One Lodestar, one not
May. 25th, 2021 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnRaybearer (Ifueko) - 3+/5. Lodestar reading. West African-inspired fantasy where a young woman is chosen to be one of the "Eleven," the teenage future council and protectors of the teenage crown prince. There were a lot of really great things about this book; I especially appreciated the world and the details of it. And Tarisai was an engaging character, and it had a fair amount of page-turning compelling quality to it, and several interesting plot twists and themes (not perhaps super twisty to an adult, but nicely done for a YA), and at least one part I found genuinely moving.
That being said, it's pretty clearly a first book, with a fair amount of tell-not-show and a fair amount of characters making choices that are less because those choices flow organically out of their characters and more because, well, the character needed to be at place X at time Y to get the plot to work. I probably would not have gotten all the way through it had it not been not-a-Hugo homework. That being said, I am glad I got through it; I have read a lot of first books (and not finished more) that were far worse; and it has enough decided strengths that I wouldn't be upset if it won the Lodestar -- but Deadly Education is quite a bit better in terms of skill and craft and is still the one to beat, for me. I mean, not surprising, Novik has written how many books now? A lot, and improved every time. And I could totally see Ifueko working through these issues once she has a couple more novels under her belt. I'm interested to read more from Ifueko, and I'll definitely be reccing this one to E to read in a couple of years.
The Fortunate Ones (Tarkington) - 3+/5. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks gets a chance to attend a posh prep school and bond with one of the golden boys there -- and gradually learns the extent of the dysfunctionality he's signed up for. Actually I loved the writing in this, and there were a couple of compelling characters, and it was about prep schools and the messed-up lives of the rich, which is super my jam, so I was prepared to love it -- but the pacing was so odd that it made me like it a lot less. Sometimes long periods of time would skip by, kind of randomly, in ways that often meant we were disconnected from both the characters we'd come to know before the skip and from the new characters who happened to pop in after the time skip. And also sometimes major events would happen during a time skip which only were briefly mentioned by a character later, which blunted the emotional response to them. I think it either needed to be shorter (without so many time skips) or longer (filling in some of those gaps). (I think the gaps were because the writer didn't want to deal with what was going on in those gaps, mind you -- but it just didn't work for me.)
That being said, it's pretty clearly a first book, with a fair amount of tell-not-show and a fair amount of characters making choices that are less because those choices flow organically out of their characters and more because, well, the character needed to be at place X at time Y to get the plot to work. I probably would not have gotten all the way through it had it not been not-a-Hugo homework. That being said, I am glad I got through it; I have read a lot of first books (and not finished more) that were far worse; and it has enough decided strengths that I wouldn't be upset if it won the Lodestar -- but Deadly Education is quite a bit better in terms of skill and craft and is still the one to beat, for me. I mean, not surprising, Novik has written how many books now? A lot, and improved every time. And I could totally see Ifueko working through these issues once she has a couple more novels under her belt. I'm interested to read more from Ifueko, and I'll definitely be reccing this one to E to read in a couple of years.
The Fortunate Ones (Tarkington) - 3+/5. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks gets a chance to attend a posh prep school and bond with one of the golden boys there -- and gradually learns the extent of the dysfunctionality he's signed up for. Actually I loved the writing in this, and there were a couple of compelling characters, and it was about prep schools and the messed-up lives of the rich, which is super my jam, so I was prepared to love it -- but the pacing was so odd that it made me like it a lot less. Sometimes long periods of time would skip by, kind of randomly, in ways that often meant we were disconnected from both the characters we'd come to know before the skip and from the new characters who happened to pop in after the time skip. And also sometimes major events would happen during a time skip which only were briefly mentioned by a character later, which blunted the emotional response to them. I think it either needed to be shorter (without so many time skips) or longer (filling in some of those gaps). (I think the gaps were because the writer didn't want to deal with what was going on in those gaps, mind you -- but it just didn't work for me.)
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