books i've read, January/February 2020

A long time ago (as internet time goes, at least), I had a book blog. And while I miss it — miss the motivation to devour 100+ books a year — the time it takes to maintain something like that, providing fresh content every day, in addition to, you know, reading and reviewing 100+ books a year, is just an impossibility. So instead I’ll use this I guess? And will keep track of books I’ve read, for all of you to judge and evaluate accordingly.

(I meant to get this out at the beginning of the month, but, you know: [gestures vaguely at life and everything].)

This book isn’t for everyone, first off. There’s a lot of body horror, themes of past sexual assault/trauma, drug use/abuse, gore — it’s tough. A friend bounced off this book just because she couldn’t get excited to read another book centered around a bunch of privileged Ivy League kids. Totally fair. The pace of Ninth House is wobbly — a frantic opening chapter, then a lot of slow as leading character Alex Stern slowly immerses us in the world, faster as Alex finds herself investigating a crime that overlaps with her world of college occultists, faster still as the mystery gets solved. I was sucked in very early and found myself reading the book over just a few sittings. Your mileage, of course, may vary. Alex Stern is a tough character to like — she’s all sharp elbows, as a former boss of mine would say. A tough nut to crack, for many very good reasons. Darlington, the Yale student assigned to help Alex navigate their weird, magical world, is full of his own secrets, too, and is a good foil to Alex, who is too stubborn for her own good sometimes. While I hate the “rewrite a book from another character’s POV” trend — it feels like a money grab most of the time — I’d absolutely read a book showing Darlington’s side of the events.

Something I really love in books is when it’s clear that the author is writing about a place that they love. Bardugo, who went to Yale, does an amazing job at making the campus and the city of New Haven come alive — or undead, I guess. She seamlessly blends the real-world intrigue of Yale and its secret societies with a shadowy occult world that has its tentacles in every part of life as we know it. I’ve never been to Yale and only know the broadest strokes of the history of the secret societies there, but Bardugo manages to never make the book feel too insider-y. I’m sure some of the locations name-checked throughout have more meaning to someone who’s spent time there, but the story worked for me without that knowledge.

Bardugo’s writing — whether for her previous YA novels or for this story, her debut in “adult fiction” — never shies away from showing the darker side of life. Terrible things happen. Characters are harmed, deceived. Death is ever-present, not just a plot device to get a scare out of a reader. I appreciated her uncompromising style in the Grishaverse series and was glad to see that she didn’t pull any punches here, either.

The book doesn’t leave off at all in a satisfactory manner — I mean, the story comes to a close, but it clearly leaves the door open for a sequel, so now I’m just mad that said sequel doesn’t exist yet.

Other Books

Spectred Isle, KJ Charles

I’ve been devouring Charles’ books for a while — they’re most often my books of choice while flying, because I don’t have to pay too much attention, the pages go quickly, and it’s nice to just sort of disappear into a well-written, engaging romance. Spectred Isle, for some reason, was the hardest of her books for me to get into. I can’t really pinpoint why it fell flat for me. I liked Saul and Randolph, the main characters, and I liked the magic/paranormal/historical fiction aspects. But blending the two together made the story drag — it took too long both to get to the meat of the romance between Saul and Randolph, and it took too long to untangle all the plot points. I’d still recommend the book, especially to KJC completionists, but just know that it was less engaging than her other books for me.

Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee

One of my friends described Ninefox Gambit — and I’m paraphrasing this, as it was a while ago that we had this exchange, so I might actually be getting it wrong — as a book you don’t necessarily enjoy, but that you experience, and that seems to hold true for me. I didn’t dislike the book but I also didn’t come out of it wanting to shove it at anyone who would listen? It’s a world with a fantastic amount of worldbuilding, which is zero percent explained. You just have to run with it. That can be disorienting, because the rules of existence of this world are so completely unlike any other book I’ve read before. The characters are all hardened military types, and one of the main characters did, oh, you know, do a genocide at one point (which the book tries to reason away; your mileage may vary on how much that works for you), so they’re hard to really get to know or feel a lot of compassion towards. I do want to eventually pick up the rest of the books in the series because I want to know how the storylines get resolved, but I don’t feel the urgency in the same way I did other first-of-a-series books I’ve read recently.

(My favorite Goodreads review of this one was a guy who was mad that despite the fact that the world is based around math, that there is no math in the book.)

Unfit to Print, KJ Charles

This was much more up to my usual expectations of KJ Charles novels. One of my favorite aspects of this one was that the main characters, Gil and Vikram, already had an established relationship, so there was none of the “I have just met you and I already love you” that drives me a bit batty about other romance novels. (Charles navigates that trope in her other books far better than many other authors.) The mystery the characters have to untangle is tense and dealing with a side of society that Charles handles with sensitivity rather than exploitation. And, of course, watching Gil and Vikram learn to communicate with each other and fall in love is, as always, the highlight of any KJ Charles book.

Spellbound, by Allie Therin

A paranormal romance set during the time of Prohibition, Spellbound has a million things that I should like and all of them combined to be an underwhelming book. I liked the worldbuilding, the magic systems, the side characters, and the backstory we got glimpses of throughout. It’s a shame that the main characters and most of the main plot didn’t live up to everything else we didn’t get to fully see on the page. The main characters, Arthur and Rory, didn’t work as a couple at all — I’m not one to care at all about age gaps in romances, but Rory is constantly infantilized and written just like he’s a moody teenager (he’s 20), with a sour attitude and terrible decision-making on top of everything else. I didn’t feel any chemistry between them and found myself skimming all the couple-y bits to get back to the plot. It was a quick read but I never felt fully immersed in the story and mostly wanted to finish it to get back to the other book I’m reading.