the bookshelf

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands is the second book in the Emily Wilde series. After fairie assassins attack Cambridge, Emily and Wendell set off to the Austrian Alps to find a way into the fairie realm to stop the attacks.

While I still liked the book, I think this installment is weaker than the first one. The journal format didn't work as well this time. With journal entries, you naturally take a step back from events, leaving the narration feeling 'detached' from what's going on. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but usually you would also get in-depth reflections, insights, and descriptions. This book lacked those, and it felt like the author got lazy with her writing. The descriptions were vague and lackluster, and the characters were a lot more flat in this book, with developments happening off page. The author didn't do the best in her characterization of Ariadne either. Like, she's supposed to be annoying, and Emily's perspective clearly colors things, but at a certain point in the book, things shift and Emily starts to warm to her, and the reader is supposed to also. But I still found her to be an annoying brat. During a conversation with Emily, where Ariadne threatened her before they left for Fairie, I actually got so mad lmao. I briefly scrolled through reviews on Goodreads, and apparently this is where I differ from them. A lot of people criticize Emily for being horrible to her niece (to be fair, she wasn't exactly great), but I feel like her actions are understandable considering how annoying Ariadne was. Are they justified? No, not really. She's the Cambridge professor so she should be more mature. But still, I couldn't bring myself to dislike the way Emily acted. But maybe I'm just projecting myself onto her. In some ways, we are similar in terms of our prickliness lol. If I had to deal with Ariadne, I probably wouldn't be the most patient either.

February's pick for Bookbug! Read the review here

The Passage is the first book in an adult horror science fiction series. After discovering a novel virus hidden in a South American cave, the US government believes they can use this virus to create super soldiers to fight in their war against terrorism. The only issue is that the virus is incredibly deadly, with unspeakable side effects on the few who manage to survive. FBI agent Wolgast is tasked with collecting test subjects for the government. But when the secret US military facility is breached and the test subjects escape, all hell breaks loose. A deadly pandemic sweeps across the world, killing billions and turning millions into monstrous creatures called virals, with a thirst for blood. Wolgast is determined to protect six-year-old orphan and former test subject Amy from the horrors of the apocalypse. But in a ruined world where horrors stalk at night, survival seems impossible.

Read this for book club. First book club read of the year and one we all felt positive about! Truly, a miracle! I was the most 'negative' of the group, but I still liked it and don't regret reading it. Our final ratings ended up being 4.5, 4.5, 4, and my 3.5. Not too shabby! For me, this book had an interesting premise but a flawed execution. I also felt it was a little too long, but I might have been more sensitive to its length after reading three chonky Cormoran Strike books in a row. (It's only February, and I've already read almost 1/3 the amount of pages I read last year, just with these five books.)

First and foremost, I really liked the premise of the book. I thought the first part was incredibly intriguing and engaging. I practically flew through the pages while reading about the scientific project, the end of the world, and Amy and Wolgast. I found the concept of the Twelve (plus Zero) to be very interesting. Overall, I liked the whole vampire zombie thing. Then, there was a time skip, and we swapped to an entirely new cast of characters. For me, the colony section was a slog. The pacing overall was a little weird. We all agreed that the swap to the colony was odd, in terms of pacing and character and plot investment. We all really liked Wolgast's character, so the time skip was really jarring. Cronin excelled at building tension in certain parts, but the book moved at a snail's pace, giving a weird sense of whiplash where we would transition from high-action scenes to another character living in domestic bliss. Very strange. The epigraphs throughout the book also killed the pacing. Normally, I love fictional epigraphs that build upon the world, but the ones in this book were unnecessary and way too long. Cronin's prose overall was fine. It was good in some parts and overly wordy/clunky in others. He definitely has a fondness for very long compound sentences.

My main complaint is that Cronin would cop out when it came to consequences. It felt like the main characters had plot armor. Despite the super tense situations they were in, I never really felt afraid for their lives. There were multiple points where it seemed like a character was killed, only for us to learn that they somehow survived. And the death(s) that do happen felt very predictable. In my opinion, it was clear which character(s) would end up being killed for plot reasons or character motivations or whatever. Speaking of characters, I felt like the female characters weren't the greatest. Maus and Sara felt interchangeable. I liked Alicia at first but by the end of the book, found her to be annoying. It felt like the female characters were written with less depth than the male characters, which I suppose isn't surprising considering the book was written by a man. I feel like this is often the case with male writers. I will say that I love Wolgast and the themes of parenthood throughout the book. Cronin did a great job in showcasing fatherhood. You could definitely tell that he's a father and was drawing on his own experiences while writing this book. Wolgast's relationship with Amy was incredibly well done and very touching.

Anyway, back to complaining. I also didn't like that it felt like the author was changing the rules established in his world. In terms of the virus, if you are an original test subject, you turn into a giga viral with psychic abilities. Otherwise, you either die or turn into a regular, mindless vampire zombie. But, towards the end of the book, the author reveals that there's a third case, where you can be a super special not-vampire zombie thingie with all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks. It's very dumb. Additionally, in the latter half of the book, the virals just didn't feel scary anymore. They didn't feel like a threat and only really appeared when Cronin wanted something to happen with the plot. I especially found myself questioning the book during the characters' journey, where they barely encountered any virals and had no issues camping out in the wilderness, with no real shelter, when it was established previously that the virals had infested the land and hunted at night. I was also iffy on the more “mystical” aspects of the book in regards to the magical dreams, telepathy, etc. of the Twelve. It felt a little out of place, but the others disagreed. I suppose I just couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to not be bothered by it. Oh, also, I thought the fake expletive 'flyers' was very dumb. It's giving Brandon Sanderson-levels of stupid. In general, I have some minor quibbles with the worldbuilding. For instance, the way the colony was set up didn't make a lot of sense. A small, sequestered community like that would rely on the labor of everyone, including the children, so having the kids grow up sheltered didn't make much sense, logically speaking. I can understand, from an emotional standpoint, that the survivors would want to shelter their children, but having the kids transition from the school abruptly to the real world, where they would have to immediately choose their occupation, seems unreasonable. You could make the argument that a similar thing happens in real life, but in real life, we don't live under the threat of vampire zombies, with most of human civilization collapsed and humanity itself on the brink of extinction.

Spoilery Complaints

Okay no but seriously, the plot armor and death fake-outs were so annoying. It happened multiple times, with multiple characters!! What the hell, man? Expounding upon the Alicia thing, I liked her at first but thought the whole Colonel thing was dumb/very convenient. It contradicted her entire character. So you're telling me that Alicia, who is established to be an incredibly loyal person, would abandon her friends to join some random military expedition? That she would throw it all away because she made an oath as a child to a dead man she didn't even seem to like? The group clearly needed her. They just survived a series of traumatic events, including ESCAPING FROM BABCOCK, ONE OF THE TWELVE, but she was like, "Lol nah you're fine. You'll definitely make it without me. :)" Like, huh???? It just felt like a contrived way for the author to have conflict between her and Peter. Also, her becoming a giga not-vampire was really stupid. We all agreed it was dumb and a misstep by the author. During our meeting, I remarked that she felt like a product of her time—the girlboss character of the 2010s, like Black Widow. Very Marvel-esque. Oh, also I was disappointed that we didn't get to learn much about the Twelve (plus Zero/Fanning), aside from Babcock. Like, I know it's a series, but come on. They're the most interesting part! Well, for me, at least. I was super curious about Zero/Fanning.

Anyway, that's my review for The Passage. I said in our book club meeting that I could be convinced to bump my rating up to a 4, but I think I'll stick with my original 3.5. It feels right. I enjoyed aspects of the book and thought it was good, but it has its flaws. I'm not sure if I'll continue with the series, though. The thing with books like this is that I feel like as the world expands, the plot often gets more ridiculous. And as I was reading this book, I feared that the plot would go off the rails in the future. I read summaries of the sequels on Wikipedia, and I think my suspicions are on the mark. While I'm super curious about the Twelve (and Zero), I'm not sure if I'm curious enough to endure all of that and two more tomes. My friend said she might read the sequels in the future, so I'll have her tell me how it goes before I decide to read them. (Although knowing her, she probably won't get around to them until like a year or two has passed lmao.)

"It was possible, he understood, for a person's life to become just a long series of mistakes, and that the end, when it came, was just one more instance in a chain of bad choices. The thing was, most of these mistakes were actually borrowed from other people. You took their bad ideas and, for whatever reason, made them your own."

"A baby wasn't an idea, as love was an idea. A baby was a fact. It was a being with a mind and a nature, and you could feel about it any way you liked, but a baby wouldn't care. Just by existing, it demanded that you believe in a future: the future it would crawl in, walk in, live in. A baby was a piece of time; it was a promise you made that the world made back to you. A baby was the oldest deal there was, to go on living."

The Serviceberry is the latest release from Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass and Gathering Moss. When I read her two books in 2023, she quickly became one of my favorite nonfiction authors, and so I was excited to pick this up! The Serviceberry is much shorter than the prior two books, clocking in at 112 pages. Originally an essay published in a magazine, Kimmerer uses the example of the serviceberry, which lives in a symbiotic relationship with the birds and its environment, to illustrate her point on economics. Kimmerer points out that our current economy system is unsustainable. Traditionally, the concept of economy is centered around the basis of 'scarcity,' but Kimmerer notes that things like food and water aren't actually scarce; it's just that our system makes them scarce. Kimmerer warns that the destruction caused by modern economics will lead to actual scarcity and suggests alternatives derived from biomimicry and/or indigenous culture, such as the gift economy. In the gift economy, or serviceberry economy, gratitude and reciprocity are the currency. Abundance is shared with others, and in turn, abundance is shared back to you, creating small webs of interdependence based on mutual aid. Kimmerer notes that she doesn't believe market capitalism will vanish but suggests that the gift economy can live alongside the market economy. She gives the example of destruction within a forest. In the gaps left behind arrive pioneer species, species of fast-growing plants that consume resources, crowd out others, and reproduce like crazy. Eventually, these species cannot continue this rate of growth and begin to die out. Incrementally, they start to be replaced by slower-growing species. The stressful conditions left behind by the pioneer species incentivize symbiotic relations and nurture cooperation, not competition. These latter plant communities are considered "mature" and sustainable, unlike their predecessors. Kimmerer notes that this transition from exploitation to reciprocity is possible with the gift economy. She believes with incremental change and disruption, gaps can emerge between the dominant and the new, and that gift economies can emerge in the gaps carved out of the destructive market economy.

Listened to this via audiobook before rereading it physically. The audiobook is really short, like two hours, and I wanted to make sure I understood everything the author was saying. The audiobook is good as it's narrated by the author, but I'd recommend reading it physically or via ebook. The book form contains illustrations, which are lovely! I adored the delicate hatching and cross-hatching the artist used. Overall, I really enjoyed it! It was a nice change of pace and has given me much to think about. With the current political climate and general enshittification of the world, the topic of mutual aid has come up a lot, and has been floating around in the peripheries of my mind. Kimmerer is adept at articulating similar thoughts I've been having, and I always enjoy listening to her perspective, both as an ecologist and a member of the Potawatomi Nation. With everything that's going on, it's easy to become overwhelmed and feel hopeless, but Kimmerer's writing always shakes me out of that funk and reminds me that things can get better.

"The wealth and security we seem to crave could be met by sharing what we have. Ecopsychologists have shown that the practice of gratitude puts brakes on hyperconsumption. The relationships nurtured by gift thinking diminish our senses of scarcity and want. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver. Climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss are the consequences of unrestrained taking by humans. Might cultiviation of gratitude be part of the solution?"

"It was previously unthinkable that one would pay for a drink of water; but as careless economic expansion pollutes fresh water, we now incentivize privatization of springs and aquifers. Sweet water, a free gift of the Earth, is pirated by faceless corporations who encase it in plastic containers to sell. And now many can't afford what was previously free, and we incentivize wrecking public waters to create demand for the privatized. What induces people to buy bottled water from a corporation more convincingly than contaminated water flowing from the faucet?"

Troubled Blood is the fifth book in the Cormoran Strike series. While visiting family in Cornwall, Cormoran is approached by a woman who asks for his help in locating her mother, who vanished in 1974. The woman disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and the investigation was horribly mishandled. The lead investigator at the time was eventually forced to resign when it was revealed that he was in the middle of a psychotic episode that caused him to fixate on astrology and the occult. Although the chances of him figuring out what happened are vanishingly small, Cormoran agrees to investigate, as he is intrigued and has never taken on a cold case before. However, Cormoran's agency is increasingly busy, and they have only a year to solve the case, on top of all of the other investigations he and Robin are currently juggling.

Yippie, a rare five star read! This book was surprisingly pretty emotional at times. Poor Robin and Cormoran were really going through it. I loved their development (aw, they're best mates) and how Cormoran is learning not to be an insensitive blockhead. A certain character whose name starts with an M is still a dick, but I thought how Robin resolved things with them was kind of sweet. It was nice to see things finally resolved and my girl finally free. I've been enjoying my Cormoran Strike binge, but I might need to take a break. I feel like I'm not reading as closely as I want to, and the books are starting to blur together. Also, the books keep getting longer and longer. This one is over 900 pages long, and the next two are even longer. Yeesh!

"The problem wasn't that Robin didn't think she'd love her child. On the contrary, she thought it likely that she would love that child to the extent that this job, for which she had voluntarily sacrificed a marriage, her safety, her sleep and her financial security, would have to be sacrificed in return. And how would she feel, afterward, about the person who'd made that sacrifice necessary?"

"Morris, Robin thought, as she headed toward the Turbe, didn't actually like women. He desired them, but that, of course, was an entirely different matter: Robin, who was forever marked by the ineradicable memory of the man in the gorilla mask, knew better than most that desire and liking were different, and sometimes mutually exclusive, things. Morris gave himself away constantly, not only in the way he spoke to Robin, but in his desire to call Mrs. Smith "Rich Bitch," his attribution of venal or provocative motives to every woman under surveillance, in the barely disguised disgust with which he noted that Mucky Ricci was now forced to live in a houseful of females. Christ, I hope I never end up like that."

The fourth book in the Cormoran Strike series, Lethal White immediately begins where the prior book left off. Then, a time skip occurs to when the story currently takes place. One day, a distressed man visits Cormoran's office, claiming to have witnessed a murder when he was a child. The man is clearly mentally ill and under some form of psychosis, but Cormoran finds it hard to forget about his story. Meanwhile, he and Robin are hired by an MP to investigate blackmail, taking them into the halls of Parliament. Secrets from the past are revealed as events lead back to the grounds of a countryside manor, the same location where the mentally ill man claimed to have seen a murder.

Decided to give this entry four stars. Not because I thought it was worse than Career of Evil, but because I felt less involved in the mystery. Like Robin, I was struggling to see the connections between the crimes as well as who the culprit was. Not sure if I just wasn't paying attention or if the clues were more subtle this time. Again, I really loved Robin in this book and her standing up for herself. She really is such a well-written character. I loved the further exploration of the characters' personal lives. The author does an amazing job of writing complex, realistic relationships and showing the resentment that can build in a failing relationship. I was so frustrated for Robin, and seeing her finally addressing things was so cathartic. A certain character whose name starts with M is so pathetic, awful, and horribly realistic. They are so incredibly petty in a way that immediately reminds me of people that I've encountered in my life (and who coincidentally worked in the same field; finance people truly are the worst). Rowling did an amazing job depicting such a horrible character. I also loved the little details she always gives about the daily lives of characters. I like seeing what they're eating or what is going on in the UK at the time. During this book, London is preparing for the 2012 Summer Olympics, and something about this backdrop felt so nostalgic.

"Geraint was representing me at that event, and it will go the way it always goes in the press when it all comes out: it will have been my fault, all of it! Because men's crimes are always ours in the final analysis, aren't they, Mr. Strike? Ultimate responsibility always lies with the woman, who should have stopped it, who should have acted, who must have known. Your failings are really our failings, aren't they? Because the proper role of the woman is carer, and there's nothing lower in this whole world than a bad mother."

"Life had taught him that a great and powerful love could be felt for the most apparently unworthy people, a circumstance that ought, after all, to give everybody consolation."

Career of Evil is the third book in the ongoing Cormoran Strike series. When a woman's severed leg is anonymously delivered to his assistant, Robin, Cormoran suspects that someone from his past is targeting him. The only issue is that he has four suspects. While the police focus on one suspect that Cormoran feels is the least likely to be the perpetrator, he and Robin focus on investigating the others. But there are two issues. One is that each of the suspects is equally capable and has the motives to go after him. The other is that he suspects that they may be targeting Robin in order to get to him, and he fears for her safety as a serial killer stalks the streets of London.

First book of the year and a strong start to the year! I feel like the books in this series keep getting better and better. The first was alright, the second was good, and Galbraith/Rowling really hits her stride in this one. The mystery was well done, and she does an amazing job at keeping you suspicious of each of the suspects, even as there are reveals throughout the book. Each suspect is equally horrible; they all have traits that link them to hints given about the killer, and they all have a genuine motive. Often, I feel like a lot of mystery books will kind of phone it in when it comes to alternate suspects/red herrings. They're usually pretty obvious, and you can just sense the author's hand in trying to obfuscate the mystery. Not in this book, however. The author is very clever in laying out clues while also keeping the mystery 'fair'. She is very meticulous in the details. She also did a good job in maintaining the tension in the story, both with the serial killer plotline as well as the personal conflicts of Cormoran and Robin. Their characters really shine in this book. Cormoran is blinded by his emotions from people from his past resurfacing as well as his concern for Robin, which leads to him inadvertently endangering her by keeping her in the dark. Robin, meanwhile, desperately wants to prove that she is not a liability, that she is no longer defined by a traumatic event in her life, leading her to act more recklessly than normal. Additionally, her perspective as a woman leads her to have a different take on things than Strike, and I appreciate that the author showcases these concerns that men may be blind to or not consider. Both of the main characters' personal lives are depicted in such a believable, detailed way. I also liked the few chapters from the killer's perspective. They were really creepy, and the author did a great job of leaving little clues while also keeping the killer's identity hidden. I will say that ending this book on a cliffhanger was a jerk move, though! I immediately started the next book because of it lol.

"Strike knew how deeply ingrained was the belief that the evil conceal their dangerous predilections for violence and domination. When they wear them like bangles for all to see, the gullible populace laughs, calls it a pose, or finds it strangely attractive."