I was going through a period of existential crisis so I spent the week:
1) Throwing myself into Hades (I have beaten him! Once! And I do not want to fight him again)
2) Continuing books I started months ago because I'm tired of starting new books and not finishing them.

Trying to use eglantiere's book review formatting magic—this took way too long, I had to go through my old DW comments to find her instructions, but I'm determined to have cover art on my entries. XD

So: books!

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The Black Tides of Heaven by J.Y. Yang

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I didn't read the summary for this novella so I felt cheated when we started with Sonami, who I was really invested in in the first chapter, then switched to the twins (this is definitely reader error, though). XD Overall I think this should have been a full novel because the PoV character was driven by complex emotions but the plot zoomed by so fast it felt like they were just going through the motions of their narrative arc. The characters didn't feel like people, and the scenes felt almost mechanically written, pieces of an outline that didn't connect. The political motivations were very confusing to me too, so if I was going to recommend this book it would definitely be not for the politics/rebellion storyline.

There was also was a thread of intense internalized misogyny that makes sense for such a flawed and confused character but is otherwise unaddressed so it ends up feeling strange and out of place.

My primary problem really is just that I wanted anyone but the PoV character we ended up having to be the main PoV character. There were interesting bits of worldbuilding, and thoughts about prophecy. I really loved the complexities of choosing one's gender—you can commit a pronoun but still not go through the entire gender confirmation process. Or you can commit to a body and gender that feels right for you but not particularly identify with it. It's just that Akeha is not the best lens with which to witness plot... I imagine we'll see more of Sonami in the next books, she seems to have her own machinations behind the scenes, but for now there is too much twins lol.

IN THIS BOOK: East Asia-inspired fantasy, non-binary characters, complex personal relationships with gender, gay (m/m and f/f) and non-binary relationships, in-character (but unaddressed) internalized misogyny, magical twins

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Twisted Travels: Rambles in Central Europe by Jessica Zafra

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book was a birthday gift from my friend Reese in 2019. The note said: Here's something you either might enjoy, or completely hate. Otherwise, I'll take my chances.

I haven't read Jessica Zafra (a known columnist and blogger; she's very sharp and funny) since high school. Just this year I sold all volumes of Twisted, collections of essays by her that I inherited from a teacher in high school who knew I liked reading Zafra. (She was Konmari-ing her possessions because she was going abroad so I was an opportunity to foist off her books lol.)

Traveling is intense—you are entirely alone, among strangers, who speak a language you don't understand, in a terrain alien to you. You find that the regular life you declare to be boring is actually comfortable and that you, in fact, love it. The purpose of travel is to remind you of that.

This has been an honest and very informative travelogue written from the POV of someone who's not afraid to figure out how to get to places herself, who's knowledgeable and genuinely interested in the history, literature, and people of the places that she visits, and most of all is Filipino. Her passing interjections about Manila's transportation and the Philippines' history are off-the-cuff and cutting. When she takes the train to Vienna, she notes:

Jarring to be in a place where you have time, where you don't have to leave an extra hour before an appointment because you know you'll be stuck in traffic, where you don't rush around in a state of traffic-induced anxiety,

and I felt the echoes of missing time vibrate through my Manila-raised body.

There's a tone shift from the early portions of the book, which are much snarkier and more blog-like, to the later portions. I don't know if it's because her writing has changed through the years and become mellower (and to me, more balanced), or if it's because of the frame of her mind as she tours places with such brutal histories (Poland: Warsaw, Krakow), but the first sections are definitely not representative of the tone of the rest of the book.

I really enjoyed her mapping out the inconveniences throughout her travels and longing for her cats, her passion for books and bookstores, and the way you can see her interests and mindset in the routes that she takes and the conversations that she has. The stories of her mishaps are sometimes anxiety-inducing, sometimes funny, but she's very generally consistent about travel being all about the stories.

A part of me wishes that this were a larger book with colored photos for reference (especially the graphic design; I must Google), but I like that it's tiny enough to fit in your handbag and serve as a travel guide—you can plan your itinerary to this.

Other notes: hmm, a lot of typos and formatting issues (ie. unindented lines + one section where the justified alignment wrapped around a photo and some of the letterspacing/wordspacing looked glaringly uneven)


CONTENT WARNINGS: detailed descriptions of the experiences of Holocaust victims

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(Having finally powered through 2 books in English, I have discovered... that I have lost the ability to read in Chinese hahahaha (am keeping up with a cnovel readalong; thankfully it's very light). Brains!)

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TV

I have put it on hold for brain reasons, but You Are My Glory is out! It's based on a novel by Gu Man that I genuinely liked, because I enjoy a het romance where the FL is mature and successful and has her shit together while the ML full-on supports her AND doesn't feel emasculated when she flexes her power to save him from bad social situations. It's a very shiny and pretty drama, and I quite like the casting: Dilireba as the cute and naive FL who as a superstar adult knows how to utilize these qualities; Yang Yang as the once-shining ML who as a disillusioned adult is struggling with his career; Gina Jin as the successful but world-weary ex-girlfriend who's enjoying the financial power but still pays for it by grinding up corporatejobs. It’s very much a canon about measures of success + the duality of teenage potential vs adult realities, and I'm enjoying the tone of the drama adaptation: glamorous but quiet and mature and occasionally devastating. Characters are 30 and act like it, and Yu Tu's (Yang Yang) storyline hits particularly hard because he's at the point where after the PhD and the years of working in his dream job, he has to shift to a different path and start from the bottom. But, as he puts it, life doesn't end at 30 which I think is a very important message.