What I drank prior to the review:
I've had at least a 6-Pack of Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat... and some wine. Plus it was Doctor Who night so....
Spoiler-free Overview:
This is a dystopian YA novel. Apparently there was some sort virus that made folk start living in these dome things to contain people from the virus. In order to get rid of the virus, they nuked everyone not in the domes. Causing all sorts of radiation outside. We start the story with the main character Nat. The most rebelious thing she's ever done is avoid the police. And by that I mean that the police monitor curfews etc. I think? IDK. So she was out outside of curfew and was standing by the dome boundary and sees a couple dudes outside. One of them gets captured and he gets taken and brings in secrets that Nat starts trying to uncover. Adventures happen.
Spoiler-free thoughts:
Okay guys. So I am really not a fan of this book. At all. I'm trying to be professional, but literally how many love-triangle, dystopian, female-led stories can you read in your life? The one boy is the bffl that you grew up with, the other is a SUPER fast newly introduced man who is mysterious and brooding and GAG ME. To be completely honest, this book was so forgettable that I don't even remember the names of the two baes. I've even tried looking them up and couldn't find them. So we will talk about them as bffl BAE and mysterious BAE. So there were a bunch of things that were disappointing.
Firstly, mysterious BAE kept saying things like "if only you knew..." and "I can't tell you why I can't..." which made me think like... "oh, he's got some other chick back at his dome" or something like that. Man. That would have made the story so much more complex.
Secondly, I wanted to know more about why they were in the domes and why their society was so structured. I felt like there were so many opportunities to teach us about this world and why the society was so introverted. But I didn't get it. I WANTED to know why. For example, we knew why The Hunger Games came to be a thing. We don't know why there are so many rules in the dome.
Finally, I just wanted more. She opened enough cans for me to be interested in what was going on and it just turned out to be a cookie cutter dystopian YA novel.
Sucks, I was really looking forward to this.
Spoilers!!!
UGH! Why? Seriously. If you're going to have a good love-triangle you gotta have at least SOME tension on the other side. Also, bffl BAE was so boring. SO SO BORING.
But I will give The Director an award for being a creepy mother fucker. He gives people some whiskey so they can't lie and then asks girls to basically sit on his face. The wives of the other leadership don't even QUESTION when he does this. It's absolutely terrifying as woman, a man taking that much power away from you. Really fucking scary. But did Ms. McFarlane address how to DEAL with this situation??? No. She just let it happen to show how scary the man was. Nat had to sit on this abhorrent man's lap and then move on. Though... how is that any different than real life I suppose... I digress.
Also, I felt like I wanted so much more out of this. The story was so promising. It could have been incredible. But it just wasn't.
Rating:
1/5 shots. Seriously. It only gets the one because of the villain. Everything else was just way too prescribed for me.
What to pair it with:
Vodka Cranberry... because every bitty bitch at the bar orders this drink.
As many of our nights blogging start out, this is a quasi-Dr. Night. I started with a nitro beer (crunchy yet oddly satisfying (THATS A LION KING REFERENCE!)) and then moved on to a pinot noir that I got from trader joes for probably about five dollars (solid choice. TJ's has good wine, also cheeses for anyone in the market).
SPOILER FREE SUMMARY:
This book is a ton of fun. The basic premise is that a limited number of people can burn metals to give them super powers. The book is about a group of people who are technically slaves who decide that they're going to defeat the Lord Ruler (functionally a god) to take over the capital of their country. There's a lot more nuance to the situation but this is spoiler free and I dont' want to accidentally give anything away so that might be the best you get. The group is made up of a bunch of people who can use different kinds of metal (most people who can use metal can only use one kind exept for a few who can use all the metal (THE MISTBORNS (GASP THE NAME CAME FROM SOMEWHERE))). So it's all these people who came from an impoverished background trying to break the system.
SPOILER FREE REVIEW:
So this book started out super slow. Sam absolutely loves this book and has tried to get me to read this book since we moved in together a year ago. I've put it off because I've been reading other books she suggested but clealry have worked my way through that list.... So this book starts slowly and as I said its the kind of book wehre I kind of wanted to know what what was going to happen next but didnt' feel the need to really know, and then you get about halfway in and holy shit did I need to know what hapened. The history of the Lord Ruler was so effortlyessly woven into the rest of the plot that I wanted to know what happened to him, and the foreshadowing was amazing (to the point wehre I normally pick up on stuff but completely missed this). Basically, this book takes place over about a year and I really liked the pace because while some things seemed to happen fairly quickly it's still an elongated timeline which makes a lot of the seemingly abrupt changes more understandable becasue we miss a month or two here and there. Honestly a couple of the characters are more caricatures, or outlines of characters where they don't necessarily have the depth to be real people (i.e. a little two dimensional) but the story is so good that that doesn't really matter all that much. I realized I shoudl probably mention characters. Kelsier is a Mistborn (who can control all the forms of metal) his crew doesn't seem particularly important, but Vin is his mentor. There are characters in their thieving gang (Like Breeze, or Clubs, or Spook, or Ham who show up but I don't feel like expounding upon here.) there's Eland who is the son of one of the Major Houses, and the Lord Ruler who is functionally a God. Obviously the crew are the people helping Kelsier attempt to oust the Lord Rule (who yet again is basically a god and immortal)
SPOILERED REVIEW
Here's your warning, Spoilers follow
So I might have been a little bit spoiled in this book because Sam mentioned to Parker that a "character who dies in this book has a continued arc" in a novella and it's clear by chapter two who dies. So I spent a lot of the book knowing who died, which meant at the point where Kelsier, Vin's teacher, dies I had been waiting for it since chapter 2.... but the book is amazing. other than failing the Bechdel test (why are all other women other than Vin evil?) But I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of this book. I hadn't picked up on the fact that the Lord Ruler was a Ferruchmancer (or whateever the hell they were, I don't care enough to look it up). I hadn't picked up on the fact that Kelsier had his secret plan to make himself a martyr even though I knew he was going to die. But the book overall was kind of amazing even though I kind of felt like the romance was a little unnecessary.
RATING
So this book earns like a 4.5 out of 5 shots. This book had a few weaknesses in character that were made up for by the plot which was a lot of fun and maybe made me think about how much needed to be overcome to get rid of slavery in this country.... but I haven't mentione dthat yet so I'm not sure the end of the review is the right time ALCOHOL MATCH
This book is a drink that sneaks up on you. Maybe a Tom Collins or a Vodka Collins because you start reading it and think it won't get to you but them, BAM it hits you and you can't put it down.
A sixer of miller
lite and a sixer of New Belgium Rampant imperial IPA, and a sneaked shot of
Boodles Gin (Sorry Ginny).
Spoiler Free Overview:
son, my feet hurt FOR jimmy.
I’m a summer baby,
and it’s summer, so I’ve got a good little summer heel, myself. But he’s been
stompin' out crickets for a little while now and lols at it, to boot.
Homie spends his night in a tree hiding from genetically
enhanced frankenpigs and his days processing the post apocalyptic coastline he
inhabits. The ants bite(and the snakes), and he has one single weird
futuristic fucking choco-soy-carb-chitin bar left before he’s gotta drink the
scotch. For the calories. What bothers leatherface jimmy more than anything?
Which verse of the CRAKErs’ origin myth he has to trade for a grilled fish
today. Right. The first-generation of fully engineered humans. Just all in my man’s hangover. You know you hungover
when you willing to drink th water out of a birdbath and sametime trying to explain why this old lady died. Jimmy goes THROUGH IT,
smh.
Through a series of flashbacks, we learn about how Jimmy
became Snowman, and how and why he ends up as the last man in the world. he
was born maybe 100 years from today, and he watches capital-C Capitalism
work through his interactions with his parents and friends and lovers; and
folks, that shit trickles the fuck down.
His genius bff CRAKE (no relation) affectionately refers to
him as #Normative and I read smacked too often to keep count, but I think his
dad calls him Champ more than anything else. Mommy don’t love him and
young metro don’t trust him(footnote) but Crake fucking does, adn this ends up being a rel pain in the ass. Everyone he knows
works for some kind of biotech sales/health multinational organization with no regulation, and visiting
the “plebelands”, cities like New New York City, are tantamount to heresy. By
the time pubescent Jimmy and Crake meet the lewd cherub Oryx , Atwood has us all spinnin through tangled webs of jealousy, epiphanic exploration, and the good-natured befuddlement
of a hungover, underfed version of my black
ass, in the shithole leftovers of the world.
Spoiler Free Thoughts:
I always trust the novel’s third person narrator, insofar as
he’s a regular mofucker with regular-ass issues trying to come of age
surrounded by overwhelming stimuli. When he seems deadpan and emotionless, I cant
help but feel for and like him, trying to make sense of his feels and tring to
decipher why others feel what they feel. you feels me?. Maggie Atwood succeeds at making me care about her
protagonist as much as I recognize him as a vehicle for some apt and timely
social commentary. that's a feat by itself and not lost on me.
The only time Jimmy seems "stupid" in his world is during his
little love story (same). He struggles and is weird (same) and then becomes a
fuckboy in his shitty liberal arts college (kinda same) before falling for a
girl way too savvy for him (same AF).
Then again, we only learn about the world and its perisl
through Jimmy’s relationships, and his greatest lost causes are women and words
(fucking same) as the world spirals out of control. In this way, the novel is a
pretty Modern take on some pretty advanced science and its threat on the fabric
of our society.
Writing Style:
A cool thing: Atwood uses jimmy’s deepening love for words
as wind in the sails of her own prosaic man-o-war; by the time we’re enrapt
with the power trio and want them to have an orgy, she’s weaving phrases together like a thatched roof,
watertight and tear-inducing. She
navigates between terse, clear syntax and a flowing lyricism, and does so affectively.
It’s beautiful stuff.
I can’t tell if it’s predictable that Crake was the
mastermind that takes it all down. As Jimmy alludes, you can really come to
know a man by his fridge magnets. Bruh I KNEWWW the Jimmy-Oryx-Crake-weird-non-sexual-child-porny-erotic-jealous-
relationship was gonna get bloody. But when the crucible at the scene of Crake’s
planned murder of goddam everybody brings the three together, the power dynamics
are kinda predictable and the action brutal (but maybe not ineffectively so. It
explains a lot, and is a puzzle piece if nothing else).
Super Fucking Spoiler:
When Jimmy gets back from his mission, with a septic fucking
foot and a 40cal Desert Eagle, the crakers have a shrine of him and revere him
as a God. They’ve been visited by other FUCKING HUMANS. IMAGINF BEING THE ONLY
HUMAN ON EARTH, HAVING ALL YOUR INTERACTIONS BE WITH BLUE DICKED 6’5” GODDAM
CHILDREN FOR A MONTH AND SOME REGULAR NIGGAS CAME BY, WERE SCARED, AND ROLLED
OUT. AND NOW YOU GOTTA FIND EM.
When you leave jimmy, he’s wondering wether or not he should
let the chopper spray on these similarly
scraggled, equally starved humans. The novel’s last works are Crake’s,
reminding Jimmy to do the best he can. I suppose we’ll see in the next novel what exactly he does
Rating:
8/12 IPAs: I’m hammered and I’m a little scared and a little
turned on, and I have a bad taste in my mouth.
What to pair It with:
Vodka soda, then Maker’s Mark, neat. Fuel the inevitable
crash into the brick wall of human arrogance. Then once fucked, drink about it
casually like proper Englishman.
What I Drank Prior
A whole bottle of the best Pinot Grigio I’ve ever had. Literally, ask Virginia. We’re going to start buying this shit by the case. And now I’m working on glass two of a Pinot Noir. I guess I like the Pinots….
Spoiler-free overview:
I don't think this review is going to be as fun as my others, because this book's style and mood do not reflect drunken debauchery. So how do I even begin to explain this book.
We start with a spectacular magician's show. After the show, these two dudes, hereforto known as Gray Suit and Crazy Man, they get together and decide that there's going to be a competition between two people. And let the best side win?
These two people are Celia and Marco and they a'start a'studyin'.
We also start hearing about this beautiful Night Circus. THey call it by some french-ass name. Le Cirque des Rêves (I googled it, don't judge me). The whole point of the Circus is that it opens at midnight and goes until the wee hours of the morning. Le Cirque is the "venue" for this competition between Celia and Marco. Neither know what the rules are, to be completely honest, even after finishing the novel, even I still don't know what the rules are.
Anyway, this novel covers over a decade of time as this competition goes on. Relationships, jealousy, fear, creation, inspiration, creativity, and love develop over time and Le Cirque des Rêves takes you on a journey into a dream.
Spoiler-free thoughts:
Holy crap guys. I mean. Just. I finished this book today. I thought maybe I needed some time to think about this book before I wrote anything about it. But then? I had some wine. And then some more wine. And I couldn't keep my thoughts in any longer.
You GUYS. This book is beautiful. Seriously. It takes you on this magic carpet ride straight Aladdin style. NOT EVEN JOKING. Okay OKAY. I'll get into more specidics in a minute. This book was so well written and captivating. I have one *minor* complaint that's noted in the spoiler-ey section but other than that, i adored this book. If anyone is looking for something that will integrate you entirely into the story, this book is for you. I wanted to know more about each tent. THough, I think that was the point. No one knows everything about the circus except maybe Marco and Celia, though even they don't know HOW it works. Their whole purpose is to beat the other, though they are unsure why.
Plot
So to be completely honest, I listened to this on audiobook from the library. Narrated by Jim Dale. The FABULOUS Jim Dale who also performed the audiobooks for Harry Potter. Need I say more? *momentary pause while i finish my second glass of wine fromt he second bottle* Alright, i'm good now. The plot was so incredible engrossing. You FELT like you were a part of the circus. You WANTED to be at the circus. And the whole time, you're never really rooting for one side or the other for the competition. I feel like the competition was just a side story. The whole time, you're just trying to figure out what's going on at the circus is, only to realize at the end that the competition is all that matters. Just. Just. Wow.
Characters
These characters are so well developed it's not even funny. Since you get to see thm over the course of their entire lives almost. Celia was a beautifully complex character. What am I even saying, Marco was also beautifully written. Their relationship was beautiful. Their competition, was beautiful.
My favorite characters were the twins. Watching them grow up and become their own? Incredible. I JUST loved them.
It's really not fair for me to talk about thos eindividually. Because they were all so enthralling.
The main character, I feel, is the Circus itself. How it changes and effects others. Everyone is involved. Everyone loves it. It becomes the central factor the story revolves around. Anything and everything that happens effects the Circus (man that's a hard word to spell when drunk) and you really feel invested in its future.
Writing Style
Have I not described this enough? THe writing was beautiful. Stunning. Incredible. Out-of-this world. You are totally engrossed in this novel from page one. Literally. Read it.
SPOILERS
YOU GUYS! The ending of this story was just beautiful. I loved how Celia and Marco's relationship develops. It's how relationships should develop. None of this insta-love crap. Sure. Marco think she's beautiful from the moment he saw her, but he didn't lvoe her until the tour of the brownstone. OK. We're not sure it was a brownstone but that's how I thought ofit. Though, I didn't really like that they both took the "oh my gosh, i want to sacrifice myself for you" side. But hey, it worked. At least Celia tried to separate herself (ok both of them) from the circus is pretty cute and a great strategy.
Also, I absolutely adore how the book ended. With Gray suit and Widget talking in the pub. Like.... for realz. Awesome.
Rating
4.75/5 shots. I wish I could give it 5/5. But that one minor thing in the spoilery section got rid of .25 for me.
What to pair it with: A fine wine. Something that you drink to feel sophisticated and mysterious. Maybe even a black and white cookie.
So we had a drinking night. We all got hammered. We all read these books. So we wrote about them together. And shots. Shots happened, right?
Sam received an advanced unfinished copy of Gemina at the 2016 BookCon which all three of us read (see the proof, I met them, they are awesome). We will definitely be picking up the finished version because it was awesome and some of the art is unfinished. These reviews are unsolicited and honest opinions.
Virginia
Sam
Parker
Happy Dr. Who Drinking game. Hanging out with Parker and Sam tonight while watching Matt Smith
become Peter Capaldi. This means we start with beer and then there’s some win, and before writing we
deicded to do a shot (why does anyone let me mix my own drinks. It was triple sec, cranberry juice,
tequila and lime – tasted bad, then kind of like a jolly racher, and then not so good again.)
Spoiler Free Overview: I’m going to be honest. It’s been a while since I read the books and I like the
way Sam does summaries better than the way I do summaries so I’m going to keep this short and not so
sweet. In Illuminae a mining camp is attacked and there’s massive damage and a ton of character
deaths and it’s super chaotic. A number of the people escape on to one of three ships and head to a
major military outpost. However, shortly during the trips the AI blows up one of the ships and shit starts
going down. I’m not sure what else I can say without getting into spoilers, so…
Gemina started a few months after Illuminae and it focuses on the outpost that the miners in the first
book were trying to get to. There’s a huge corporation that doesn’t want information to get out and
they decide to invade this spacestation but didn’t expect the drug ring on the station to be breeding
horrifying monsters that could be used for SPACE DRUGS! Yet again shit goes down.
My Spoiler Free Take: These books play around with format like crazy. There are awesome
illustrations, and pictures and the writing skips between diary entries and chat logs and military reports.
Every few pages the look of the book changes. That makes this a quikc read because you’re mind
doesn’t really get complacent. Additionally the characters in both Illuminae and Gemina were incredibly
well thought out. I always appreciate books that have badass ladies and this series has them in spades.
Though I have gotten to the point where whenever the protagonists are 16 year olds running around
kicking ass I start to feel really old and wonder who the fuck lets these kids deal with this stuff. I mean
really.
That being said, these books show the emotional toll that comes with dealing with crazy shit. Each book
focuses on two main characters and in the first book Kady (I think? Like I said, it’s been a while and even
if the books are sitting right next to me, I’m being lazy) is dealing with a crazy situation and an AI and it’s
clear that she is using humor to cope and even more clear that she’s hanging on by a thread. In the
second book both Hanna and Nik deal with deaths of people close to them and it’s clear that it doesn’t
just disappear.
I’ve been told we have talking points so I’m going to cover those a little more here, at least the ones I
haven’t covered and actually feel like covering. The AI in the Illuminae is named Aidan. I’m not sure if it
was ever written that Aidan was masculine or feminine, but for some reason I never gave it a particular
voice. When I read I don’t get a perfect picture of characters in my head, and Aidan was never given a
gender in my mind so it ended up with an androgenous voice. Though I did end up thinking about HAL
from 2001 a Space Oddessy on regular basis. (I was going to look up the famous line but god did I hate
that movie).
Also Sam’s review mentions a section where I got so upset that I got up, crying, left the room I was in, to
go yell at her for making read this book when such a horrible thing happened. I explain what happened
in the spoiler section. Because holy feels Batman.
SPOILERS!!!!
Illuminae: Surprise SPACE ZOMBIES! Seriously. There was a virus and it totally
decimated a shit-ton of people. I mean, everyone seriously kicked ass and Aidan, while
being a crazy AI who was trying to kill basically everyone that mattered to me in that
universe, was still a little sympathetic. Like, yeah he’s trying to kill everyone, but it’s to
save all other life in the universe. And Kady, holy shit Kady. When she thinks that Ezra
is dead she takes off the kid gloves, and the fact that what she was doing before were
the kid gloves? She was fucking brutal. The end of the book was absolutely beautiful.
She recognized the creepy but well-meaning Aidan was sentient and didn’t want him to
die. She almost died due to radiation and frankly only survived due to a lot of hard work
but even more luck. And her finding out that Ezra wasn’t dead was beautiful. If you’ve
read Sam’s review about how I was crying it’s when we found out that Ezra had died. I
was no okay with that. I was so invested in him and how he and Kady interacted… But
we find out he’s okay and due to space magic medical shit, she survives a nuclear
reaction (uhhhhhh, sure).
Then we get to GEMINA: THE CHARACTERS FROM ILLUMINAE ACTUALLY SHOW
UP HERE VERY SHORTLY AND IT MADE ME REALLY HAPPY. Also, holy shit do I
love a multi-verse. At some point Nik dies and boy is Hanna crushed, though she’s still
fighting to stay alive. And she’s in communication with the ship from Illuminae who is
acting super confused because it turns out they’re talking to both Nik and Hanna both of
whom say the other person is dead! Ugh, my heart burst of happiness. But yet again
we have two heroes who have a history that explains why they can do all this crazy
stuff. It’s great! This book didn’t pack quite as big of a punch as Illuminae and I can’t
quite tell you why. As far as it goes I think it was mostly that, while the back and forth
between Nik and Hann was charming I still have a problem with a relationship where it’s
so one-sided for so long, especially when the one party is pursuing the other party even
after push back… and maybe I was reading into that too much, or not enough. I can’t
quite tell you. But the horrifying creatures had to grow in cows and they burst through
the cows and sounded pretty much invincible. Add that into a war zone wehre all the
civilians are being held after the celebration of holiday where the captain was killed in
front of them. It was just pretty fucking dramatic.
Illuminae earned 5 out of 5 shots, because with the format and the plot, the tension was
high the entire time.
Gemina earned 4 out of 5 shots, because while the format was still amazing (and I was
reading an ARC copy so not all of the artwork was there) and the story was still fantastic
(look under the cut for my love of the plot-twist) but I wasn’t quite as connected to the
characters here as I was the first one. Still, a solid book.
This book is like Everclear because you kind of know what you’re getting into but it’s still
gonna fuck you up.
What we drank prior to the review:
It was Doctor Who Drinking Game night… so I’ve lost count…. But I promise I’m drunk.
Brief spoiler-free overview of the book
So basically you start the book with two POVs, Kady and Ezra. They just broke up. I know, dramatic right??? But hey, the day they break up their planet basically blows up. They both escape but end up on different space ships running away from the scary ship (the Lincoln) chasing after them. Stuff happens, she becomes a scary hacker girl, he becomes a military pilot punk. Also, in the attack the ship Alexander’s Artificial Intelligence called AIDAN broke and it goes all 2001: A Space Odyssey and there’s a scary virus going around too. There’s just so much happening. It’s hard to keep it straight in my brain right now.
Personal spoiler-free thoughts on the book:
You guys… So I’m not watching Pokemon this time (I know… tragedy… Blame Virginia) but these books are so so good. The format itself is so unique. It’s basically a series of video transcriptions, chat logs, emails, situation reports, and the inner thoughts of this crazy unreliable AI. On top of all of that, they use art to tell a story. For example, there’s a part where one character is outside the fuggin spaceship tryna get from one spot to another spot on the ship and they literally write the words in the path that they take around the ship in large arcs. It’s incredible.
Plot – So these books are hard to think of as boring. There are a ton of things going on at the same time. I thought I was going to be bored with the “a YA couple just broke up but have to fight adversity” troupe but it wasn’t like that at all. Not even a little bit. These books BROKE me. TWICE. Literally broken. Virginia was broken as well… she comes out of her room with tears in her eyes screaming at the top of her lungs “NO! THAT’S NOT WHAT HAPPENED” True story. She says it was 2am… it’s a lie. It was like 9pm.
Characters – Alright. Okay. So I didn’t think I cared about these characters at all. Boy was I wrong. I found myself connected to each and every character in some way. Eether it was through empathy or personal connection, I had it. They got me. They were incredibly well developed characters. Even the bad boy. I don’t particulary love that troupe either, but there were enough redeeming qualities that I adored him. Additioanlly, AIDAN. For those of you who’ve read, did you read them as a female or male? I originally thought of him as a woman, because 2001: A Space Odyssey, but then someone screwed with my brain and I couldn’t get out of the male persona.
Writing Style – I really have no words for this other than you’ll know it when you see it. It’s badass and beautiful. Read it. The end.
A couple other points – This book gave me all of the feels. In the second book, someone has inserted a virus into the mainframe that causes the same stupid pop song related to things like T-Swift’s Shake it Off or Katy Perry’s Last Friday Night. These songs are annoying. They’re incredibly and irritatingly annoying but catchy. So some dude, at the very beginning of the book has this song going through the whole joint all the fuggin time. So something super serious can happen on page 500 (I’m literally pulling that number out of my ass, I looked for a page and couldn’t find it and don’t have enough patience to look (DOUBLE PARENTHETICALS I love writing this in word because it fixes my typos)) and they’re still singing this stupid song called Lolly-Pop and it just makes you giggle. I thought it was hysterical.
Also, I think that Ms. Kaufman and Mr. Kristoff should be commended in their co-authorship. I never once thought the story was written by more than one person. It flowed so well that I had no issues with the narrative or lost my palce in the story. Well done. (I’ll put the photo of us up here too ;-) ).
Last thing – Promise. My Bff and I, Parker (writing the third part to this review) work for the same company. Over the course of every day, we get on work chat and the chats that happen in book 2 are quite literal examples of our daily conversation. We both found it amusing. We say stuff like that all the time.
SPOILERS!!!
GUYS SPACE ZOMBIES AND CREEPY SNAKE THINGS! Seriously those snake things were terrifying I still have nightmares.
Why do both books have to crush you just to bring them back? Literally both Ezra and Nik die. Is this a girl power thing? I mean, I’m all for it but sometimes people gotta die. Right?
So in book 1, I found it pretty interesting the BioTech person in charge of the attack was Ezra’s mom, and yet, she doesn’t end the attack. I think there’s more there. The Space Zombies were really creepy with that whole “pretty birdy” thing and havng the count down and percentages of infected folk. Also, when Byron got infected I got real sad. Lastly, when we found out that AIDAN was pretending to be Ezra I died. I had to put the book down and walk away for a while. I never do that with books. Not even in HP when certain main important characters died. I pushed through. This one I had to walk away for a min. Ok that’s a lie, with one of the characters in HP I through my novel across the room and proceeded to cry for a day. A whole day.
In book 2, HOLY CRAP THOSE SNAKE THINGS ARE SO SCARY. And I also found the alternate universe thing hard to follow. I mean, they gave me enough pre-work to buy it. The whole “we really have no idea what could happen” crap. But still, I am always skeptical of the two universes. And why did both Hanna and Nik have to die in the other universe? It just made it tough to buy. I think I would have been more crushed if they’d brought back Nik’s dead body.
Rating
Book 1 is 5/5 Shots. Super well done. So unique. Color me impressed.
Book 2 is like 4.75/5 Shots. I’m that girl at the bar who leaves a quarter of her shot in the glass because she “can’t finish it.” I hate those girls. Again, beautifully written and incredibly unique. But for reasons written in the spoiler section I have to take off .25.
These books are like like when you ask the bartender to “make you something new” and it’s delicious.
What to pair it with – Absynthe. You literally have no idea what’s going to happen after your first drink.
Okokok so lemme preface this by saying there are a few things wrong with what I’m boutta write today:
I had two family members pass away this past weekend and I’m pretty fucked up about it. I’m having a
hard time giving af about anything right now, but hey, I like words, and hopefully these ones will offer
me some modicum of relief. Here goes
For Dianne and Sherron
What I drank prior: Soooo it was Dr Who drinking night (is that not a thing for you? Look/ lock it up) a
rough guess goes as follows: 4 yuengling, 7 miller lite, 3 glasses de vino, 3 shots de
teequilaaayayayayayayyy
Brief spoiler free overview:
Picture yourself in deep space. Ore mining on asteroids is so common a thing that your whole family is on
an asteroid. Mining ore. It’s so chill that you’re in high school on said asteroid. Life is grand and
terraformed. These two teens are madly in love and it’s adorable and shit when BOOM THE WHOLE
MINE JONT GETS ATTACKED. They both escpae and spend the bulk of the novels really just trying to
survive. Their attackers did a shitty job killing everyone and they are hunting that ass down/ using some
pretty fucked up methods to eradicate the evidence of there enedavors. Will Kady and Ezra be together
in the end? Tune in next week on DRAGON BALLL ZE—
But seriously, Amie Kauffman and Jay Kristoff write a pair of incredibly compelling narrative in Illuminae,
about attacking overwhelming odds, and they do so in consistently surprising ways. The second
installment in the trilogy, Gemina, picks up right where it left off. Fancy yourself able to predict what’s
gonna happen in works of fiction? These two books contain the following, in no particular order:
A love story
A evil maniacal military dickbag
Artificial Intelligence (also a dickbag)
A goddam man-made wormhole
The Russian mafia
Space zombies
Hallucinogens
Spaceship battles. TWICE.
(Bruh. Read these shits.)
Personal spoiler free thoughts: Plot: The astronomy nerd in me (minored in it, have autographs from Stephen hawking, went -twice-to
space camp) loved the plot and technical execution of these novels ( with ONE exception. Spoilers, dear.)
I was continuously roped into caring about both the physical safety of these characters as well as the
lovey-dovey/retribution stories that are a significant arc throughout. I was never bored, and furthermore,
I cared. I gave a shit. To be able to carry that through two novels and 700 some-odd pages says a lot.
Characters: while we do see a few boring tropes arise in our characters, I found them continuously
surprising in a number of ways. (Oh you thought this son-of-a-druglord-fuckboy was gonna be a POS?
NAH. Oh you thought the sociopathic-semiomnipotent AI was gonna come to your aid? WRO –wait. Well.
kinda?). Some characters are flat, but our protagonists, antagonists, and most characters you spend
more than a few sentences on evolve tremendously, which is fitting considering how dire their situations
become. Only at one moment did I find myself actively disbelieving a character’s behavior. I’m hella
critical and read FOR these kinds of things, so such a feat is an achievement indeed.
I’ll finish with a bit of praise: AIDAN, the artificial intelligence piloting one of the ships, is the most
interesting and compelling character I’ve read in a while. AIDAN not only (d)evolves quickly, but is a
catalyst for other characters.
Writing style and pace: I almost wrote a sentence that described the style of these novels as
“contrived”. Here’s why: there are moments where the layout of the words on the page are as effective
and affective as the words themselves. Entire sections are written as military reports summarizing video
and/or audio feeds recovered from the spacecraft in question. Dialogue between characters is literally
more often espoused via instant messages (And emoijs. O.o) than via actual words spoken aloud. There
are moments where some of this “dialogue” sounds like my good friends and I chatting via IM at work.
Acronyms fly around, lolz are lolled, ellipses abound. For a digital native like myself, these things were
easy enough to break down but a less tech-savvy reader may run into trouble connecting.
A standout to me are the “illustrations” in these books. Entire pages function as concrete poems wherein
the shape of the words on the page add meaning. Imagine reading a firefight, but there is no narrative,
only dialogue. These fools manage to capture spatial and temporal changes and events with the literal
location of the words on the page, their size, their density, their orientation. Literally something I had
never seen before from a work of fiction, and when I have seen it in other genres, never has it been so
extensive, and to me, never has it been so effective
There are moments where characters have “dueling pages”, wherein lover girl’s actions take place only
on left-hand pages, and lover boy’s on the right. There’s a plot reason for this mirroring, and it is fucking
stupendous to me. A novel idea, well executed
the novels regularly give you checkpoints. Literally T-minus x minutes until things are FUBAR. And they
are hella effective companions to the pace that the authors were able to capture more traditionally. The
rising action in these novels draw you in innocuously; suddenly I realized while reading that my brows
were furrowed, my mouth hanging slack and that Hannah and Nik HADNT EVEN REALIZED THAT THERE
WERE 5 FOOT MAN EATING DEATH SNAKES ABOARD. Seriously. if the climaxes in my personal life were
as intense and prolonged as these I would have long since died of dehydration. Powerful, powerful stuff.
Do they resolve well? Considering that these are intended to lead toward a heretofore unreleased
concluding novel, I’d say yeah. I don’t leave either of these novels “satisfied” (heh) but only because I
want more, not necessarily because there are unanswered questions or poorly tied loose ends.
Spoiler:
the homie AIDAN is CRAZY BRO. straight batshit. Devolving to omniscient and omnipotent to FUCKING
BATSHIT INSANE and omnipotent. Which, yanno, aint an upgrade.
The happily-eve- afters are trill. Both novels have moments of unadulterated joy when our protagonists
meet again. Authors do a phenoooommmmmmeeennnaaall job of capturing these moments, and in fact
they are the moments that solidify the power of their graphical effects. The whole “Gemina effect” thing
fucks me up though. Dueling universes? Trading dead bodies to fix the fucking whole in the goddam
universe? IDK bro. a lot. Just a lot to buy into.
Rating x/5 and what drink it’s comparable to:
Illuminae: 5/5 shots of patron
Gemina 4.5/5 shors of cuervo
The change is because by the time I get to gemina, I KNOW I wanna get fucked up. Idc that I’m probably
gonna hook up with my ex and feel like vomit(ing) the next day
What to pair it with:
I’d pair these novels with a nice IPA. Maybe Bell’s two-hearted ale, only because you need to get through
a bunch of hundred pages of IMs and concrete poems that literally make you turn the book over
sometimes. If you drank liquor, you’d drop your book. Like I did. Twice
