The Dry: A Novel by Jane Harper (3.5 stars)

I waited too long to write this review and so I've forgotten everything about it, which usually means it was above 3 stars but not above 4 because either way it would be more memorable :) I only have a couple of notes, so usually that means it was pretty good. The highlights I have were about how well it described what's it's like to be in a small town in a drought.

Soon they’d discover that the veggies didn’t grow as willingly as they had in the city window box. That every single green shoot had to be coaxed and prized from the reluctant soil, and the neighbors were too busy doing the same on an industrial scale to muster much cheer in their greetings. There was no daily bumper-to-bumper commute, but there was also nowhere much to drive to.

Arrivals looked around at the barrenness and the scale and the sheer bloody hardness of the land, and before long their faces all said exactly the same thing. I didn’t know it was like this. He turned away, remembering how the rawness of local life had seeped into the kids’ paintings at the school. Sad faces and brown landscapes. 

3.5 stars

Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen (4 stars)

Just a really astonishing journey, mostly because some people actually lived long enough to return and tell us about it. Magellan sets off to circumnavigate the globe in a handful of small ships with hardly any food, quite a bit of wine, and no idea of how to prevent scurvy.

Of the food that Magellan took on at Seville, nearly four-fifths consisted of just two items, wine and hardtack.

Wine was considered the most important; it was tax free, and an official was required to come aboard and make certain it had not soured or become contaminated.

And this journey was crazy super dangerous. Basically everyone was expected to die. Reading this account you just have to respect the courage it took to take off on such an adventure.

Going to sea was the most adventurous thing one could do, the Renaissance equivalent of becoming an astronaut

Magellan does some amazing stuff, not the least of which is surviving some spectacular mutiny attempts. But just the sailing and navigation feats through unknown waters with primitive instruments is impressive in its own right.

Magellan’s skill in negotiating the entire length of the strait is acknowledged as the single greatest feat in the history of maritime exploration.

But at some point his decision making goes haywire and he starts picking unnecessary fights with native peoples of various islands which gets him killed. Then the remainder of his crew basically turn into pirates, pillaging villages and any ships they come into contact with.

Just when it seemed that a measure of order had returned to the fleet, they attacked a large proa to obtain information about the whereabouts of the Moluccas. In a bitter struggle, they slaughtered seven of the eighteen men on board the little craft. Pigafetta mentioned the matter only in passing, without remorse. In the past, the needless deaths of the Chamorros and the Patagonian giants had caused sorrow and guilt, but by now he had become desensitized to the business of killing, which he reported with less emotion than he would a passing storm.

The thing that bothered me the most about this book was the uncritical descriptions of sex the Europeans had with the native peoples, which are largely presented as consensual orgies. I suspect the reality was much less consensual and extremely brutal for the women involved. Later in the journey when the crew kidnaps a woman "whose chief role was to serve in a harem" on the ship I found that description disgustingly uncritical for a modern author who should be capable of calling a rape a rape.

Despite those shortcomings and it being occasionally pretty slow, which may be unavoidable due to the tedium of this type of ocean travel, it's truly an astonishing story.

4 stars. 

 

The Monster Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade Book 2) by Seth Dickinson (1 star)

I don't think I've ever had a 5 star followed by a 1 star in the same series before. I loved The Traitor Baru Cormorant, it's one of my favorite books ever. But I made a huge mistake by not re-reading it before picking up this sequel. There is literally no accommodation to help the reader remember what happened in book one: no hints, no reminders, no recaps, nothing. For essentially the whole book I didn't know who anyone was, and I didn't really care either.

So, it probably would have been better with the whole story fresh in my brain, but I doubt that would have brought it higher than 2 stars. Apparently there's supposed to be 4 books and this one got cut in half because it was too long, so it's basically a bridge to nowhere.

I guess that's it for this series because I can't imagine trudging through another one like this.

1 star.

Deacon King Kong: A Novel by James McBride (2 stars)

The writing is great, but honestly it was a real drag to read. It's funny in places (the cheese!), has deep character development and gives you a great feel for the community, but it was a struggle every time I picked it up. And I've waited too long to write this review so most of it has faded from memory.

This was fresh, rich, heavenly, succulent, soft, creamy, kiss-my-ass, cows-gotta-die-for-this, delightfully salty, moo-ass, good old white folks cheese, cheese to die for, cheese to make you happy, cheese to beat the cheese boss, cheese for the big cheese, cheese to end the world, cheese so good it inspired a line every first Saturday of the month: mothers, daughters, fathers, grandparents, disabled in wheelchairs, kids, relatives from out of town, white folks from nearby Brooklyn Heights, and even South American workers from the garbage-processing plant on Concord Avenue, all patiently standing in a line that stretched from the interior of Hot Sausage’s boiler room to Building 17’s outer doorway, up the ramp to the sidewalk, curling around the side of the building and to the plaza near the flagpole.

 “Isn’t it something,” Hettie said softly, “what ol’ New York really is? We come here to be free and find life’s worse here than back home. The white folks here just color it different. They don’t mind you sitting next to ’em on the subway, or riding the bus in the front seat, but if you asks for the same pay, or wants to live next door, or get so beat down you don’t wanna stand up and sing about how great America is, they’ll bust down on you so hard pus’ll come out your ears.”

2 stars.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Articles of The Federation (3.5 stars)

Well, I waited too long to review this one so I'm going to just give it a safe 3.5 stars, which TBH is probably underrating it. I remember quite liking it as part of my "bureaucracy porn" kick earlier in the year. It's very much "The West Wing" political drama set in the star trek universe.

3.5 stars.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: A Novel by Gail Honeyman (4.5 stars)

If you liked the curious incident of the dog in the night time, you'll probably like this one, although it studiously avoids any sort of mention of autism or Asperger syndrome, which I think is something that Mark Haddon regretted.

Eleanor is a great character and we see the world through her single POV. At the start it's extremely extremely lonely and we get to watch her deal with her past trauma and build relationships haphazardly but successfully. By the end of the novel I was so emotionally invested in her I was desperate for her to succeed and was constantly worried that it was going to end sadly and catastrophically. Thankfully it doesn't. But it also doesn't end unrealistically in some perfect world.

Eleanor's social awkwardness, direct way of speaking, and sometimes minutes-long pondering of questions before responding is beautifully written. It's also really funny in lots of places:

If I’m ever unsure as to the correct course of action, I’ll think, “What would a ferret do?” or, “How would a salamander respond to this situation?” Invariably, I find the right answer.

He was staring into the middle distance, and I noticed that he had lit a cigarette and smoked almost half of it while I had been pondering. “Yes, Raymond. I will go to the pub with you for one drink,” I said, nodding. “Magic,” he said.

How they loved to wear those badges on their blazers the next day! As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe.

I had forgotten about the security devices clipped onto the clothes, however, and we had quite a struggle to remove them. I had to come behind the desk, in the end, and kneel backward beside her so she could detach them using the magnetic machine fixed to the counter. We ended up laughing about it, actually.

“O” as a snail-shell spiral if they wished to, after all, and using a mixture of upper- and lowercase letters is simply good sense—it ensures that the signature is difficult to forge.  

At other times it challenges the societal pressures on women from Eleanor's analytical, well-reasoned viewpoint and reflects on the nature of overwhelming loneliness:

Did men ever look in the mirror, I wondered, and find themselves wanting in deeply fundamental ways? When they opened a newspaper or watched a film, were they presented with nothing but exceptionally handsome young men, and did this make them feel intimidated, inferior, because they were not as young, not as handsome? Did they then read newspaper articles ridiculing those same handsome men if they gained weight or wore something unflattering? These were, of course, rhetorical questions.

 “If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn’t spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say”

The "twist" at the end of the book isn't a twist at all, it's completely obvious for most of the novel, but that didn't worry me.

It's a great book and I deliberated about whether it is 5 star or not. It didn't have that can't-put-down quality, but it definitely made me cry and I was incredibly emotionally invested. Some reviewers seem to think the character was incredibly implausible, but I've worked with some people with pretty similar personalities, minus the trauma and alcohol.

4.5 stars

The Goblin Emporer by Katherine Addison (4 stars)

I came to this novel because it was cited as a prime example of a new genre I realized I like: bureaucracy porn! Basically the literary equivalent of the west wing: people doing complex things with competence with no details spared.

It's that. Definitely that. The world building is very good, although it's fairly limited to politics and court intrigue. The main character Maia is deftly built, if a little too good and moral so that he tends toward being boring. There's a strong racist tension throughout the whole novel: the king's son that was never supposed to inherit the throne is a goblin, and goblins are black/grey, while the ruling class are elves who are white. Prejudice and othering are everywhere at court.

The names and linguistics are brutally complicated. There's a glossary and really complicated explanation at the start, but it's too hard to switch back and forth on the kindle, so I just picked up what I could with context. I'm still super confused about plural and singular and which one is formal/informal and what the significance is, oh well.

I found myself enjoying the fish-out-of-water fast learning Maia has to do to survive at court (quite literally, his life is on the line), despite the action sequences being few and far between. 

Things really heat up with the assassination attempts, but also cool off and are resolved far too quickly. The murder investigation necessarily happens off the page since the emperor has a whole kingdom to run. 

I think the book suffered significantly from the single POV. The witness for the dead would have been very interesting to run in parallel and would have provided significantly more action and a different perspective on the kingdom. Apparently something like this is coming out in a separate novel soon.

4 stars.