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Devouring books whilst looking fabulous.

The Psychology of Time Travel (Review) by Kate Mascarenhas

| kate macarenhas, Reviews, sci-fi

The Psychology of Time Travel was the only unplanned book I bought on my recently birthdaythe psychology of time travel book cover kate mascarenhas book shopping spree. I just saw it in the ‘new hardbacks’ section of Waterstones and knew it had to be mine. I love books about time travel, and if it’s time travel run by an overarching corporation, woven into every day life, so much the better. See The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. for the best example I have ever read. But we’re here to talk about The Psychology of Time Travel, not D.O.D.O. (unfortunately – I love that book so hard), so here we go.

Plot summary: 1967: Four female scientists invent a time-travel machine. They are on the cusp of fame: the pioneers who opened the world to new possibilities. But then one of them suffers a breakdown and puts the whole project in peril.

2017: Ruby knows her beloved Granny Bee was a pioneer, but they never talk about the past. Though time travel is now big business, Bee has never been part of it. Then they receive a message from the future–a newspaper clipping reporting the mysterious death of an elderly lady.

2018: When Odette discovered the body, she went into shock. Blood everywhere, bullet wounds, flesh. But when the inquest fails to answer any of her questions, Odette is frustrated. Who is this dead woman that haunts her dreams? And why is everyone determined to cover up her murder?

Star Rating for The Psychology of Time Travel: * * 1/2

Plot

I’d interpreted the blurb as a sort of sci-fi version of Hidden Figures. Four women invent time travel but are subsequently shoved to the back pages of history as white, male scientists rush forward and take all the credit for decades.

Yeeeeeeeah, it’s not that. I don’t know why I thought it was. Luckily, it’s better. I loved the plot of The Psychology of Time Travel, but then I was always going to. There is a huge, all-seeing organisation that controls time travel, but three of the women still run it and work there. Time travel is used for everything – criminal investigations, preserving extinct plants and… uh, other stuff that isn’t exactly clear.

The story follows an awful lot of characters, who I’ll discuss below, but the main point is that an unknown woman is found dead in a locked basement, with the remnants of time travelling bacteria on her body. The point of the book is, who is she and who killed her?

There’s a recurring theme of mental health within time travel, hence the title. Whether those with mental health difficulties should be barred from the work, and whether ongoing time travel can cause negative psychological effects. It’s quite subtle and forms only a few sub-plots. That’s not a criticism, as I think more would have been slightly too sledge-hammery. It provided a nice angle on the whole time travel shtick.

It jumps around between multiple people in multiple periods, which obviously results in a fairly complex plot. Time travel novels must be hellishly difficult to write. That said, as far as I can tell, it all makes perfect sense once you get your string, markers and drawing pins out.

Writing and Characters

Unfortunately it’s very difficult to follow.  There are a lot of characters in this book and I frequently forgot who was related to who, and who could time travel and who couldn’t. The story is told from multiple POVs – everybody gets a look in. It follows far too many people, which makes it very difficult to keep everybody separate. This isn’t helped by the fact that every single person as the same ‘voice.’ They’re identical, and all flat.

Surprisingly for the subject matter, which deals frequently with death and bereavement, it’s very unemotional. I never really connected with the characters as they never really seemed to feel anything themselves.

The writing is just… not great. I mean, it flows easily enough and the dialogue is unstilted, for the most part. On a basic, ease of ‘moving your eyes along the page’ level, it’s fine.

But when you look closer, it’s just not. I’ve said that the characters have no personality, but they also have no reasoning behind what they do. Some characters help others when it would make zero sense for them to do so, and Odette (case in point – I originally typed Ruby because I CANNOT KEEP THEM STRAIGHT) wanting to pursue an investigation at all confuses me. The romances are very strange, and it’s not even acknowledged within the story that such a coupling would be unusual.

Conclusion

I loved the plot, or the idea of the plot, with The Psychology of Time Travel, and I can appreciate the complexity in putting something like this together.

I enjoyed reading the descriptiong of time travel, and the policies and issues involved. I’ve always found the subject fascinating. But there’s no getting around the fact that I didn’t really enjoy the story itself.

The characters are flat and far too numerous, which makes the plot confusing. There’s no emotion and the writing feels somewhat lazy. If the same effort had been put into the prose as with the plot, The Psychology of Time Travel could have been amazing. Unfortunately it’s just not at all memorable.

Read my review of The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (much recommended) or visit Kate Macarenhas’ website here.

N.E.W.T.s Progress Report

| Uncategorized

This year I signed up to do my N.E.W.T. qualifications in August, as part of a read-a-thon run by Book Roast.

It actually worked out quite well as we’re in the middle of rewatching all the Harry Potter films at home, and I’ve also reread two of the books as well as replaying LEGO Harry Potter on the XBox. In short, it’s a very Pottery month!

My TBR is here, although I don’t think I’ve read any of those books for the required categories. Not that I really expected to, I suppose. It also didn’t take into account the fact that I was going to wander off and buy a ton of books on my birthday, which I was obviously going to read immediately.

Here’s how I’m doing:

Arithmancy

A: At Least 300 Pages
Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews

E: Ends on an Even # Page
Neverworld Wake

Charms

A: Has Magic In It
The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

E: A Cover That Charmed You
The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas

History of Magic

A: Would Fit In At Hogwarts’ Library
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Muggle Studies

A: Book From a Favourite Author
The Beautifull Cassandra by Jane Austen

Potions

A: Name of Colour in Title
All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Transfiguration

A: Grey Cover
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

So, so far, I’m on track for a bucket load of bottom-level classes. What I had planned to do is concentrate on the classes I’d actually want to study – Charms, History of Magic, etc. What I actually did, and what I always do for these things, is read whatever the hell I wanted, blindly hoping they’d fit in. And they have, to some extent. All the books I’ve read in August have met a prompt.

The only problem is that I’m going to end up with low levels in every subject, as opposed to doing really well in my chosen topics.

I might be taking this a bit too seriously.

The Poppy War (Review) by R.F. Kuang

| fantasy, historical fiction, Reviews

The Poppy War was one of the books that I knew I definitely needed to buy on my birthday book blow-out. Unfortunately,the poppy war book cover r.f. kuang Waterstones had sold out and I had to order it on the train on the way home instead. No harm done as it meant that I got to read The City of Brass instead, with which I fell completely in love. The Poppy War rolled up a day or two later… and here we are.

Plot summary: When Rin aced the Kejuthe Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies it was a shock to everyone. That she got into Sinegard, the most elite military school in Nikan, was even more surprising. But surprises aren’t always good.

Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much aliveand that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.

For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .

Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.

The Poppy War Star Rating: * * * *

R.F. Kuang has an MA in International History, in which her research focused on Chinese military strategy, collective trauma, and war memorials. This background knowledge lends The Poppy War an air of authority and I loved that. I loved the lessons from Sunsi (Sun Tzu, essentially) about the art of warfare, and the lessons the students attended about strategy and linguistics. Of course, that results in a novel about war, and about tactics, based on a period of history that most of us are unfamiliar with, so you can’t really read this while you’re half asleep. Still, that was my favourite part about The Poppy War – the history and the strategy.

The Poppy War is split into three parts, separating Rin’s time at the Academy, with the military and then her time pursuing her own quest. I have to say that my enjoyment of the three sections was very different.

I loved the first part. Rin gets into Sinegard and her time is spent developing new skills with her classmates, spending time with her eccentric Master and learning the military history of Nikan. Essentially, it’s mostly wider world-building at a prestigious school, complete with student enmities and Rin’s worries about her position. It’s fantastic and I love it. The detail is just wonderful. It’s so well-thought out and I just wanted to be in that world. Four and a half stars.

In the second part, Rin has moved on into the military. This isn’t a spoiler – it says so in the blurb. I still liked this, although I struggled with the fact that the previous setting and all the previous characters (but Rin) had vanished. Although it possessed the same detail and the same air of authenticity that the first section had, I struggled to really link it to the first section, which I’d loved. Four stars.

The last section is very abstract. Rin sets out to complete her own quest, again abandoning the previous setting and most of the characters, bar herself and one other. It’s partly my own failing that I tend to not appreciate abstract novels – I struggled with the final book in the Mistborn series for the same reason. It just felt bizarre that such a clinical, military history novel would descend into the realms of abstract divinity. And Rin’s decision making and the subsequent ending is… well. Two stars.

I’m not sure how I’m meant to feel about that ending. Rin makes a huge decision with far-reaching consequences and it’s unclear what the author’s intention is. I mean, am I meant to support it or feel conflicted or what? I hated the choice that was made by the characters, and if I’m meant to, as a reader, then fine. I can actually get on board with that. But the book doesn’t really make that clear – whether we’re meant to look down the characters, or whether it was a total misfire by the author.

The thing that gets me, though, is that I thought this was a standalone. All the way through I was thinking ‘this should really have been a series,‘ which is the opposite of what I usually think. Usually I wish series had been condensed! The passage of time isn’t great – we’ll spend hundreds of pages through Rin’s first year at the Academy, and then suddenly ‘a year passed by…’ etc. I was thinking ‘Alright, it’s a standalone so it had to zip along. No time for explanations!‘ But then I finished it and IT IS A SERIES, so the passage of time could have been better.

It’s not as brutal as people say, not really. There is one scene that refers to atrocities committed by an invading party, but it’s related second hand by a witness. You don’t ‘see’ it. Yes, it’s pretty bad but it doesn’t last long and I would argue that it is integral to the plot. The rest is fine. There is no first-hand rape, the violence isn’t bad and the self-harm that is constantly referenced, isn’t really self-harm. I mean, it’s not YA, but as far as adult books go, it’s fine.

Oh oh, and there’s no romance! I love that!

I had intended to give this 3.5 stars, but I walked away from this review for a week and now I think it does deserve the full 4. I enjoyed the first two parts immensley, despite some issues with pacing and abandoning old characters. The last part just wasn’t to my taste. That’s probably the fairest way to say it. I would still recommend The Poppy War to lovers of fantasy, just be warned that the ending does descend into chaos somewhat.

Visit R.F. Kuang’s website here, or find her on Twitter.

The sequel to The Poppy War is called The Dragon Republic and has a release date on 2 May 2019.

 

The Full Monte Read-a-Long: Chapters 101 to FINISHED!

| Uncategorized

Can you believe it!? We’ve finally finished all 1,400 pages of The Count of Monte Cristo!

applause gid di caprio

I did enjoy it. It was a lot more accessible and interesting than I expected. That said… I’m still glad it’s over. I didn’t struggle to get through it as I’d generally finished the reading by Wednesday of each week, but now I can read things without feeling guilty that I’m not reading a dense French classic.

Whilst obviously I liked that all the necessary people got their comeuppance, but pretty much everybody offended me towards the end.

Mercedes is all ‘I would lie to you and say that I’d get a job, but we both know I won’t. *shrug*’ She gave up her husband’s wealth with absolutely zero consideration as to how she was going to live, assuming that SOMEONE would sort her out. Honestly, as time went on, I was beginning to think Dantes was better off without her anyway.

poor gif kristen wiig bridesmaids

Villefort rightly condemns his wife for murdering his father’s servant, his parents-in-law and HIS DAUGHTER, but then decides she’s not so bad after all and wants to run away with her after his illicit child is discovered. Alright, you fucked up too, but what you did isn’t four counts of murder!!! You can’t just decide she’s not so bad after all, just because your reputation is also in tatters.

Maximilien – yes, alright, his life sucks. But shut up, shut up, shut up. When he’s trudging after the Count being all whiny:

C: There was a man in prison once.
M: Prison isn’t so bad.
C: For fourteen years.
M: Eh.
C: His father died.
M: Mine died too.
C: Yours died happy.
M: He’s still got his woman. I don’t.
C: She married someone else.
M: Eh, my life sucks more.

SHUT UP, SHUT UP.

Ohhhh, but Madame Villefort. I hate hate hate her. TO THINK that commiting suicide and TAKING YOUR SON WITH YOU is what ‘a good mother’ would do. I got so, so angry. Incandescently so. I can’t explain explain how much this offended me. My partner walked in as I was reading this part and I have been told that I literally snarled at him.

angry gif alison brie annie community

At least the Count grieved over the unexpected consequences of his plot – Edward’s death, who was a little brat, but an innocent one.

I’d have liked more explanation to the victims, as to why they’d been targeted. I know there was a little to Villefort, but a bit more about the agonies he suffered, about being forgotten, etc.

After all that, he’s going off with Haydee! What the fuck point was the fucking point then!? I thought he’d at least end up with Mercedes, even if they were living under assumed names or something. He’s essentially punished her when it’s not really her fault she didn’t wait around for decades for the bloke she thought was dead.

He let Danglars GO!? But why!? He was the worst one! The others have dead family members, are dead, or have gone mad… and Danglars gets everyone alive and well, if slightly poorer, when the whole thing was HIS idea!?

Oh, and I liked that he’d arranged for Noirtier to meet them before they got married. That was nice.

So, in short, I enjoyed reading The Count of Monte Cristo and huge thanks go to Reading in Bed for arranging it. I’d never have read this otherwise, not in a million years. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to read something that isn’t dense French literature!

Neverworld Wake (Review) by Marisha Pessl

| mind-fuck, Quotes, Reviews, Young Adult

I was actually planning on getting Neverworld Wake from the library, but every time I lookedneverworld wake book cover marisha pessl for it (after checking the online catalogue) it wasn’t there. I’d pushed it onto the TBR backburner when Charlotte sent me a copy for my birthday and I was suddenly grateful the library hadn’t had a copy after all – I’d only have had to buy a copy anyway. It’s that sort of book; a book you need to own.

Plot summary: Five friends – the beautiful elite at their exclusive prep school – reunite a year after graduation. After a night out, they narrowly avoid a collision with a car on a deserted road. Back at the mansion belonging to one of the girls, a storm rages and a mysterious man knocks on the door, announcing something world-shattering. The friends must make a choice: one of them will live, and the rest will die. And the decision must be unanimous.

So begins the Neverworld Wake. The nightmare. The nothingness. Time backbends and they are fated to repeat that day, but fears are now physical and memories come alive in horrifying ways. How will they vote? And will they be able to escape the Neverworld?

Rating for Neverworld Wake: * * * * *

I knew that I was going to love this book by the time we were about three chapters in. It’s a complete morbid mind-fuck with creepy strangers and shifting time loops. Nothing says, ‘this book is made for Hanna’ quite like that winning combination.I can pinpoint the very quote that made me realise I was going to love this book and it was this one:

“Each of you is, at present, lying kinda sorta dead on the side of a coastal road. This is due to a recent head-on collision with one Mr Howard Heyward, age fifty-eight, of two hundred eighty-one Admiral Road, South Kingstown, who was driving a Chevrolet Kodiak tow truck. Time is standing still. It has become trapped inside an eighth of a second like a luna moth inside a mason jar. There is a way out, of course. There is one means by which the moth can escape and time can fly irrevocably free. Each of you must vote during the last three minutes of every wake. You must choose the single person among you who will survive.”

It’s sort of like The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, but for teenagers.

This isn’t some kitchy, cute Groundhog Day type thing.

But it’s not too teenager-ified. That was my fear; that Neverworld Wake would degrade into five teenagers bickering about who should survive for 350 pages. It’s not like that at all. Instead, they each have their need to be chosen at the back of their minds constantly and everything they do is a way to manipulate each other. It’s sneaky and clever and dark.

These five teenagers are trapped for a long time; the narrator doesn’t know how long, but it’s implied that it’s centuries. The time changes them as people – they learn new skills but also start to slowly descend into madness.

The ongoing experience of Recurring goes against the very heart of being human, and it is – I will tell you this without flinching – unbearable. The mind rages trying to disprove it. When it can’t, the brain breaks down with shocking ease. The psyche is fragile. It is a child’s sand castle in an incoming tide.

It’s written well. And I don’t just mean ‘…for YA.’ It’s written well, and at times it’s very poetic.

The slight negative, and why I’m willing to overlook it.

My only complaint would be that there are a few overlooked mistakes. They’re not huge and they’re not central to the plot, but if I can spot them during a first read-through, then surely an editor could have as well. It’s little things, like when all the characters state that they’ve never tried to commit suicide, but it told us several chapters back that one of them had. I actually thought at the time that it was an intentional plot point, that he was lying, but no – just a mistake. It happens a few times.

I also don’t really understand how or why it’s decided that investigating their friend’s death the previous year would help them with the vote. It’s fine, it was easy to get on board with it, but I didn’t see the thought process.

We are all anthologies. We are each thousands of pages long, filled with fairy tales and poetry, mysteries and tragedy, forgotten stories in the back no one will ever read.

However. Whilst this would normally result in losing a good star or two from a rating, I just couldn’t do that with Neverworld Wake. This book kept me awake at night. Partly because I kept imagining The Keeper (played by Cristoph Waltz) stood in the corner watching me, but mainly because I could not get it out of my head. I was lying there, tossing and turning, unable to stop trying to unravel it in my head and figure out where it was going to go. Any book that can do that to me doesn’t deserve less than 5 stars.

So, no, it’s not perfect. But surely the way a book makes you feel is more important than a few irrelevant plot holes? Admittedly, this is not my usual shtick and normally I’d be jumping up and down with rage and a red felt tip. But I kept having to put the book down to stare blankly into space, just to process, before I could pick it up again.

It’s just that sort of book.

Read my review of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which is sort of the adult version of Neverworld Wake.

The City of Brass (Review) by S.A. Chakraborty

| fantasy, Reviews

So I turned 29 and subsequently spent £90 on books. In one fell swoop. Well, two fell the city of brass book cover s.a. chakrabortyswoops, if you count buying six in the shop and then ordering a further seven on the train on the way home. Anyway, The City of Brass was one of them and it was the first one I picked up when I settled down to read my haul. Unfortunately, I’ve probably set myself up for failure because there’s no way the rest of them can be anywhere near as good as this.

Plot summary: Among the bustling markets of eighteenth century Cairo, the city’s outcasts eke out a living swindling rich Ottoman nobles and foreign invaders alike.

But alongside this new world the old stories linger. Tales of djinn and spirits. Of cities hidden among the swirling sands of the desert, full of enchantment, desire and riches. Where magic pours down every street, hanging in the air like dust.

Many wish their lives could be filled with such wonder, but not Nahri. She knows the trades she uses to get by are just tricks and sleights of hand: there’s nothing magical about them. She only wishes to one day leave Cairo, but as the saying goes…

Be careful what you wish for.

Rating: * * * * *

The story starts in very late 18th Century Egypt, right after the invasion of Napoleon. Fortunately, you need absolutely zero historical knowledge as the magical hijinks kick in before too long, and we’re whisked off on a wonderful journey that never mentions Napoleon again.

I keep typing and deleting, and typing and deleting, as I try to work out which aspect of this story to rave about first. Let’s start with the plot then, as I’ve touched on it already. It’s pretty amazing, to be honest. I wouldn’t say it’s 100% unique, as djinn, ifrit, Solomon, etc, are all part of Middle Eastern mythology and have therefore been used in countless other works of fiction before this one. That said, I’ve never seen so much effort put into a story before. There’s a lot going on here.

The narratives alternate (more or less) between Nahri, an Egyptian orphan of unknown heritage, whisked away by a djinn she accidentally summons, and Prince Ali (…of Akhbar!? I’ve been singing that song for days now), the devoutly religious second son of the monarch of Daevabad. Their ‘voices’ are sufficiently different to keep the reader occupied, and whilst I’d say that I preferred Nahri’s chapters, there wasn’t really much in it.

There are multiple different plotlines – Nahri’s heritage, a looming rebellion, Dava’s past and his true loyalties, and Ali’s disillusion with the power of the ruling elite. Unusually, I was equally interested in all of it, and that’s down to the skill with which each strand is woven. I’ve read reviews that say The City of Brass is slow to start, and I can understand that. It is, sort of. But I didn’t really notice until this was pointed out to me, as I was so wrapped up in the lore and the world-building.

Ah yes, the world-building. Maybe I should have started with that. It’s incredible. On her website, S.A. Chakraborty mentions that she’s ‘a white convert’ to Islam and in a recent interview she states:

In Islam, we believe you have humans, angels, and all these other creatures, including the djinn, who are created from smoke or fire. They live alongside us, but you can’t see them, and they live for hundreds and thousands of years. As a history lover, I thought that was just great.

So the fundamental concept is based on Islamic lore, but that feels almost dismissive of the work that Chakraborty has put into The City of Brass. Not only does Daevabad feel real, I’m pretty sure at times I could almost see and hear it. There’s a whole world here, with different tribes, races, factions… I would honestly read any book set in or around Daevabad. The magic system is very in-depth and I absolutely adore it, on the face of it.

But that does lead me to my only criticism of The City of Brass. Even now I couldn’t confidently tell you which races are djinn, or the differences between the tribes, or who can become a slave and who can’t, etc. There’s a lot to take in, and I frequently had to read a page a couple of times before I could get it straight in my head. There is a glossary at the back, but it doesn’t really help that much. As an example, a ‘relic’ is discussed fairly early on (as an actual plot point, not an irrelevant aside) but it’s not explained until half the book later what a relic actually is. It didn’t spoil my enjoyment, but a little more explanation would have been very helpful; either that or a more comprehensive glossary.

The characters are impressively nuanced, for the most part. Ali, in particular, struggles with balancing his faith against his family, and his morals against his politics. It was occasionally a bit heavy-handed when he refers to ‘the right religion’ etc, but it was infrequent enough for me to overlook it. The real star of The City of Brass is Dava, however, the djinn who Nahri accidentally summons in the streets of Cairo. I love him. His personality is so complex that you’re never quite sure what’s going on; you don’t know what his motives are, how much of his power he’s hiding, why he’s so feared… He’s just sort of perfect, actually.

The ending is intense. It’s revealing and brutal and intense. It doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, not really, it’s not that cheap of a novel. However, it does raise questions that I want answered now. I checked when the next book is out and was disappointed to learn it’s not until January 2019. Then I checked again just in case I was wrong and it was actually earlier (I wasn’t and it’s not).

The City of Brass is honestly incredible. I’d be very, very surprised if it doesn’t make it onto my eventual Top Ten list at the end of the year. The world, the story, the characters are all masterfully crafted and I’ll be devouring anything that S.A. Chakraborty writes. If she wrote a cereal packet blurb, I’d read it.


…featured on:

This is what £120 worth of books looks like…

Visit S.A. Chakraborty’s website here or read Ellie’s review of The City of Brass at Curiosity Killed the Bookworm.