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emergencily's reviews
97 reviews
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi (Novel) Vol. 1 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
5.0
1500 page slow burn Chinese martial arts fantasy gay romance novel? It's like they set up a mouse trap and this bait was personalized just for me.
A lot of fantasy romance novels fall into the trap of either focusing too much on crafting their worlds, leaving the development of the characters and romance to the wayside, or the reverse situation where the focus on the romance leads to a shoddy story. Thankfully, MXTX manages to balance all of these well.
The plot and world building is genuinely interesting and well-crafted, both resting comfortably on the laurels of generations of well-established xianxia tropes and culture, and breathing new life into them. The author's somewhat excessive use of time skips back and forth over the course of the story can sometimes stall the pacing, and confuse you when reading.
I do think the translation has something to do with that occasional confusion - it’s been translated in a way that’s clearly very faithful to the original text, with plenty of foot notes and a glossary for context. I normally love that, and while I do appreciate it, I actually think they really could and should have localized this a bit more. Sometimes the prose and flow is just way too awkward sounding in English because they focused on preserving the exact original’s literal meaning a little too much vs focusing on communicating a clear meaning, and natural, better flowing style and prose.
For readers unfamiliar with the tropes & terms of xianxia, combined with a large cast (each of whom has about 5 different names and titles) it means it takes some perseverance to get through the first volume and make sense of it all. But once the story hits its stride, it's a tense page turner: a murder mystery, high fantasy, martial arts action, high stakes thriller, family tragedy, and slow burn romance rolled into one.
The MC, Wei Wuxian, is the star that holds it all together. You can't help but fall in love with him - mischievous and trouble making, lackadaisically arrogant, and enduringly kind and loyal. Seeing his character grow over the course of the novel is a treat. He’s a well written character with a lot of depth. You see him start as a bright and promising young man who spirals and implodes on himself, trying to reconcile his ideals within a corrupt society and to protect his loved ones. His self destruction is partly due to an actual conspiracy against him, but a lot due to a mess of his own making: his hubris, rash temper and emotional immaturity. He's also strongly situated as a main character within a larger cast of characters who are all incredibly interesting, loveable and frustrating, in their own rights. They all have deep motivations and exist not just to fill out the world but to serve as interesting foils, foreshadowing and parallels of alternate outcomes. All the recurring characters are connected by a web of complex and unique relationships that the story takes its time nurturing (EEJU - Everyone Is Jin Ling’s Uncle). And of course the relationship btwn Wei Wuxian and his love interest Lan Zhan as their bond withstands death, betrayal, war, and time, is the one you root for the most.
Oh and a note - the extra chapters are mostly fun and nice additions to fill out some missing B side scenes and characters, but for gods sake skip that incense burner chapter where they bone. Gotta be some of the least sexiest sex I have ever read in fiction, second only to Murakami sex scenes. Christ almighty.
A lot of fantasy romance novels fall into the trap of either focusing too much on crafting their worlds, leaving the development of the characters and romance to the wayside, or the reverse situation where the focus on the romance leads to a shoddy story. Thankfully, MXTX manages to balance all of these well.
The plot and world building is genuinely interesting and well-crafted, both resting comfortably on the laurels of generations of well-established xianxia tropes and culture, and breathing new life into them. The author's somewhat excessive use of time skips back and forth over the course of the story can sometimes stall the pacing, and confuse you when reading.
I do think the translation has something to do with that occasional confusion - it’s been translated in a way that’s clearly very faithful to the original text, with plenty of foot notes and a glossary for context. I normally love that, and while I do appreciate it, I actually think they really could and should have localized this a bit more. Sometimes the prose and flow is just way too awkward sounding in English because they focused on preserving the exact original’s literal meaning a little too much vs focusing on communicating a clear meaning, and natural, better flowing style and prose.
For readers unfamiliar with the tropes & terms of xianxia, combined with a large cast (each of whom has about 5 different names and titles) it means it takes some perseverance to get through the first volume and make sense of it all. But once the story hits its stride, it's a tense page turner: a murder mystery, high fantasy, martial arts action, high stakes thriller, family tragedy, and slow burn romance rolled into one.
The MC, Wei Wuxian, is the star that holds it all together. You can't help but fall in love with him - mischievous and trouble making, lackadaisically arrogant, and enduringly kind and loyal. Seeing his character grow over the course of the novel is a treat. He’s a well written character with a lot of depth. You see him start as a bright and promising young man who spirals and implodes on himself, trying to reconcile his ideals within a corrupt society and to protect his loved ones. His self destruction is partly due to an actual conspiracy against him, but a lot due to a mess of his own making: his hubris, rash temper and emotional immaturity. He's also strongly situated as a main character within a larger cast of characters who are all incredibly interesting, loveable and frustrating, in their own rights. They all have deep motivations and exist not just to fill out the world but to serve as interesting foils, foreshadowing and parallels of alternate outcomes. All the recurring characters are connected by a web of complex and unique relationships that the story takes its time nurturing (EEJU - Everyone Is Jin Ling’s Uncle). And of course the relationship btwn Wei Wuxian and his love interest Lan Zhan as their bond withstands death, betrayal, war, and time, is the one you root for the most.
Oh and a note - the extra chapters are mostly fun and nice additions to fill out some missing B side scenes and characters, but for gods sake skip that incense burner chapter where they bone. Gotta be some of the least sexiest sex I have ever read in fiction, second only to Murakami sex scenes. Christ almighty.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Violence, and War
Moderate: Homophobia and Incest
Minor: Rape
IQ84 by Haruki Murakami
Did not finish book.
Did not finish book.
i FW him cause i liked the wind up bird chronicle but reading even part of this dense brick shit of a novel made me want to fly to japan, break into his home, tie him up and forcibly hold a 48 hour long seminar on feminism & gender
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder
4.25
Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin
Other notes:
EDIT: i changed my mind hehe i'm giving 5 stars because this book just ended up staying with me...it has its flaws but the emotional journey & impact is more important to me
5.0
- At first, feels like the candid, unedited ramblings of a teenager’s angsty diary. There are parts where it devolves into an excess of self-pitying angst & wallowing self-destruction delivered via endless, monologues full of flowery metaphors that become repetitive and trite. Getting through the first 100 pgs felt like pulling teeth because of this
- On the other hand, that in itself is precisely what makes it an incredibly accurate depiction of depression + social isolation in your teens/early 20s LOL
- A unique look into the inner world of a closeted lesbian in 1980s Taiwan. It’s not a comfortable read because it’s about a protagonist who occupies a social position that is deeply discomfiting
- By the end of the book I had changed my mind - the long monologues of misery were worth it. Seeing Lazi finally grow as a person as she tries to build community, and dares to hope for a future for herself is moving (even if the journey there is long. very long.)
- The book isn’t marked as autobiographical, but it’s so personal and feels so much like someone’s real diary that it’s hard not to believe there wasn’t a lot of the author's own feelings and experiences in this. It’s sad to read the echoes of her pain, her sense of solitude, and the self-hatred she grappled with for her sexuality & gender in the pages of this book
- Sometimes I felt frustration with the protagonist, but at the same time, I empathize with her and I recognize my younger self in her
- As the book progresses her rare moments of clarity & self-awareness are such shining and hopeful moments. More than anything, you want to see Lazi happy.
Other notes:
- This book is apparently the origin of the Chinese slang term for lesbian, "lala," from the protagonist's name "Lazi"
- Almost the antithesis of a novel; no structure, not much plot. Mostly focused on inner monologues
- Some of her descriptions of love and how she views her lover can be trite, but sometimes it is incredibly moving and beautiful. Love is so all-encompassing for her.
- "Tell me, just this once, if you still think of me. And let me recklessly, tenderly, tell you one more time: I love you."
- "I’d taken everyone I loved and killed them off in my heart, one by one. I’d long been tending their graves—secretly visiting and mourning during the day, going out and erecting a cross on starry nights, lying inside and awaiting my own death on starless nights. That was my Atlantis, the kingdom I’d built in the name of separation. I’d never before unearthed so much of myself, and so suddenly at that. Inside the world of my tomb, everyone else was dead, I alone survived, and that was the reason for my sorrow."
- "She'd been harboring her love for me like an oyster cultivating a pearl."
- Tun Tun & Zhi Rou are the MVPs - girl best friends with undeniable homoerotic romantic tension that ends as a life-changing, soul crushing rift between friends. Even as they go on to perform heterosexuality & femininity and try to cope by conforming within society, they can't forget what they meant to each other and they carry the impressions they left on each other in everything they do
- Meng Sheng – a terrible, terrible man, but someone who burns all the brighter for it. You can't help but be charmed by him and drawn into his orbit. He’s the kind of person who lives life like a comet; fast and hard until he self-implodes. I loved the parallels in the role reversal drawn btwn Lazi and Meng Sheng as the novel progresses; in their youth, Meng Sheng asks her to keep living and to stop hurting herself. Years later, she's the one in his position.
- Really interesting ruminations on the gender binary & gender nonconformity, on masculinity & femininity, yin & yang. Would have loved if there could have been more space in the novel for this
EDIT: i changed my mind hehe i'm giving 5 stars because this book just ended up staying with me...it has its flaws but the emotional journey & impact is more important to me
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape, Self harm, and Suicide attempt
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
5.0
Of course what do I have except glowing praise for a nostalgic, childhood favourite?
This book is so effortlessly humorous and charming. It had me cackling out loud so many times. Miyazaki's movie adaption is equally brilliant in its own way, but the characters in the original book are so much messier, meaner and chaotic, and all the more endearing and funny for it. Howl & Sophie's endless bickering and bantering makes you root for them all the more. Howl is so charmingly pathetic and ridiculous (in a babygirl way) & Sophie's blistering self-deprecation and deprecation-of-Howl makes her so complex and funny.
The plot can be really, really chaotic. New characters and plot points run in and off the pages constantly without so much as a "how do you do." Somehow, the chaos works and creates the most magical hodge podge, just like the moving castle itself. I love that the book just throws you into its magical fantasy setting (and also throws at you the hilarious plot pipe bomb that is modern Earth casually existing alongside it, and Howl's decidedly ordinary origin as a mediocre university rugby player with too many useless degrees) and just keeps marching onwards. The book's just like, well duh magic is real and lives in all of us and in every setting -- now it’s up to you if can you keep up with it or not.
This book is so effortlessly humorous and charming. It had me cackling out loud so many times. Miyazaki's movie adaption is equally brilliant in its own way, but the characters in the original book are so much messier, meaner and chaotic, and all the more endearing and funny for it. Howl & Sophie's endless bickering and bantering makes you root for them all the more. Howl is so charmingly pathetic and ridiculous (in a babygirl way) & Sophie's blistering self-deprecation and deprecation-of-Howl makes her so complex and funny.
The plot can be really, really chaotic. New characters and plot points run in and off the pages constantly without so much as a "how do you do." Somehow, the chaos works and creates the most magical hodge podge, just like the moving castle itself. I love that the book just throws you into its magical fantasy setting (and also throws at you the hilarious plot pipe bomb that is modern Earth casually existing alongside it, and Howl's decidedly ordinary origin as a mediocre university rugby player with too many useless degrees) and just keeps marching onwards. The book's just like, well duh magic is real and lives in all of us and in every setting -- now it’s up to you if can you keep up with it or not.
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
5.0
This book was such a page turner for me - I finished the whole thing in about 3-4 hours.
It takes place during the Black Plague in France and follows the mysterious, holy journey of a young girl with unexplained spiritual powers and prophetic visions. She is accompanied by a disgraced, aged old knight who’s made it his sworn duty to guard her on her journey, and a gay priest ostracized by his own flock seeking a reason to uphold his faltering faith.
Absolutely loved the fantasy/historical setting with the Black Plague, the Crusades, war, and total social upheaval ravaging Europe. All the while, metaphysical wars are waged between heaven and hell in dimensions beyond human comprehension, holding
life on earth as collateral in the balance. The settings were perfectly complementary, with the gorey, visceral body horror of the Black Plague, and the violations of humanity's self-destructive violence amid total social collapse juxtaposed against the unknowable, unexplainable vengeful violence of god's angels and hell's monsters. I'm a sucker for historical fiction with a fantasy twist.
The ending was perhaps a bit cliche, but by then the main characters have suffered so much that you don't even care that it's a bit cliche, you just want to see them have a modicum of any kind of peace.
It takes place during the Black Plague in France and follows the mysterious, holy journey of a young girl with unexplained spiritual powers and prophetic visions. She is accompanied by a disgraced, aged old knight who’s made it his sworn duty to guard her on her journey, and a gay priest ostracized by his own flock seeking a reason to uphold his faltering faith.
Absolutely loved the fantasy/historical setting with the Black Plague, the Crusades, war, and total social upheaval ravaging Europe. All the while, metaphysical wars are waged between heaven and hell in dimensions beyond human comprehension, holding
life on earth as collateral in the balance. The settings were perfectly complementary, with the gorey, visceral body horror of the Black Plague, and the violations of humanity's self-destructive violence amid total social collapse juxtaposed against the unknowable, unexplainable vengeful violence of god's angels and hell's monsters. I'm a sucker for historical fiction with a fantasy twist.
The ending was perhaps a bit cliche, but by then the main characters have suffered so much that you don't even care that it's a bit cliche, you just want to see them have a modicum of any kind of peace.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia, Pedophilia, Rape, and War
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology by Shane Hawk, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
4.25
An anthology of short stories with 26 different creepy & dark short stories by Indigenous authors.
I enjoyed it but I have the same criticism for this as I did for the other horror anthology I read before this one. I understand wanting to include as many voices and stories as possible, but I still think that quality is more important than quantity. If they could have trimmed it down and curated it more to present a smaller of batch of stronger stories with more thematic cohesion, it would have been a much stronger anthology. A lot of stories were great, but some were barely even memorable.
Overall still recommend because it's always worth it to read stories that draw on something outside the usual Eurocentric canon
I enjoyed it but I have the same criticism for this as I did for the other horror anthology I read before this one. I understand wanting to include as many voices and stories as possible, but I still think that quality is more important than quantity. If they could have trimmed it down and curated it more to present a smaller of batch of stronger stories with more thematic cohesion, it would have been a much stronger anthology. A lot of stories were great, but some were barely even memorable.
Overall still recommend because it's always worth it to read stories that draw on something outside the usual Eurocentric canon