LRRC Week 15
I can't decide if time is moving faster or slower in quarantine. On one hand, it feels like every day takes so long to happen, but on the other hand, how is it already halfway through April?? When did that happen? Anyway apparently it's Friday so I've got some books for you.
#29: TRULY DEVIOUS by Maureen Johnson
Somehow, despite being a teen when Maureen Johnson started publishing AND once being a huge John Green fan, this is the first of Johnson's books I've ever read. And yes I DID read it on recommendation from one of Travis McElroy's videos.
I thought it was interesting enough! I like mysteries, so I'm a pretty easy sell, and I thought the set up and the characters were interesting enough, if a bit more like caricatures than real people. And the mysteries themselves seemed interesting, too, even if the "main one", the Truly Devious mystery, seemed a little bit ridiculous.
My main issue with this book is that it...doesn't feel like a complete story. Almost at all. Obviously it's the first in a trilogy, and I knew that going in, but I apparently have pretty strong feelings that every book in a series should still be, y'know, a book in its own right.
"Truly Devious" sets up a big mystery and a small mystery, which is to be expected. As I'm reading, I'm going oh, okay, so the small mystery will be solved in this book, but the big mystery will last over the whole series. That makes sense to me. But the small mystery wasn't even really solved! They discover the "culprit" but I still have way too many questions about the why and the how to consider it "solved."
I'm probably going to still read the other books in this series, because I am curious to see how it unfolds, but this does leave a very strange taste in my mouth.
Also, this book has a non-binary character that it...misgenders frequently? It's established early on that this character uses they/them pronouns, but frequently the narrative uses she/her. Who edited this?
#30: JADE WAR by Fonda Lee
Fuuuuuuuuuuuck I love the Green Bone Saga so much.
I'm always a little bit worried about sequels, especially for books I really liked - and I LOVED Jade City. Which is probably why it took me approximately 9 months to actually read this, even though it's been sitting on my shelf for.....most of that time period.
Anyway, I needn't have worried, Jade War takes everything that's excellent about Jade City and increases it tenfold. You like complex clan politics? We got that. You like big family feels? We got that! You like badass complicated characters, especially badass complicated women? You KNOW we got that!!!
I don't have many intelligent things to say, to be honest, this book is a wild ride in the best of ways. It's so nice to be able to put your trust in an author and say, "go ahead, rip my heart out repeatedly. It's okay, I'll enjoy it."
Also god DAMN is Fonda Lee good at writing characters doing objectively bad deeds while still making those characters deeply compelling and likeable. Maybe it says something about me, but even after two books of watching these characters do quite a lot of violence, sometimes to people who don't deserve it, I'm still all-in rooting for the Kaul family (and yet I'm also rooting for Ayt Mada. Is that a contradiction? Yep! I just love powerful ambitious women, sorry not sorry!)
I want Jade Kingdom to come out YESTERDAY. But also I recognize that books take work and I want Fonda Lee/her people to take all the time they need on the grand finale.
NEXT WEEK'S AGENDA:
#31: Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
#32: The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin