I've been bingeing this series over the last week or so because it's just that addictive. The last time I read something that was this cheesy but emotionally wrenching was during my college manga phase. You think anime is all fun and games until you decide to read the entire Hana Yori Dango series in one summer and find yourself drinking wine by the glass and clawing out your hair in chunks. Then you know pain.
SHADOW PRINCESS is book four in the Zodiac Academy series. Book three, THE RECKONING, was my absolute favorite book in the series so far-- it was action-packed, dramatic, emotional, and stunning, with character development and the answers to questions that had been steadily building over the previous books. SHADOW PRINCESS, on the other hand, is... the weakest? Ah, don't hate me!
But, like, seriously. I've been Tory's staunch defender for the last couple books. I know she has real emotional pain and boy, does this book prove it. And even though she has some of the best lines in these books, she is also such a stubborn fool. Her sleeping around doesn't bother me, but her emotional pigheadedness does, as does her constant need to be a jerk and never change. Darcy has changed a lot over the four books. You can tell that she's on the verge of becoming the powerful woman she'll one day be: she doesn't take any shit, she's nuturing, and there's an emotional maturity to her that Tory really lacks. It makes it really, really hard to like Tory, who doesn't change. She just remains a self-centered asshole who insults everyone to cover up the pain inside.
And don't even get me started on Darius, who is literally the exact same way. They're both Sad Dracos in Leather Pants, I swear to God. Every time I find myself warming to the guy, he does something stupid. Maybe I just don't like him because I was shipping Tory and Caleb and this feels like a reprise of the Rhysand/Tamlin situation that put me off the ACOTAR books. I don't like it when one ship kind of feels like end game, only for the author(s) to play a big switcheroo. That said, the ending legitimately made me tear up and scream, NOOOOOOO. I would hate to be a reader picking these up as they were coming out and wondering what was going to happen next. I mean, really.
So why three stars instead of four? This book started to feel really dialed in. There were too many POVs. I didn't need to see Max mooning over Geraldine. I don't really care about Max. I also don't really care about Seth. In fact, I hate Seth and this book just made me hate him more. I actually preferred it when the books were mostly just in Tory and Darcy's POVs. It was more fun for me when you could only guess at what was going on in the guys' heads. Subtlety is an underappreciated art form. I found myself skimming chunks of these books and noticing a lot of repetition. The word "growl" and its various iterations are used 175 times and smirk was used 121 times, just to give you a taste. I was pressed to look it up when I noticed the words "I smirked" TWICE on the same page.
Also, Washer doesn't need that many cameos. He's gross. I don't want it. Stahp.
ALSO, why do they celebrate Christmas? Is there a Faerie Jesus?
Jumping ship at 8% sounds like I didn't read much until you take into account that this book is over 600 pages. I read about fifty pages and then decided that I really wasn't into this book. After reading HEAT and SCHOLOMANCE, I was really excited to see R. Lee Smith's take on gargoyles, but this book didn't work for a variety of reasons. First, the sex is very much furry sex. Which a lot of Smith's books kind of verge on I guess, but the demons in SCHOLOMANCE and the Jotans in HEAT were at least humanoid in appearance for the most part, and Meoraq in Gann had a humanoid culture, even if he was more lizard in appearance, but the bat creatures in OLIVIA are covered in fur and have wings and snouts and definitely don't look like humans. Which I am soooo not into, so that was a huge turn-off for me.
Second, it's just really exhausting and not in a good way. Olivia spends most of the book crying. Which I guess is realistic but not all that fun to read. The sex is pretty unambiguously non-con and in one part of the book, it's a violent assault that makes the heroine bleed. The other books had their share of rape and gore, but they were either off-page or more dub-con than violently graphic non-con, so I was able to compartmentalize. Could not do that here. Yikes.
Third, it's... boring? Olivia is not a compelling heroine and I didn't like Murgull at all. The fifty pages I read was basically just Intro to Stockholm Syndrome 101. I'm shocked this was published after HEAT because HEAT was so much more polished. I'm all for experimentation but for me this was a failure. R. Lee Smith is a huge favorite of mine so it was a pretty crushing disappointment not to like this.
Make sure you watch this space for Caro's review (sorry for jumping ship!). Her status updates are hilarious.
Usually when I really enjoy a book, I want allllll my friends to read it, too. But R. Lee Smith is not an author I would actually recommend to most people. All of her books are quite long, usually 400+ pages (sometimes close to 1,000), which is a deal-breaker for some. And then there's the content: vicious, brutal, violent, and often filled with gross sex and dub- or non-con. I don't personally find many of the sex scenes in her books erotic but they are haunting and fascinating. She has a keen insight into the human mind and what makes people do what they do, and her ability to build and craft inhuman worlds with believable details and a rich tapestry of culture inspires awe and envy.
So, you know, if that's something you think you'd be into, check her work out. But if not, abandon all hope ye who enter.
I buddy-read this book with my friend, Caro, who shares my love for this author. I would say that this book isn't quite as brutal or frustrating as SCHOLOMANCE or GANN for the most part, although there were a few scenes peppered in that exceeded the aforementioned in terms of blood splatter and gore. The interesting thing about HEAT is that it is basically two very different books crammed into one. On the one hand, you have the story about Kane: prisoner, chemist, and slaver, who has come to the Earth to make street drugs out of human brains, while helping himself to the local flavor. The local flavor being Raven, his punk, purple-haired love slave, and Sue-Eye, a blonde biker chick he picked up at a bar to be his #2. On the other hand, you have Tagen and Daria's story. Tagen is the police officer who is tasked with hauling Kane in, and Daria is the human he ends up crashing with while trying to get his bearings.
The twist is that, for Tagen at least, Earth isn't what either of them expected. Jotan aliens hadn't been to Earth since the Bronze age, and were expecting spears and not-- well, handguns and automobiles. Also, it's hot because global warming sucks, and when they go to the normally cool PNW, it's hotter than Hades. And unfortunately for Tagen and Kane and every female human who ends up in contact with them, hot temperatures put Jotans into violent, mind-blistering heat. So, there's that.
Kane is probably one of the most fun characters I've read about in a while. He's just so evil, but the author does a good job kind of humanizing him a little, and his relationship with Raven definitely comes across as having a Joker/Harley Quinn dynamic where you tell yourself, yes, it's abuse, but if he has a human side to him at all, she's probably the one person who ever receives the benefit of it. Their romance is infinitely more interesting and fascinating than Daria and Tagen's, which is cute but bland. Their sex scenes end up feeling pretty repetitive, and I found myself skimming over some of their interactions because I wanted to see what Kane, Raven, and Sue-Eye were getting up to.
Overall, I would say that this is an excellent work but it probably needed to be shaved down a little. Some of those Daria/Tagen scenes could have been cut. The Kane chapters, on the other hand, were perfect, with Smith building up an atmosphere of dread that could put even Stephen King to shame. I kept thinking what a great TV mini-series this book would be because it has a little bit of everything: action, romance, horror, shoot-em-ups, adventure, sex-- the whole nine yards. It's dark and it's violent and sometimes it's cruel, but the author's trademark dark humor and incredibly deep insights into humanity and the world totally make it worth it, imo.
I understand that this is a cultural touchstone of crime literature in Japan, that it's taught in schools and considered a significant work. I liked the prologue a lot but the next couple chapters were REALLY slow and I could feel myself losing interest. I recently said in a review of another work that I don't mind character-driven books where nothing happens as long as I'm engaged, but if I'm not engaged and I'm not particularly invested in the characters, it just becomes a test of wills. For some people, I think this is going to be an instant favorite because of the ponderous pacing and really thoughtful prose (the translators seem to have done an excellent job), but I urge you to read the sample if you have doubts to see if you think it would work for you.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
Even though I had some reservations about THE POPPY WAR, I did ultimately end up enjoying it, even if I couldn't quite put my finger on who the target audience was or what it was trying to achieve. I did wonder where the author was going to go from there, since having a book end with your main character committing a grave atrocity is definitely a choice... one that's hard to bounce back from.
As soon as I began THE DRAGON REPUBLIC, my hopes for the book began to sink. As I said in my review of TPW, I really enjoyed Part I and admired the author's ability to show a character who was hard-working but unlikable. Parts II and III were where her characterization began to fragment and it was like she unlearned everything that had made her interesting. That's even more magnified here, where Rin spends the bulk of her narrative shrieking, yelling, insulting people, threatening people, mooning over the man who used to abuse her, and gulping down opium like a stoner with a Slurpee.
I was also really disgusted with how Rin treated everyone around her. Her "friends" were never really her friends and I don't understand why she's being shipped with Nezha now when he was so cruel to her in TPW, or why she's so shocked that Kitay is angry at her after what she did in the first book. They're portrayed as this motley crew of buddies who have each other's backs... but they never did, and it feels like an even bigger ret-con than what S.J. Maas pulled with Rhysand and Feyre. I also really didn't like the racism and misogyny in this book. The racism is intentional, as I think it's meant to show how Westerners were viewed by the Chinese, and how the British used their racist, taxonomical-inspired discrimination to legitimize colonization and oppression, but what Kuang does here just barely scrapes at the surface and, as in the previous book, makes everyone out to be awful in a way that just seems to be done for shock. I also hated how all the women in this book, including Rin, are portrayed. So many reviewers portray Rin as a strong protagonist, but anyone who relies that heavily on threats, emotional manipulation, and drugs, is weak, in my opinion. And that could have been interesting to explore, but it felt like Rin was always getting a free pass for what she was criticizing others for doing (genocide, racism, emotional manipulation, war crimes, etc.), and she was really only strong because all other women in this book were portrayed as spineless victims, noble victims, manipulators, or objects.
Also, to clarify: I understand that psychedelic drugs are a key implement in the religious ceremonies of many religions, and unlike some, my issue was not with their presence in the narrative, but the way that they were used. Rin has developed a chemical dependence, as a result of her guilt and trauma (PTSD), and, again, that could have been interesting, but it wasn't really explored fully and was basically portrayed as a free pass for all of her abusive or manipulative behavior, and I really didn't like that/feel comfortable with that, especially not in a character who is supposed to be so kick-butt and ~awesome~.
At this point, the book kind of feels like a gussied-up YA title with flat, two-dimensional characters that uses its violence to shock and titillate. I could understand the violence in book one being used to show the atrocities of war and how shocking that can be to those who glamorize it, as well as to call attention to the massacre of Nanjing, but I'm really not sure what this book was supposed to accomplish apart from making me despise a character I only found barely-tolerable.
Whew. I buddy-read this with my friends Maraya and Sage and I'm honestly glad it was a team effort, because I'm not sure I would have gotten through the book on my own. The last time I tried to read this, I ended up quitting at 14% because I was so bored. THE POPPY WAR is a pretty widely-read book that a lot of people have read and have opinions about and I guess I'm just one of the masses in that regard, because I have a lot of things to say about this book and it's going to be really difficult because a lot of those thoughts are conflicting.
***WARNING: some spoilers to follow***
First, I'd like to say that I've noticed that some members of this fandom likes to attack people who didn't like this book. I muted "TPW" and "The Poppy War" as keywords on Twitter because I kept seeing people making fun of the one-star reviewers and saying that anybody who didn't like this book was too stupid to understand/enjoy it, and that is such toxic behavior to me. There are a lot of reasons why people won't like this book and honestly, some of them are valid. If you are sensitive to violent content of any kind, this is going to be an incredibly unpleasant read. Bad things happen in this book and the main character is very unlikable. Part I is very different in tone from Parts II and II. Parts II and II move much slower, and more unpleasantly, than Part I. I understand that sometimes people hold authors of color to different standards than white authors, and might say racist things in their reviews, but simply being put off by negative content or critiquing the writing or the pacing or the story in and of itself is hardly problematic and doesn't, in my opinion, warrant shaming and bullying. I read positive and negative reviews of this book, sans spoilers, and unlike 99% of other books, where I fall firmly on one side or the other, I can actually see where both sides are coming from and why this book is so polarizing. The things that make one side love it will make another side hate it. One person's idea of daring is another person's idea of triggering.
Second, I'm writing this review as someone who is somewhat familiar with both Sino-Japanese Wars, the Nanjing/Nanking massacre, and The Opium Wars (of which, I believe, the Poppy War is a play). I've read Iris Chang's book on the subject, which scarred me for life (although it ended up preparing me for chapter 21 soooo... mixed blessings). However, even though this is heavily inspired by Chinese history, I wouldn't say that it's a direct allegory like ANIMAL FARM. It's more like GAME OF THRONES, in that it borrows in bits and pieces, and there are some direct parallels, but most of that borrowing is used to further the fantasy elements and give a "grimdark" feel to a book while also making people feel smarter for reading it for noticing the borrowed elements (no hate-- it worked for me). I say this because some people are saying that this book is history or historical and I would argue that while that may be a matter of some debate, I don't really think this book is history. It has demons and gods and magic in it. It isn't history. It just borrows from it and takes artistic license with it.
THE POPPY WAR stars Rin, an antiheroine who is willing to sacrifice literally anything to be the best and win the war against the stand-in for the Japanese in this world, the Mugen. When she starts the book, I think she's a young teen because she hasn't had her period yet (so maybe 13?). To avoid getting married, she crams for the national exam, the Keju, spending two years working her butt off to pass. She ends up scoring the highest in the province and goes to Sinegard, an elite military school. This portion was honestly my favorite, as it reminded me of other "dark school" type stories, like VITA NOSTRA or SCHOLOMANCE (the R. Lee Smith one), which also feature morally gray heroines with sociopathic tendencies who are slowly corrupted by power. I think this is also why so many people categorize this book as YA. It does have a dark YA vibe to it, the way some of Victoria Schwab's allegedly adult books do, and it can be hard to pinpoint who the audience for this book actually is. I liked Rin's unusual education and how she came into conflict with her peers and masters as the underdog, and probably would have given this portion of the book four or five stars.
Parts II and III have a major tonal shift as Nikara, Rin's country, engages in war with the Mugense for real. Rin finally has to put everything she's learned into action while also trying to control the magic she's only just realized she's had (she, like a very rare few, has the power to call gods down from their sacred realm and let them temporarily possess her). In part I, her mentor was the delightfully eccentric Jiang. Here, she's attached to Altan, and unpredictable student of immense power who was the only survivor of a genocidal attack by the Mugense. Altan is a drug addict and abusive, and thinks nothing of yelling, throwing things, or hitting people, including Rin. Rin is in love with him and idolizes him in a way that feels uncomfortable, despite the abuse. Especially since so many reviewers laud Rin as a strong heroine when she seems comfortable acting as a pawn at the hands of others and apologizing for the people who use her ill. Again, I think that this will be a major trigger for some people.
The absolute worst part of this book, in terms of violent content, is the infamous chapter 21. This chapter feels like a Wikipedia dump of the Nanjing massacre, so if you aren't sure if you will be able to handle the content, read the Wikipedia article on the massacre. If it is too much for you, do not read this book or skip chapter 21. It is brutal, but not as upsetting as I was expecting since, again, I've read Iris Chang's book on the actual events that inspired this book (which had photographs). This is a reason I think that this book shouldn't be categorized as YA. Most U.S. schools don't teach the Nanjing massacre, and so students reading this likely won't have the context that puts this chapter into perspective. It's incredibly violent and horrific, and while I won't begrudge anyone who felt legitimately triggered by this chapter, I think having that historical context does put this book into perspective. That said, there are other moments of violence that don't really have anything to do with the war, such as Rin giving herself a chemical hysterectomy (in a scene that was uncomfortably similar to Yennefer's similar decision in The Witcher, but way less graphic) or graphic dueling scenes in the school or Rin getting grabbed or hit by the boy she loves. This book is very violent, period.
That said, I'm not really sure what this book intended to do with that historical parallel to Nanjing. In ANIMAL FARM, for example, the purpose was to show the slow slide into a dictatorship with the gradual relinquishing of one's personal freedoms, and how sometimes liberation can lead to an even greater prison. Here, the parallels seem more like GAME OF THRONES, in that they kind of feel like they're just there to shock. There is no real context for the war unless you are familiar with Chinese history, and it isn't really clear why the Mugenese hate the Nikara unless you interpret them literally as Japan in that specific time frame of history. There is no slow backslide into corruption on behalf of the Mugenese because, through Rin's eyes and those of their other victims, they were never human to begin with. So many of the descriptions of the Mugense describe them as inhuman or not human, and the only really humanizing moment is Rin's shock that they look so superficially similar to the Nikara. There's really nowhere for them to go because they are the de facto evil villains in this book.
Ironically, the slow corruption happens in Rin, who ends up becoming a perpetrator of genocide herself, which is ironic, since in an earlier portion of the book, she says, "War doesn't determine who is right, only who remains." She survives but at the cost of her soul, I would say, since by the end of the book she is a despicable person who doesn't see reason and makes decisions solely on rage (like Altan). She is literally unable to see how her own actions put her on the same level as the Mugense and their annihilation of Speer, which is interesting from a moral perspective, but kind of frustrating from a reader perspective. Especially since we watched her give her all to understand everything in Part I, only to throw everything away that she learned in Parts II and III. It almost felt like she was a different person from the first part, and part of that is because she grew up and was subjected to horrible trauma, but it was frustrating to see someone who I admired for tenacity (despite loathing her for her selfishness) become such a stupid person who made such stupid decisions. Why, Rin?? Why?
I didn't hate this book, despite thinking I might, but I didn't love it either. I can see why people do, because it is different, and it does take a lot of risks, and in some ways, it is very similar to some of the manga storylines I loved as a child. The scene with the chimei, for example (one of my favorite parts) was like something right out of Inuyasha: a pseudo-historical epic filled with violent magic and dark content, with characters you rooted for even though they were incredibly annoying. I think Inuyasha even had a face-stealing monster in one of the earlier books. So it was cool to read a book that had some interesting Chinese mythology thrown into a world filled with geopolitical intrigue. I just wish the second and third parts of the book had meshed better with the first, and that Rin didn't flip-flop (to borrow my friend's term) quite so much in terms of her character. She was all over the place, and I expected a brutal queen and not an idiot with a magical firearm she didn't know how to use but was all too willing to fire. Even if it is a revenge fantasy that does appeal to the dark satisfaction all of us would have at triumphing over our enemies at tenfold delivery, I don't really like the message in that.
Anyway, hopefully all that makes sense. I'm probably forgetting half the things I was going to talk about but I think I hit on all of the important key points, and I'm wicked proud of myself for figuring out the major "twist" in this book before I even got to the 15% mark. Props to the author, by the way, for taking the chosen one stereotype and at least subverting the trope a little bit by making the character work for it. That, and the brilliance of part I, is why this is getting 3 stars and not a 1 or a 2.
Dammit, I wanted to love this book. Judith McNaught has been recommended to me so many times and when I found out that this book has some of my favorite tropes (hero wants revenge, rich/poor match, second chance but as enemies, etc.), I was like YES YES YES. But reading this book... was not all that fun. It has the same trashy vibes as one of those Harlequin Presents novels from the 1980s and 1990s, or a Jackie Collins novel without the fun sleaze that makes her books so addictive. It was all melodrama.
Basically, the heroine is the rich daughter of a man who owns an entire chain of department stores but he's sent her to poor school to build character. Everyone hates her for being rich and the only person she can become friends with is a walking Italian stereotype who's super smart and thinks her chauffeur is her dad. When she finds out she's been tricked she's mad for one hot minute and then is like YOLO. Heroine is "ugly" because she has straight blonde hair and glasses, but as soon as the glasses come off and she waves her hair, suddenly everyone is like OMG YOU'RE SO HOT. Oh, and she's a giantess at 5'7". *epic eye-roll* Ask me how tall I am, princess.
The hero, meanwhile, is a working class boy named Matt who has huge issues and basically takes those issues out by sleeping with rich women as a way of flipping the bird to the entitled rich guys he hates. Which is why it's so ironic that he falls for our heroine, Meredith, at a party, precisely because she's ~so much more than she seems~ and also she sleeps with him because she's mad at her father and decides to flip the bird to entitled rich guys because fuck Daddy (not literally, this isn't that kind of book). Only he's annoyed when it's him getting used because he's a man dammit... but only for a hot minute because there's a baby and they have to get married! Single moms are so declasse!
I love a soapy drama as much as the next girl, but this was just way too boring and the characters didn't have any depth. I was hoping for something like Meagan McKinney, who wrote a story kind of like this one that was historical, but her writing was heartwrenching and torturous and I couldn't put it down, even though her books were pretty long as well. This was a slog and now I am done.
When people think of the 70s, they generally think of bell bottom trousers, Farrah Fawcett hair, or disco. Me? I think of chunky family sagas. Before the bodice-ripper craze of the 1980s, Gothic romances and multi-tiered family epics were in, and PENMARRIC is the perfect example of what a prized specimen of the genre looks like. Based on the lives of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and their many children, PENMARRIC is set in late 19C and early 20C Cornwall, revolving around a crumbling Cornish estate and petty manners of inheritance, and the bickering chains of family lineage that twine and intertwine in numerous and surprising ways.
Mark Castellack becomes an inadvertent heir to the Penmarric estate after having it long be denied him. He isn't a Penmar, though-- at least, not by marriage. But his mother, it seems, might have some personal grievances involved that go well beyond the matter of contesting the will. His father, Laurence, is also a Castellack, an intellectual and moral man, but after Giles Penmar makes Mark his heir, their relationship suffers-- especially when Mark's promiscuity begins to dive out of control.
After an affair with a gently-bred woman named Rose that ends about how you would expect, Mark marries a woman named Janna and takes her to Penmarric. We get to read the book from both Mark and Janna's POVs and I loved seeing their story from both their eyes. How Mark's infatuation with Janna borders on violent obsession and how little respect he clearly has for women, especially when they behave in ways contrary to how he expects and tumbles from his pedestal. Janna, on the other hand, is a woman of low birth who had to struggle and strive to make a living. At first, she blossoms in Mark's harsh glare, but after a while, the wonder fades, and so does their romance.
The next chunk of the book is told from their children-- both Mark's children of his marriage with Janna, and the ones he had out of wedlock with Rose. We follow these offspring from childhood to adulthood, from petty rivalries, to the parts they played in WWI and WWII, their affairs and betrayals, their battles and rivalries over inheritance, their grievances, their secrets, their day-to-day lives. Honestly, if you had told me that Susan Howatch could sit me down and have me eagerly read about a character obsessed with the rigors of tending a mine and mining, I would have laughed, but then I read this book and I ended up being fascinated with the concept of tin mining.
One thing I loved about this book is how Susan Howatch doesn't concern herself with moral highhandedness. The characters behave in often unscrupulous or unlikable ways, and she lets them do it. This is not a morality play. These characters come across as painfully human in their flaws, and honestly, considering that this book was published in the early 1970s, her attitudes towards a lot of concepts like LGBT+ matters and abortion come across as shockingly progressive. I love how each chapter opens up with quotes taken from history books to let you know which character and historical event she is doing an allegory for because there is a HUMONGOUS cast of characters in here and it was hard to keep in mind who was who, let alone which Plantagenet they represented.
I love reading about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine so it was really exciting to find out that this was an allegory to that time period (I honestly didn't know that when I started reading it until I checked out some of the other reviews). This book is LOOOOONG but I read through it surprisingly quickly and one of the things I had forgotten about reading long books is how immensely satisfying it is when you finish them, like tucking into a multi-course meal. I loved this book and can't wait to read her other one, CASHELMARA, which is about the Edwards (I, II, and III).
If you enjoy chonky historical fiction about gloomy people living in gloomy estates, this is the perfect book for you.
I almost tossed this down in disgust five times while reading this book. I knew, going in, that it was going to be a massive act of revisionism with regard to Rhysand, the villain of the first book. And as someone who loves villains and the Persephone myth that could have been something I could have gotten behind under the right circumstances. But I wasn't truly prepared for the narrative gymnastics that this book would perform to try to redeem him without really making him do any legwork. By the end of the book, he's still a sleaze lord, only now he's a sad sleaze lord in leather pants who was actually the heroine's soulmate all along and an all around Nice Guy. Pop a fedora on his head and he'd probably "milady" his way through the Night Court.
Big yikes.
The beginning of the book was great, and very much in keeping with ACoTaR. Feyre has PTSD (understandable) and so does Tamlin (also understandable) and they're trying to heal and find the same love for each other that was the fuel for Feyre to save him under the mountain in the first place. The passion between them in the beginning was great. Feyre's misgivings about ruling also made sense. I could even understand why Tamlin would want to be so overprotective. He felt like he had betrayed her in failing to keep her safe and was overcompensating for it in the worst way by essentially treating her like she was made out of glass.
Enter Rhysand, who makes good on his bargain to take Feyre back to his court for seven days a month. He actually ruins Feyre's wedding, where she is about to get married to Tamlin but having a major case of cold feet and PTSD. He tells her that her wedding dress is ugly and tells her that she should thank him for saving her the effort of breaking things off, because he is *chef's kiss* a prince among men. *eye roll* He takes it upon himself to teach Feyre to read and write and is so shocked that she was allowed to be illiterate for so long... which was kind of weird to me, because I was pretty sure that TAMLIN was actually teaching her how to read in book one?? Maybe I'm wrong, but I seem to remember Tamlin teaching her to read was a major part of his introduction as love interest.
Also, apparently Feyre hates painting now and is totally upset that Tamlin gives her a set of paints as a present. Because how dare he get her something that she used to like but didn't tell him that she doesn't like anymore. How dare he not be a mind-reader like Rhysand who is a prince among men.
Anyway, things between Tamlin and Feyre aren't so great when she gets back. She starts noticing that he's really controlling but they never really sit down and talk about it. She whines about it but never discusses anything with him... and yes, while his behavior isn't great, locking her in the tower is hardly the abusive act that Feyre milked for all it was worth. It was bad, yes, but it's not like Rhysand was free of faults (oh no, we'll be getting to that), and yet his past was wiped so clean it was practically sparkling, while Tamlin's smaller crimes are portrayed as the Greatest Wrongs in the History of Wrongs, and you would think he put her up in some kind of prison camp for all that she goes on about Tamlin locking her up and Rhysand freeing her. IT WAS SO ANNOYING.
The "mate" thing is really just a neat excuse to forgo any groveling while also explaining this seeming switch mid-series between love interests. We learn that Rhysand sexually assaulted Feyre for her own good, to keep her angry so she wouldn't give up hope. WOW, WHAT A GREAT GUY. About 370-pages in, he finally brings up the assault and sort-of-but-not-really-apologizes and Feyre merely shrugs it off, despite the fact that in book one, everything he did was infuriating and traumatizing to her, and she HATED his guts and HATED him for parading her around and objectifying her in front of Rhysand, drugged her, mind raped her, and even made jokes about forcing herself on her, but yeah, Tamlin's the bad guy because he locked her in her room ONE TIME.
It's kind of amazing, really, how eager Feyre was to throw Tamlin in the trash.
Also, like Celaena/Aelin in THRONE OF GLASS, it isn't enough for Feyre to be a bad-ass fighter on her own terms, no. When she comes back with the gifts of the other Lords, she comes back with LITERALLY ALL OF THEIR POWERS, and she is so powerful that people are going to kill her just to keep her powers from manifesting. Because a heroine just isn't worth salt if she isn't the Queen of the Specialverse, I guess. Part of what made Feyre so endearing in book one is because she actually did have to struggle to succeed; here, everything is served to her on a silver platter.
I skipped over most of the Night Court things... they were so boring.
Of course, Tamlin has to become a traitor. Maas basically did to him what she did to Chaol and Dorian in THRONE OF GLASS. They both become terribad people so Rowan can show up and steal the scene with his earth-shattering orgasms. I guess maybe even the author realized that Tamlin didn't look that bad, so making him into a betrayer was necessary for giving Feyre a clean-cut reason to dump his ass without looking petty. Also, apparently he harbors a sexual assaulter in his court, because in this book we learn that YET ANOTHER WOMAN IN THIS BOOK tried to have her way with Rhys without his consent, and Tamlin just keeps her around... because he's the bad guy now.
We're supposed to feel sorry for Rhysand because he was Amarantha's "whore," and yes, I do feel sorry for him... Amarantha was awful... but that doesn't excuse his own abuse. "This is for your own good" is literally one of the go-to phrases of abusers. He was AWFUL in A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES and he never really grovels for it. He tells Feyre about his abuses while crying, but that's all about HIM. He provides plenty of reasons-- excuses-- about why he did what he did, but this serves more to brush off his actions than genuine contrition. I wouldn't even care if he became her love interest as the villain if he was actually KEPT as a villain, but it's like all that brutality gets a pass because he is, in fact, a nice guy. Also, the casual story about what basically serves as an allegory to genital mutilation in his mother's court was super disturbing and mentioned like once, but holy yikes-- his parents were fucked up, and I felt like that should have been unpacked more.
Lastly... the mental illness rep. Some people apparently think it's great. No. I don't think it is. Love basically cures Feyre's ills. While it's true that being in an unhealthy relationship can exacerbate existing mental illnesses and cause ones you are predisposed to to manifest, being in a good relationship is not a cure. You don't lose your PTSD or whatever because the sex is good and you've found your soul mate. That is a toxic trope in way too many romances, and I can't stand for it. ALSO, what about Tamlin's PTSD? This was also never really discussed. Does only Feyre get to behave irrationally and have freak outs? That's an unrealistic expectation to have, and her contribution to that toxic relationship was never even discussed... because of course, Feyre is perfect.
On second thought, maybe she is perfect for Rhysand. They're both selfish trash people.
One of the crowning moments in this book is Feyre saying NOBODY HAS SUFFERED OR GONE HUNGRY LIKE I HAVE while a few chapters before she was hating on Tamlin for literally tithing his people until they starve. I guess she's the High Lady of Virtue Signalling as well. Fuck the poor people if they don't give her an excuse to hate on Tamlin. I don't believe they're mentioned again.
If you forget how perfect this couple is, Feyre and Rhysand will remind you 2342342 times why the two of them are the Faerie Jesuses Incarnate who died and prostituted themselves for your sins.
This almost reads like bad fanfiction of the first book. I really don't feel like Rhyand and Feyre were destined to be together from the beginning. I felt like maybe Maas initially planned on a love triangle but maybe thought Rhysand was too rough around the edges, and so worked double-time trying to find reasons to excuse all of his behavior and make him supes enamored with the heroine. The greatest death in this series wasn't Junian's or Amarantha's... it was Tamlin's character.
It isn't even like Rhysand is perfect in this book. His flirting is literally saying things to Feyre that most men would get slapped for. He talks to her like one of those sexist asshats in Madmen. He's constantly talking about her appearance in a creepy way, and he laughs when she's upset that he used her as bait for the Attor. Even their bargain, which ended up allowing him to read her mind, was done without consent, and he certainly doesn't ask for consent every time he reads her mind. At one point, he even says that he could rip her mind apart if he wanted. It's almost like this book was written out with the intention of having him still be the villain and Maas changed her mind halfway through.
I really couldn't stand this book. Rhysand and Rowan are literally the same person, and their "development" with the heroine follows the same trajectory. It's not the worst book I've read, and it's not even the worst Maas book I've ever read, but I will never for the life of me understand why this series is so popular, or why some people who eagerly condemn other books for being problematic seem so eager to forgive or ignore the flaws in this one.
Gather around, my friends, and pull up several seats. I give you my worst book of 2020. My god.
My first introduction to Sarah J. Maas's work was through THRONE OF GLASS, which sounded kind of like POISON STUDY when I heard the premise: a disgraced assassin fighting for the saving of a kingdom? YAS. But POISON STUDY was a much better book. "But no," said the Stans. "You have to read the entire series. It gets better." Well, I read all seven books, and it actually got worse. Maas either killed off or ruined the only characters who made the series halfway okay, and introduced a sleazy, growling alpha motherfucker of a love interest to match Aelin/Caleana's Super Senshi Sue Powers™. It got so bad that I joked she would literally have to be a god to become any more special and it's like Sarah J. Maas heard me thinking that and was like YAAAAASS QUEEN. I SHALL MAKE IT SO. Ugh.
The A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES series is better... in book one. I'm reading it right now and it might actually be the only book of hers that I'll give more than a two star rating, even though it butchers not just The Ballad of Tam Lin but also Beauty and the Beast. I have a lot of thoughts on making characters in fairytales and stories where the characters are supposed to be unattractive attractive, which I expand more on in my review of A.G. Howard's ROSEBLOOD. But everything that makes A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES bearable is destroyed in later books. Maas swaps out a genuinely tortured and flawed love interest for a carbon copy of Rowan who, once again, is a sleazy, growling alpha motherfucker who makes volcanoes erupt with the force of his come and takes to the skies to make the clouds cower with his incredibly male orgasms. And Feyre, who started out reasonably flawed and realistic, as a human who can't read and has to scrounge to survive, becomes EVEN MORE SPECIAL AND AMAZING, OMG!!!! SO SPECIAL!
Throne of Glass was a young adult series until the last 2-3 books and ACoTaR was a new adult series (even though it wasn't labeled as such), but both of them read as being fairly similar and had similar outcomes. I'll admit that my eyebrows shot up to my hairline when it was announced that CRESCENT CITY would be Maas's first adult novel, because her other books are clearly marketed at a much younger audience and this seems like an attempt to maintain her fanbase's interest as they grow older and outgrow the series. What would her take on "adult" content be?
I'll give you one fucking gods-damn clue what Maas's fucking take on gods-damn content is, but first I have to make sure that my fucking vibrator didn't fall into the gods-damn box of fucking My Little Pony knock-offs that I fucking keep in my gods-damn linen closet!
...That's right. PG-13 sexual content and lots and lots and lots and lots of swearing.
Now, I am no prude, but the swearing in this book was totally unnecessary and just came across as childish. If anything, it made CRESCENT CITY feel like a young THRONE OF GLASS trying to impress all of her older friends with her edginess. CRESCENT CITY fancies itself quite the little edgelord with its filthy mouth, drugs, sex, and violence, but none of it is handled well. Drugs are treated as something casually edgy that the characters do without any sorts of repercussions. Violence is casual as well, and doesn't really serve any purpose in the story. Characters are killed off before we can really care about them properly. And the sexual content is... cringey.
Another issue I took with the book is the way it is constructed. This book was way too long-- about 300 pages longer than it probably should have been max. I think Maas has fallen into the trap of just feeding her readers endless self-fanfiction of the stories she's already written. They adore her worlds and want to read more of it... but both ACOTAR and THRONE OF GLASS were relatively short. They didn't expand in length until the characters (who stayed with her) cared about the series. There is no such emotional bond in CRESCENT CITY, but Maas wrote it as if it were book seven in a seven book series and expected us all to just care. I was reading the comments from stans on the negative reviews who said things like, "Well, it doesn't get good until page 500! You should have kept reading!" and "The last 100 pages made the first 700 pages totally worth it!"
I'm sorry, but no. If your book is 800 pages long and doesn't get good until page 500, that's not okay. If you have 500 pages of info-dumping to get the book get off the ground, you're not a good writer. There was way too much crammed into this book and a lot of it was exposition that probably should have happened organically by us following the character around and seeing her interact with things and people instead of having everything dropped on the reader like a ten-ton weight of narrative. I read about 600/800 of this book and I'm still not sure what I read. It has Norse gods, faeries, vampires, demons, werewolves, shape-shifters, angels, technology, fast food, video games, humans, and a whole host of other stuff, and none of it really meshes cohesively. The world-building is a bigger mess than a drunken mid-2000s party girl stepping out of her limo to greet the paparazzi after an all-night cocaine bender. It doesn't make sense, and I don't really get how any of it fits together.
Then there's Bryce. Bryce is basically a mishmash of Celaena and Feyre. She's gorgeous. She's sexy. Everyone wants to fuck her. She's not like other girls. She feels pity for whores because she only sleeps around to self-medicate for her emotional issues. She does drugs but she's deep. She hates everyone but everyone's okay with that because they can see the pain deep inside her beautiful eyes. Brycaelayre is half-human, half-fae, and ALL Super Senshi Sue™. You just know that she's going to end up being revealed to be a "goddess incarnate" or the queen of everything by the end of the last book. Maas has never been content to let a female character be powerful on her own merits. She's gotta roll her shoulders, roll her eyes, purr, talk sweetly, tap her nails, and flap her aerobicized faerie wings to the heavens while exploding sex, magic, and specialness from every nonexistent pore.
The love interest, Hunt, is basically a stand-in for Rowan and Rhysand. I'm not entirely convinced that he's here to stay, though, as Micah was looking pretty fine and fiery and there were way too many paragraphs devoted to talking about how hot he was. Don't be surprised if on book 2 or 3, Hunt undergoes a total personality transplant, starts being a dick for no reason, and is then kicked to the curb with the story reworked for how he was secretly an evil gaslighter who was imprisoning Bryce and robbing her of her potential with some half-assed betrayal and only Micah could set her free.
WHICH, by the way, the constant use of the word "alphahole" in this book was not only incredibly irritating and ridiculous, it's also incredibly unselfaware. If you're trying to make fun of a trope, it's probably best not to have that be a trope that you're well-known for. One of the alphahole quotes in this book could literally be a description for any book that Maas has churned out in the last five years. Don't even get me started on the whole "males" and "females" and "scents" nonsense.
I don't think it's exaggeration when I say that this is THE WORST MAAS BOOK I HAVE EVER READ. It was so terrible, reading it actually gave me a headache. All of her other books I've read, I could at least finish, but this was unbearable. It was like SJM took everything I hated about her previous books and injected them into CRESCENT CITY in ultra-concentrated form. The only two redeeming things about this book were the *attempt* at sex-positivity (but only for Bryce-- remember, actual whores are to be pitied) and an odd reference to My Little Pony figures (called "Starlight Fancy" figures-- Bryce collects them). Between the terrible, disorganized world-building, the curse-words speckling each page, and the beautiful but two-dimensional shells that served as the main characters, I just could not find one single fuck to give. Maybe because SJM took all those "fucks" and put them into her book, instead. You know, to make it "adult."
I was describing this book to someone as Game of Thrones, only set in a desert where magicians are responsible for bringing the rains and water is the ultimate currency. But honestly, that doesn't quite do this book justice, as it's much better written than Game of Thrones and doesn't quite wallow in the physical and sexual violence like GoT does - not to say that this isn't a brutal MF of a book; it is.
Set in the Quartern, a desert land in which water-sensitive magicians called "Stormlords" are responsible for bringing water, THE LAST STORMLORD is about a land in the middle of political and environmental upheaval. All that magic has brought about climate change and water is becoming scarce in a land that desperately needs it. The last stormlord is dying without a replacement, and hostile factions who have been oppressed by the stormlords are rallying forces to seize powers in the void and resort back to scavenging.
The two main characters are Terelle and Shale, both teenagers. Terelle is a young woman who was sold into a brothel when she was a child by her cruel stepfather, and now lives in dread of reaching puberty and being auctioned off for her virginity like a prize mare. One day she decides to escape, hoping to become a dancer, and instead discovering that she's capable of much more. Shale, on the other hand, lives in the outskirts of the Quartern, called "the Gibber," in a labor camp where people mine for resin. His father is an abusive alcoholic, but freedom comes when Shale realizes that he has the power to detect and manipulate water. Unfortunately, his powers bring him to the attention of very dangerous people on both sides of the water war who will stop at nothing to capture him alive.
Lately, I've found myself reading more and more fantasy by women because for the most part, male fantasy authors don't really deliver what I want: complex, nuanced world-building with a rich tapestry of culture; strong female protagonists who aren't sexualized and whose agency isn't wrapped up with that of the male hero's; and heroes who don't style themselves after the Chuck Norrises or Tyrion Lannisters of the world, punching holes in trucks or laughing drunkenly in the fate of death. THE LAST STORMLORD is set in an original world that deals with poverty, climate change, colorism, racism, sexism, and so much more.
Oh, and this book is brutal. I've seen dudes scoff at female fantasy, but there isn't a whiff of romance in this book yet. Shale is a strong character but also flawed realistically. Terelle has agency and interesting powers, and doesn't need no man in her life to tell her what to do. Taquar Sardonyx was an excellent villain (and does it help that he's brooding and good-looking? But ofc.) It's also a pretty grim world, with mages who can bleed all the water out of people and leave them dried out husks; flesh-eating beetles called "ziggers" that like to burrow into people's eyes or noses and eat them alive; child prostitution and slavery and evil nomads who live by honor and enjoy torture as punishment.
I also loved the machinations of the royal family. There's definite Cersei/Laisa and Joffrey/Senya parallels, which is maybe why I found them such a pleasure to hate. The Lannisters were always my favorite characters in Game of Thrones just because they were so unabashedly evol. There's a lot of heavy thoughts about power and how sometimes you do harm when doing good, and vice-versa. When I saw that the author lives in Malaysia working on rain forest conservation, the climate change messages made a lot of sense. This is no heavy handed Ferngully - it's very nuanced, and very good.
P.S. CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL AND YOU'RE A FUCKING IDIOT IF YOU THINK OTHERWISE. DON'T @ ME.
People, especially conservatives I have noticed, like to make fun of content warnings. They like to say that it's yet another facet on the crystal of over-sensitive, over-entitled "millennial privilege." (Right, because we're the generation that needs to choose between iPhones and health insurance. So privileged.) Speaking as someone who has, historically, gotten panic attacks, let me tell you that for people who do experience anxiety from "triggers," it isn't something that's made up. Your blood pressure plummets, your heart rate picks up, you feel nauseous. It can feel like you're going to faint and have a heart attack at the same time. I no longer get panic attacks, but reading this book was so physically uncomfortable that, for a moment, I remembered with stark clarity what having them was like and how much I used to dread them.
This is because A LITTLE LIFE is the most wretched, depressing book that I have ever read. That is saying something, considering that I have some pretty strong contenders on my "just-tear-my-heart-out-why-dont-you" shelf on Goodreads, which features books such as OUTLANDER, for its gruesome torture and rape scenes, KINDRED for its grim portrayal of slavery in the South, THE BOOK OF YOU for its portrayal of stalking and abuse, and the previous winner of the title for "most depressing book of all time," THE LAST INNOCENT HOUR, an extremely visceral WWII-era book about an American woman who finds out that her husband is a Nazi and experiences severe emotional, physical, and sexual abuse over the course of the novel. I am someone who rarely takes offense to books, and reads bodice-rippers from the 1970s for fun. My tolerance for problematic content is very high.
This is actually my second time attempting to read A LITTLE LIFE. The first time, I received a copy of it as an ARC but ended up DNF-ing it around 80% in and writing a 2-star review for it on Goodreads. It was upsetting me too much to finish, and I actually felt myself becoming physically nauseated from reading about the subject matter. There's a reason most of the reviews are either ultra-positive or ultra-negative, and I think that rating really stems from your mindset on depressing books. At the time, my mindset was, "This book made me feel like crap afterwards, ergo I did not enjoy it," so the two-star rating was an accurate representation of my feelings at the time. This time around, I was more aware of what I was in for, and was able to steel myself going in. The four-star rating I am giving this book this time around is to acknowledge the beauty of the writing, the compelling portraits of the characters inside, and the very on-point portrayals of anxiety and body dysmorphia.
A LITTLE LIFE is about four boys named Willem, Malcolm, Jude, and JB. They are all talented and brimming with potential when we first meet them while they are in college. Willem is an actor, Malcolm is an architect, Jude is talented with numbers and logic and law, and JB is an artist. Willem and Jude forge the closest relationship that ends up growing over the course of the novel, but the four of them retain a closeness that is reminiscent of the cult-like bond of the college-age kids in Donna Tartt's THE SECRET HISTORY, especially since the bonds between them are largely defined by secrecy. Specifically, one secret: the history of their friend, Jude, and his secret past.
Jude is essentially the main character of this book. Everything - the events, the characters, their narrations - all revolve around him. He is the best-looking of the bunch but also the most reticent. He is in chronic pain from a childhood accident he refuses to divulge, incredibly private, and has very low self-esteem and poor body image. As the story unfurls, we learn that he was the victim of truly horrific child sexual abuse and physical abuse, and has been able to recover from these events psychologically. To compensate for his physical and mental pain, he self-harms - something that his doctor basically enables by refusing to take action or force him to get help - and at several points in the novel, his self-harm intensifies to such a degree that he is hospitalized.
Willem, his friend and, later, his boyfriend, and Harold, his adoptive father, and Andy, the enabling doctor, are his closest confidantes, but even with them, he has walls that he refuses to lower. Bits and pieces of Jude's story come out, either in his own narrative arcs, or in reluctant admissions that are basically given under duress. He is a truly flawed and pitiable character, and to make it worse, it never stops. His past is bad enough - God, how I ached for him - but his future offers no respite, either. One by one, those in his life leave him - or at least, he perceives them as leaving him - either by choice or reluctantly, and Jude allows his life to spiral out of control. Being in his head is a truly terrible place, because he is so vulnerable and negative and damaged. I can't help but feel that this book takes a highly ableist view of disability, much in the same way that ME BEFORE YOU did. Jude is portrayed as being a fraction of a person, someone who is broken and beyond help.
Even though I enjoyed both this book (ultimately) and ME BEFORE YOU, I can understand the criticisms of both books. Both books portray disability as being an obstacle that cannot be overcome and in both cases, disability is weighed against able bodies as being the desired norm, and any action that cannot be matched against one who is able bodied is considered a depressing short-coming. With the other books on my depressing book shelf, they had some sort of redeeming value or message, but A LITTLE LIFE is so bleak. What is the message, then? That some people are beyond redemption and should be allowed to rot away on their own terms, like a piece of forgotten bread? That was the message I got here, from Jude, and his pointless struggles, and how all effort to live and carry on only resulted in more pain - like he was being punished for trying to live his life as best he could.
I have never done this before, but with A LITTLE LIFE, I slipped a little piece of paper inside the book before donating it that listed out all of the content warnings. I know some people get angry about these and consider them spoilers, but I couldn't bear the thought of someone going in cold and feeling that same icy feeling of dread that I did while reading this the first time. The content warnings in this book run the gamut from child sexual abuse to domestic violence to medical gore to grievous self-harm to anxiety and post-traumatic stress flashbacks and substance abuse, and just about everything else. I hope the next person who gets this book is able to enjoy A LITTLE LIFE for the think-piece that it is, but I would not, in all honesty, recommend this to anyone with an anxiety disorder or a history of abuse, as I think the flashbacks and the content would just be way too much.
P.S. You don't have to use content warnings, and aren't obligated to be responsible for others, but please respect the people who need/want them. Anxiety is not a joke, and it is very unkind to make fun of people who experience it. Consider this my PSA for the day.
Jackie Collins is the literary equivalent of cheap tequila - you know, in principle, that you probably shouldn't do it, but it's such an easy way to have a good time. So you do it. You pick up the Jackie Collins and take a shot - in fact, you take three. Now I'm sitting here, post-Jackie, and reflecting on the garbage I just read. Did I mention that she's very hit or miss? SINNERS almost got a 2-star rating from me because it left such a bad taste in my mouth, whereas AMERICAN STAR just replaced LUCKY as my favorite of hers. Where does HOLLYWOOD HUSBANDS fit in to that ranking? That's actually a tough question...
HOLLYWOOD HUSBANDS is the story of a bunch of famous bros who basically prance around Hollywood with their dongs hanging out of their pants. There's Jack Python (lol), the sexy TV talk show host who also happens to be the brother of a famous star, Silver Anderson. Then there's Howard "I can quit the cocaine anytime I want" Soloman, who is the head of a major movie studio. And lastly, there's Mannon Cable, famous celebrity, who has a hankering for his ex-wife, and screw the current one, who can't do anything right.
This is 600+ pages of these sorry excuses for men basically living up to all of the worst stereotypes about men. The women, I'm sorry to say, aren't much better. Silver is like the quintessential self-absorbed celebrity and she's a mom, but basically only in name; she's jealous of any success her daughter has, and is resentful that having a kid makes her seem older. Clarissa is the dysfunctional TV actress who is constantly chasing after Jack Python, whereas Whitney, who is more established, is a typical primadonna. Heaven, Silver's daughter, makes all the wrong choices, and it's really hard to root for her success when she goes about it so foolishly.
Then, juxtaposed against the Hollywood sex scandals are these incredibly dark back stories, all involving rape or some kind of abuse against an unnamed female character who turns out to be one of the main characters in the storyline. I called these the Dark AF passages. It was pretty jarring, and I was surprised when I found out who the character was. I was also surprised at how disturbing these passages were. One minute, you're reading about a horribly abused character who likes to use arson to murder those who have wronged her; the next, you're at a wedding where one of the love interests breaks up the bride and groom with a helicopter and a rope, literally stealing the bride away from her wedding to an actual lord to become his mistress instead, and she absconds with him gladly. What.
I think this is my fourth or fifth Jackie Collins rodeo and I'm starting to notice some favorite themes of hers. She's a fan of sleaze-bag criminals, like pimps and drug addicts - not a fan of them, personally, I mean, but a fan of putting them into her books. She seems to have believed that all black women are named Aretha, because there was a black Aretha in this book and in AMERICAN STAR. All women of color are described as "exotic" or "exotically beautiful." In virtually each of her books, a vehicle explodes and causes deaths - in LUCKY, it was a plane. In AMERICAN STAR, it was a car. In this book, not to outdo herself, it was a luxury yacht. All of her characters are extremely promiscuous and will go to great lengths to validate their cheating.
I'm also not a huge fan of how she treats her gay characters. She did the gay character in this book some serious kinds of dirty, let me tell you. Not only does this character cheat on his boyfriend, he cheats on his boyfriend with a woman - and I'm not one of those people who thinks, "Oh, if you're gay and you're in a hetero relationship, you're not really queer!" because that is bi-erasure, but the way it was portrayed in this book, it felt to me like the character wasn't bi; it was more like, "Oh, I'm such a sexy bed partner, I have cured you of the gay!" The way all the other characters talked about this gay character was also super offensive, and of course, he dies in the end. I also side-eyed Collins when she has this character's solidly gay ex-boyfriend end up with an AIDS-positive partner who he nurses until he dies, only to start an AIDS hospice in his loving memory. That's his happy ending.
HOLLYWOOD HUSBANDS was definitely not my favorite Jackie Collins book, although it wasn't quite as unpleasant or grating as SINNERS. I enjoyed reading it but it made me feel guiltier than I would have liked, so I'm docking half a star rating. This is a positive rating + review, but I'm frowning a little as I write it, so take that into consideration.
Reading CRAZY RICH ASIANS gave me a hankering for tales of rich people behaving badly, and seeing as how I'd already worked myself through CHINA RICH GIRLFRIEND, the only other book I had on had to serve my purposes was by good old Jackie Collins. RIP Ms. Collins. Nobody, and I mean nobody, writes trash like you. I don't believe in heaven, but if I did, I could totally picture Ms. Collins up there writing stories to scandalize the angels as they screwed their way across the clouds with big pie in the sky dreams, only to have success forestalled by drug addiction, sexual abuse, murder, car crashes, plane crashes, adultery, and heartbreak.
AMERICAN STAR is a lot like her other standalone, ROCK STAR, in that it follows a bunch of outcasts from youth to middle age as they hunt down fame, only to find out that success isn't all it's cracked up to be if you aren't with someone you love (re: want to bang until death do you part). Lauren is the good girl next door with a desire to break free from convention and become an actress in New York. Cyndra is a half-black girl with a long history of abuse who wants to sing and be appreciated for who she is and not what she represents to racist jerks who view her as a walking fetish. And Nick is Cyndra's half brother who wants to make something of himself and get out of the trailer park he lives in with his deadbeat father and black stepmother. All of them have dreams, all of them have secrets, all of them want revenge.
Given the publication date of this novel, it probably isn't going to come as a shock to you when I tell you that this book has trigger warnings across the board. AMERICAN STAR has a story to tell, and to hell with anyone who might be offended; it's going to tell that story however it wants. I can't help but respect such candor, but if you are sensitive to such topics as the ones I mentioned in the first paragraph, you'll probably want to give this one a miss. That said, if you enjoy doorstop epics that follow a troupe of characters over the span of their lives and put them through all kinds of hell before reluctantly dropping that HEA in the dust at their feet, then this is the book for you, my friends.
Honestly, I think this is one of the best books I've read by her so far. All of the characters were so compelling, and it had the nuance that ROCK STAR lacked. Say what you like about such trashy books and their target audiences, but I feel like books like this and VALLEY OF THE DOLLS really were quite advanced in some ways for daring to portray women as sexually autonomous beings with agendas of their own, for better or for worse. This isn't feminist literature, exactly, but it could be its second cousin twice-removed.
I think Jackie Collins ranks up there with Tarryn Fisher and Rosemary Rogers in the Hierarchy of Smutty Trash™. These are desert island books, to be sure. I know, I know, everyone says they'd bring Dickens or Baudelaire, but I know who I am and I'm not trying to impress anyone. I love the simple pleasures in life and if you keep me in bad smut, good wine, and great company, I'm happy. So bring on that desert island, and I'm bringing my Jackie.
LUCKY is such an epic wtfest of laudable proportions. If I had to describe it with two words, it would be "80s sleaze." Everyone plays musical beds, everyone does cocaine, everyone teases their hair, Madonna is still the sex symbol, and stretchy synthetic fabrics are in (the stretchier, the better, and bonus points for leopard print).
The characters are even better than the setting, though. Lucky, the titular character, is the daughter of an ex-mobster millionaire playboy who wants to make her own way in the world. She talks dirty and doesn't take any guff from anyone, and despite some of the lurid content in this book, she's basically a total feminist and has a raging comeback for every misogynistic comment hurled her way. The secondary characters are also great. There's her playboy pops, obviously: Gino. Then there's Olympia, the high-strung, slightly overweight heiress who puts the erotic in neurotic. There's Santino, the sadistic mobster. Eden, the hooker with the heart of gold-plated sulfur. Carrie, the reformed hooker with the lawyer son in the middle of an existential crisis. Lennie, the actor-comedian who just wants to find love. Dimitri, the aging billionaire with the high-maintenance French mistress. Brigette, the precocious and annoying child who grows up to be a precocious and annoying sex kitten. And Jess, the good girl in love with the bad boy (who just doesn't know it yet). And Matt, the bad boy who is in love with the good girl and doesn't think he's good enough (it's actually really adorable).
This is a long story, one of those epic sagas that were so popular in the 70s and 80s and then fell out of fashion in the 90s, which makes me sad because nothing makes me happier than finding a really thick and juicy story that you can bite into and savor like a steak. A longer page count, when done well, can really let you become attached to the characters, and by the end of the book you almost don't want to say goodbye to them. That's how I felt with this book. Even though the drama was so over the top that it was pure ridiculousness, it felt just real enough that I thought to myself, "Well, someone's probably done it." I read the Wiki on Jackie Collins and allegedly she drew inspiration from her own life for her books, which, okay - so do all writers. But Jackie Collins is the younger sister of actress Joan Collins, so I have no trouble believing that this teased and rhinestoned queen has rubbed elbows with the rich and famous and lived to tell about it. In fact, I want to believe it, because it makes these characters even more outrageous. Adultery, blackmail, domestic violence, drug addiction, murder, mob hits, kidnapping, inheritance battles, and scandal are all tropes involved in this messy soap opera. The last 100 pages are especially intense and had me sitting up in bed, saying (quietly, in a "whisper-yell" because everyone was asleep), "WHAT?"
If you enjoy fun, trashy books and long, interesting storylines that feature a colorful and large cast of characters, I really think you should give Jackie Collins a try. This is my second book by her and she's just so fun. I always end up fangirling after I finish one of her books. Right now, I'm reading SINNERS and it looks like more of the same: smut, vice, and romance. What more can you ask for?
Usually, I have no trouble at all reviewing books I like but CSARDAS is a different kind of beast. After finishing the book, I felt both a sense of satisfaction (I got through 600 pages of weighty material! I did good!) but also a sense of dread. Sometimes, you pick up a book of such substance that simply reviewing it doesn't quite do the damn thing justice. This is one of those times.
CSARDAS, which according to the book jacket, is pronounced "char-dosh," is a novel of the Austro-Hungarian Empire written just prior to, during, and then immediately after WWII. It chronicles the lives of two families of noble origin, the Ferencs and the Racs-Rassays. The first part of this book is set before WWII, in an idealistic golden age filled with prosperity and affluence. During WWII, there is a sense of fear, desperation, and violence. After the war, when the Communist party forms in the void left by the Nazis, there is a sense of paranoia, hypocrisy, and futility.
The first part of the book was my favorite, because I thought the way Malie and Eva's relationships with their families and their love interests was portrayed was exceptionally well done. None of the characters here are purely good or purely evil, and that morally grey characterization really reminded me of THE BRONZE HORSEMAN, which is set around the same time, only in Russia.
CSARDAS nearly does for Hungary what THE BRONZE HORSEMAN did for Russia, only the last part of the book feels a bit weak in comparison to the first two thirds. It doesn't help that the main characters are either shunted to the side - or SPOILER: killed - meaning that the romance of the third act falls between a character who was previously secondary to the plot, Janos, and Terez. Neither had the depth of character that Eva and Malie did in the beginning, which really disappointed me.
That said, I'm really glad I managed to locate a copy of this out-of-print gem and I really enjoyed learning about WWII from a different angle. I also loved that the handy book jacket (which also included a pronunciation guide for the title), disclosed how long the author spent researching this book - 3 FREAKING YEARS - and the book itself included a detailed bibliography. That was cool.
The only thing better than reading these types of books is reading them with friends. Thank you, Korey, for being my book buddy!
So at this point, I think I'm well on the way to becoming an unofficial Mariana Zapata expert, having read 5 of her books. It's fascinating to me how her style can remain consistent and yet the quality of how she applies it can vary so much. Take KULTI, which is an amazing book and movie-worthy in terms of pacing and plot, and then take LINGUS, which deserves to be blasted into the sun because I think it's unspeakably awful. Calling it a "piece of sh*t" would be generous, because at least sh*t can be used as fertilizer, but this garbage was utterly toxic and I loathed it.
THE WALL OF WINNIPEG AND ME falls squarely between those two extremes. I did not think it was as good as KULTI. I felt like Aiden was much less endearing than Kulti, maybe because Kulti's gruffness made sense, whereas Aiden just kind of looked like a jerk. I also did not like Vanessa as much as I liked Sal. Sal, with her iron backbone, was of no endless source of amusement to me, whereas Vanessa felt much more timid and doormatty.
I guess if I was describing the plot of THE WALL OF WINNIPEG AND ME, I'd say it's one part Devil Wears Prada, one part The Proposal, and one part Muriel's Wedding. Van has been working as Aiden's personal assistant for two years, and both he and his agent have treated her like garbage the whole time. Finally, she's decided that enough is enough and she's going to quit for her own sanity. Aiden asks her to reconsider and then, after that, requests her to marry him so that he can get citizenship and continue to play American football (he's from Canada). Initially, she refuses, but she's several hundred thousand dollars in the hole for her student loans, and when he agrees to sweeten the deal by paying them all off and buying her a house, she decides to agree to his scheme. After all, they only need to be married for five years. That's practically nothing, right?
I have had a lot to say about Zapata's books and how they upset me. Fecal humor and homophobic jokes are not uncommon in her books and I'm not sure why. I think it's because that's how she thinks dudes are like, and maybe some dudes are, but I don't want to read about them in my escape (fluffy romance). Regardless of the reason, they annoy me. Zapata seems to have cottoned on to that because in KULTI there was a marked reduction in this sort of "locker room talk," and in THE WALL OF WINNIPEG AND ME it was totally absent, as was most of the slut-shaming that I've seen in some of her earlier books. I found this very refreshing and it pleased me that Zapata actually seems to be taking the opinions of her readers into account, because this is something that other readers (not just me) complained about as well, especially LINGUS, which was the worst of the lot.
The beginning of the book is good, because I think Zapata really captures that overworked, under-appreciated mindset of personal assistants. No, the biggest setback of THE WALL OF WINNIPEG is that it's slow AF. I know that "slow burn" is kind of her thing, but this was really slow and felt boring as a result. There's almost no romance between the characters until the very end and I don't think they even have sex until 97%. In the meantime, there's a lot of drama about Van working things out with her incredibly abusive family (especially her sister - ugh), Aiden worrying about his possible deportation and basically being a grump on wheels, and bonding between the characters, which can be cute (I liked their Dragonball Z marathon), but sometimes feels almost gruelingly slow.
I think after KULTI, WALL OF WINNIPEG AND ME is Zapata's second-best book that I've read so far, followed by DEAR AARON, and then RHYTHM, CHORD & MALYKHIN, and then LINGUS coming up dead-last. It certainly isn't a bad book but people were hyping it up to me and saying that it was better than KULTI and I disagree. KULTI is her best book by a long shot. THE WALL OF WINNIPEG AND ME is, at best, inoffensive. I don't regret reading it, but it's not great, either.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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