A complex, tangled masterpiece. Really this is probably closer to four stars but I can’t bear to give it less than five. Difficult in theme and subjecA complex, tangled masterpiece. Really this is probably closer to four stars but I can’t bear to give it less than five. Difficult in theme and subject but radiant in language—the writing sings, it wails. Characters are deep and intricate and the world through which they move pushes up against them at every turn, the way the world pushes up against all of us, the way we have to steel ourselves just to be people in this world, like walking in the wind.
I think every book that is good—I mean, really good—feels like a death when it’s finished. Feels like a loss, an end, but puts you in mind of things tI think every book that is good—I mean, really good—feels like a death when it’s finished. Feels like a loss, an end, but puts you in mind of things that are true and real, centers you, sets life in ever clearer relief as opposed to death and nonexistence and shitty books. The pleasant sting of being alive bright in your breast like a muscle being worked for the first time in weeks, or like a long deep slumber after a trying day.
I’ve just finished this one, not even three minutes ago, and I feel that aimless languor that comes when you get to the end of a book you’ve grown to adore, that book-drunkenness giving way to a book-hangover, where things feel simultaneously unreal and incredibly, astonishingly tangible. A tiny death, with the grief and melancholy that entails, and the determination, and the gratitude that this day at least belongs to you, even if no other future day has yet been promised. You’ve taken something into yourself even if you can’t name it; something is different, even just slightly. And that dramatic desire to walk out to the lake and rest on the shore until evening, thinking and dreaming and crying a little bit but mostly giving thanks, silently, for the simple fact of being alive and not dead, not yet, and hopefully not for a long while either. This is what a good book can do. Does. Did, for me, today....more
In 1977, NASA launched two space probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, and sent them hurtling off into the cosmos to gather data on the planets and their mIn 1977, NASA launched two space probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, and sent them hurtling off into the cosmos to gather data on the planets and their moons and whatever else there was to be found. Both probes have officially entered interstellar space, out beyond the solar system, and Voyager 1 is currently the manmade object that has travelled furthest from Earth.
The probes were each carrying, aboard all their scientific instruments and delicate data-collecting architecture, a record made entirely of gold.
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They're intended as a message for any extraterrestrials which may come across them, encoded with all sorts of information meant to display what life on Earth is like: people speaking various languages, sounds of thunder and ocean waves and rain and wind, birdsong, laughter, music from J.S. Bach to Chuck Berry; photos representing scientific discoveries, architecture, food, landscapes, portraits, scenes of daily life.
Per Carl Sagan's Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium,
The Golden Record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of Ann Druyan. During the recording of the brainwaves, Druyan thought of many topics, including Earth's history, civilizations and the problems they face, and what it was like to fall in love.
While it would've been impossible to do so—the probes were launched in 1977 and the book published a year later—I would've included Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual somewhere on the Golden Record. Le Monde called it the novel of the decade but I'd go even further into senseless hyperbole and call it the novel of the century. It doesn't have a great recognition factor compared to other books (say, The Quran or The Collected Works of Shakespeare). And, as opposed to a book that's more representative of humanity as a whole, it's incredibly specific, entirely taking place within an apartment building in Paris' XVII arondissement on June 23rd, 1975 around 8PM—its cultural references are niche and occasionally intentionally abstruse. So why would I place it on the single furthest relic from Earth as an offering to the extraterrestrials to understand mankind?
I think it encompasses more of that indescribable thing called Life than encyclopaedias four times as thick. In its remarkable specificity and astounding level of detail, it somehow hits upon themes and subjects that are so universal and crucial.
Naturally, a book like this doesn't lend itself well to summation. I wouldn't even know where to begin. The Goodreads description calls it "an unclassified masterpiece" and... yeah, that pretty much sums it up. In a way, it touches nearly every genre. The literary structure of Life: A User's Manual is, essentially, a collection of descriptions of apartments in a building, broken up by anecdotes connected to these descriptions (the summary of a book somebody is reading, a character's family history, what became of a room's previous tenants). Imagine a massive, intricately detailed still life, a cross-section frozen in time, reality paused and coolly picked apart. These anecdotes range from the hilarious to the tragic to the sweet to the flat-out absurd. A trapeze artist who refuses to come down from his perch; a wealthy couple who steals for libidinous pleasure; an autodidact who only discovers academia in midlife; a murder-suicide preceded by years of simmering revenge; a millionaire who succumbs to a shockingly complex scheme to rob him of his wealth. And then there are more quotidian stories: a motorcycle accident; a raucous birthday party; a group of friends stuck in the lift; a woman slowly losing her mind to dementia. Both of these, the dramatic and the mundane, are the sorts of scenes that make up our lives in all their patchwork mess of love, beauty, boredom, misfortune, triumph, quiet fortitude...
"Sometimes Valène dreamt of cataclysms and tempests, of whirlwinds that could carry the whole house off like a wisp of straw and display the infinite marvels of the solar system to its shipwrecked inhabitants; or that an unseen crack would run through the building from top to bottom, like a shiver, and with a long, deep, snapping sound it would open in two and be slowly swallowed up in an indescribable yawning chasm; then hordes would overrun it, bleary-eyed monsters, giant insatiable mouths: the wood would crumble, the stone would turn to sand, the cupboards would collapse under their own weight, all would return to dust." (p. 219)
It's difficult to convey just how precisely Perec crafts this place, its residents, its interiors and its rumours and its history. He seems obsessed with lists. We read an exhaustively enumerated list comprising the contents of a wine cellar, pages of sale listings in a hardware catalog, entire letters, a survey of the remnants left on the floor the morning after a party (a chapter that I inexplicably loved, although it's essentially just a list of various old foods and misplaced ties and crumpled wrapping paper). He specifies the exact shade and hue and texture of a couch, the precise size and cut of a ring, the appearance and history behind any piece of art hung on a wall. Rarely is one person noted and left alone; often we will hear about their father, grandfather, their unlucky great-great aunt, the circumstances regarding their brother's will; or their relation to other tenants, the concierge they particularly dislike because of some long-ago tiff or the baby they give to the cleaning lady to watch or their jaunty steps down the stairs as they take down the garbage bags.
This book presents such a close facsimile to real life with its texture and detail that we're left with the question: Why read this book at all?
You could just as easily take a minuscule survey of your own house or apartment complex, its history, the stories of its inhabitants, their family trees, the minute details of its decor and architecture, set it in an imitation of Perec's voice, and it would likely look a lot like Life: A User's Manual. In fact, there were many times I looked something up that was mentioned in the book only to find that Perec had completely fabricated it, and done it so masterfully that it didn't cross my mind for a second that, for example, the supposedly storied Carel van Loorens was not a real man at all. Which begs the same question I mentioned before. Why read a book that so cunningly imitates real life without being literally real? (That is to say that the apartment building it describes does not exist, nor in fact does Rue Simon-Crubellier, the street on which Perec places it.)
I don't know. I don't know why we read fiction that's close enough to reality that it becomes virtually indistinguishable. But it doesn't feel pointless, somehow; it feels like an exercise in empathy, in rediscovering the beauty in the mundane and the endless complexity and strangeness of fellow human beings: their obsessions, pathologies, dreams, fears, hobbies, losses, hopes. I can't give you a good reason to read this book or any book like it (if books remotely like it do indeed exist). I can just tell you that I read it and adored it and feel like a better person for having done so—these are the easiest five stars I've ever given....more
Quiet and brilliant and moving. I was going to write a review but the bottom line is just: read this book. You can read it in an evening and it will bQuiet and brilliant and moving. I was going to write a review but the bottom line is just: read this book. You can read it in an evening and it will be a contemplative and wonderful evening. Just read it, okay?...more
"Well you weren't writing about yourself, I hear someone in the peanut-gallery saying. You were writing about Andy Dufresne. You're nothing but a mino"Well you weren't writing about yourself, I hear someone in the peanut-gallery saying. You were writing about Andy Dufresne. You're nothing but a minor character in your own story. But you know, that's just not so. It's all about me, every damned word of it. Andy was the part of me they could never lock up, the part of me that will rejoice when the gates finally open for me and I walk out in my cheap suit with my twenty dollars of mad-money in my pocket. That part of me will rejoice no matter how old and broken and scared the rest of me is."
God, I love this story. It really is timeless, and just wonderful. It's a story in the old fashion, with an incredible plot and characters that interact meaningfully and a great setting that binds it all up... There's nothing abstract or unreachable about it, and I think it's one of the most accessible and easy-to-relate-to tales I've ever read. There's just something about Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption that plays into our human desires: the desire for justice, the burning need we have for wrongs to be put right, the way we respect and root for people who deserve better than what they got. It's so appealing on so many levels, and since it's well-written and touching to boot, this story really is perfect.
I've mentioned elsewhere how I love moral greyness and the vast area between black and white, but every now and then I need some good old-fashioned good vs. bad, wrong vs. right. I've loved books with almost no plot to speak of— The Road and Wolf in White Van—but now and again I need a simple yet compelling plot, one that makes sense and has all the trapping of a story. Not a character study, not an exploration of morality, a STORY. Sometimes as a reader I feel like a child who just wants to curl up and listen to their parents read them a bedtime story, and while Red makes it clear that prison is no place for fairytales, this one has that same calming, spellbinding effect.
The film adaptation of this is my favourite movie of all time, as I suspect is the case for many people, and I know you're wondering: Which is better, the movie or the book? Well, I'll have to chalk this one up to one of those rare occasions like The Princess Bride where they're both equally great. I have to give credit to the filmmakers here, because they kept all the good parts intact and left everything more or less unchanged, and what they added enhances the story rather than obscures it. I'm also kind of in awe as to how they captured Red's voice so well; even apart from the voice-over parts (most of which is exact quotes from the novella), the way the plot unfolds is so spot-on when compared to the narrator's straightforward, earnest, yet thoughtful way of storytelling in the novella.
Other than that, there's not too much more I can say, other than I recommend this novella to... well, pretty much everyone. If you have a heart and a pair of eyes and the ability to read, you'll find something to love about this story.
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PRE-REVIEW, 25 AUGUST 2017:
Here I am sitting in a hair salon among the sounds of ladies chattering and blowdryers and pop music, blinking away tears, feeling like the oldest ex-con walking away from Shawshank Prison, getting his first taste of that cold bracing air that whispers freedom.
It's a work of staggering grandiosity and ambition, no doubt. To portray human drama intimately and wiIt is a madman's undertaking, Angels in America.
It's a work of staggering grandiosity and ambition, no doubt. To portray human drama intimately and without pretension; to examine the politics and morality at play in a cross-section of not-too-distant history; to create a cast of characters that are three-dimensional and complex; to ruminate on the Big Stuff, love and death and forgiveness, and the Contemporary Stuff, homosexuality and modern religion and partisanship; to weave all these things into a gripping, moving, hilarious, intense, strange, wonderful story, all the while infusing it with all manner of Judeo-Christian allusion and historical context and intriguing philosophy. Who on Earth would sign up for such a task of their own volition? Who could even attempt to carry all of this out?
Tony Kushner, apparently. And, by God, does he do a fucking spectacular job of it.
Perestroika is a very different play than Millennium Approaches, and you'll realise that quickly, but you'll understand just as quickly that the quality and the heart of the second remains just as high and just as true as in the first. While Part I cultivated a sense of eagerness and impending salvation mixed with a foreboding and a fear of judgment, Part II deals with the messy business of what happens after the Angel arrives, after the Great Work is undertaken.
It doesn't make sense to talk much about the plot, because it's a continuation of Part I and giving a way a little bit is liable to cause the whole spool to unravel, and I don't want to spoil anything. What I will say, though, is that I feel like I should've been unsatisfied, but I wasn't. In any other story, I probably would dislike the looseness, the lack of structure, the way that—objectively—not much actually happens (compared to Millennium, at least). But something about this play made all of that perfect. I still felt closure, and it felt like a coherent plot that didn't have the sort of intricate twists that a less talented writer has to rely on, simply because it didn't need them. The characters and the internal dynamics were more than enough.
This (Angels in America as a whole) is a very gay play, and I mean that in the absolute best way. And not just that many of the characters are gay (I don't think there's one heterosexual kiss in the entirety of Part II) but that homosexuality and AIDS and drag and such are dealt with really well, with such tenderness and introspection and searching for truth. Kushner himself is gay so this shouldn't be surprising, but it still is; because on television and in movies and even in several books, the most we see of gay people are their surfaces, very rarely do authors or creators take the time to consider gay characters not based on how they can further the plot or help the (always hetero) protagonist, but what they're like as people, how being gay affects their lives and their relationships. Kushner doesn't stick to focusing on saccharine positives (cheery, sassy Gay Best Friend) nor on melodramatic negatives (Bury Your Gays). Prior, Louis, Belize, Joe, Roy—being gay affects them all in different ways, highlighting different facets of their personalities, revealing much more about themselves in how they react to it rather than by the simple (and rather bland) fact that they're "friends of Dorothy."
I should talk about the humour here too, which is something I forgot to mention in my review of Part I. Tony Kushner is funny, and the comedic touches in these two plays are always tasteful and they always land—Prior himself made me laugh out loud a few times, and not because he's the stereotypical witty queen, but because he's legitimately intelligent and fiercely emotional and the way he speaks his mind is bloody hilarious. And even apart from the dialogue, there's something so deliciously subversive in making the Prophet a gay man dying of AIDS, or fully embracing the hermaphroditism of angels, or sending the Valium-addicted Mormon housewife up to heaven for a little detour. Apart from being funny with their absurdity, they mirror the absurdity of life and history, and they're profound in that they blend the mundane and the fantastic together so well.
Which leads me right into where I wanted to end, my greatest praise of Angels in America: its astonishing ability to meld raw humanity with lofty philosophy. Authors who can paint beautifully in broad strokes, waxing poetic on grand points and skilfully weaving theories and belief systems, your Ralph Waldo Emersons or whathaveyous, they captivate us. Authors who can frame a simple conflict or personal dilemma to reveal the depths and complexities of the human heart, who can probe our spirit and our emotions with incredible subtlety and nuance, they make us feel. But authors who can do both, who can fuse the concrete and the abstract, the idyllic and the real, the broad and the narrow, the should-be and the is, who can play the part of the Angel and the AIDS patient and recognise that both are equally important and powerful—they're masterful. And rare.
I loved it. I thought it was absolutely bloody spectacular. Vonnegut has such a keen sense of the interplay between realism and absurdity, tragedy andI loved it. I thought it was absolutely bloody spectacular. Vonnegut has such a keen sense of the interplay between realism and absurdity, tragedy and hilarity. If I were pressed to describe The Sirens of Titan, I suppose I’d call it a story about purpose.
It’s my nineteenth birthday today. It’s 8:33 PM. I’m in a cabin in New Hampshire, looking out at the forest, and the soft, pinkish-yellow light of a post-storm sunset is glowing through the canopy like twilight on Titan. If I close my eyes and listen really close—I can hear the universe singing....more
An astonishingly beautiful look into the things that are all around us and yet so far away: nebulae, stars, supernovas, planets, galaxies. Books like An astonishingly beautiful look into the things that are all around us and yet so far away: nebulae, stars, supernovas, planets, galaxies. Books like these really put us on perspective, and I think this one in particular should mandatory reading for whenever you feel a little too self-involved or woe-is-me. The photographs are full-page, and the book itself is massive (in terms of height and width) and spellbinding. Highly recommended for people of all ages....more
Dark things have a way of slipping in through narrow spaces.
I'm normally very hesitant to read books in a series that end in a decimal. This is becausDark things have a way of slipping in through narrow spaces.
I'm normally very hesitant to read books in a series that end in a decimal. This is because the #0.5s, the #1.5s, and (god help me) the #1.75s almost always seem to be either a transparent moneymaking ploy on the author's part or a lame spinoff of the same story but with the names changed. A notable exception is Warm Up (Vicious, #0.5) because Vicious was just as good as the short story that preceded it and V.E. Schwab is a brilliant literary legend, but I digress.
THIS. STORY. WAS. AMAZING.
Honestly, it had everything going for it: captivating setting, complex characters, positively gorgeous writing, and a touch of dark whimsy. It read like a delicious cross between a fairy tale and a ghost story, with shades of the superb graphic short story collection, Through the Woods. But the part I thought was the most breathtakingly awesome was the twist.
I've never before read a twist like that- one that managed to effectively (view spoiler)[switch how the reader views the antagonist and protagonist. The villain becomes the hero, the hero the villain, (hide spoiler)] and it never felt gimmicky or abrupt. It was beautiful and simply ingenious.
Bottom line: read this story. You won't regret it. I am now super excited to read Bardugo's Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows.
No path could lead her back to the home she had known. The thought opened a bleak crack inside of her, a fissure where the cold seeped through. For a terrifying moment, she was nothing but a lost girl, nameless and unwanted. She might stand there forever, a shovel in her hand, with no one to call her home. Nadya turned on her heel and scurried back to the warm confines of the hut, whispering her name beneath her breath as if she might forget it....more
"Everything is good in leaving the hands of the Creator of Things; everything degenerates in the hands of man." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 'Emile, or On "Everything is good in leaving the hands of the Creator of Things; everything degenerates in the hands of man." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 'Emile, or On Education'
God, this book gutted me. Absolutely gutted me. I'm not an emotional reader (or an emotional person), so I am incredibly surprised at how much this affected me. I didn't just cry over this, I wept- four times. Sobs and everything.
Usually I like to really analyse and pick apart the books I read- consider the book's plot, characters, setting, style, tone, themes, and then try to understand it as a whole.
Not so with The Isle of Blood.
Setting aside the fact that this may very well be the best book I have ever read, there's no way I can review it as I normally do. It's special. So the "review" that follows is really just me ruminating on the book's themes, with some synopses and analyses thrown in for the sake of coherence. ____________________
Nil timendum est.
This is the motto of the Society for the Advancement of the Science of Monstrumology. But, if anything, The Isle of Blood makes us question these words. It's a profoundly different book than The Monstrumologist and The Curse of the Wendigo, and leagues better- but it's not without all the same heartbreaks and dark beauty that weaves through this series.
In The Isle of Blood, Warthrop receives evidence that could mean that the "holy grail of monstrumology," the Typhoeus magnificum, not only exists but may be possible to find and study. The magnificum, nicknamed the Faceless One, is strange and shadowy- not much is known about it besides the rumour that it causes a mysterious phenomenon; pulverised bits of human viscera falling from the sky on remote islands. In short, finding it could mean the height of Warthrop's considerable scientific ambition- fame, accolades, a major monstrumological discovery, academic recognition. But as Warthrop and Will Henry prepare to venture to places unknown in search of this elusive monster, Warhtrop leaves Will in the middle of the night to journey with his new assistant, Arkwright. Will is understandably baffled, devastated, and furious, and when Arkwright comes back months later bearing news that Warthrop has died, Will cannot accept the information and decides to go searching for Warthrop and, in a roundabout sort of way, the fabled magnificum.
"The world grows smaller, and little by little the light of our lamps chases away the shadows. All shall be illuminated one day, and we will wake with a new question: 'Yes, this, but now... what?'" He laughed softly. "Perhaps we should turn back and go home." "Sir?" "It will be a seminal moment in the history of science, Will Henry, the finding of the magnificum, and not without some ancillary benefit to me personally. If I succeed, it will bring nothing short of immortality- well, the only concept of immortality that I am prepared to accept. But if I do succeed, the space between us and the ineffable will shrink a little more. It is what we strive for as scientists, and what we dread as human beings. There is something in us that longs for the indescribable, the unattainable, the thing that cannot be seen."
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This book asks some really interesting questions (it's definitely the most philosophical one in the series so far) and the above quote embodies what is perhaps the central theme of this book: seeing the unseen, facing the Faceless One, striving to know things that seem unknowable. As Warthrop says to the unfortunate courier of Kearns' package early on: "'It is human to turn round, to stare into Medusa's face, to tie ourselves to the mainmast to hear the sirens' song, to turn back as Lot's wife turned back. I am not angry at you for looking. But you did look.'" The idea of "The Faceless One" and "The One of a Thousand Faces" factors into the ending and the reveal of the manificum as well, but I'll be discussing that later on.
The Isle of Blood very much represents the internalisation of the concepts explored in books one and two- monsters; good, evil, and the grey in between; god; Hell; and stepping a little too close to the abyss.
In it we see a Will Henry who is twisted and rent by internal conflict- a boy struggling to extricate his own identity from the dark, thorny, murky, and profoundly broken one of Pellinore Warthrop. He has to navigate the mire that lies between who he used to be and who he has become under Warthrop's care. This is further developed when Warthrop up and leaves Will in New York- now that he is alone, with no Warthrop to cook, clean, and work for, no master to yell at him or berate him or teach him, no monsters to battle... Who is he? What is Will without Warthrop- and, for that matter, what is Warthrop without Will? Their relationship is the paradox of paradoxes: pure but toxic, brilliant but damaging. There's hate, and certainly some measure of love, despite the fact that Warthrop never says it and Will swears up and down that he never loved the doctor. It's touching and terrible in equal measure- they are both so broken, but sometimes some light shines through the cracks.
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This leads me to the theme that I found the most interesting in the novel: how we remake things in our own image. As god may shape us, as Warthrop shapes Will, and as Will shapes him, so too does the magnificum shape its victims. It is dark and beautiful and horrifying, considering the many ways which we project our own hopes, fears, dreams, and doubts onto others.
"Why do men pray to God, Kendall? I've never understood it. God loves us. We are his creation, like my spider; we are his beloved... Yet when faced with mortal danger, we pray to him to spare us! Shouldn't we pray instead to the one who would destroy us, who has sought our destruction from the very beginning? What I mean to say is... aren't we praying to the wrong person? We should beseech the devil, not God. Don't mistake me; I'm not telling you where to direct your supplications. I'm merely pointing out the fallacy of them- and perhaps hinting at the reason behind prayer's curious inefficaciousness."
And yes, that was from Kearns, because who else would have said something so morally grey in such an elegant way?
(I feel like I should just briefly note that this book is not nearly as grotesque as its predecessors. There's gore, of course, but most of it is in the first one hundred pages and the last fifty, and it doesn't come close to being as horrifying as, say, baby faces floating in rivers of shit or sheaths of skin sloughing off upon the removal of a boot- two memorably stomach-churning scenes from the second and first books, respectively.)
The Lady and the Tiger is a major motif in this story; the daunting presence of the unknown, and the crippling fear of choosing wrong, even when both options are equally horrible. The Lady and the Tiger is a short story by Frank Stockton involving an impossible choice between, well- a lady and a tiger. In The Isle of Blood, Torrance explains the story in detail, but you can still read it here. I encourage you to do so, as it's short, fascinating, and many of the ideas found there relate directly to this book:
Now, the point of the story is this: Did the tiger come out of that door, or did the lady?
The more we reflect upon this question, the harder it is to answer. It involves a study of the human heart which leads us through devious mazes of passion, out of which it is difficult to find our way.
I think the phrase "devious mazes of passion" describes this series rather well, don't you?
Oh, I nearly forgot to mention: there are some historical figures in this novel as well. Yancey tries his hand at imagining if Arthur Rimbaud and Arthur Conan Doyle met Will and Warthrop, and I think it's a great success. Yancey does really well in characterising actual historical figures like those mentioned previously, as well as Jacob Riis and Jack the Ripper. I especially loved when Doyle met Warthrop and was positively giddy- as though Holmes had walked right out of his story and shaken his hand.
[image] (Come on, how could I resist adding this in?)
Now, I'm going to talk about the ending here, so I'm spoiler-tagging this entire section. I beg you not to succumb to your itchy fingers and not press the "show spoiler" button unless you've already read the book or have no intention or desire to, ever.
(view spoiler)[At the end of Will and Warthrop's journey, which takes them to England (and a brief stay in a mental institution), Venice, Aden, Port Said, and, finally, Socotra, they discover that the magnificum is not a physical monster, but a disease with the possibility to devastate the island every so often. If that seems anticlimactic, don't worry- it isn't. Because the actual reveal is fascinating and visceral and astonishingly well-done- but it isn't the reveal I want to talk about, it's what happens afterward.
The discovery of the true nature of the magnificum allows us to examine the many ways in which we can tear ourselves apart, both literally- the scene where the magnificum (for lack of a better term, although I'm talking about the victim of the disease and not the disease itself) is weeping while tearing apart a corpse to form the nidus comes to mind- and figuratively, like Will killing three people and coming dangerously close to killing a fourth. Warthrop is another example of this, when he falls upon the floor in the cave and begs for death. (hide spoiler)]
Because no matter the outside evil- the monsters, be they literal or figurative- we will always hurt ourselves the most, and we will always damn our own souls before anybody can do so for us.
I think Warthrop's reaction to the discovery speaks volumes about his character- specifically, how much he's grown since we first meet him in The Monstrumologist. There are three great Pellinore Warthrop quotes in this book. One is actually a full-fledged conversation Will has with an imaginary Warthrop, which I found both inventive, funny, and touching, but which is too long to past here, and the second one is this:
"'You shouldn't be out here!' he screamed.
'Neither should you!' I hollered back.
'I will never sound the retreat! Never!'
He shoved me toward the stern and turned his back upon me, planting his legs wide for balance and spreading his arms as if inviting the fullness of God's wrath upon his head. A burst of lightning flashed, thunder shook the planks, and Warthrop laughed. The monstrumologist laughed, and his laughter overtook the wind and the lashing rain and the thunder itself, trampling the maelstrom under its unconquerable heels. Is it any wonder the power this man held over me- this man who did not run from his demons like most of us do, but embraced them as his own, clutching them to his heart in a choke hold grip. He did not try to escape them by denying them or drugging them or bargaining with them. He met them where they lived, in the secret place most of us keep hidden. Warthrop was Warthrop down to the marrow of his bones, for his demons defined him; they breathed the breath of life into him; and, without them, he would go down, as most of us do, into the purgatorial fog of a life unrealized.
You may call him mad. You may judge him vain and selfish and arrogant and bereft of all normal human sentiment. You may dismiss him entirely as a fool blinded by his own ambition and pride. But you cannot say Pellinore Warthrop was not finally, fully, furiously alive.
Beautiful, no? (view spoiler)[And so it is that even in the depths of his failure, Pellinore Warthrop attains his greatest achievement. And that is why, even though the end of the book should, in theory, be depressing- it isn't. (hide spoiler)] I would daresay that it is rather positive. But my most favourite is the final lines of the book, which I'm spoiler-tagging because nobody should ever read the final lines of a book before they finish the book itself. That is sacrilege. (view spoiler)[
The world is large, and it is easy to forget how very small we are. Like the rot of stars, time consumes us. He had thought the quest would bring him immortality, a triumph that would outlast his brief appearance upon the stage. He was wrong. Pellinore Warthrop would pass into oblivion, his noble work unrecognized, his sacrifice overshadowed by the deeds of lesser men. He could have wallowed in despair; he might have chewed upon the dry bones of bitterness and regret.
Instead he came to Venice, and he danced.
We are hunters all. We are, all of us, monstrumologists. And Pellinore Warthrop was the best of us, for he had found the courage to turn and face the most terrifying monster of all.
Warthrop's final lines to Will Henry made me sob like a child, but I don't feel so bad because apparently Rick Yancey himself cried while writing that scene: "I vividly remember the night I wrote the final scene between them in The Isle of Blood, and I burst into extremely unmanly tears."
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The biggest question The Isle of Blood leaves us with regards Will Henry- namely, his morality. Moral carelessness and evil- what Warthrop aptly names "the dark tide"- seem to encroach upon our Will at every corner. He is faced with several dilemmas and my heart ached for him every time he had to (view spoiler)[do the unthinkable. As I mentioned before, Will killed three people in this book (more if you count Arkwright and all of the monsters, but I'm just talking about Kearns & the Russians), and came very close to killing a fourth. It still remains up to the reader whether he did these in cold blood, whether he simply holds infinite devotion to Warthrop, or whether he himself realises that they were wrong. It just killed me when Warthrop said this:
"It is a very thin line between us and the abyss, Will Henry," he said. "For most it is like that line out there, where the sea meets the sky. They see it. They cannot deny the evidence of their eyes, but they never cross it. They cannot cross it; though they chase it for a thousand years, it will forever stay where it is. Do you realize it took our species more than ten millennia to realize that simple fact? That we live on a ball and not a plate? Most of us do, anyway. Men like Jacob Torrance and John Kearns... Those kinds of men still live on a plate. Do you understand what I mean?"
I nodded. I thought I did.
"The very strange and ironic thing is that I left you behind so you wouldn't have to live on that plate with them."
There are so many wonderful and chilling questions in this book, questions of the best kind: hard, and perhaps impossible, to answer.
What happens when we stop fighting the darkness? When the battle is no longer good versus evil, but us versus ourselves? What happens when we let the the evil in? Does it consume us? Are we ruined forever, inextricably bound to death, decay, and darkness?
Aren't we already?
And what happens if we let the darkness in, only to find that it has already hollowed out a place inside of us?...more
Some background: I picked up this little beauty at Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal, an amazing bookshop specialising in graphic novels and comics, and wSome background: I picked up this little beauty at Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal, an amazing bookshop specialising in graphic novels and comics, and when I bought it the cashier told me, "This book is really good." Cool, I thought, that's a good recommendation. But then I read the book and let me tell you that is the understatement of the freaking century.
This book is not just really good. It is fantastic. It is dark and creepy and weird and beautiful and artistic and everything you'd want from a fairy tale, a horror story, and a graphic novel all rolled into one. And since it is so wonderful and I can't talk about the book as a whole without devolving into rampant, incoherent praise, I'm going to review each of the stories in Through the Woods separately, and in the order they appear.
An Introduction ★★★★★
While not technically a story, this introduction sets the tone for the rest of the collection. The author, Emily Carroll, talks about how she used to read at night as a child, by the light of a lamp clipped onto her headboard. She imagined that there were things waiting for her in the dark beyond the beam of light, things would grab her and pull her down if she let them. In a way, the rest of the book is about all those things waiting in the darkness.
Our Neighbor's House ★★★★★
A really strong opening which elicited my first "WHOA". This tale of three sisters, Mary, Beth, and Hannah, in a cold, lonely cabin and what becomes of them is stark, simple, and marvellously scary. It's a feat because we never actually get to see the villain, and we never truly know what becomes of our three sisters, but the ending gives a sense of closure all the same. There's a mounting sense of dread running through the story, culminating in the moment when (view spoiler)[the last sister, Beth, wakes up alone in the cabin and knows by the end of the day she will have met her sisters' same fate. (hide spoiler)]
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This was also my first immersion into Carroll's artwork, which is stunningly beautiful. Most of her stories take place in the winter, and the dark woods, enormous snow drifts, and tiny cabin are really beautiful imagery for My Neighbor's House.
A Lady's Hands are Cold ★★★★★
"And then it settled into her bones. Every night, that song (that wail) until the girl's insides were clotted with cold heartache."
Many of the stories in this collection read like warped fairy tales, this one especially so. A woman is arranged to marry a rich man and life seems to be going well- she has several handmaids, antique jewellery, fancy gowns, a huge mansion. But every night she hears a strange, keening song emanating from the very house itself, which leads to the dark heart of the story, and the secrets that both her husband and the mansion are hiding. Think Bluebeard, but darker, weirder, and cooler.
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My absolute favourite part about this tale is the last page, when everything finally clicks and you realise, without needing to be told, that (view spoiler)[the heroine has been doomed from the very beginning. (hide spoiler)] Beware, friends- this is one of the gorier stories, as it depicts dismembered limbs and reanimated corpses and such. But it's never overly gory.
His Face All Red ★★★★☆
"But three days later my brother came from the woods. (Most strange things do.) The joy. The joy on all their faces... but it couldn't be him. It couldn't be."
Most strange things come from the woods. Beasts, madmen, and occasionally something...
...darker.
This is a pretty open-ended story, not everything is explained, but that's the case with most of the tales in Through the Woods. If you're the type of reader who needs everything to be explained and figured out, then you might be irritated by this book, and especially this story. But if you're like me and you can enjoy a good story without needing to know all of its secrets, you'll love this. Part of the creepiness in this collection emanates from the unknowns in every story, and how one must use one's imagination to fill in the deliberate blanks.
But, getting back to this one. It's the story of two brothers, a beast, a hole, and what happens in the darkness of the woods when nobody else is around. Plus, Mrs. Carroll has it posted on her website, so you can read it for free here!
My Friend Janna ★★★☆☆
"I admit, at the time, we thought it a splendid diversion. Because I was what waited within the walls of Janna's mother's house. No ghosts, no spirits. No demons. 'Are you there, O visitors? O otherworldly things, O creatures of the faraway darkness!'
Me, who would scratch and kick when I heard my cue. Me, who would shake the plates from the wall."
While I really liked the premise- two friends, Janna and Yvonne, who trick their neighbours into thinking that Janna can speak to the dead- I wasn't crazy about the execution. I was never really sure why, or how, or by what (view spoiler)[Janna became haunted. (hide spoiler)] And while I loved reading Janna's nonsensical notes, I wish they were explained more than just "Oh well Janna's gone bonkers look at this stupid stuff she's written".
The Nesting Place ★★★☆☆
Mabel, nicknamed Bell, spends summer vacation at her older brother's house, ringed by ominous woods she's been warned to stay out of and an unsettling feeling from the cook, Madame Beauchamp, and Bell's brother's mysteriously cheery wife, Rebecca.
This story is remarkable because it reads a lot like a book condensed into a few pages. It has a great plot, characters with backstories, mysteries, twists, and, in keeping with the theme, monsters. In fact, I loved the monsters in this one, because I've always been a fan of monsters that burrow deep within you and whom you don't realise are there until it's too late. They're the scariest kind, in my opinion, and they're the ones that grace the freakish pages of The Nesting Place.
So why only three stars, then? Well... I just didn't get it. It felt like it had been building up to a bigger reveal then the typical (view spoiler)[skin-wearing monsters and red worms protruding out of Rebecca's face. I also didn't understand the significance of the crooked teeth- what does that have to do with the skin-worm things? (hide spoiler)] This is definitely the goriest story, though, so be warned. There's some pretty startling imagery, such as: (view spoiler)[
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(hide spoiler)] Yeah. Ick.
In Conclusion ★★★★★
A really, really wonderful and short conclusion in the vein of Little Red Riding Hood, which closes up the collection with this amazing quote: [image]
On this book as a whole, I have to agree with J. Caleb Mozzocco, who wrote in his review that, "Through the Woods is thus a completely 21st-century form used to tell new stories that read as if they could have been centuries old." And while I would love to say that this hauntingly beautiful collection is perfect for Halloween, I would really recommend reading it in the cold of winter, when the darkness of the woods and the things that wait within can truly come to life.
P.S. Also! Emily Carroll has a bunch of other cool stuff on her website, my favourite being an interactive comic/story called Margot's Room
P.P.S. This book pairs incredibly well with the song In the Woods Somewhere by Hozier. They are perfect together....more
This book feels, for lack of a better word, classic. Not classic as in Frankenstein or Beowulf or To Kill a Mockingbird, but classic as in timelessThis book feels, for lack of a better word, classic. Not classic as in Frankenstein or Beowulf or To Kill a Mockingbird, but classic as in timeless. Now, don't get me wrong, I like innovative literary devices as much as the next girl. I've read short stories from the perspective of feet. Hell, I read The Road (in which there is barely a plot to speak of) and loved it.
But every once in a while I feel the need to shake off all those new bells and whistles and just get back to basics. I want to lie back and have the author tell me a story, one where I can fall headfirst into the world it describes and be completely under the spell of its colourful characters. I want to feel like a child, sitting at the knee of a loved one, listening to wild fancies and wondrous tales. I want my stories vast and I want them sprawling- I want journeys, fights, backstories, villains, heroes, daring escapes, vows of revenge. The Shadow of the Wind, The Hobbit, The Princess Bride- books like these are my comfort food. Books that are classic and familiar but still feel special; books that are heartfelt but thrilling; books that have the Holy Trinity of plot, characters, and style, and that marry them all together to create a world, a time, or a moment that I'll never want to leave.
The Lies of Locke Lamora delivers all of these things splendidly: a provocative, edgy setting; well thought-out cultural and religious customs that weren't a bore to read; a hero to root for; a villain that's bad but oh so good, evil of the proper, moustache-twirling sort. Usually, I revel in the grey areas- antiheroes, punch clock villains, semi-antagonists, man vs. self- I love the interplay of elements of light and dark. But every now and again I want clean cut, I want good and evil battling it out on a grand, dramatic stage, but I still want it nuanced and unpredictable, which Scott Lynch covers beautifully.
The writing, too, was gorgeous, the kind you can slip into and pass hours reading, totally and utterly immersed. The Duchy of Camorr is a deliciously dangerous and delightfully corrupt city of olde- with shades of Riften, Renaissance Venice, Red London, and Florin City*. I felt like I was being guided through the winding alleys, taverns, holes-in-the-wall, and mansions of Camorr by a funny, knowledgeable guide who showed me all the facets (good and bad, seedy and sumptuous) of the city. I watched women battling gigantic sharks, I saw bloodbaths, I experienced massive floating markets, lavish skyscraping terraces, dank dens of villainy. Corridors of razor-sharp roses, thieving cellars below temples, shifting docks- all described so clearly that you'd swear you've actually been there.
And, in a way, you have.
Because, in reading The Lies of Locke Lamora, you become a citizen of the crazy city of Camorr- you're party to all sorts of schemes, swindles, and plots, standing in the corner and watching the lives of a vast array of characters unfold and tangle in the most spectacular of ways.
I smiled so many times while reading this book, and I broke down into tears too, but they never felt like the cheap heartstring-pulls so many contemporary novels use today in lieu of genuine emotion. This book kept me guessing, laughing, wondering, and- above all- craving more. I won't say much about the plot or characters specifically (it's so much more magical when you read it yourself) but it involved theft, revenge, fighting, comradery, tricks, secrets- all the good stuff- and doctors, alchemists, nobles, priests, assassins, gangs, and, of course, bands of thieves.
[image] Gentlemen Bastards!
If I may point out a few details I loved, I thought the "fantasy" elements were woven in artfully. There's alchemy, but I really liked how it was talked about in more scientific terms rather than magic. There are people called Bondsmages who are basically the Siths of wizards- they cause pain, control animals, do mind tricks, all that sort of thing, but they never seemed gimmicky or too much "ye olde magicka." The format of the story was lovely- a main storyline with several well-placed interludes about Locke's childhood, certain colourful events in Camorr's history, the working of the city's underworld, or even spending a little time inside the head of a secondary character. Also, let it be known that this has the greatest ending to anything I have ever read, ever, so don't worry about being disappointed by a lackluster finish- I thought it was brilliant.
All in all, a richly told, wonderfully executed, positively delightful tale. It was just... charming. It just made me happy in so many ways, and it felt new despite the fact that it really is a return to the tried-and-true aspects of sprawling fantasy, done marvellously well. Like I said above, classic but fresh, drawing from its predecessors but still special in its own right, which I think is an especially difficult thing to master.
Because nowadays I believe we value writing far more than storytelling, and every now and then I need a charming thief (Locke), an unwittingly brave hobbit (Bilbo), or a suave bookseller (Fermín) to comfort me. Sometimes (but certainly not all the time) I want a clear hero and a clear villain- because in a world where so much is mired in the grey, a little bit of black and white can go a long way. These books, for me, are the equivalent of a favourite armchair. They may not be of the very highest quality, but they are warm, cosy, incredibly enjoyable and with the perfect, comfortable mixture of firmness and fluff. Everybody needs books like these, the ones we can fall back on time and time again and never get tired of, books that feel very much like the emotional equivalent of peeling your socks (or pants) off after a long day of work. Many people find that fluffy, cute romances do the job for them, and that's just fine. But me?
Well, I'll take a rakish thief any day of the week.
*I might have made a status update saying this (I have a feeling I did), and I loathe being redundant, but as of right now I can't see my status updates. It happens sometimes, especially as of late, but eventually it resolves somehow. Ah, Goodreads- the site with more bugs than an overzealous entomologist.
Read for the 2016 Popsugar Reading Challenge: "A book that's more than 600 pages."
This quietly moving two-part graphic memoir is both a whisper and a shout, a strained and complex relationship between a father and a son, and the stoThis quietly moving two-part graphic memoir is both a whisper and a shout, a strained and complex relationship between a father and a son, and the story of trying to cope with tragedies on both a minute and grand scale. It's a chronicle of the guilt of surviving genocide and the guilt of not having to, the portrait of a generation who lived through hell and their children, who have taken up the task to put it all into words. Bravo.
Note: Maus I & II are my first "real" graphic novels, and I'm not sure if this is common with the format, but they really transported and awed me more than most traditional novels I've read. I'm going to read Persepolis next, another wildly popular graphic memoir, because I'm really digging this story format....more
"Julián had once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things he would be unable to discover otherwise."
Five "Julián had once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things he would be unable to discover otherwise."
Five stars and two words: emotionally draining.
The Shadow of the Wind is a sprawling gothic novel set in Barcelona during the 1930s to the 1950s. Our protagonist is Daniel Sempere, the son of a bookseller, and the story begins- one of the stories, at least- when Daniel's father takes his ten-year-old son to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a labyrinthine complex filled with all sorts of obscure tomes. Daniel is told that he can choose one book to take with him, and the one he chooses, The Shadow of the Wind by the mysterious Julián Carax, will have repercussions through the rest of his life like ripples on the surface of a pond. The mystery of Carax unfolds and unravels, and we hear his story from dozens of different characters, whose narratives overlap, tangle, and reflect upon each other like a warped mirror. As Daniel grows up and discovers the secrets of Carax's life and legacy, his own story becomes intertwined with that of Carax, and he begins to scour the farthest corners of Barcelona, unearthing startling facts about the author Daniel already feels like he knows. On the periphery, though, and drawing ever closer, are a sadistic inspector and a gruesome, faceless man bent on burning all of Carax's novels.
Before I go any further, I should probably say that whatever you like, this book has it. Do you like romance? Tragedy? Crumbling ruins of old European cities? Ghost stories? Mysteries? BOOKS? All of these things are here, all balanced perfectly. I generally dislike romance in books- too often it's ham-handedly thrown into a story and doesn't enrich it at all- but I really didn't mind it in The Shadow of the Wind. It felt natural.
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Next to the prose and the plot, my favourite part of this was the vast array of characters, both central and minor. There's a blind bibliophile; the weary keeper of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books; a corrupt, evil police inspector; a horny grandfather; a forsaken caretaker; a charismatic beggar-turned-bookshop attendant; a lecherous magnate; a woman locked in a prison of memories, and many more. They're all complex, they all have backstories, and watching them interact, mingling with each other, living, loving, lying, is fascinating and heartbreaking.
In that same vein of characters, can I just talk about Fermín Romero de Torres for a minute? I loved that guy! He was charismatic, charming, eloquent, articulate, funny, big-hearted. He certainly functions as a comic relief, but he, too, has an interesting and heartrending backstory (which I won't go into here because I don't want to drop too many spoilers). Fermín is Daniel's friend and confidant, and his presence is this story is wonderful. He is, without a doubt, one of my all-time favourite side characters.
I won't say too much about Julián Carax, because his life is the central mystery of this book. But what I will say is that it was so well done, so emotional, and that Carax just about broke me into a thousand little pieces.
The plot is very complex, as it spans several decades and is told through many people's viewpoints. There are a few twists and it's generally very intriguing, but the only problem is that there are so many characters (many of whom only appear once or twice) that it can sometimes be difficult to remember who's who.
For me, a five-star book does not mean one that is flawless- it simply means that it was a book I loved, despite and perhaps even because of its flaws. And that is why this beautiful, heartrending, vast, tragic, magnificent book earns my full five-star rating. Carlos Ruiz Zafón has truly created a masterpiece in The Shadow of the Wind, a love letter to literature and to the many ways, large and small, in which books and people can change us and shape our lives.
EDIT 16 FEBRUARY 2016: So, as though this review weren't long enough as it is, I decided to add a little something extra. A few days ago, somebody asked me for my ONE favourite book. Before giving her the whining bibliophile speech about how I can never have just one favourite, I said this one.
And that got me thinking about this book. I really ought to reread it, and I will at some point, but mostly I've just been thinking about some of the most prevalent themes in The Shadow of the Wind: love, loss, the past, and reminiscence. So I wrote a poem about that, which was very much inspired by this book (and by Nuria in particular), and I figured I'd just add it here.
Ten years ago we met Nine years ago we loved Six years ago you left
It is ten years later, and all the cigarettes in the world won't erase stubborn memories I know this, but it doesn't stop me from trying
Six years ago I'm standing in the doorway And watching you drive away I'm calling my mother, sobbing And she's telling me I'll find another When deep down, I know my last chance just walked out of my life.
Six years later, I light another cigarette.
Nine years ago, We're at a party (Officially a couple, Sharon whispers) And I'm going out onto the fire escape to get some air.
You're there, And we're talking about the sounds of the city And you're leaning your head on my shoulder And we're smiling in the night breeze And the people inside stop wondering where we went.
Nine years later, I pretend not to remember.
Ten years ago, I'm holding you close Breathing in the smell of your hair And that organic shampoo you love And you can't see it, but I'm smiling into your shoulder Maybe you can feel the wetness as my tears are landing in the crook of your neck
I never want to be anywhere but here I'm hugging you tighter And you're gripping me back As though we're falling with nothing to cling to but each other Falling through darkness and space With only you to hold me
But it's ten years later again And I'm embracing nothing but air....more
I devoured this book in a day. It was profound because you're not given a grand, sweeping, cold, objective, historical view... You're given a story asI devoured this book in a day. It was profound because you're not given a grand, sweeping, cold, objective, historical view... You're given a story as it was lived by a man and again as it was recounted to his son. There's something deeply private and moving in that....more
WOW. I'm speechless. And dangerously close to actually squealing with delight.
I finished this book an hour ago, and right now I'm just filled with the mWOW. I'm speechless. And dangerously close to actually squealing with delight.
I finished this book an hour ago, and right now I'm just filled with the most glorious feeling- a lovely, exhaustive, satisfying, wonderfully pensive book hangover. I can now say with confidence that V.E. Schwab knows how to write a goddamn book. There's always a fear in the back of my mind when I read a great book that this it's the only good one the author has written- such is NOT the case with Schwab. First she blew me away with Vicious, and now she's left me in a daze with A Darker Shade of Magic. I can only admire (and envy) the woman.
Where to begin with this gem? I should probably mention that if somebody tailor-wrote a book for me, this is what they'd write. I mean, it's got everything! Londons! Coats with infinite sides*! Magic! Flirtatious princes! Heaps of badassery and fun and suspense and imagination and I could go on and on for eternity. All of this is made all the more astonishing because A Darker Shade of Magic juggles so many fantastic ideas that you expect Schwab to drop the ball at some point... But she doesn't. Not even once. Instead, she ups her game, and the book just gets better right when you thought it couldn't possibly.
First of all, the world-building is sensational. The Londons- all of them- are beautifully crafted. Red London is lush and whimsical; White London is warped and raw; Grey London is sober and real. Schwab really brings all of them to life, and I could picture them more vividly than I have any other setting of any other book I've read.
The characters. If you read Vicious and thought, "Wow, how can V.E. Schwab do better than this?", then you need to acquire a copy of this, pronto. Because the characters in A Darker Shade are just as layered and complex. Seriously, Kell is on par with Victor! I don't know how it's possible, but Kell is mysterious and slightly dark without being the typical brooding, emo boy trope. And Lila- well. Lila is just the greatest. She is the very definition of kickass: she's got knives, willpower, and she's tough as nails. A pickpocket turned adventurer, I absolutely loved her and Kell together. Their banter was fabulous, they were constantly saving each other's lives. That's another thing I appreciated: so often an author will give a male protagonist a female companion just to create a love interest and have her "save" him once, when really all she does is show up with a gun so he can kill all the bad guys. But Lila genuinely saves Kell's life several times, and Kell does the same for her. As for the villains, Athos and Astrid Dane are everything you could ever ask for in an antagonist. They're smart, sadistic, and cunning; the ruthless masters of a starved world.
Of course, I have to commend how original all of this is. Kell, who can create doors; the tavern, a fixed point in every London; the Danes' possession charms; the magic itself, as it's presented in such a new and fascinating way- all of it with the charm, wit, and intelligence of Schwab's writing. There is such thought and care and creativity put into every subject that it's impossible not to get swept away by this strange and beautiful universe.
All of this comes down to one statement: GET THIS BOOK. I don't say this often, but this is a book that I would buy and reread, and I'm immensely grateful to Tor Publishing for the ARC! I'm honestly not trying to be an endorser, but it makes me happy when free things are very good.
In conclusion, V.E. Schwab is a hell of a writer from what I've read so far, and it seems like there are many more great things on the horizon. Keep an eye out for her!
*I have a serious obsession with Kell's coat. It is one of the coolest magical objects I've ever read about! Cooler than the invisibility cloak of Harry Potter, methinks.
"I had a thought, dear, however scary About that night, the bugs and the dirt Why were you digging? What did you bury Before those hands pulled me from th"I had a thought, dear, however scary About that night, the bugs and the dirt Why were you digging? What did you bury Before those hands pulled me from the earth?
I will not ask you where you came from, I will not ask and neither should you." -Hozier, 'Like Real People Do'
The doctor is in!
What to say about this book? I have a lot to say, actually, but right now I have that wonderful feeling of total satisfaction that you get from finishing a book that had all the right stuff in it- plot, writing, characters, structure- the whole bloody, shocking, fantastic, gory enchilada. Because there's so much to talk about, I'll separate this review into sections to spare you the horror of reading through an enormous wicket of blocks of text.
Synopsis
The book opens in June of 2007, when Yancey, the author, is commissioned by the director of a retirement home to leaf through the journals of a resident by the name of William James Henry. Will, who claimed to have been born in 1876, died a few days before, and these were the last of his possessions, so the director asks Mr Yancey to read through them and search for any identifying details as to Will's identity, or specifications to whom the journals should be passed on, as nobody has claimed Will as their kin. Like any self-respecting author confronted with several folios of mysterious, worn notebooks, Yancey accepts the offer. What follows are the first three folios of Will's journals.
The rest of the book is set in 1888, New England, with a twelve-year-old Will Henry as the protagonist and narrator, whose parents died a year ago in a fire and who, ever since, has lived with Pellinore Warthrop, a cold and mysterious doctor of even an more mysterious profession- monstrumology. What happens in Will's second year under Warthrop's care is an exceedingly strange and gruesome affair concerning bloodthirsty monsters and more than a few morally bankrupt supporting characters. We'll travel with Will to horrifying sanatoriums, into misty graveyards and through dank, pitch-dark tunnels where it becomes ever more difficult to believe Dr Warthrop's saying that fear is the ultimate enemy. The claustrophobia and insanity, the smell of smoke and decay, monsters in forms both familiar and foreign, blood and sinew and bones- these are the things that distinguish The Monstrumologist. And I loved every damn second of it.
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William James Henry
After Will's parents died when his house burned down- the grisly details of which are revealed later on- his father's employer, one Doctor Pellinore Warthrop, takes him in. It's immensely lonely for Will living at the Warthrop residence on 425 Harrington Lane- it would be for anyone, even more so a twelve-year-old boy thrown into new and terrifying circumstances. His parents' deaths were so sudden that he's now thrust into the demanding job of being Warthrop's assistant, and all that it entails: being woken up late at night for whatever Warthrop needs, assisting with necropsies, cooking, cleaning, and generally helping with the doctor's obscure calling.
Not to fear, though- Will is a tough little orphan. He sees things that would send grown adults cowering into corners, monsters that everyone has always assumed only live in our darkest nightmares. It's a solitary way to live, and despite Warthrop's presence, Will is usually on his own.
I was not unused to this odd isolation in his company, but had yet to become accustomed to the effect it had upon me: There is no loneliness more profound, in my experience, than being ignored by one's sole companion in life. Whole days would pass with nary a word from him, even as we supped together or worked side by side in the laboratory or took our evening constitutional along Harrington Lane. When he did speak to me, it was rarely to engage me in conversation; rather, our roles were rigidly defined. His was to speak; mine was to pay attention. He held forth; I listened. He: the orator; I: the audience. I had learned quickly not to speak unless spoken to; to obey any command instantly and without question, no matter how mystifying or seemingly absurd; to stand ready, as it were, as a good soldier dedicating his sacred honor to a worthy cause, though it was the rare instance when I understood precisely what that cause might be.
Pellinore Warthrop
As much as I loved little Will Henry, Warthrop was, without a doubt, my favourite character. He is the eponymous monstrumologist- he studies, and, if necessary, hunts "life forms generally malevolent to humans and not recognized by science as actual organisms, specifically those considered products of myth and folklore." He takes this profession seriously- his work is his life, and he often spends days at a time without eating or sleeping, sustained only on black tea, if he has a lead on one of these malevolent organisms.
I was expecting a pretty cut-and-dried mad scientist- obsessed with science, has some sort of sinister master plan or agenda for his research (taking over the world maybe?), ruthless, willing and able to lie and cheat and steal to achieve his ends.
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What I got instead was Doctor Warthrop.
He's quite earnest- he is obsessed with monstrumology, but he also has a regard for human life, and he isn't quite as ruthless as he may seem at first. He's tough and wickedly smart, but he's as stubborn and uncooperative and egotistical as they come. I think Warthrop described himself best when he said:
"We are slaves, all of us, Will Henry. Some are slaves to fear. Others are slaves to reason- or base desire. It is our lot to be slaves, Will Henry, and the question must be to what shall we owe our indenture? Will it be to truth or to falsehood, hope or despair, light or darkness? I choose to serve the light, even though that bondage often lies in darkness."
Warthrop is such a fascinating and complex character, and puzzling together his intentions and motivations is an equally fascinating exercise. Also, how awesome of a name is Pellinore Warthrop?!
The Monsters
These are monsters done right! They aren't the monsters we've become accustomed to seeing- they don't brood about their fate, they don't pretend to be human, they don't pine for humanity or love or release from their bestial confines.
They are ferocious. They have no heads. They eat humans alive. They have a bite-force of two thousand pounds.
They are Anthropophagi.
They are monsters whose mouths are gaping pits of razor-sharp teeth set into the middle of their torso, who feast upon human flesh with the unbridled ferocity of a Tasmanian devil. Think this:
[image]
Combined with this:
[image]
To form something along the lines of this:
[image]
...And you've pretty much got an Anthropophagus. They're the villains of this story, the monsters to be exterminated, and they are really worthy monsters. Horrifying.
Plot
There are two main plotlines working in tandem in this book: 1) The mystery of how the Anthropophagi pod got to America in the first place, and 2) The dilemma of how to kill them all, when their strength is far superior to humans'. I'm purposely keeping it vague here because I don't want to give you any hints to either of the answers to these questions.
You've probably noticed that I gave this book four stars. Make no mistake, I loved it- but since lying is the worst kind of buffoonery I must confess that I did not find the plot five-star worthy. It's pretty linear, which is fine because it's executed well and there are a fair amount of twists, but I kind of wish there was more going on. I love a book that can juggle several plots and character arcs without making them too jumbled or confusing, books like The Shadow of the Wind. The Monstrumologist had five star potential, no doubt, but the plot was rather simple, and even though it was only .5 stars away from being a five, I round my reviews down because I am a cold-hearted harpy.
Writing
Apart from the extremely well fleshed-out characters, Rick Yancey's writing is really what makes this book shine. He masters the gothic Victorian tone and aces the setting, and he was able pull off the feeling of a 100+ year-old man looking back on experiences he had when he was 12. The sentences are gorgeous, the metaphors complex and beautiful, and somehow it never feels purple or overwrought. It would be so easy to venture into cheesy or cliché territory here, but Yancey deftly avoids the line separating high-quality from trying-too-hard. He also seems to be very fond of alliteration- there's a lot of it in the book- which I actually quite liked.
Beware, my more sensitive friends- there is a sizable amount of gore and nastiness within these pages, so read at your own risk. Some scenes even feature pus, that most repulsive of bodily fluids. But, to me, it was never gratuitous, and in places it really helped me to step into the book, to feel the revulsion and shock and horror that Will felt, the horror of realising that all the nightmares of things waiting in the dark were not fabrications at all. Take, for instance, the sanatorium scene with Hezekiah Varner- for the last three pages I didn't even realise I was holding my breath until my vision started to swim.
"Fresh from the fields, all fetor and fertile, It's bloody and raw, but I swear it is sweet." -Hozier, 'Angel of Small Death & the Codeine Scene'
Closing Thoughts
While the marketing for The Monstrumologist really sells it short, in my opinion- this is most definitely NOT Young Adult Fiction!- the book remains a remarkably well-written and thoroughly entertaining story. The characters are not only relatable and interesting, but they ask important questions, something I wish more books would do. Questions like, when do the ends justify the means? Is one life taken worth one life saved? What happens when a scientist get to close to the subject? Finally, how are humans really different from all other animals, and will the belief that we have conquered nature's viciousness be our downfall?
Will Henry and Warthrop's relationship was wonderful, their seemingly one-sided conversations were hilarious, and the way their roles grew and changed and became less defined felt natural and was really quite touching.
Sorry if this review is long and dry and doesn't do the book justice, I am very tired but I felt the need to review this because it is such an incredibly absorbing book. I'm looking forward to tearing through The Curse of the Wendigo next!
Also: I must send out my heartfelt thanks to the lovely Vane. Without her prodding me to finally pick this book up, I've no doubt it would have just sat on my TBR shelf for months, perhaps years. I blame her for my budding addiction to this series. Also, check out Tash's and Evelyn's great reviews of this book, two other friends who assisted in the creation of my obsession....more