2021 read #8: The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang.

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

283 pages

Published 2018

Read December 2

Rating: 4 out of 5

I adored this book. It's such a wholesome, heartwarming delight, rich with self-discovery and fabulous fashion. The character designs are winsome, the storyline gently moving, the dresses superbly detailed and astoundingly rendered. It takes place in a vague pseudo-historical Paris full of unmarried princesses and absinthe clubs, where all it takes is a single fashion show to spark social change. I'd move to this world in a moment if I could.

2021 read #7: A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow.

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

288 pages

Published 2020

Read from November 10 to November 22

Rating: 4 out of 5

First and foremost, it's a delight to read a YA fantasy novel in which the protagonist-narrators show an actual range of emotions. I've had ill luck in recent years with modern YA narrators with chips on their shoulders, incapable of speaking in any meter but sarcasm. Morrow's two alternating viewpoint characters have depth and dimension to them, which shouldn't be this rare, but here we are.

I love the setting Morrow constructs. Beings of folklore -- sirens, elokos, sprites, gargoyles, oracles -- exist in modern society (or history) and everyone knows about them. Everyone knows the stories attached to them but is at least partially aware that the lore is often prejudiced and mistaken. There's no secret underground away from the mundane world. Everyone goes to high school and has to deal with shitty cops. The magical mingles with the mundane in a wondrous way.

Morrow uses the tools of the fantastic to craft a powerful allegory for the silencing of Black voices, particularly those of Black women. The healing powers of family, community, and having your voice truly be heard are an important through-line.

2021 read #6: In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce.

In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce

241 pages

Published 1984

Read from October 31 to November 6

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

It's been a while since I read Alanna: The First Adventure. Three years -- three long, tumultuous years. I can be forgiven for not remembering much at all about the original book. My partner R loves Pierce's Tortall books, though, and encouraged me to give them another go. Especially since we have them here at home, and I'm currently without a library card.

I can't compare Goddess to Alanna more directly. I can say that this volume felt a bit scattershot, an exercise in vibes rather than plot. About three years, coincidentally, breeze by for Alanna in the space of this volume, though the narrative really doesn't feel like it. Major events that feel like they should become the major thrust of the book instead get neat resolutions and on we fly to the next big thing. A war breaks out and gets resolved within a chapter and a half. The nearest thing to an overarching plot, the perfidy of Duke Roger, mostly just hovers in the background while Alanna pretty much lives her life.

In her afterward, Pierce details her struggles as a young reader trying to find any book where a straight girl is an active, ass-kicking warrior protagonist. Given how rare fantasy books about LGBTQIA+ protagonists of any description still are, it reads like a missive from a bizarre parallel universe when Pierce stresses how rare it was to find a warrior girl who liked boys in the books available during own her formative years. Especially when the much-vaunted heterosexuality here involves Alanna pushing away unwanted sexual advances from her friends but secretly wanting them, deep down. Let's just say that part didn't age well at all.

2021 read #5: Witch World by Andre Norton.

Witch World by Andre Norton

222 pages

Published 1963

Read from October 31 to November 3

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

If you browse used paperbacks with any regularity, you've seen this book. Andre Norton was such a prolific and popular SF/F writer during the midcentury pulp period that her books fill discount bins to this day. The Witch World books, in particular, are inescapable. I've orbited around the series for a while, intrigued by their place in the history and development of fantasy fiction yet confident that they would prove to be schlocky trash, and probably not worth the effort.

Sure enough, Witch World fulfilled my expectations. Norton's prose is awkward, written in bulk for a less discerning audience. Our hero is a stock sci-fi archetype, the cool and collected man of action whose unsavory reputation was thrust upon him by an unfair world. At a time when most fantasy was packaged with science-fictiony framing devices, it's almost amusing how our hero stumbles into a crackpot-inventor archetype straight out of a midcentury time-travel tale.

Our heroine is a sorceress from a land of matriarchal power, where mating with a man means losing your spark of magic. You can fill in the gaps of how this is employed as a plot device in a 1960s novel. And surprising no one, at the end our heroine (by implication, at least) proves willing to give up her power in exchange for the big strong embrace of our hero.

I skimmed Wikipedia to get an idea of where the series goes from here. Apparently it turns out that when a magical woman and a magical man love each other very much, their powers complement rather than negate each other, so there's that, I guess. Now that I've done my due diligence, however, I don't feel any desire to revisit Witch World or its dozens of sequels. Give me something newer, gayer, and better written, please!

2021 read #4: Winter Rose by Patricia A. McKillip.

Winter Rose by Patricia A. McKillip

262 pages

Published 1996

Read from October 22 to October 31

Rating: 4 out of 5

If I used The Lord of the Rings to ease myself back into reading, Winter Rose helped to remind me of what I love about reading in the first place.

This is a gorgeous book, dreamy and full of feelings rather than certainties. McKillip's prose comes into its own here, spare at times and lush in others as the seasons turn through her narrative. It reminded me of the possibilities of the written word, the gentle heartbreak and delicate power inherent within fantasy. The whole time I found myself wishing I could write McKillip's seemingly effortless prose, reproduce the lightness of her touch, the richness of her ambiguity.

It all works far better for me here than it did in The Book of Atrix Wolfe. Whether that means McKillip's faculties improved significantly within a year, or my tastes changed significantly over the last five, is anyone's guess. (It's probably the latter.)

2021 read #3: The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien.*

The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien*

366 pages

Published 1977

Read from October 6 to October 22

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

* Denotes a reread

Another book I'm unsure how to review. I read it once before, during my Middle-earth phase in the early 2000s, and found it a challenging read at the time. The book has a reputation of being dense and borderline biblical in its ponderous begats and condensed battles. This time around, though, I found a new comparison: it reads like a setting guidebook from a tabletop RPG.

The hardest part of reading a new book (for me) is getting over that initial hump of investing myself in the characters and the narrative. It's what makes books of short stories particularly challenging -- you have to adjust to a new set of characters (and, in SFF, often a new setting) every few pages. Rereading the Middle-earth books has been nice because I already know the characters, the setting, and the broad strokes of the stories. It's comfort reading. I didn't prepare any deep thoughts to share while I read it. What matters to me now is relearning how to read for fun, and this was a nice book to rediscover in that context.

2021 read #2: The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.*

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien*

1112 pages

Published 1955

Read from about September 10 to October 6

Rating: 4 out of 5

* Denotes a reread

It's been a long while since I've read for my own entertainment. Like, a long while. I don't think I've gone this long without finishing a book since I began regularly reading in the early 1990s. Thanks, depression!

To ease myself back into reading, I decided to start with an old familiar favorite. I first read The Lord of the Rings after watching The Fellowship of the Ring back in 2001. It became a yearly fixture -- I read it at least once a year, usually in September, until 2005 or so. And then I just stopped, and didn't pick it up again.

I'm not sure how to review a book like this. (I'm no longer sure how to review books, period, so please bear with me.) There were fantasy novels before this, and Tolkien himself was influenced by many of them. LotR's enduring popularity and its central role in the development of later 20th century fantasy is a complicated business. It figured in the counterculture and folk revival of the ensuring decades, but also formalized an array of epic fantasy tropes that would be recycled well into the 21st century, when finally an influx of writers with different perspectives would breathe fresh life into the genre. There's also an astounding amount of casual racism in the text, thanks to the bizarre British taste for treating human beings like breeds of livestock. There's a lot to unpack, and I'm not sure where to start, so maybe I'll just skip that part.

Tolkien as a storyteller excels in two situations: when he narrates daily life from a hobbit perspective, and when he incorporates the magic and mystery of the natural world into his narrative. Contrary to its reputation, and sadly for the book itself, LotR is a lot more than halflings singing about trees. Tolkien struggles when attempting to tell his tale from a "courtly" vantage, losing the poetry of his own style in a creaky pastiche of the heroic mode. The first third of the book, Fellowship, fares best in this regard, but suffers a bit in modern eyes from pacing issues. When Aragorn becomes a central viewpoint protagonist, the narration becomes a disembodied mess of omniscient perspective, and gets weighed down with disgusting Numenorean master-race bullshit along the way.

Lord of the Rings endures, nevertheless, as a stirring and beautiful paean to cottagecore aesthetics rooted in worldbuilding of astounding depth. It was a nice reintroduction to the pleasures of reading for fun, which is exactly what I wanted it to be.

2021 read #1: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.

 A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

419 pages

Published 2015

Read from January 1 to January 12

Rating: 3 out of 5

2020 was not kind to me, and this is reflected in how few books I finished last year: six, quite possibly the fewest books I've read in a calendar year since 1990 or so. My book reviews were never insightful in the best of times, and now I face the extra struggle of rust. I haven't written a review since July, when my life was entirely different, before so many things fell apart. What thoughts can I even string together here that feel worthy of such a return from bad places?

I don't want to give up on reviewing what I read just yet. I've maintained this blog since 2013. It's a luxury to be able to go back and read my thoughts (however vague and disjointed) on any random book I read in the last eight years. So I'll try to pull something together for now, and in the future, I hope to put in a better effort to write reviews worth reading.

A Court of Thorns and Roses is one of the default YA fantasy books of recent years. If you go on Instagram and search tags like #fantasybooks, Sarah J. Maas titles will be ubiquitous -- tastefully arranged on beds of cotton fluff, bedecked with flowers. I've always had a hipster streak, a preference for forgotten or underappreciated works and a tendency (unconscious or not) to avoid the popular titles. But my partner R bought me a lovely copy of Thorns, and when I found myself picking up the pieces of my old life, it was one of the few things I took away with me, and just the sort of light escapism I needed to get me back into reading.

YA fiction has anger issues. Every character will be snarky or sarcastic to every other; narrators will arrive with chips on their shoulder. This isn't my sort of thing -- but I acknowledge I'm not the target audience here, and haven't been for about twenty years. For the most part, Thorns handles this fairly well, justifying the walls our narrator has built around herself. Perhaps the fey beings she encounters could have been more august and freighted with the centuries they have seen, and perhaps major plot contrivances happen solely through our narrator's stubbornness two too many times, but it works. There were glimpses of delightful fey strangeness here and there, and I enjoyed how horny everyone became maybe halfway through.

I can't decide how I feel about the main faery dude being named Tamlin. Given the name, and the mask magically stuck to his face, I naturally assumed that a particular twist would be coming -- and then it never came. I'm glad I didn't guess a major twist, but then I have to ask, why was he even named Tamlin in the first place? Enough of the book loosely aligned with the titular ballad that I guess I can see the connection between the two, but it was a bit distracting in the early chapters all the same.