ergative's reviews
925 reviews

 It was engaging, certainly, and I loved the descriptions of the games, but the main thrust of the plot was interpersonal conflicts between two people, and I find it really tiresome to deal with interpersonal squabbles written about in a literary way. The start of the book was great. The second half, as everyone did SO MUCH navel-gazing, was hard to take.
 

 This trod a very fine line between being a tiresome retread of old tropes (spunky girl goes to fight school to rage against misogynistic society and becomes the Chosen One Best Evar Fighter) and inverting or subverting them in unexpected ways. Not quite unexpected enough to undo the irritation of seeing those tropes played straight for a while, though. Imaginative world building. But I don't really see myself seeking out the sequel. I don't care enough.
 

Review to follow for Nerds of a Feather from 8 January.

 In true Alex Bledsoe manner, the strength of this book lies in the depiction of the Tufa, with the uncanny combination of their human-facing squalid, impoverished existence in rural Appalachia, alongside their otherworldly magic and music. Each part is equally real, both the mundane and inhuman. And both components have their good and bad elements; it's nothing so simple as 'squalid human side = bad; magical fairy side = good'. The human hicks can be kind and decent and bigoted and cruel; and the magic of their songs and flights can be sinister and beautiful. 

This book is a departure from previous Tufa tales, told entirely from the perspective of an outsider, one Matt Johansson, a New York stage actor. He is cast in a musical about Tufa history written by an ex-pat Tufa named Ray(ford) Parrish, which centers around the mystery of an ancient article buried by a long-dead Tufa in an old Chapel of Ease down in Tennessee. For a while it seems as if the primary conflict in the book might relate to the reluctance of the Tufa community to see their story told to outsiders, attracting attention of the outside world, but that actually fizzles out in a way I'm not entirely sure worked. Instead, the primary tension centers around the mystery what's buried in the chapel. In the play the mystery is never solved, which drives the cast of the play wild with frustration. Eventually, Matt finds himself travelling down to Needsville, Tennessee, the heart of Tufa-land, to seek out the original chapel that the play was based on, and dig up the mystery to find out for himself what it is. 

A great deal of this driving tension derives from the fact that Ray is adamant that, for the purposes of his play, the actual revelation of the mystery is second to the story that is built around it. For this reason it's not necessary to reveal the solution to the audience. The emotional drama is all the more powerful if people remember the mystery; because once it's solved they won't care anymore. And it's entirely clear that Alex Bledsoe is playing a similar game with us, the readers of the book. This means, though, that Bledsoe has tied himself in a knot, because if he reveals the mystery to us, the reader, he's betrayed Ray Parrish's deeply held belief that the revelation is irrelevant; but if he doesn't reveal it, then we the readers share in the cast's frustration at being kept in the dark. And although Bledsoe is a very good writer, he is not a fairy-descended Tufa whose powers of music and dance are literally magical, rendering the emotional arc of the story so compelling that the solution becomes irrelevant. I think he managed to thread that needle in a way that made sense, but I was still left feeling a little dissatisfied in the end. 

I should also mention that, although Bledsoe does the cultural representation of rural Appalachia with sensitivity and nuance, he really struggles with other bits of representation. I'm still fuming at how he treated the one black guy in 'Long Black Curl', and in this book he decides to take on gay people. Matt is gay. Down in Needsville, he starts a romance with a gay Tufa man. This is fine. The Tufa, apparently, are totally cool with gay people (except when the nasty ones call them 'faggots' an awful lot, but this is explained as being 'not personal', because they just use all the racial slurs as needed for outsiders; which, apparently, makes it less bad?). 

No, the problem is more a sort of clumsiness in dealing with the situation. First, Matt is constantly turning lustful eyes on everyone and worrying about whether he'll be able to work effectively with them through his insta-crush. This is something I always find irritating, because fucking adults should be able to fucking control themselves and do their fucking jobs. But, to be fair, in previous books lustful men turn their gazes on women to similar effect, so it's a sort of equal opportunity male gaze thing, I guess. Alex Bledsoe's men have real difficulty keeping their brains out of their pants. But Matt has a boyfriend back in New York at the same time he's hooking up with his Tufa lover. This is excused by the arrival of a text message apparently intended for someone else, which implies his boyfriend is cheating on him back in New York. But because cell phone reception is so bad in Needsville, Matt can't get in touch with him to hash it out; which means that, in the event the text message was in fact innocent, he was fully cheating on his boyfriend. 

Also, Matt knows martial arts, because his father told him when he came out that he would need to learn how to defend himself. And he's constantly using it against Tufas giving him a hard time. To be fair, they're not giving him a hard time for being gay (he does an awful lot of trespassing in his search for the Chapel of Ease), but it's the being gay bit that was responsible for him knowing how to kick some ass. And it just has the same sort of tokenistic feeling of forced competence that sets my teeth on edge when a girl!boss and strong!female!character has no flaws in an attempt to counteract the narrative that girls are weak. Like, I get the intention. I understand where it's coming from. But it still feels off. Matt is a lustful gay guy who can't keep his eyes to himself, cheats on his lovers with other men, but isn't your typical pansy-ass weako, because he knows Muay-Tai. It's well-intentioned, but it's clumsy. 

At least he doesn't end up dead like the token black guy in the last book. That's progress, I guess.
 

 The approach to gothic horror that Atwater uses here reminds me of A.G. Slatter's The Path of Thorns: A young governess, Winnie, arrives at a creepy-ass house with the creepy-ass master, but we learn in short order that she is actually the scariest thing around. The difference is that Atwater's approach is fluffier, with an extremely slow romance side plot that was so slow its eventual revelation felt shoehorned in. It was supported, in a way, by Winnie's own character backstory which involved a violent aversion to romantic interest, but since that story itself is the consequence of a history of sexual harrassment, all of it chafed. It was sensitively done, with sympathy and with intention--none of that tedious 'rape builds character'--type of nonsense that weaker authors rely on to build drama, but all the same, I do prefer my books without sexual harrassment, thank you very much.

The plot was twisty and convoluted, almost to the point of confusion, but I think that's because the three key names--Longfell, Hollowvale, and Mourningwood--somehow all looked the same on the page, and I kept getting them mixed up, All the 'o's, I guess. Or maybe it was because I've read some but not all of the previous books in the series, so I kept trying to figure out which of those references were familiar and which are new. Indeed, the plot relies on so much backstory that I found myself wondering if I'd missed a trick--was there some intervening book that set up the current characters? But if so, they don't seem to be part of the traditionally published series, which as far as I can tell does not engage with these characters or set up the current state of faeries in England that holds for this installment. All the same, I bet there are some stories on Patreon or wherever Atwater first published these before the UK publishers picked up the books, because the references to Winnie's sister and friends, who only very briefly write a couple of letters to shift along a bit of plot, felt a lot like they had been originally conceptualized in more depth, and then reused here, rather than created and properly introduced for the purpose of this story.

So, in sum, an enjoyable gothic governess tale, with faeries and romance and a rich backstory that supports a complex mystery whose unravelling does, in the end, allow all to become clear. I disagreed with a couple of the narrative decisions--mostly regarding the romance--but that doesn't mean they were done poorly; just that they were not quite to my taste.
 

I struggled with this one. Some bits I really loved, in particular city in the throes of a massive technological shift, which is itself the outcome of a stalled war. The descriptions of the biological technologies were wonderful, very vivid, and this idea of a literally living city worked well with the mechanisms of the magic system as it was revealed. 

But other bits felt overblown or out of control. The commentary on social injustice was obvious and unsubtle. Yes, cops like to exercise power in shady ways; yes, it sure is unfair when people are queerphobic. Yawn--not because I think these are not real problems, but because they're such mundane problems that lingering on them in long introspective monologues is just boring. There's nothing new said here that you couldn't find on your basic social media platform among the most mainstream lefties. 

The interconnection of the gods and folklore felt slightly diffuse. It seemed like the author was trying to show a parallel between the politics and perception of the gods, and the politics and perception of the humans, but the connections never felt quite clear, and the gods felt underdeveloped. There was a brief field trip to an entirely different island to explore an entirely irrelevant bit of god-related (ish) backstory to the main plot that could definitely have been edited out.

I also think the politics of the humans could have been better developed, because as it was, the entire reason the antagonists come up with their horrible plot is because . . . 'rawr I evil kill everyone and rule the survivors'...? And the nature of their schemes felt a bit scattershot. First they seem to be trying to frame an antagonist nation to break an apparent ceasefire, stirring up fear in an attempt to justify injustice in the name of exigency. But as their plot ripens to completion, it becomes rapidly clear that there's no point trying to frame any other nation in this, since the people for whom the charade is being played out are hardly going to be taking up arms and exploding into jingoistic fury. Not when they're melted into each other, and the neighbourhood horses and birds and sea creatures in the harbour in a mass of dying body-horror. So what was the point of all the institutional and social engineering shenanigans, when the end goal was so extreme as to render it all moot?

Even beyond these broad structural issues, I found myself getting bored, putting off washing the dishes because this book (consumed on audio) was not a comfortable accompaniment. The character arcs were not engaging, and the relationship I found the most interesting--between our main character and her older mentor-colleague, the one unsullied cop left on the force--faded away, to be replaced by another, different older mentor-colleague cop who looks dirty, but is actually virtuous when it matters. It was as if the author wanted this kind of relationship, but couldn't decide which type of cop to put in the role, and so divided one role between two people, such that neither felt fully realized. 

Anyway, I could go on, but I won't. I was disappointed--especially because the imaginative conceit was pretty great.  There was some really good stuff there. But it needed a lot more developmental editing than it got.

 This was--hmm, not quite sprawling, but Dickinson has an enormous range of ideas that he employed in building this book. The trolley-problem theme, and how Anna, Erik, and Clayton had each been faced with their own real-life version of it that informs their approach now with the much larger-scale alien-overlord version, was incredibly well constructed. The political parallels, too, between the role of America in Kurdistan, or Europe in the New World, and now aliens on Earth, were skillfully drawn. Dickinson is very, very clever at weaving these broad sociopolitical and philosophical commentaries into the structure of his books. Good character work too; each individual's motivations and values were consistent and their actions made sense. Specific mechanics of the actual speculative world-building were a bit vague. The whole logic of aretaia and Exordia were kind of info-dumped, and never really developed. I would have liked to see the same skillful weaving of motivation and political structure for the aliens that we saw for the humans. But if there are going to be sequels, maybe we'll get them there. 

ARC from Netgalley; longer review up on Nerds of a Feather from 2 November

 Solid, reliable fun, as the previous one. I think the chaotic family next door worked really well, and all their individual characteristics were nicely woven in with the overall mystery. 

 I don't really understand the near-universal admiration for Roger Zelazny. The conceit of this book was cute, but the actual execution was wildly frustrated. So many secrets are being kept from the reader only to be revealed as trivial. The Things in the Mirror, the Thing in the Attic--they turned out to be noThingburgers, entirely failing to live up to their setup, while the unexpected rule about the location of the sacrifice came out of nowhere--fully adhoc, entirely not set up at all. The Great Detective's eventual role, given how important a role he'd been set up to play, was disappointing (outshadowed by a rat, I say!), and in the end it felt like an exercise in plot design, rather than a fully fledged book with characters and proper emotional stakes. 

I did like the howlable moon, though. That was a good line. 

Also once again we have the token lady amidst all the dudes, and the sacrifice is, of course, the helpless girl.
 

Solid, reliable fun