Year in Review: 2018 Ongoing Reading List

[catlarks]

In light of the fact that I cannot write a brief discussion of literature to save my life, I bring to you now: the second half of my 2018 literary year in review. My previous post consisted of mini-reviews of every book I completed in 2018; in this post I offer you commentary on the books I began in 2018 but am still in the process of reading for 2019.

As previously mentioned, some of these books I am still very much excited to read and I simply put them on hold in favor of something else I wanted to read more, or because the tone of the book was something I was no longer in the best frame of mind to consume. Other books on this list — a few, not many — I didn't turn out to be so much of a fan of. Even so, there is only one book here which I don't plan to finish. Everything else on this list I would recommend reading, depending on your personal taste.

Books in Progress After 2018

As a bit of a qualifier: considering that I have finished none of these books, what I am writing are not reviews. These are more of my initial impressions of what I've read so far and commentary on what made me put the book aside in the first place.

I've been reading a lot in 2019 and while there's no guarantee I'll keep it up for the entire year, I really like the idea of doing a quarterly round-up of what I have read. Presuming I do finish some of the books here in 2019, I hope to write proper reviews of them in a forthcoming post!

	+ The Ship Beyond Time :: This book is the sequel to The Girl From Everywhere, which I adored. The founding concept of the books is that there are special "navigators" who can travel to the waters depicted on any map, so long as it is signed and authenticated, but that they can only visit each map once. For their purposes "authentic" doesn't mean real; the characters have visited places out of myth using this ability. A map must simply pass certain tests to be viable for travel. I adore time travel plots and so I really enjoyed the unique approach this book takes to travel, and even if it's a fairly typical plot, I also loved that the issue the main character faces is "her navigator father wants to get back to the time before her mother died and save her, but if he succeeds, she has no idea what will happen to her past and her future." I loved the main character and both of her potential love interests (and really like the idea of all three of them as a M/M/F OT3) and found the resolution to the first book very satisfying. I was excited for a sequel in that it's more content of these characters I enjoyed so much but in execution, I wasn't certain I liked where the plot of the next book was going. I really would like to continue and find out how it ends (if I'm remembering correctly, I'd only read about 20% of the book), I'm just hoping I won't be disappointed.
	+ Death's End :: I really loved The Three Body Problem and The Dark Forest and I genuinely really do want to know how the series ends. I also enjoy Ken Liu very much as a translator and was excited that the third book (as well as the first) was his translation. The problem is just, these books are really, really dense and they are hard science fiction, which requires a certain amount of critical thinking in order to follow the concepts the book is presenting to you. I stopped reading this book because I just didn't feel up to reading something so dense and complicated, but if I'm honest... I think I was also a little bummed out because the second book includes some of my favorite characters in the series, most of which have been maneuvered out of the narrative. The third book was asking me to pay attention to different players I wasn't currently enthusiastic about and that wasn't something I felt up to doing at the time.
	+ The Pearl That Broke Its Shell :: I read Before We Visit the Goddess as my break from Death's End and found it very satisfying, then followed it up with Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. The Pearl that Broke Its Shell was what I chose to read next after that. While both previous books did put their characters through some tough and grueling experiences, I ultimately put this book down because as fascinating as it was, the lives of its female characters just felt so bleak and like they were being put through trial after trial with no end in sight. I needed a break from the misery. Perhaps hilariously, now that I'm writing about why I stopped reading, I'm remembering why I was so excited to read this book in the first place. It's set in Afghanistan and depicts a custom called bacha posh, where the daughter of a family without sons may dress and be treated as a son until she is of marriageable age. It also follows two parallel narratives; the life of a bacha posh child in modern times, and the life of her grandmother who lived similarly multiple decades before her. I genuinely found the gender roles stuff in this book to be sooooo fascinating and I do want to see how the grandmother's life plays out. The problem is that the narrative got as far as the modern bacha posh being married off to a warlord at the age of maybe thirteen and I was just getting so depressed about her life. It's a rooooough book but I really do want to finish it.
	+ Nightbird :: After rereading Practical Magic, I chose to read Nightbird because I was interested in reading some of Alice Hoffman's other works. Compared to Practical Magic, Nightbird feels like a far simpler story. The narrator is a young girl and so the story is presented as a young girl would see it: very directly and with many things taken at face value. It's such a gentle read and I really appreciated that after some of the other books I had been reading and in light of my being rather stressed out about various real life occurrences. It feels a lot like a fairytale and I enjoyed that a lot. The thing that happened with Nightbird is honestly something I constantly do with books (I did it with The Margarets and The City of A Thousand Dolls, until I finally MADE myself finish reading those books). I'll get as far as the big final conflict of a book, the point where you can KIND OF see how everything will be resolved, and I just... Stop reading. My brain decides that I've gotten far enough, I've consumed the part of the book that matters, I don't need to see the resolution. It's extra funny because I'll often stop reading before the problem is ACTUALLY solved, so before you know how the conflict plays out and have that narrative payout. Nope, I got enough. So with Nightbird it was partially that I hit my usual illogical mid-conflict stopping point, part this sense that I wanted to "save" the rest of this gentle narrative for a time when I'm sad and might "need" it.
	+ The Hero and the Crown :: I know Robin McKinley for her novel Spindle's End but I've had a few of her other books on a list to be read for years now. The Hero and the Crown is one of them. It's fairly standard fantasy fare, the king's daughter by his second wife must prove herself considering there are rumors of there being unsavory aspects to the situation surrounding her birth. She sets out to do this by becoming the kind of dragon-killer her people have never seen before, by revolutionizing the way they hunt dragons, typically seen as vermin. I was enjoying it very much; I like Aewin as a narrator and I liked finding out more about the world she lives in. The reason I put The Hero and the Crown aside is because there is a point in the novel when Aewin takes on a dragon which far surpasses the power of the little dragons she's killed before and afterward, she is gravely injured. There's a great long sequence of her pulling herself together and even after the laborious challenge of making it home, she faces a lengthy recovery period. I've always been touchy about stories that really get into chronic illness or rehabilitation from injuries so it was just too much of a thing I tend to avoid. I want to read the rest of the book because I am invested in the overall plot, I just need to convince myself to slog through the rest of the recovery plotline.
	+ The Clockwork Dynasty :: The premise of The Clockwork Dynasty is: unbeknown to human-kind, a living race of automatons exist undetected in society, having endured through history until the modern day. I really love stories about robots and about secret societies and so based on what it says on the tin, this seemed like a book I should be really into. I liked the initial narrator, June, and found some of the prose in the flashback scenes to be quite striking. I'm genuinely interested in the history of the automaton characters who are introduced and I like the idea of finding out more about their secret society. The reason I feel like I absolutely cannot read any more of this book is because the narrative structure most closely resembles a NYT best-seller style thriller. And I just have no patience for that sort of prose. I felt that there was an initial question posed at the start of the book that I wanted to have answered badly enough to convince me to slog through about 25% of the story. But at that point the book confirmed some of my suspicions and left me without any questions I really cared to have answered, while also thrusting me into some action scenes which were written in a way I found unbearable. I just can't do thrillers and so I can't do this book.
	+ The Devourers :: This novel, most prominantly, is a story about shapeshifters (werewolves) and about cannibalism, set in Kolkata, India. It was recommended to me in the context of "recent LGBT fiction worth checking out." It has a very specific, sensory atmosphere which really succeeds in capturing the essence of its setting; likewise, the more gruesome passages about the shapeshifter characters fighting and eating humans are especially vivid and disturbing. I was enjoying it a lot as a novel that felt very unlike any other published book I've read recently and I especially appreciate the way it talks about taboos, even if what is taboo to some of its characters is different from what is taboo in modern society. I'm not really sure why I stopped reading this book, honestly. It was just one of those cases where the tone and the mood of the story wasn't quite what I wanted to read at the moment -- not a drastic shift from what I wanted, nothing extra upsetting was happening, I just felt vaguely "off" about it -- and so I put it aside to start reading something else for a while. Most likely I'll go another half a year or so before I finally pick it back up on a whim and finish the other half of the novel.
	+ Infomocracy :: I have kind of been trying to read this book for almost two years. I heard the author read a passage which was either several chapters in or from the second book at a convention in September 2017 and I loved it sooooo much, I was immediately very taken by the concept of the world and the form of world government that had been instituted. I am still incredibly fascinated by the world, I just... Haven't had a lot of stamina for what is essentially a political thriller crossed with a speculative fiction novel. I feel like the ideas Malka Older is putting forth are INCREDIBLY GOOD and very topical to our Modern Political Climate, I just only have so much stamina to consume those sorts of ideas, and so I have been reading this book very, very slowly. I'm sure one day I will finish it!!
	+ The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms :: I love N. K. Jemisin and I love this book. The worldbuilding is fascinating and the society it depicts is a beautiful sort of awful; I especially love all of the mythology and was constantly eager to learn more about the mythological history of the world. The characters are intriguing; I enjoyed Yeine very much as a narrator and especially loved Sieh, he's the trickster god and is very much my type of character. I love the power dynamics between the Enefa and inclusive of Yeine, I love the political machinations, I love the constant state of menace that exists in the world. I ate through about 70% of this book at a steady, enthusiastic clip and really adored everything about the language and the imagery in Jemisin's prose. Really, the only reason I stopped reading is because we are repeatedly reminded that a deadline is approaching and that when it comes, Yeine will die. She is supposed to have a chance to participate in a cultural rite, basically, but the reader is led to believe she genuinely does not have a chance. The book is the first in a trilogy and so I know that Yeine doesn't die, I wasn't getting stressed because I was like, worried for her fictional well-being. I just was getting really worn down by the hopelessness she was feeling, and needed a little break from it. I'm really excited to read the rest of this book and this series, I just need to summon the will to read about this sort of cruel setting again.
	+ The Thief :: I began reading The Thief at the recommendation of K, having been given the impression that the series includes really good power dynamics and fictional politics and that sort of push and pull I really love in a story. So far, it's been solid fantasy fiction and I have enjoyed it... But I haven't really encountered the relationship dynamics that I was looking for, yet. I'm about 30% into the book and over that span, the nature of the mission has been slowly revealed to Gen as well as the reader as he travels with the King's magus. I feel like where I'm at, I finally have a sense of what the plot actually is and I'm expecting the action to ramp up. It's just been a bit of a slow start. I like the book well enough and plan to finish it, especially because it seems like the fictional politics grow more complex as the series continues and that further in, these books will be more and more to my interest. But for the time being, there are other things I want to read more than the story being told at the part of The Thief I am currently reading.
	+ Shanghai Girls :: This one is a bit of a cop-out, because I want to say I was maybe 2% of the way into the book according to my e-reader. This is another historical novel by Lisa See, this one a bit more recent in time than Snow Flower and the Secret Fan or Peony in Love, and I am genuinely sooooo excited to read another one of her books because I love the themes and emotions that Lisa See likes to explore in her fiction sooooo much. I'm pretty sure I only stopped reading it because I realized my Ninefox Gambit hold had come in and then I lost my entire goddamn mind about Ninefox Gambit and its sequels and fell all the way down a science fiction pit. Right now, I've been more in the mood for science fiction and fantasy, so I haven't felt like reading a historical novel set in the real world. When I've finished reading the SF&F books on my plate, I am sure I will come back to Shanghai Girls and enjoy it a lot.
	+ Raven Stratagem :: Technically speaking, on the first of January, 2019, I was still in the process of reading Raven Stratagem and so it did not make my list of books completed in 2018. But I finished it like, within a week of that. I love The Machineries of Empire trilogy soooooo much, it's so perfectly for me in every way possible, please please please if you have even the remotest sliver of interest in these books, read Ninefox Gambit. Then read Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun, too. Please cry about these wonderful books with me.

Comments

[fickle]

The Hero and the Crown is SO GOOD. I read it as a teen and yes, the recovery is grueling to get through but it's satisfying to meet Luthe finally and see how things happen.

The writing is also top-notch, even after two decade, I still have two or three sentences from it engraved in my brain. Like I can literally remember what the page looked like that those sentences were on, the font, the paragraph breaks, everything - they made THAT much of an impression on me.

Going to look for The Devourers now - I love the idea of POC LGBT books, and you would've had me on female-led POC book, honestly.

[catlarks]

I'll eventually force myself through the recovery plotline because I am more than halfway through the book and I'm the sort of stubborn person who won't give up at that point if I at least WAS enjoying the story. But this really is one of those things where like, if someone recommends me a book and DOES NOT mention it includes a recovery plotline, I will be really, really pissed at them, because it is a dealbreaker for me and because if I am properly informed I will avoid those sorts of stories.

It's not someone being sick, or injured. It's specifically an extended narrative focus on recovery I cannot fucking do.

So yeah, I do really like the author I'm just like. Why. Why is your story doing this to ME, PERSONALLY, BECAUSE CLEARLY IT IS PERSONAL. (It's not personal)

More importantly, I have accidentally mislead you. I've made a point of reading books by women and/or POC authors and with female and/or POC protagonists, but I am treating that as an AND/OR. This book has a gay male POC lead. That said... Please do still look it up, based on what I've read this is ABSOLUTELY a book I would recommend to you, based on my experience with your taste.