14-16/50, Shamsie, Pon, Yang
All books I'd picked up because of recs on this community.
Kamila Shamsie, Broken Verses. I picked this up because of puritybrown’s enthusiastic review -- and am very glad I did. About a woman, Aasmaani, in Pakistan, whose mother was a radical activist, and is now missing; her mother's lover, the Poet, murdered; and how Aasmaani deals and fails to deal with these stories, especially when new information comes to light that challenges her beliefs about the past… It's well written, it's complex and different, and every character feels so clearly a part of their world and their community. I definitely want to read more books by her, although I also feel I should read more explicit Pakistani history first.
What didn’t work for me in this was Ed. He never really felt like a fully developed character, and in particular the "meet-cute" between him and Aasmaani just rubbed me the wrong way - I could never see what she saw in him. Because of that, the ending became obvious before I got there, although it's also that in meet-up chunk between them felt forced, and I never quite managed to see what Aasmaani sees in him. Because of that, the ending became obvious, and really only reinforced my dislike of the character.
Cindy Pon, Silver Phoenix. Ai Ling sets out to look for her father and ends up on a quest through a medieval/mythic China that involves multiple encounters with bizarre and fantastic creatures, various gods, and two brothers on a quest of their own that intersects with hers. Fun, but although the encounters are great they’re episodic, with not a lot of building tension, and there are inconsistencies that threw me a little (are all the demons transformed humans? This only seems to be the case when a sympathetic dead character is required). I’m also, basically, not all that enthralled by reincarnation as a story trope, unless there’s an awful lot of interacting with and fighting destiny.
What’s good about the book, though, is the enthusiasm that carries the reader through, the amazing and frequent scenes of highly enticing food, and Ai Ling herself, who is likeable despite her specialness (mind-reading, an encyclopaediac memory of a relevant and totally accurate forbidden text, a magic pendant and the reincarnation thing), and who manages to both make mistakes and recover from them. I’m not convinced I want a sequel, although I would like another by the same author.
American-born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang. Overall, I liked this, and the art, but I found the Jin Wang American high school angst storyline the least appealing of the lot. Partly, this is because I feel like I’ve seen it too many times before, and it’s always a straight male teenage angst US high school thing within which all the women become weirdly two dimensional (arggh. Apart from being a comic) and shiny quest objects. Partly, though, it just felt less real - and less interesting - than the monkey king and Chin-Kee storylines - as if the author were relying on a cliché rather than transforming it.
I do like Wei-Chen's line about Jin's hair looking like a broccoli, though.
Kamila Shamsie, Broken Verses. I picked this up because of puritybrown’s enthusiastic review -- and am very glad I did. About a woman, Aasmaani, in Pakistan, whose mother was a radical activist, and is now missing; her mother's lover, the Poet, murdered; and how Aasmaani deals and fails to deal with these stories, especially when new information comes to light that challenges her beliefs about the past… It's well written, it's complex and different, and every character feels so clearly a part of their world and their community. I definitely want to read more books by her, although I also feel I should read more explicit Pakistani history first.
What didn’t work for me in this was Ed. He never really felt like a fully developed character, and in particular the "meet-cute" between him and Aasmaani just rubbed me the wrong way - I could never see what she saw in him. Because of that, the ending became obvious before I got there, although it's also that in meet-up chunk between them felt forced, and I never quite managed to see what Aasmaani sees in him. Because of that, the ending became obvious, and really only reinforced my dislike of the character.
Cindy Pon, Silver Phoenix. Ai Ling sets out to look for her father and ends up on a quest through a medieval/mythic China that involves multiple encounters with bizarre and fantastic creatures, various gods, and two brothers on a quest of their own that intersects with hers. Fun, but although the encounters are great they’re episodic, with not a lot of building tension, and there are inconsistencies that threw me a little (are all the demons transformed humans? This only seems to be the case when a sympathetic dead character is required). I’m also, basically, not all that enthralled by reincarnation as a story trope, unless there’s an awful lot of interacting with and fighting destiny.
What’s good about the book, though, is the enthusiasm that carries the reader through, the amazing and frequent scenes of highly enticing food, and Ai Ling herself, who is likeable despite her specialness (mind-reading, an encyclopaediac memory of a relevant and totally accurate forbidden text, a magic pendant and the reincarnation thing), and who manages to both make mistakes and recover from them. I’m not convinced I want a sequel, although I would like another by the same author.
American-born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang. Overall, I liked this, and the art, but I found the Jin Wang American high school angst storyline the least appealing of the lot. Partly, this is because I feel like I’ve seen it too many times before, and it’s always a straight male teenage angst US high school thing within which all the women become weirdly two dimensional (arggh. Apart from being a comic) and shiny quest objects. Partly, though, it just felt less real - and less interesting - than the monkey king and Chin-Kee storylines - as if the author were relying on a cliché rather than transforming it.
I do like Wei-Chen's line about Jin's hair looking like a broccoli, though.