hollyway's reviews
497 reviews

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

adventurous dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

3.0

Not for me. Heavily military/war focused which is not my thing anyway but I am capable of getting invested in any plot if I'm invested in the characters. Unfortunately all the characters in this book (and their relationships to one another) were severely under-developed and uninteresting. This includes Rin. Amorality is not the same thing as a complex, compelling character psychology (the prose is also at fault here as it is lacking in subtlety and leaves no room for subtext). I found her motivations to be extremely weak and she just never jumped off the page for me.

All this might make it sound like a terrible book, but it's not. If you, like me, prioritise deep, real-feeling characters and beautiful prose, then yeah, you probably won't be impressed with it. However, if you love fantasy for the magic, the world-building, the bloody battles and epic scope - and don't mind if the characters are merely serviceable to move the plot forward - I'm sure you would thoroughly enjoy this. It is genuinely very good at being an action-packed,  mystical spectacle. Hell, many people do in fact recommend this series based on Rin's supposed complexity which is why I read it in the first place, so it's not even guaranteed you'll find the characters as flat as I did.

Another Country by James Baldwin

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is an absolutely breathtaking novel. James Baldwin's writing is so refined yet so raw and visceral. I was so immersed in both the emotional and physical world that these characters inhabited. This story is a reckoning with America at a very specific time in history and yet the larger questions it raises about race, sexuality, masculinity, love and humanity still resonate deeply today. Something Baldwin captures so brilliantly both here and in Giovanni's Room is the exquisite agony of existence and that essential, unanswerable question: how do we bear to live? In Another Country, love is perhaps both the problem and the solution, and the way Baldwin walks this tightrope is a wonder to behold. 

A Constant Hum by Alice Bishop

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Diverse cast of characters? No

I'm quite conflicted on this one! It's well-written and I think it succeeds in doing what it set out to do, which is to make the reader reflect on the tragedy of Black Saturday. A few stories stood out as being very emotional and insightful. However, I found that despite the variation between first, second and third person POV, the narrative voice in almost every story was exactly the same. Such consistency would be commendable in a novel but here it did start to make the separate stories blend together and by the end it felt a bit repetitive. That said, though, the stories that did work for me will stick with me and overall I do think it's worth reading! Not everyone will notice or be bothered by the lack of differentiation between stories, and reading it at a slower pace than me would probably help too.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

dark sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

*read for book club*

Sadly this really, really did not work for me. The structure, the prose style, the approach to character; all the complete opposite of my taste. Even the story itself didn't really offer anything new unless this is your first foray into this subject matter. On a technical level it's fine, it's competent. But it's not for me.

In the Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami

dark mysterious tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

God knows why I decided to spend my afternoon/evening reading this from start to finish instead of making progress on any of the many books I'm already reading, but here we are! Honestly though I think it was a pretty apt way to consume this book which spans the course of just a few days and takes a steep dive into the surreal. Despite the objectively horrific subject matter, I didn't really find this all that visceral. Maybe it's just my mood today or maybe it's because Kenji as witness to these horrors is somewhat detached and passive. I don't think that's a bad thing, either. I was engaged and intrigued the whole way through and am left with a lot to mull over. I also found it to be interesting purely as a time capsule of 1990s Tokyo. So, didn't grab me by the throat or anything but I had a really solid time reading this.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Man, this is definitely one of those novels whose cultural legacy is extremely incongruous with the actual content of the story. I was under the impression that Holden Caulfield was a sinister character, the original incel... but he's approximately as fucked in the head as your average depressed sixteen year old. His mind is not a pleasant place to be but I just felt sad for him. I also found his relationship with his little sister to be really touching.

I can't decide if it was a missed opportunity or a dodged bullet that I didn't read this as an insufferable depressed teen as it definitely would have become my entire personality.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Somehow even better than I remembered. Say what you will about old sport F. Scott as a person (honestly I don't know all that much) but christ was he a master of his craft. Gorgeous prose, effervescent characters, wit, philosophy and no shortage of emotional impact. The fact that he is able to do all of this and more in so few pages is endlessly astounding.

Reaffirmed as an all-time favourite and I think I will have to make a point of revisiting some of his other works as well next year.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This is one of those reviews that's going to sound a lot more brutal than a 3 star review should be. This is because my expectations for this being a new favourite were SO high that my disappointment stings SO bad; and because this book is so widely loved and critically acclaimed, I want to explain in a bit more detail than usual the reasons why this didn't work for me. Not because I feel the need to *defend* my opinion, but just to add my voice into the mix to hopefully save someone with similar taste to me from wasting their time on something that just isn't going to be for them. So here we go!

1. For whatever reason, I really bumped up against Jemisin's writing style. It read very YA to me, which isn't an inherently bad thing, just not my taste. It had that sarcastic, flippant tone a lot of the time that comes off really juvenile, and then at other times when it was going for something more epic and dark it kind of just felt like it was trying too hard. I feel like I'm coming up with descriptors that sound a bit more mean than I intend, but I've honestly been racking my brain for more a more objective way to explain what it is about this narrative voice that rubs me up the wrong way and this is the best I've been able to come up with. Ultimately it's just vibes.

2. Related to the voice and YA feel was the use of made up words which - try as I might to ignore them - pulled me out of the story every damn time. Which happened a lot, because my god did Jemisin cram them in on every page. So many scenes which might have otherwise been actually effectively harrowing were genuinely ruined for me by the characters exclaiming with their silly little invented swear words instead of just saying fuck. (Also they start saying fuck halfway through anyway so you did this for what??) (Also also: I swear my gorge rose every time I had to read the word "runny-sack")

3. This one, as always, is the most important factor for me: the characters. I won't spoil what I guess was supposed to be a huge twist, which I assumed to be the case by like chapter two, but suffice to say that the structure of this book was in my opinion unnecessarily convoluted and made it very difficult for any of the POVs to feel developed. I didn't find one single character compelling, nor were there any interesting relationship dynamics to explore. The relationship developments that did occur felt shallow and unearned. Each of these POVs could have been a full novel in its own right, but instead we get such a condensed version of events that everything felt inconsequential. This feeling is exacerbated again by the fact that the structure creates a circular feeling rather than a forward momentum.

4. I can't make a definitive judgement on the world-building etc. because honestly I'm not a very visual reader, but just for me personally, I wasn't especially impressed by those aspects of the book. They weren't bad, but they just didn't wow me. I also just didn't get that sense of expansiveness and lived-in-ness that I get from the fantasy worlds I love. But hey, the world-building is what I always heard these books lauded for and so it obviously works for many and if you're more likely to latch onto these elements you might absolutely love it. The magic system is also pretty cool, and there's a fair bit of action which, if you like action for action's sake, you could appreciate. Sadly I'm only able to engage with action scenes if I give a shit about the characters in them, otherwise my eyes just glaze over which is what happened here.

5. I'm genuinely so happy for the people who love and adore this book/series, but in this case I can definitively say I just don't get it. I do understand that when this first came out it was groundbreaking as far as black and queer representation in fantasy, and that the world-building it featured was much more inventive than what the genre was used to. All of that helps me understand why it was huge a decade ago, but I struggle to understand why it is still being held up as the pinnacle of literary fantasy today. I gave it 3 stars because I think it's perfectly competent at being what it is, even if what it is isn't for me; but while I can understand why someone would enjoy this book, the reverence it inspires absolutely baffles me. It's always fascinating to find yourself on the outside in this way, feeling like you read a completely different book to everyone else. Doesn't make any of us right or wrong, just another reminder of the wonderful subjectivity of art.

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

emotional funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

This definitely didn't blow me away like it did so many others, but it's good! Very warm and spirited, and its mass appeal is no mystery. I will say, I found Ove's wife to be a bit too saintly and the writing style got a bit too repetitive at times. Also I didn't cry - sorry! 

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

3.0

Henry Miller is undeniably a skilled writer but the way he applies those skills does nothing for me. It's interesting comparing this with Anaïs Nin's  Delta of Venus which despite its vulgarity had many moments of tender human insight that made it feel worth reading to me. Tropic of Cancer on the other hand is just miserable. The misogyny of the characters was also just exhausting. A certifiable Favourite Book of the Absolute Worst Guy You Know.

(3 stars may seem too high of a rating for this review lol but these days I tend to reserve 1 or 2 stars for books that are actively, incompetently bad; my star rating is about more than my personal enjoyment level reading the book.)