LRRC Week 20
Woof, 40 books in already. And yet somehow my "to-read" pile isn't shrinking at all. Hmm.
#39: THE MERMAID, THE WITCH, & THE SEA by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
I ping-ponged around with this book a lot, and even now, a couple days after finishing it, I'm still not quite sure where I land with it.
On one hand, yay, f/f (f/non-binary?) romance and pirates and magic! On the other hand...eeh?
This book starts out a bit wildly, with a (presumed) cis woman protagonist killing a man to prove herself to pirates in the midst of them taking a bunch of people as slaves. This was not an especially great first impression, and I'm not sure that I ever overcame that.
There's an obvious issue of gender that is probably best tackled by trans reviewers, but I know the "cis woman dresses as man for Safety" trope has quite a few problems. There's some references to her perhaps embracing a genderfluid identity towards the end, which I'll be honest, I kind of missed; I'm not sure if that's because it wasn't all that explicit or because I was bored and not paying as much attention as I should've been. Also, Flora (who is part of a crew of slavers!) is Black, and I'll stay in my lane about that as well.
Ultimately I found I just didn't care that much about the main characters or the romance, which was at the heart of the story. The ending had some strong moments for them, but the rest of the story just kind of plodded along. Also, ye gods, the pacing, I swear the entire book grinds to a halt during Part 2. It feels both too big and too small. Like, the titular Witch and Mermaid almost feel tacked on for the sake of it? But also a lot of text is devoted to them?
The characters I was most invested in were side characters: Rake, and Flora's brother Alfie, who is (imo) massively mistreated by the narrative. He exists solely to be a victim and the book punching bag, apparently. Towards the end there seemed to be more compassion for him, but by that point I was already frustrated with Flora and the narrative itself. Admittedly, I did start to skim about halfway through.
I did like the concept of the Sea as explored in this story, though, as a living being with agency and plans of its own, that the characters can appeal to and can take vengeance upon people who are bad to it.
(Also I did not intentionally read two mermaid books during MerMay, this is just how the stars aligned.)
#40: EMPRESS OF FOREVER by Max Gladstone
This seems like the kind of book that I'm going to come back to in like a year or two and really enjoy.
At the moment, however, I have some reservations.
It's not a huge secret, I think, that I love fantasy more than sci-fi, and this book unfortunately had a lot of the hallmarks of sci-fi that I find challenging, i.e., a lot of concepts and new ideas being thrown around so quickly that I felt like I never had a good grasp on what was happening. Even when I started to think "no, okay, I got this", something would happen and my understanding would be shattered.
This is especially odd to me because the story itself is fairly simple (though I found the pacing to be a bit wild, but that's a separate point. How did this book feel endless but also the ending feel horribly rushed?). It was more the details of how things worked (which, unfortunately, much of the plot resolution ended up hinging on) that I found myself missing.
I don't know if this would be aided by a better transition from "our world" to the "harder" science fiction that happens about 50 pages in, because that I feel is where I had the biggest struggle. And maybe I just wasn't reading closely enough, but I found that transition to be deeply jarring (even though I knew I was in for space sci fi!). It's entirely possibly I just wasn't paying enough attention.
I really wanted to like the found family aspects of this book, and sometimes I did. I actually like a bunch of the characters and their interactions, especially the bond that forms between Viv and Zanj. I'm not sure I ever bought into the romance, but that might just be a me problem.
I've really liked everything else I've read of Max Gladstone's (which is most of his published books), and so I was disappointed that reading this often felt like a chore. However, like I said at the top, it seems like if I come back to it in a bit, now that I have a basic understanding of the story and the world, it might make a lot more sense and be a more engaging story.
NEXT WEEK'S AGENDA:
#41: A Study in Brimstone by G.S. Denning
#42: Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan