Sam Krupnik > Recent Status Updates

I want to read more classics this year, but most of my local library's books are contemporary. Saw this one on the shelf, was intrigued, checked it out. It's good so far.

OKAY, Ms. Parker-Chan. We get it. Girls aren't valued in this world. You've made your point with all the subtlety and nuance of a protestor screaming at the sky. I'm giving you a bit of a pass because imperial China had some horrifically dehumanizing views toward women, so much of this seems historically accurate, but if every man in this story is a shithead, I'm moving on to something else.

Is the whole book just going to be Addie shoplifting her way through New York, being sad that she can't form lasting relationships, and marveling at how 1714 Paris was populated exclusively by dickheads? Because if so, 450 pages of that seems excessive.

2020 was only 5 years ago, but Addie's reason for getting into this mess hasn't aged well. C'mon, Addie, was getting cursed to be forgotten and never form lasting relationships REALLY preferable to getting married? The book is good enough to distract me from the protagonist's historically inaccurate idiocy, but I still wish VE had gone with a more compelling reason for Addie to make that bargain.

The Faustian bargain scene was insanely well-written, I like Addie as a character, and I'm definitely hooked by now. But I still think the "girl who doesn't want to marry" plot was done better in Spinning Silver, where Wanda had some pretty severe trauma regarding marriage and childbirth that made her want to avoid that fate. Here, Addie comes across as a 21st century woman in 16th century France.

"A second life, at the expense of Addie's one and only."

Or, y'know, he wants to make sure his kids have a mother because you live in a pre-industrial society where work is constant and split along gender roles out of necessity. Yeah, it's shitty that no one considered your wishes, but you're coming across as pretty selfish here.

This book isn't so much a story as a dialogue between three different humans and benevolent otherworldly teachers, meant to impart lesson to the audience through the characters' burgeoning understanding. That's not a bad thing. Reminds me a bit of the Socratic Dialogues, except it takes place in modern Japan and Socrates is a talking cat.

I don't feel super connected to the protagonist and there's not much conflict, but I'm still enjoying this? Don't ask me why.

Also, why does every mixed-race couple have kids who are either black or white? It happens, but it's FAR more common to have all the kids be a mix of their parents' complexions. Is this set in some Giver-esque alternate reality where married couples don't have sex and children are randomly assigned? Again, fun plot, but the author's failure to grasp basic genetics is REALLY distracting.

The premise is fun enough to keep me reading, but I hate how Millie is being treated like the wet blanket who needs to learn a lesson about meddling in other people's lives when she's the only one in her family with common sense. PSA to parents: Your sense of personal fulfillment is not more important than keeping your families financially afloat.

"Half those dots were for insects that haven't even been discovered yet!"

THEN WHY TF WERE THEY ON YOUR MAP YA PEA-BRAIN

Felix:
-jumped into the argument between Nell and her dad
-defended Nell of his own volition
-got fired because Dr. Young had the emotional maturity of a 4-year-old
…and he blames Nell for this? To the point where he dumped her that same day?? Nell. Honey. Felix is a dick. You deserve so much better.

Really liking the book, but I hope the other interpersonal conflict doesn't feel this forced.

….I was not expecting to get an answer to the question "how are maw-mouths created," nor was I expecting the answer to be so fucked up. Well done, Novik.

El flirting: Oh my god, I hate you. I hate you more than anyone I've ever met. Meet me in the library and bring your sexy abs.
Liesel flirting: Come to dinner. Look at my bed. You will be more successful in life if you stop being an idiot.

They're perfect for each other.

The Dragon is a grouch, no doubt about it. But if I'd spent the last 100 years mastering magic and my apprentice healed a fatal wound by packing it with poultry seasonings and singing "Lorem Ipsum, Lorem Ipsum" to the tune of "Happy Birthday," I'd be mad too.

I'm still enjoying this one, but I think naming antagonists after public figures you personally dislike is childish. It doesn't help that the name Magnus Tebow is niggling at my willing suspension of disbelief (Tebow isn't that common a name, is he Tim Tebow's nephew? a distant relation? how did one family branch become mundanes and one become wizards while both kept the name? is that even possible?).

I was immediately skeptical when the book jacket called El "sharply realized and richly nuanced…will live in hearts and minds for decades to come." But so far, El's characterization is bearing that out.

Being trapped in a high school for four years, with no teachers and no outside help, where the cliques you join determine the course of the rest of your life? Even without the monsters, this is my worst nightmare.

Also, if this is anything like Spinning Silver, El and Orion will absolutely be married by the end of this.

To recap: Gwendoline has openly tried to bribe and threaten the judge, told a fellow contestant to let her win in the judge's hearing, and now she's blatantly trying to sabotage another contestant under a very thinly veiled guise of "making her sister do her part." Holy shit, is this village so hard-up for professional female cooks that they can't afford to disqualify the one who's obviously cheating?

Peleus: …and they were roommates.
Odysseus: OH MY GOD, THEY WERE R O O M M A T E S

"What has Hector ever done to me?"

Nothing, Achilles. Absolutely nothing.

Yet.

Whelp. I already know this book is going to make me cry.

Page 4: Allie gets dumped.
Page 40: Allie gets abandoned in Nowheresville, KY and all the townsfolk do what Kentucky folk do when they meet an outsider.
Page 51: The town librarian is the victim of an attempted assassination.

Lynn Austin isn't cooking with gas so much as dumping an entire bottle of lighter fluid on a campfire.

DNFing this one. It kills me to put down a mythology book that's this compulsively readable, but it's too disrespectful to the myths I know and love.

I'm really enjoying these retellings, but Johnston's hate boner for Zeus has already become tiresome. Making every single sexual encounter of his nonconsensual was a deliberate choice on her part, and probably not one the original audience for these myths would have agreed with.

Okay, this is the first retelling that I think she flubbed. The fact Pandora was told, in the original myth, not to open the jar and opened it anyway exposed a deep truth about human curiosity. Making her completely unaware of the jar's existence and having her open it out of ignorance makes her a victim of the gods' cunning, but it also destroys the core message of the story.

Johnston's writing is extremely engaging. She's doing an excellent job of bringing out the humanity in these stories, and in the gods themselves. It's not easy to tell a good story while simultaneously explaining cultural context that might be unfamiliar to readers, but she's balancing the two quite well.

I bought this book without hesitation because I loved [i]Restless Dead[/i] so much, and I wanted to see her bring her scholarly knowledge to these familiar (and some unfamiliar) myths. Let's see how it goes.