Adrienne Metternich

August 2024 Reading

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 10:51:22 GMT

The Lost Souls of Benzaiten, by Kelly Murashige - After the trauma of her best friends wanting nothing to do with her anymore, Machi develops selective mutism and serious apathy and depression. After seeing therapist after therapist, she visits an little unknown shrine, makes an unexpected prayer, and surprisingly, the goddess Benzaiten actually answers, though in a way Machi didn't expect and mostly doesn't want. The book is a powerful exploration of grief and trauma and the ways it can affect us that look baffling from the outside, and also how sometimes small seemingly-inconsequential actions can change a person's life, for good or ill. This book resonated with me a lot, it had many echoes of some traumatic things I've experienced in the past, and after reading it, I needed a bit of a break. It was fantastic! It was an engaging story and written well and I loved it. But it also hit extremely close to home for me and I needed some time to process everything before I read anything else. Highly recommended, though. Go read it if you haven't yet!

I Want to Live, by Nina Lugovskaya - The translated diary of a teenager who lived during Stalin's reign in Russia, in the 1930s, before she and her family were arrested and exhiled to years of hard labour. While it was a fascinating look back at that time, and a piece of history that I didn't know much about, I have to admit that Nina herself was, well, pretty boring. I didn't find much to be interested in when it came to her stories of liking a boy but the next week thinking he was dull and beneath her and then the week after liking him again. Or her feuds with her older sisters, most of which seemed to be prompted by absolutely nothing and were rather incomprehensible to me. Maybe it's just been too long since I was a teenager, but I was far more interested in aspects of her life which were often only barely touched upon in the diary entries. I'm aware that some of this was due to the translation, and also the destruction and redaction of certain entries to keep the family safe, but still. It's an interesting look at a period of history I knew nothing about, but Nina herself just didn't appeal to me. And I feel rather bad saying that about an actual person who went through hell.

Among Others, by Jo Walton - The diary of a disabled teenager, written from 1979-1980, and how she experiences boarding school, a sci-fi book club, and saving the world from her insane witch of a mother with the aid of fairies and her love of fiction. No, seriously. This book is magical realism at its finest, and I adore it, so much so that this is a re-read. I can't count how many times I've already read it. It's a book I want to savour every time, reading slowly, but also one that I want to speed through because I want to see the next part, the next entry, the next book recommendation. The protagonist, Mori, has a typical teenager snobbishness about her, but also a good heart, and her voice is fantastically realistic. Fans of magical realism and historical fantasy will find a lot to love about Among Others. No review I could write can really do it justice, in my opinion.

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July 2024 Reading

Thu, 01 Aug 2024 11:10:55 GMT

The Starless Crown, by James Rollins - A variety of unlikely people band together to not only attempt to stop a country from needlessly making war on another country, but also to stop a prophecy that says the entire moon will crash into the world. I can't quite tell if this book is filled with Fantasy Names (like calling the world Urth or making holy buildings kath'drals) or whether it's all supposed to take place in a far-future Earth or alternate timeline, but if it's the latter option, I want to know what happened to throw the world's orbit entirely out of whack in the first place. It's a bit of a dense book to approach at times, but it's still pretty good and I want to know what happens in the sequel, so I expect I'll be picking up book 2 from the library before too long.

My Lady Jane, by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows - A YA retelling of the short reign of Lady Jane Grey, only in an alternate historical fantasy setting where many people have the ability to transform into animals. There's a lot of politics from the time, understandably, but in a fun way that makes it all very interesting; it is YA, after all. After enjoying the show so much, I figured I'd give the book a try, and it's also enjoyable, but different from the show in a number of ways. I liked the humour, and I'm looking forward to reading other books in the series, even if they're about different people throughout history.

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June 2024 Reading

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 11:23:18 GMT

Draw Down the Moon, by P.C. Cast & Kristin Cast - Wren isn't supposed to have any magic, being literally born at the wrong time of the month. But when she's suddenly gifted with magic from the moon, she embarks on a journey of learning and mystery that she was entirely unprepared for. Not a bad YA novel, and pretty enjoyable in many respects. It feels a bit like a lot of the YA novels that came out during the late 2000s and early 2010s, only with less dystopian elements. Still very much features an "unimpressive" protagonist who goes on to do very special and impressive things. I can absolutely see why this sort of thing appeals to many folks of all ages; most of us have a bit of a yearning to be plucked from the ordinary and told we're extraordinary. I'll likely continue with this series when more books are released, provided it doesn't end up as bloated as the House of Night series.

The Girl With All the Gifts, by M.R. Carey - The zombie apocalypse is here, brought on by a variant of cordyceps fungus that infects humans. And yes, that sounds exactly like The Last of Us. The two stories stem from the same inspiration. The twist is that some of the infected zombies, referred to as hungries, are not just mindless attack-beasts. Some retain a little bit of their minds, and some of those far more than others. The story centres around a military and scientific attempt to understand and cure the infection using those special hungries as a launching point for the investigation. The book ends up asking a lot of questions about the nature of humanity, whether we become monsters by doing monstrous things and denying others the dignity of demonstrated sentience, and far more fascination thought experiments than I can go into in a quick review like this. Suffice it to say that I really enjoyed the book (and the movie), and my biggest regret is sleeping on it for so long.

Heaven Official's Blessing, vol 7, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu - 2nd to last book in the series, and it took this long for the story to actually interest me. It's got some weird moments (like a divine "mech" battle), but eh, I'm not into the books enough to really call those moments out as either good or bad. It's not bad overall, not really, but I'm just not that into it, and I'll be glad when I finish the final book and can fulfill my promise to a friend.

Nigeria Jones, by Ibi Zoboi - A teen who was raised inside a Black revolutionary movement starts expanding her world's boundaries and learning more about herself, her place in the world, and the history that drove her to the point where she starts making her own way instead of sticking with the tried-and-true. This is a powerful book and I'm so glad I picked it up at the library because hot damn, it makes waves that need to be made! YA has the wonderful benefit of asking hard questions and addressing hard topics while remaining accessible by necessity, and so it's amazing for making readers confront uncomfortable realities. Seriously, if you like contemporary YA or want to learn more about the issues many Black people face in America (not just America, but that's what the book focuses on given the setting), then absolutely read Nigeria Jones!

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