rebeccazh's reviews
2320 reviews

i love priest and i love her writing and how tropey and fun her books are, but this book is seriously turning me off... the book was going fine until the main character, Chu Huan, a Han Chinese meets the other protagonist, Nanshan, the leader of an ethnic minority group (china 55 ethnic groups) living in a village near the mountains. okay, i know priest is very uncritical of race relations (see: [b:杀破狼 Sha Po Lang |41429949|杀破狼 Sha Po Lang |priest|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547924437l/41429949._SX50_.jpg|64652703]) although in that book i could still sort of close an eye; but in this one, the full racialized differences come out: Nanshan is uneducated and exotic. BUT very handsome and very intelligent, which makes him desirable and admirable. their language barrier is narrated with a lot of humor, but Chu Huan is the 'center' and Nanshan is the 'fringe' -- Nanshan is expected to communicate in Chinese, and jokes are played on his clumsy Chinese. sigh. it really turns me off. going to see if it gets better.

EDIT 16/4/20: quarantine gave me time to reread this lol. cs pacat's gratuitous preferences are more clear now - the (overly) 'clever' (sometimes complicated/convoluted) narration, the idealizing of laurent, the preference for kinky stuff (power dynamics disguised as slavery/debauchery)... anyway, i have a much greater appreciation of both laurent and damen as characters, and their relationships. i also came from banana fish.

A lot of really useful ideas presented in a very accessible way.

years ago, i tried to read this and i couldn't get through it, then i watched the Becoming documentary on Netflix (which i loved), which gave me the motivation to come back to finish this lol. i had to skim a lot of it, because this writing style was really not my cup of tea, and when Michelle was talking about Barack's political stuff, i really zoned out. but reading this just confirms my belief that Michelle Obama is one of the best people ever. she's a very genuine, hardworking and very kind person. there were a lot of wonderful quotes, and it's amazing to see how her past and her experiences have shaped her to be the kind of person she is.

from young, her family has helped her feel that she matters. she has carried this security into every stage of her life and it's helped her achieve a lot of really big things - going to Princeton and Harvard, her progress in her work life, becoming First Lady. i loved how openly and warmly she talked about the love and support she had received from her family, how they taught her to be resilient, optimistic and hard-working, and how much these values had supported and shaped her whenever she was doing something new and big. it's led her to want to bring up her daughters with the same love and nurturing, and it's the goal of her outreach initiatives with young people and kids. she wants them to feel like they matter.

i loved the inside look into the Obamas and i loved how openly she talks about her relationship with Barack. i love how much she wants to repay the nurturing and support she received from family, friends, colleagues, and all kinds of people by sort of paying it forward into nurturing the younger generation. even despite becoming First Lady, she is down-to-earth and humble, only thinking about how to use her new (and unwanted) influence and platform to do meaningful work. i was telling my therapist how she is honestly a great role model. what an inspiration.

i've just realized i've never added this book, which is so blasphemous. this was literally one of my favorite books as a kid, alongside harry potter. i tried to move things telepathically like matilda after i read this.

That was good! Heavy spoilers near the end of my review.

The bad: this book had some pacing issues. The premise of the book is really strong - Essun just lost her son and is looking for her daughter - but the middle part was really slow, and then it suddenly gets really intense in the last part. The book is sort of light on plot, heavy on worldbuilding. I was also not a huge fan of the writing. It's evocative and descriptive, but sometimes it's too vague and I was confused about the sensory details of a scene. I couldn't picture what was happening.

The good: It's a fascinating world that Jemisin has created. This is a whole society built around the earth and it's reflected in the language. I was thankful there was a glossary, unlike Gideon the Ninth, where I had to fumble my way through and was still confused by the end of the book. Jemisin built a whole history, with lore (!), and different segments of society, in this book. Through the course of the book, we discover the dark secrets of this world - the society is built heavily on the exploitation of an underclass, the orogenes.

Two things that really stood out to me. I've read Jemisin's other series and really loved them, but this was the first series of hers that I felt like there was quite a bit of social commentary. The parallel between the exploitation and oppression of the orogenes, and real world events, felt very real. The lived experience of being born an orogene, hated and feared, less than human, was so sharply written.

The second thing I really liked was the characters, Damaya, Syenite and Essun. They are the same woman, at different points in her life. This is the biggest plot twist. I was totally blown away. The three of them are so different, but there is a thread of similarity. In hindsight, certain things make a lot of sense, and I loved that I could see this continuity - Damaya's adherence to the rules, excelling in the system; Syenite fully internalising the teachings of the Fulcrum, appearing to believe everything that was forced onto her; Essun hiding her identity and living a life built on lies, albeit a happy one, for the past few years. At the heart of it, as Essun reflects, she doesn't really know who she is. She camouflages to fit in, and did so in all three 'stages' of her life. It makes a lot of sense to me. Oftentimes with othering and exploitation, people internalise the harsh external gaze of society and lose their sense of self and don't really know who they are, what they're capable of, and how to accept and like themselves. I particularly loved how both Damaya and Syenite struggled with this - Damaya reminding herself that she is a weapon and she's fine being alone, and Syenite's subtle dislike and prejudice of other orogenes (who are exactly like her). It was so well written. I loved the chapter titles too.

The second person narration worked surprisingly well for Essun. There is really a sense of disorientation, like she's cut adrift.

The audio book was very good. It was thanks to this that I got through the rather slow middle part.

Nostalgic reread. I picked it up because the audiobook was available on my library app and I really liked the narrator. Their Artemis is absolutely perfect. Anyway, docking a star for the portrayal of the Vietnamese character in the first chapter, but otherwise this was more fun than I remember. It's surprisingly funny. I read this series when I was, what, 10? And I had forgotten most of the details. All I remember was that Artemis was really cool. Now that I've reread it, I feel like I seriously missed out on Holly. She's a fantastic character. Watching Artemis duel wits with everyone was fun, yes, but watching Holly be her hot-headed and compassionate self really makes me root for her. She's awesome. I loved all the side characters too.

This book is very different from the first. Where The Fifth Season was sort of fantasy, sort of post-apocalypse, this book is sort of science fiction and apocalypse. It's even darker in tone, and there are some downright gruesome/body horror stuff. Heavy spoilers below and this is a very long review.

The bad: still some pacing issues. This book has three narrators, Essun, Nassun and Schaffa. Essun's parts were full of info-dumping. She is in the underground community and Alabaster appeared at the end of the last book. I was excited to see him because he's a really interesting character. Unfortunately, he was only here as a character to provide information.

For nearly her entire arc, Essun reacts and doesn't really act. She is very similar to Jonathan Sims from the podcast, The Magnus Archive. A protagonist who is new to the world, so they are one step behind everyone else, and mostly reacting or belatedly understanding the consequences of their actions. I mean, I don't think I would have done as well as her if this was real life, but it made for a frustrating read, coz she was just confused and powerless. So her chapters had very little action and it was mostly worldbuilding. It was great to finally get some answers though. And some of the answers really blew me away.

Second, there is just something about NK Jemisin's writing that I don't quite like. I can't figure it out. While she's really good at narrative and reflection, the character dialogue is mostly boring, and the character interactions didn't really shine.

The good: all the good parts of the first book continue here. The social commentary is so sharp! I highlighted so many sentences. Jemisin really explores the lived experience of someone who is seen as a monster, treated as a second-class citizen, exploited, feared and oppressed. It is especially evident in Nassun's narrative.

Nassun is Essun's lost daughter, and in the first book Essun searches for her with fury, grief and fear. You would think Nassun would want to be back with her. But Nassun's chapters reveal that she actually resents and hates her mother a little. Nassun is almost happier being with her father who killed her brother. She travels with him and uses her powers to do kill to protect him. She then meets Schaffa, who is apparently reformed and sort of good now, no longer that sinister and creepy father figure in the first book, and she instantly attaches to him as her new father figure. He seems to love her. She loves him fiercely and devotedly because he is the only person who seems to accept, love and protect her.

Her narrative explores the really complex emotions and psychology of growing up under a great deal of trauma and cruelty. Essun was abused by the Fulcrum since she was a child, and was basically taught that love is conditional, and love comes with pain and fear. Schaffa broke her hand to show he loved her. It was really screwed up. In this book, we find that this is what Essun does to Nassun. She broke her own daughter's hand to prove a point. She is harsh and critical with her. Later on, Nassun unwittingly understands Essun because she almost wants to control and override Schaffa's will because she 'loves' him. She stops herself in time, but this recurring pattern was really powerful. It reminded me of intergenerational trauma, where the parent passes down the trauma they experienced to their child, and the child then passes it down to their child...

But it also makes you think about how there is almost no space for love in a harsh and cruel world like this. Essun says she did it to keep Nassun alive. Better Nassun hate her than be dead. This, of course, makes me think about how Essun smothered her own baby son because she thought, better he die than he live as a slave. And later on, Nassun sees how completely her father is consumed by hatred, and she has to kill her own father or he would kill her. She is so overcome by grief and fury that she chooses to hate and blame Essun for it. She thinks, her mother can take her hatred. It makes you wonder if love is even possible.

Nassun's relationships are all incredibly complex. Her father is a piece of shit, by the way. I couldn't stand him. He was traumatised by something horrible that orogenes did when he was young, and as a result, he sees every orogene as that orogene, even his own children. He kills his son and alternates between love and hatred for his daughter. That's trauma - you're frozen in the past at that incident, and you see everything through the lens of the past. Nassun is forced to read his motivations and manipulate him to keep herself safe.

This is not even touching on Nassun's relationship with Schaffa and her view of orogenes, people like herself, and her own feelings about herself. It's incredibly complex.

Nassun herself gave me complicated feelings. She is basically a child prodigy. Very powerful and gifted, able to do a lot of difficult things easily. Her main motivations are survival, and ensuring that her parental figures (Schaffa, her father) love her. She's a child thrust into a horrible situation and I was bothered by a lot of things she did.

I still don't trust Schaffa and he kind of creeps me out.

The hostility and blaming that Essun experiences again reminded me of The Magnus Archive. A lot of times when there's a lot of trauma, people blame and fight each other.

Anyway, this was a great book, with some pacing issues. Now, on to the next book.