Tag: alternate reality

Blurb Book Review: Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Image by Goodreads.com

Lydia is a translator for a Logi, an alien species that has an embassy on Earth. The Logi communicate telepathically and only a small selection of humans can understand them. Lydia enjoys her job and has a good rapport with Fitz, her Logi employer, although translating for too long will give the effect of drunkenness in her. One night, after overdoing it with translating, Fitz is found dead in his study. Lydia lives in his residence and was the only one home. Too bad she can’t remember what happened, or even if she was the one who killed him.

The author does an excellent job of keeping the reader firmly implanted in the world. These Logi aliens are commonplace and accepted by most humans, which is reflected well in how Lydia interacts with Fitz and her social media. The world doesn’t feel too far into our future, which is a feat in and of itself. Glasses supply a constant feed of social media and recording the world around the wearer and scrolls offer another kind of access to the internet, social media, and recording yourself. Everyone is constantly being watched and potentially recorded and Lydia dealt with this in a way that felt believable.

The author also uses language to keep the reader firmly entrenched in the narrative. Words like ‘idee’, ‘veearr’, ‘ayaie’, and ‘enpeecees’ are used just like the acronyms are now and it makes sense that these acronyms would become words in the future.

The novel was engaging enough, but it’s a mystery that I doubt can be solved by the reader until the last bit of the book. The clue of how Lydia knows who the killer is doesn’t make sense to the reader until Lydia explains it at the end. Other than that, the book takes some odd twists and turns, which I found entertaining enough to consider seeking out the author’s other novels.

Blurb Book Review: The Thick and The Lean by Chana Porter (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Image from Goodreads.com

Beatrice hungers for luxurious foods, but her strict religious sect praises those that go hungry. She’s expected to take pills to suppress her appetite and stabilize her moods but chooses to avoid them. All she wants is to be a chef and prepare delicious meals for those who want to eat solid food, and to do this without shame. In a moment of vulnerability, she shares her desire with her girlfriend, who rips her recipe book and heart to shreds. Beatrice runs away that very night, to a woman who gave her the freedom to copy recipes from books surreptitiously. That woman helps her escape the cult and train to be a chef.

Reiko is from one of the poorest sections of the city, the Bastion. She receives a scholarship to an expensive school, where she can study skills to make her marketable. Her computer engineering skills are particularly good and she decides this will be her career path. Her grades are stellar, but the school pulls her scholarship, leaving her with either a mountain of debt or going home in shame. She chooses to use her skills to skim money from her rich roommate. From there, she steals her way higher and higher up in society.

Both women get their hands on a forbidden book: The Kitchen Girl. This book is the basis for the Flesh Martyr religion and forbidden because the ideas have been bastardized into people starving themselves to be closer to God.

While both women lead remarkably different lives, they cross paths and bond over the book.

The author’s narrative style is sumptuous, describing rich foods and fine clothes in such a way that I could taste and feel them. I loved the author’s first book, The Seep, and am thrilled that this book is equally good, if not better.

The worldbuilding is incredible and beautifully woven into the story. The author takes dieting to an extreme, demonstrates the difference between the wealthiest class and the poorest, and ties everything together with a theme of nourishment, finding oneself, and societal expectations based on class.

I loved this novel so much I’d read it again, just to immerse myself in the world for a while longer.

Blurb Book Review: The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment
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Image from my favourite source: Goodreads.com

I put this book on hold at the library because I read a review that said it was weird and that there was nothing quite like it out there. I’m looking for comparable titles for my own book, so I thought this might fit. It doesn’t, not quite, but it was an amazing read. So amazing that I’d like to buy a copy just to have on hand.

The story starts out normal enough. A person named Carolyn is walking down the road, covered in blood and barefoot. She had just murdered someone but wasn’t ruffled at all. Very quickly, the reader learns that she’s something called a librarian but didn’t start out as one, and that she had vague memories of being American.

Information is doled out in little packets. We learn that her cul-de-sac was hit by something when she was young, the neighbourhood children survived, and became librarians with specialties known as ‘catalogues’. Her catalogue was languages; past, present, imaginary, and real.

The author weaves in dimensional realities in a way that felt natural and, well, right. Not once did I feel lost, not once did I have to go back and reread something to confirm information. I was instantly engrossed in the story of Carolyn and her quest to search for Father, the entity that trains the children on their catalogues. He’s missing, and Carolyn and her siblings cannot access the library to search for him.

Carolyn does more than search for Father. She sets up a series of events so she may murder Father and take over his reign. I was absolutely thrilled that she wasn’t thwarted at all, that she did succeed, that her brothers and sisters were eradicated in this process. It’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine, to read how the protagonist is constantly having to alter the plan and change tactics because of a worthy adversary. Some stories suit this well, but this one had enough going for it that constant threats to her plan would’ve been tiresome. I know that I just gave away the ending, but really, the book is worth reading page by page simply for the experience of existing in this universe.

The author also ensured the reader never forgot the fantastical nature of the world. Carolyn and her siblings never quite dressed according to social norms, their conversational skills were lacking but adequate, and their explanations of events showed how different their world was compared to our world. Really excellent anchoring from the author.

The narrative flow was so excellent, so engrossing for me, that I searched to see if the author has written anything else. Why yes, yes there are other works. Except they’re technical manuals for Linux and whatnot.

Like I said above, the story was revealed in perfect sized bits, and arranged in a manner that made the novel easy to read and follow. I very much want to take each scene apart and reconstruct the book in linear form, but only so I can understand it better and apply it to my own work. The author’s voice makes me want to be a better writer, to make other people read my stuff and feel as electrified and energized as I do from reading this book.

I seriously considered writing fan fiction of this, simply to keep myself engrossed in the world for a little bit longer. I may still do so, but when I have enough energy to focus on more than one thing at a time.

If you’re looking for something different but still realistic enough to keep you grounded, for something so well written that guessing the next step is nigh impossible, read this book. I will be recommending it to everyone whose queries even vaguely apply.