Two kinds of fantasy
35. The Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
Book two to my #34 book review, I devoured this in another three days. Now that the first blush of author-crush has worn off, and I was crushing a little less on the book in general, I found myself more attentive to whether the storytelling would hold up. In short, I'm not sure -- it's still deft, funny, frightening, made me laugh and gasp out loud like an old fashioned rube -- but if I looked at the premise of the first book, and then took a hard look at where book #2 ended, I was far from satisfied with where the plot had gone. Not because it was unpredictable, but because the driving forces of book #1 just didn't seem to develop. [Vague spoilers ahead] Where are the Amyr? We are stuck in the same "durrrr maybe they're around here somewhere" place that the first book ended on, yes? Or maybe it was given away at the beginning of this book. Either way, I want to know about: the Amyr (knights templar!), the Chandrian (mysterious evil!). Instead I got a travelogue with sidequests. Don't get me wrong, still awesome! Still highly recommended! However, as far as advancing the plot goes, it felt pretty static. Our protagonist is on his way to being even more awesome, we learned a little bit more about why he's feared and revered, but we're still not sure why his bookend storyline has him as a brokedown innkeeper with a mysterious trunk, or what to think of the other big themes. If book 1 was a bit of Harry Potter in hell, book 2 was his junior year abroad, and he came back still not really sure what he should major in. Lots of fun, but not much to show for it. Maybe I'm being too harsh here -- I still love this book a whole lot.
36. Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart
This is my reading habit in a nutshell, books that were all the rage approximately two years ago! This is your standard dystopic New York kind of novel, with occasional bonus sexism or racism or hey maybe the protagonist is just awful? It's Woody Allan but Russian, the aging self-hating Jew who magically attracts his youthful beauty, Soon-Yi Previn! Except her name is Eunice. And they are verballing and FAKing on their apparati and shopping on AssLuxury and talking about yuan-pegged dollars on their GlobalTeens accounts, all this gibberish that makes sense in the book and is ridiculous in a book review. The point is, the world collapses, and then what happens to tenuous bad-idea romances? What happens to chasing youth? What happens when the American economy collapses and corporations take over? Nothing good, but then I think I already knew that. This book was definitely poignant, with its switching POV chapters showing how Eunice kind of despises Lenny, who prostrates himself in front of her, and maybe he understands her in a few interesting ways that transcend fountain of youth chasing, but mostly they seemed like slightly awful people. Perhaps this book was more radical in 2010, before the Occupy movement, and in that sense it was also weirdly prescient, but not in an interesting way. The message was that people are awful, America is awful, corporations are awful, chasing youth will bite you in the ass, money is power, and oh also this love story goes pretty terribly. Not terribly satisfying, but also fairly clever along the way.
Book two to my #34 book review, I devoured this in another three days. Now that the first blush of author-crush has worn off, and I was crushing a little less on the book in general, I found myself more attentive to whether the storytelling would hold up. In short, I'm not sure -- it's still deft, funny, frightening, made me laugh and gasp out loud like an old fashioned rube -- but if I looked at the premise of the first book, and then took a hard look at where book #2 ended, I was far from satisfied with where the plot had gone. Not because it was unpredictable, but because the driving forces of book #1 just didn't seem to develop. [Vague spoilers ahead] Where are the Amyr? We are stuck in the same "durrrr maybe they're around here somewhere" place that the first book ended on, yes? Or maybe it was given away at the beginning of this book. Either way, I want to know about: the Amyr (knights templar!), the Chandrian (mysterious evil!). Instead I got a travelogue with sidequests. Don't get me wrong, still awesome! Still highly recommended! However, as far as advancing the plot goes, it felt pretty static. Our protagonist is on his way to being even more awesome, we learned a little bit more about why he's feared and revered, but we're still not sure why his bookend storyline has him as a brokedown innkeeper with a mysterious trunk, or what to think of the other big themes. If book 1 was a bit of Harry Potter in hell, book 2 was his junior year abroad, and he came back still not really sure what he should major in. Lots of fun, but not much to show for it. Maybe I'm being too harsh here -- I still love this book a whole lot.
36. Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart
This is my reading habit in a nutshell, books that were all the rage approximately two years ago! This is your standard dystopic New York kind of novel, with occasional bonus sexism or racism or hey maybe the protagonist is just awful? It's Woody Allan but Russian, the aging self-hating Jew who magically attracts his youthful beauty, Soon-Yi Previn! Except her name is Eunice. And they are verballing and FAKing on their apparati and shopping on AssLuxury and talking about yuan-pegged dollars on their GlobalTeens accounts, all this gibberish that makes sense in the book and is ridiculous in a book review. The point is, the world collapses, and then what happens to tenuous bad-idea romances? What happens to chasing youth? What happens when the American economy collapses and corporations take over? Nothing good, but then I think I already knew that. This book was definitely poignant, with its switching POV chapters showing how Eunice kind of despises Lenny, who prostrates himself in front of her, and maybe he understands her in a few interesting ways that transcend fountain of youth chasing, but mostly they seemed like slightly awful people. Perhaps this book was more radical in 2010, before the Occupy movement, and in that sense it was also weirdly prescient, but not in an interesting way. The message was that people are awful, America is awful, corporations are awful, chasing youth will bite you in the ass, money is power, and oh also this love story goes pretty terribly. Not terribly satisfying, but also fairly clever along the way.