Quicksand by Nella Larsen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m not sure how confident I am about the five stars just yet, this novel hit far too close to home. Quicksand is a bit like a modernist black Madame Bovary, if one wishes to be reductive, and I loved Madame Bovary.

Helga Crane is an unhappy schoolteacher at Naxos in Tennessee, chafing at the isolation and ostracization she feels being a bi-racial, class conscious woman in an all black institution in the South. She’s 23 at the opening of the novel. I am 23. Too close!

However, Helga lacks a home and sense of identity, her white mother, an immigrant from Denmark, died when Helga was fifteen, leaving her alone but for her Uncle Peter, a white man who arranges for her education but otherwise remains the racially correct amount of distant toward her. Helga’s father is absent but to my memory never finally accounted for. I presume he died when she was very young.

In the novel’s opening Helga decides suddenly after two years at Naxos she can’t bear another day of the place, quits without reference, breaks off her lukewarm engagement, and sets off to Chicago to apply to her Uncle Peter for a loan to get her on her feet. It’s the beginning of a journey for Helga, a quest for something she can’t define. Led astray by her own folly and inevitable inability to know her own mind, Helga searches for a home, an identity, and a balm to sooth the racial friction of her very being.

I read this novel for a literature class, and my classmate pointed out immediately how distasteful and unlikeable Helga is as a character. I may have to disagree, being that Helga is, for me, a caricature of possibility, a warning sign writ large. Likeable or not, she is the focal point of a series of very complex internalized issues, and a very interesting novel.

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The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel is amazing. Probably the best Science Fiction novel I have ever read, and if not that, certainly in the top five. Hard-hitting theological questions detailed by tight knit interpersonal relationships and speculation about first contact with other sentient species. Very few flaws come to mind just after the first reading, but if I had to name one it would probably be how difficult it was to mentally picture Emilio Sandoz as a real human being, given how detailed his characterization is at the start, and how much he changes. I doubt it would trouble too many others. Though, speaking of troubling elements, this book is not fluffy and NOT for the faint of heart. Still, read it. READ IT.

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Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having previously read Feist’s Riftwar Saga and giving it a solid meh, I can confidently say this is Feist at his best.

Fans of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods will enjoy this book, which was published about ten years before Gaiman’s exploration of the fantastical in different kinds of folk tales.

Great pacing, solid characters, masterful weaving of the paranormal and mystical elements. Loved it.

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White Cat by Holly Black
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Such a good book! I was reluctant to read it for a very long time because of my opinion of the other Holly Black books I’ve read (Tithe, Valiant, Ironside). They were okay, good even, but kind of lacking. I didn’t really connect with them and they didn’t impress me.

White Cat totally did. The concept is refreshing, and I liked how the mob elements gave a very gritty, realistic urban feel to the story.

I’m reading Red Glove now, and I’m happy to report: my trust in Holly Black’s writing has been fully restored.

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Eon by Alison Goodman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I vacillated between four and five stars for this book, and I ended up going with my *feels* instead of being hoity-toity and and judging it purely on its very few imperfections (of which I can’t call up an example at the moment, go figure).

Eon is written well, to start off. I was turning pages with an elevated heart rate, desperate to see what happened next. It was awesome. I was so sucked into the story and I felt Goodman gives the reader just the right amount of exposition about the geography and culture of Eon’s world. The history, not so much. This is crucial to the plot, however, as the reader begins to become aware, slowly, that a destructive patriarchy has erased and tried to rewrite the mystical laws and history of the world.

Speaking of, I really, really liked how Goodman confronted many feminist topics in a fantasy setting. Clearly, this is nothing new, especially YA fiction. I chose this book on Tamora Pierce’s recommendation (her quote is on the cover), and she has been writing pro-feminist YA fantasy for like, almost 30 years now? I think the major difference I would draw between a Pierce novel and Goodman’s Eon is that Tamora Pierce’s worlds sometimes have pockets of equalized cultures and traditions, in which women are protected. This is only hinted at in Eon, in which the eponymous character faces death with no quarter in hiding her sex. There is more hardness in Goodman’s reality, which seemed more realistic to me than Pierce’s style of tart practicality.

The other thing I really liked was the treatment of Lady Dela’s character. I won’t go into it to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that I thought she was very well done by the author.

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to reading Eona, and I’m glad to have discovered another author who does fantasy so very well.

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Chime by Franny Billingsley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ok, so five stars, and here is why: this book richly deserves five stars. It is BEAUTIFULLY written. It is not, however, going to seem beautifully written to many or even most people, for the very reason it is a dark-twisty-wonderful mess of beauty.

I won’t lie, it almost lost me. I was about 30% of the way through when I stopped reading and started looking for something else. Reading the first half of this book, to me, was a lot like a reading assignment for school. I’m an English major who enjoys poetry only when it is not force fed. And that (being an English major) gives me the authority to refer to the twisty rabbit warren mind of Briony, the narrator, in this first part. It is complex, it is boring, but BOY HOWDY will it all start to make sense later.

Take it in, slowly. Small chunks. Pace yourself, take your time, be patient with this book. Let yourself get bored, but please please try to finish it, because it is so worth the effort!

Usually I have trouble immersing myself into anything that isn’t info-dump-tastic and incredibly oversimplified without massive distrust of the author’s skill, and to a certain extent that happened here. Once I started to figure out what was going on in the story, my brain was highjacked, my disbelief suspended.

The characters were really well done. My favorite part of the story is Elderic. I am usually not so susceptible to male characters, but I couldn’t help but be charmed. He was just so dang understanding and raffish and frankly calling any man leonine is enough to make my imagination do implausible things.

Ok, now I’m just gushing and not saying anything particularly useful. My final remark is that I liked this book for the same reason I love Diana Wynne Jones’ Fire & Hemlock. There are some similarities, but mostly I am referring to the fact that it’s hard to tell exactly what is going on but you love it all the same.

Just read it, all the way through. I probably will again soon.

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The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Clicking that fifth star is a pretty big commitment. People will expect you to have some seriously well reasoned and thoughtful/thought provoking things to say about the book in question.

Frankly, right now I really couldn’t write the review that could do this book justice. Because it was really fucking good. But it was also a little sad, and a lot more truly honest.

Which, really, is why John Green is so good at what he does, because he can write a story that can seem completely impossible and wonderful and totally realistic all at once, and you can stop yourself believing it is totally made up. Because you really want to think such things can happen, to anyone. To you. And that is pretty awesome.

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