Reading Sunday
I'm still around! Just facing multiple deadlines. Hopefully to be around more soon! (...she says, for the millionth time.)
Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo. A murder mystery set in contemporary small-town Ohio, deep in Amish country. Our lead character is Kate Burkholder, the new chief of police, who's only recently returned to her hometown after spending years in the big city. Kate grew up Amish, but left the faith at 18 and as a result is considered an outcast by her family and former community.
Now, in the deepest part of winter, a serial killer attacks. One with a particularly gruesome habit of focusing on women: torturing them, raping them, and desecrating their bodies. It seems to match the MO of a serial killer who struck in the same area twenty years previously - but Kate has a long-held secret that means she knows it can't be the same man. Telling the truth means she'll lose her job, but keeping the secret means more innocent lives could be lost.
A fun, if shallow, thriller. Castillo's descriptions of the murder scenes and bodies are way more graphic than I prefer to read, and there was a CSI-esque vibe that put me off in the early chapters. I nearly gave up on the book because of that, but ultimately I'm glad that I continued on because the plot ended up grabbing my attention and I raced through the end. I especially liked the revelation of the killer, and hadn't guessed who it would be at all.
On the negative side, the love interest is incredibly boring and cliched, though thankfully he and his relationship with Kate doesn't get very much page time. I was also surprised by how small a role the Amish setting and the clash of cultures between the Amish and the English ended up playing. Why choose such a specific setting if you're not going to make use of it? Of course, given that this is just the first book in a series that currently consists of 12 and is still going strong, I'll give Castillo the benefit of the doubt in assuming it comes up more later on.
Overall, I can't say Sworn to Silence is anything more than an adequately competent crime thriller. But it kept me engaged and my mind off of real-world problems for a few days, and honestly, isn't that all you can ask from a book?
The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin. The second book in Jemisin's award-winning trilogy about earthquakes, magic, culture change, oppression, and motherhood. I've been meaning to read this book for at least four years - since it came out - and putting it off for approximately 3.5 years, because I felt I should reread The Fifth Season first. The trilogy as a whole is intricately plotted, with worldbuilding, backstory, and characterization presented almost as puzzles to be slowly assembled; in other words, they're not books that benefit from being read years apart.
In The Obelisk Gate, Essun has given up her search for her daughter, Nassun, in favor of staying with a community that could provide her with safety in the midst of a world-shattering Season. This will also allow her to stay with Alabaster, her old friend/mentor/lover, who wants to teach her a new way of using her orogeny that might allow her to save the world once and for all. Unfortunately Alabaster is dying due to turning into literal stone, so there's a deadline to how much he'll be able to teach her, particularly when Essun isn't sure she wants to learn.
In another plotline, Nassun and her father (who Nassun witnessed beat her toddler brother to death for possessing orogeny, as does Nassun herself) set off on a quest to find a place where Nassun can be "cured". Since this is unsurprisingly impossible, Nassun instead learns not to trust, to use her orogeny in brand-new ways, and to find a new father.
I loved The Fifth Season. Spoiler alert, I loved The Stone Sky, which I've already finished. I love the trilogy as a whole. But The Obelisk Gate is very much a middle book. Almost nothing happens in Essun's plotline, which is a particular shock after the massive amount of plot stuffed into the first book. (Three lives worth!) And yes, it's necessary for the story as a whole for her to learn the world's backstory, for her to build relationships with the other members of the comm, for her to begin to heal, but it's still really, really boring. Nassun's plotline is much more compelling, but it takes up a fairly small proportion of the book. Her sections were an absolutely devastating portrayal of emotional abuse on a child, and the way such treatment warps personality, beliefs, and self-identity. It was so well-written, but then after each short chapter we had to go back to Essun, who is... still not doing much.
It's not a bad book! It's just the weak link between two outstanding achievements, and the best things about it are things that are also present in the other two. It's a link that does what it needs to do, even if I'll probably skip it when rereading the trilogy in the future. This entry was originally posted at https://brigdh.dreamwidth.org/588875.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo. A murder mystery set in contemporary small-town Ohio, deep in Amish country. Our lead character is Kate Burkholder, the new chief of police, who's only recently returned to her hometown after spending years in the big city. Kate grew up Amish, but left the faith at 18 and as a result is considered an outcast by her family and former community.
Now, in the deepest part of winter, a serial killer attacks. One with a particularly gruesome habit of focusing on women: torturing them, raping them, and desecrating their bodies. It seems to match the MO of a serial killer who struck in the same area twenty years previously - but Kate has a long-held secret that means she knows it can't be the same man. Telling the truth means she'll lose her job, but keeping the secret means more innocent lives could be lost.
A fun, if shallow, thriller. Castillo's descriptions of the murder scenes and bodies are way more graphic than I prefer to read, and there was a CSI-esque vibe that put me off in the early chapters. I nearly gave up on the book because of that, but ultimately I'm glad that I continued on because the plot ended up grabbing my attention and I raced through the end. I especially liked the revelation of the killer, and hadn't guessed who it would be at all.
On the negative side, the love interest is incredibly boring and cliched, though thankfully he and his relationship with Kate doesn't get very much page time. I was also surprised by how small a role the Amish setting and the clash of cultures between the Amish and the English ended up playing. Why choose such a specific setting if you're not going to make use of it? Of course, given that this is just the first book in a series that currently consists of 12 and is still going strong, I'll give Castillo the benefit of the doubt in assuming it comes up more later on.
Overall, I can't say Sworn to Silence is anything more than an adequately competent crime thriller. But it kept me engaged and my mind off of real-world problems for a few days, and honestly, isn't that all you can ask from a book?
The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin. The second book in Jemisin's award-winning trilogy about earthquakes, magic, culture change, oppression, and motherhood. I've been meaning to read this book for at least four years - since it came out - and putting it off for approximately 3.5 years, because I felt I should reread The Fifth Season first. The trilogy as a whole is intricately plotted, with worldbuilding, backstory, and characterization presented almost as puzzles to be slowly assembled; in other words, they're not books that benefit from being read years apart.
In The Obelisk Gate, Essun has given up her search for her daughter, Nassun, in favor of staying with a community that could provide her with safety in the midst of a world-shattering Season. This will also allow her to stay with Alabaster, her old friend/mentor/lover, who wants to teach her a new way of using her orogeny that might allow her to save the world once and for all. Unfortunately Alabaster is dying due to turning into literal stone, so there's a deadline to how much he'll be able to teach her, particularly when Essun isn't sure she wants to learn.
In another plotline, Nassun and her father (who Nassun witnessed beat her toddler brother to death for possessing orogeny, as does Nassun herself) set off on a quest to find a place where Nassun can be "cured". Since this is unsurprisingly impossible, Nassun instead learns not to trust, to use her orogeny in brand-new ways, and to find a new father.
I loved The Fifth Season. Spoiler alert, I loved The Stone Sky, which I've already finished. I love the trilogy as a whole. But The Obelisk Gate is very much a middle book. Almost nothing happens in Essun's plotline, which is a particular shock after the massive amount of plot stuffed into the first book. (Three lives worth!) And yes, it's necessary for the story as a whole for her to learn the world's backstory, for her to build relationships with the other members of the comm, for her to begin to heal, but it's still really, really boring. Nassun's plotline is much more compelling, but it takes up a fairly small proportion of the book. Her sections were an absolutely devastating portrayal of emotional abuse on a child, and the way such treatment warps personality, beliefs, and self-identity. It was so well-written, but then after each short chapter we had to go back to Essun, who is... still not doing much.
It's not a bad book! It's just the weak link between two outstanding achievements, and the best things about it are things that are also present in the other two. It's a link that does what it needs to do, even if I'll probably skip it when rereading the trilogy in the future. This entry was originally posted at https://brigdh.dreamwidth.org/588875.html. Please comment there using OpenID.