more book thoughts!

[sophia_sol]

Gosh June was a good month for me, quality-of-book wise. The below four are all really great, as were most of the others I read earlier this month! A big contrast with May, which was nearly all books I was pretty meh about.


The Emperor's Soul, by Brandon Sanderson

Okay Brandon Sanderson's going to have to work pretty hard if he ever wants to top this book for me. I'M SUPER INTO THIS BOOK. I mean, a) it's a really good book but also b) it is very thoroughly Sophia-bait in its priorities and themes. And also it's short and not bogged down in extraneous verbiage! It does what it sets out to do and then gets out.

So okay here's the thing. The main character is a female character with ZERO romance arc, who is rather a trickster type, who is hella competent (if you like competence THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU), and who is really interesting! And the book has fascinating worldbuilding (especially with the way the magic system works)! And is full of interesting reflections on humanity and art and creation and identity and trust/respect! And it is an ultimately good-hearted non-cynical book!

And basically I am just all "YES GOOD" forever. What a good book. What a good everything.



The Martian, by Andy Weir

This is another book that is way up there in competence-porn. It is the story of an astronaut who accidentally gets stranded on Mars and has to figure out how to survive with what little he has.

I turned to the end to reassure myself of how things were going to end pretty much immediately after starting reading, but once I'd done that the book was nicely exciting without ever tipping me over into excessive anxiety/tension.

And it's just, like, the book is relentlessly showing you ALL THE VERY MANY WAYS in which the main character (Mark) could very feasibly die because THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS TO DIE ON MARS, but he just keeps trying and being resourceful and figuring things out and getting shit done, and doing it all with a sense of humour, and it's just AWW YEAH. It is extremely satisfying.

It is also extremely nerdy in its attention to detail, and in the degree of research the author VERY CLEARLY did about all of the everything, but none of it ever comes across as infodumpy or boring. It just works and is great and delightful.

My only quibble with the book would be that it's not very strong with its secondary characters - they all seem more or less interchangeable and forgettable. But most of the book is Mark's log so he's very much front and centre, so the secondary characters aren't a huge problem. And I did like that the author had put some effort in making sure his minor characters' names indicated a variety of racial/ethnic backgrounds, and that there were a number of female characters included.

(okay another quibble, even more minor. The book goes between first-person writing in the form of the logs Mark is keeping on Mars, and third-person pov about the various other secondary characters on Earth and in space. But there are two brief sections where you see something happening to Mark on Mars in third-person pov and it is JARRING AND OUT OF PLACE, and there's nothing relevant in those sections that couldn't have been worked into one of the log entries instead, and WHY DID YOU DO THAT ANDY WEIR. Ugh I am so annoyed and it is not even a big deal but I DON'T LIKE IT GRUMBLE GRUMBLE COMPLAIN.)

But really the book is overall just fantastic.



Warbreaker, by Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, I know, YET ANOTHER Brandon Sanderson. This has all been kind of accidental that I've read three by him in really very little time. (and I'm reading a fourth now.)

I was rather skeptical going in to this one because in some ways I overdosed on epic fantasy as a teenager and am very wary about it these days. And this book had had rather a slow start and I didn't really get into it right away. But I was on a canoe trip with limited reading material so I couldn't just abandon it for something shinier. So I persevered, and it turned out to be really awesome!

Great worldbuilding, as I'm coming to see is a real talent Sanderson has. And I LOVED the characters. I really liked that the various main characters were all very different from each other, and that nearly all of them got character growth arcs.

I can't decide if my favourite is Lightsong, Siri, Susebron, or Vivenna. I love the contrasts between Siri and Vivenna, and how they love each other dearly as sisters anyways, despite not really understanding each other. And how when they have grown into themselves by the end of the book, they end up having basically traded roles with each other! I love the adorable wee innocent immensely powerful god-king Susebron, awwww, bb! And I love Lightsong's ridiculousness and sense of humour and his dissatisfaction and cynicism and curiosity and kindness. And the relationship between him and Llarimar is great too, and I love how much Llarimar trusts and believes in him.

And I am VERY SAD that Lightsong dies in the end, though I suppose the fact that it was going to happen WAS rather signposted. And I like that he dies for a good cause - allowing the army of Lifeless to be stopped. EXCEPT. The way this is accomplished is by the healing of Susebron's disability and just ugghhhhhhhh OF COURSE this is yet another disability narrative where the disability must be healed by the end of the story. NO STOPPIT.

In other news, Brandon Sanderson is clearly in love with prologues and I am SO OVER IT. Especially since of the three Sanderson books I've read so far, two of the prologues seem entirely unnecessary. In this one the prologue was more functional, but I still am just not very into the whole idea of doing prologues.



The Book of Small, by Emily Carr

I picked this book up because I'd enjoyed Emily Carr's first book "Klee Wyck" so much. I was expecting this book to be about Carr's childhood, but instead it was more about the Victoria of her childhood, with some about her as well. (Victoria is the city she grew up in.) Which wasn't a problem, it just wasn't what I was expecting! It was very good at being what it was. There were some bits of racism and ableism, which were unfortunate, but Carr still seems to see everyone as humans first, despite some of the things she says. And she's excellent at writing sketches of people, places, events, etc in very evocative ways.