Asha > Recent Status Updates

I am kind of fascinated by this book. It has an axe to grind. The first chapter with the influencer stuff was better than the chaotic overlay of flashbacks. The POV work is so interesting. I feel like I’m missing both Christian and America context that might make this clearer. Because it feels ….. axe to grind.

More pacing issues. The moments that get to breathe? We get pages of Jebi in that prison cell but no denouement on [big event] at all? There’s piles of stuff in the cafeteria but no trust building at all when they arrive at [location]. One of these things is more interesting and relevant than another.

Yeah. It’s not style or character. It was pacing. Start this thing at the 60% point and make us figure out the set up in media reas and it would be so much better. Like the plot is actually going now and the characters have finally gotten interesting. It just took two thirds of the page count to get here.

Ok, we’ve got to the prison break and I’m finally starting to be into this.

The style of this puts as little as possible in Jebi’s head. It’s all show. No tell. I like all the ideas. I can’t quite figure out why it’s so hard for me to latch on. Maybe pacing. Jebi just got arrested and my reaction was “sigh I thought it was about to get interesting.”

There’s this gap in the emotional impact of this style. The structure is fine. The emotional notes are there but there’s this clinical distance which I think is hiding in the style in a way I haven’t locked down yet. The stakes just flipped and I’m not sold on why at all.

The metaphor of the destroyed art is a bit on the nose but it is resonant. I do not like those scenes in quite a vivid way.

The question of collaborators and colonialism is an interesting in to a character. It makes Jebi a little bit hard to like but I’m kind of hooked on the question of where the story is going. The prose is a little clinical but the worldbuilding is very interesting so far.

It is reasonable to look at the gong-show nonsense of prohibition enforcement and see echoes in American news.

As I read more historical pieces there are so many places where history rhymes. We’re always just people and that is not always great for us.

This book is cascading towards an endless parade of names and dates not that we’re into the crime wave part. I might end up abandoning it because I’m less interested in the nitty gritty details than in a more analytical overview of the whole prohibition and gangster thing.

The author uses this “it is likely that” phrasing to cover gaps in the research in a really interesting way. It allows them to hit the emotional note of a novel while preserving the historical record “it is likely that they lost their home” or “if the disease had affected his brain” I’ve never seen this in a nonfic. It makes for a very novel style read.

The dirty talk in the sex scenes is ugh ugh barf but I do enjoy their kind of fucked up romance dynamic. Neither of these leads is normal and it works pretty well. The book does suffer for not letting those complicated backstories breathe. There are all these notes that are dropped then plowed on by.

Managing heavy backstory in a short book is hard and the main plot does carry itself well enough but I am still annoyed that major pieces of worldbuilding backstory get swept under the rug. Maybe I’ve been reading too much nonfic. I want the story about the tattoos! Don’t just tell me it was funny and not tell it. AUGh.

The introduction suggests that this is meant for people who grew up on gangster movies which is not me. I know some of the names but none of the history. Once it got rolling, it has been very thorough and accessible. It does go hard on the lurid descriptions of violence. I got interested in prohibition off the poisons book and so far I’m very curious about this one.

I do like a nice genre-historical. I’m curious about the world building and I do not think I’ll get as much of it as I’d like.

It rollicks along and it seems to be a pretty short read. Let’s see how it turns out.

A lot of this book is about prohibition nd I don’t know why it never clicked for me that bootleg alcohol would be dangerous? If I’d stopped and thought I would have got there. Like “alcohol will make you blind” was a genuine thing in this era.

I am sucked right into this.

This book has an interesting pacing because it tells the story of this one pathology lab and the people who work there but it bounces around between cases in a way that allows it to set up cliffhangers. It is quite engaging

There are so many angles I’ve never considered. I’m on the section on poisons in WWI right now and I’d heard of mustard gas and other chemical warfare but never processed just how bad it was.

Pretty sure I know where the macguffin is! It’s not structured fully as a mystery. We’ll find out if I’m clever or not.

You do have to work within the stakes of the era and I know academically that these are stakes and a problem but also I live in this era and can’t quite work up the emotional energy the scene is trying to convey.

I’m warming up to him now. Which actually works well as a characterization arc. It sets this “he was living a life that was breaking him” tone to it. As he gets his shit together and finds a hobby and makes familial connections and starts to form his own opinions instead of “supposed-tos”

The protagonist of this one is kind of hard to like. I’m curious to see where it goes but he’s insecure, wishy-washy, flies off the handle. He’s a decent person but in a spineless way. Like ehhhhhhhhhh. I’m still reading along and I’m interested is where it’s going to go. It’s just interesting to start with an MC like that.

Was definitely expecting this to be gay given the set up. It appears that it is not. It is currently leaning into the Sex and the City style of rich-white-women and I’m having a big “ew yuck” reaction. I wanted kind of fucked up lesbians with that con artist/cop begrudging mutual respect enemies to lovers thing. Not yoga class and sushi. I’ll give it a little more chance. It doesn’t need to be gay to be ok.

Because this story is based on a play I’ve studied, some of the “twists” are obvious and the way the author handles that is interesting. We know who is on the other end of the line because we know Hamlet but the story plays it straight because it is a mystery to the characters.

Hayden is such a little shit head. Again. I also hated Hamlet. (I think him being a shit head and a pampered rich kid is what the author is shooting for and is just nailing it).

It’s based on Hamlet so my initial “I find all these people unlikeable” is not surprising as I feel the same about Hamlet. But it is fascinating. The sci-fi edge. Whatever the fuck is going on with Hamlet and Horatio. The trapped in one place mystery and the lab with secret rooms. I’m definitely interested.

This thing tears along. Dropping bread crumbs that keep you trying to solve the mystery first. The teenage boy pov is a lot worse than the 44 year old woman pov but those chapters are so short that it doesn’t take anything away from the main arc.

I used to read a lot of crime fiction when I was in my teens and early twenties but I fell off of it as I got older and started to see the violence less as spectacle and more as violence. But it’s nice to be reading a different genre than my usual and this thing rips along at a good pace and isn’t (so far) lurid. It’s more family drama than CSI episode.

It’s cute and funny to see the YA novel in the wings of the main story. Having read lots of YA novels the “and then there was a competent adult involved” element is cute to me. But I’m not actually liking it much. I am not really sold on the pacing. I’m just shy of half way and I’m not sure what the arc is. The romance angle is boring. The world building flies by without getting a chance to shine. Ehhhh?