Asha > Recent Status Updates

Ooooh the plotting starting to come out! The book is a lot of tedium of the church and procedures but there’s this air of tension and this just sort of pulls it another step up. I also continue to like that the cardinals all suck. They bust out unexpected racism or homophobia and are like “remember we’re some of the most powerful old men out there and we’re Like This!” And the author gives it space.

The author also does a really good job of using single words to paint a picture. “The neon strip above the mirror” like the bathroom lights aren’t neon but that single choice of words drives home the garish brightness and his irritability and just works. Earlier in the same section he describes the room as a cell to similar effect.

I am enjoying this choice of main character. “Very well. Manage.” He’s fussy and particular and not exactly likable.

Kind of fascinated by the way this is written like a thriller aimed at people like my dad but it’s about old priests. Like the actual opening scene was some old dude complaining about his job and his knees and saying a prayer for his dead boss but the way it is written, it has this spy thriller tension.

I started this on audio and found the narrator extremely hard to follow and it's got a very dense descriptive style of prose and between that and the narrators.. emphatic.. pauses.... I was just endlessly lost. I have shitty audioprocessing on a good day and usually audiobooks are ok but something about the narrator's style was just incomprehensible to me. I am finding it a much easier with the text in front of me.

I complained about the last book I was reading being too direct and not painting a picture. This is a nonfiction book written by an academic but it does such a good job of hitting emotions and painting pictures. I do think I need to make an effort to read more non-fic that makes me look my own ignorances in the face. "Sure I know a bit about South America and the US border stuff" no. No. Nope. I knew nothing.

Ok I was wrong. Now I’m even less sure what the plot is supposed to be.

I'm warming up now that the the plot is rolling faster. The extremely flat direct present tense style still feels way too detached and clinical. And now we shall examine the death of his mother. She made him mackerel for his lunch the day she died. Now we shall examine her rocky relationship with her parents. Aha look. There is a conflict. .... I am leaning in on the plot though. I am invested in figuring out Jihoon.

Ok I think I have the Jihoon twist figured out. Let's find out if I've got it.

How is the shoot out boring? I'm not particularly interested in any of the characters, I don't know where the plot is going. Obviously there is a conflict with the collapsing spy ring but like k... I guess...... that's happening. Oh and Jihoon is still here. I'm holding out just to see the twist of who the fuck Jihoon is and why he's here. Why are you here Jihoon? Why do you get as much page space as the other two?

It’s short so I’m pushing through but for a book about spies it is so slow. I would have expected it to have more tension. It’s also an extremely direct writing style so it reads fast but it’s also easy for me to get distracted because there’s so little voice.

Oh there are layers to how fucked up this thing is.

Not what I was expecting. Gonna have to sit on that for a few minutes before I can come up with an opinion on it.

There is something awkward in the voice here and the choice to make it a conversation with all the responses cut out so you only get the teacher’s voice is already intense and I’m like 21 ebook pages in. I think some of the awkwardness is the translation and some of it is a wind up for this thing punching me in the face in 100 pages. Gonna get emotionally assaulted by a novel. I am sure.

One thing I appreciate about Kingfisher books is how unrepentantly weird they are. Like there’s no filter on the “is this too much” scale. It just keeps going. Book 1 in this series was off. Book 2 was a ghost story but this one is fucking weird the way Hollow Places is fucking weird. And it is a delight.

Oh this has sucked me in. It has such an odd voice that I cannot even look at my own writing projects because i am thinking in this cadence. I am curious how it will shake out in the long run but I’m enjoying to more for the rhythm than the plot right now. Not a bad plot. I’m just really into the flow of it.

This reached out and grabbed hold. The odd style with the second person narration. The priorities and interests of the protagonists. I’m very curious

The dream sequence makes me want to write!!

These books read fast because they’re so short. Nothing much has happened yet but I do enjoy Easton’s narration. I guess we’re building atmosphere.

I put in a request at the library to get the text version. It might work better for me on paper because I don’t multitask while reading text and I can scan better without getting lost in the narration

I am listening to this on audio and the narrator has this rhythm where he pauses for .. emphasis... in a way that requires my brain to lock in to understand. Between that and the very intricate description work, I have to listen very intently to understand. Which is making it really hard to listen to because I usually do audiobooks while I'm out walking or doing chores. That is too much multi-tasking for this.

It spends quite a lot of time meandering through the aesthetic (like starless sea but with a very different mood board, this one is full of bugs and rot and pollution). But it has a solid plot and character. It starts strong.

The little quirk of Viv picking up traits from her coworkers is cute.

This book is nice. It has very minor stakes. The rumbles of plot in the background are distant to the actual concerns of the story which is making cinnamon buns. I’ve been listening on audio while I have my lunch and I can pick it up and drop it like that with no urgency to get back and find out what’s going to happen next. But it’s nice while I’m sitting and eating.

I wasn’t sold on this one before starting but so far I’m finding it charming.

The voice work continues to be excellent as it moves through the different narrators and they have their own diction and quirks. Makes me want to try and write something that moves through voices like that. I’m also really curious to dig into the research behind it. Because it seems like it’s grounded. If I looked up some of these plot references and places, I could find them.

I don't know if the author knows how queer the not-romance going on in this book is. But it's definitely interesting.

Sometimes the humor in this book is so dumb. (The bit with the two astronauts being weird about sharing their sex lives? Is especially weird on the audiobook because nobody talks like that). I’m having fun with it though