LRRC Week 18

Another week already, huh? I can't decide if lockdown is moving slowly or flying by. I may have said that last week. I've lost all track of time and posts and oh god what's that??

#35: THE GOBLIN EMPEROR by Katherine Addison

Oh oh oh what a lovely book this is.

​I don't remember what I initially saw recommending this book, but it's rare to see a book precisely like this. It's a political intrigue book, but one in which the main character is a genuinely good person trying to do good things and act with kindness and compassion towards everyone. It's a strange beast, but I was really into it.

For some people, that might push the boundaries of their suspension of disbelief, but for me, it hit in a really good way. There are characters who do bad things, and who act against the titular emperor, but even in those cases, there's a refusal on a narrative level to dismiss them as wholly evil and unsympathetic. For the most part, this is a book about how being kind can lead to receiving kindness in return, and I loved it.

If I had to level one criticism, and this might just be a me-problem, it was that the naming structure was a little bit confusing. There were a lot of characters with similar-sounding names, and all of them were fantasy names I'd never heard before, and as a result, I was sometimes confused as to who was speaking/present. Generally, context clues cleared this up, but it still presented a bit of a challenge.

Aside from that, though, goodness, if you're like me and you want a bit of a break from the awfulness of the world, read this.

#36: OF CURSES AND KISSES by Sandhya Menon

This is one of those books that I find it really hard to review.

Like, it was fine? I have nothing against it? But it also didn't really grab me in any particular way.

Some of the character relationships I liked, particularly between some of the female characters. Though I'm not sure I always completely bought that they were real people (some of the actions seemed a little bit far-fetched), I generally liked the fact that the book refused, for the most part, to engage in a "different than other girls" type of narrative. And I liked the ending, I thought that was mostly satisfying, though the main character's character development kind of hits her all at once in a way I'm not sure I bought.

The main thing I came away from this book with was confusion, over something that's honestly not even that much of a big deal in the novel: the appearance of the love interest. It's a Beauty & The Beast retelling, though I'm not sure that the "Beast" character is ever truly beastly, either in appearance or action.

They try, though; in his first appearance he's described as large, hulking, "feral," compared to a bear. At which point, naturally, I turn back to the illustration on the cover, which is of a perfectly normal-sized boy. And for the rest of the novel, he seems to be normal in appearance, if perhaps a bit strong. Certainly, nobody ever remarks on him being "feral" after that first appearance. Does the author know what image is conveyed by comparisons to a bear?

Also, I think I was maybe just a little bit burnt out by the end of this on Rich People Problems. Like, I'm sure the problems as described here are legitimate, it's just hard to get into that as an escapist fantasy at the moment. It is fun to see an Indian main character, though!

NEXT WEEK'S AGENDA:
#37: I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom
#38: Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant