December 2018 - The Y Logs

Yzabel / December 30, 2018

Review: Carnivore

My rating: [rating=5]

Blurb:

Meet Leander: lover, fighter, liar.

He learnt a long time ago that nothing is as intoxicating as blood. But whether it’s his or someone else’s doesn’t matter any more. There’s a mysterious pain in every muscle of his body – and it’s got so bad that he’ll do anything to escape it.

Up to now, it’s been his secret. But it’s hard to remain invisible when you leave a trail of destruction everywhere you go. So, when he comes to the attention of one of London’s most infamous criminals, Leander decides to put his appetite for violence to the ultimate test.

Let the villain win.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A dark thriller set in modern London, following Leander, a young man (20ish I’d say) who’s been living for years with a chronic illness that causes him constant pain, and isn’t properly recognised nor treatable. Tired of useless diagnostics and trips to the hospital, Leander has decided to give the finger to all this, and embarked on a life of drugs, sex, and mixing with more or less unsavoury characters who fuel his descent, and whose addiction he fuels in turn through constant games of sadistic/masochistic manipulation.

To be honest, I’m not sure where exactly this story sits on my spectrum. The first chapters felt rather disjointed and meandering (which in itself matched the narrator’s mental state, I’d say, since he’s pretty much doped on something or other almost all the time), and while there is a plot, it took some time to emerge and be recognisable as such. I guess it was somewhat lessened by the shock factor, and the many scenes of violence and rape (one may argue that Leander was somehow consenting, since at least some of them were the result of some of his manipulations, but that’s a very slippery slope here, so I prefer to call that rape). It felt like the characters as well as the underlying message had more potential than that, and perhaps weren’t given all the limelight and development they would’ve deserved, instead of being shadowed by the grit element.

On the other hand, said message—chronic illness, the way many of those ailments are still relatively unknown and not treated, not to mention considered with disdain by many people—was still a powerful one, carried by a poetic writing full of strange but curiously endearing metaphors. While I do not suffer from such an illness myself, I know a few people who do, and who keep struggling day after day not only to live with their symptoms, but also to make other people understand that, no, they’re not “faking it”, that it’s not merely a matter of “think positive, go out more and make more efforts”, and that because you can’t necessarily see their symptoms easily doesn’t mean they’re not there and causing constant pain.

As a result, in spite of Leander’s twisted games and of the way he treats most people, it was surprisingly easy to root for him nonetheless, because deep inside, he’s more broken than breaking, and all in all, most of his actions are the only way he’s found to bear his pain. In the end, it’s hard to know what is true and what is lies about him, whether’s he’s completely bound for a path of self-destruction or can still find a better life—his schemes sure don’t make the way easy for him.

I’m not giving the story more than 3 stars because I found it hard to really care about the characters: we get to be in Leander’s mind, but considering how much he also lies to himself, it’s difficult to really get to know him; and the rest of the cast is mostly seen as either prey or predator, as people he can use and harm or who can use and harm him. The few decent people he meets don’t necessarily last long in the movie of his life, and the ones who do have the potential of helping him destroy himself rather than bring him some healing.

Conclusion: An interesting theme, and if you want grit and rotten human beings, you’ll get that for sure, but I feel that the latter may have been just a little too much, and didn’t give the characters enough room to breathe.

Yzabel / December 21, 2018

Review: All Rights Reserved

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Speth Jime is anxious to deliver her Last Day speech and celebrate her transition into adulthood. The moment she turns fifteen, Speth must pay for every word she speaks (“Sorry” is a flat ten dollars and a legal admission of guilt), for every nod ($0.99/sec), for every scream ($0.99/sec) and even every gesture of affection. She’s been raised to know the consequences of falling into debt, and can’t begin to imagine the pain of having her eyes shocked for speaking words that she’s unable to afford. But when Speth’s friend Beecher commits suicide rather than work off his family’s crippling debt, she can’t express her shock and dismay without breaking her Last Day contract and sending her family into Collection. Backed into a corner, Speth finds a loophole: rather than read her speech—rather than say anything at all—she closes her mouth and vows never to speak again. Speth’s unexpected defiance of tradition sparks a media frenzy, inspiring others to follow in her footsteps, and threatens to destroy her, her family and the entire city around them.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.]

Good premise here—a future where, as soon as people turn 15, they are charged for every word they say, and other forms of communication such as many gestures. Pretty much a legal nightmare, in which lawyers have all the power, where people can slap each other with instant lawsuits, and where everything is monitored through cuffs and eye implants, all connected to the ever present Wi-Fi.

In general, I enjoyed reading about this world, for all its chilling technology that may not be far off the corner (such as the Black Mirror-esque “Blocking” tech, preventing people from seeing specific faces, for instance). It was a little hard to follow at times, but it nevertheless made it for a quite unique setting.

I had more trouble with the characters, unfortunately. Speth, especially, struck me as overall rather dumb.While her silence stemmed from a shocking event, it became apparent very quickly that there would be a price to pay—in many ways, literally, as her family gets slapped with lawsuits, her sister is prevented from working, and so on. Yet it took her an extraordinary long while to finally figure out what to do about it all, instead of remaining mute and passive for most of the story. Not passive as in not going out and not doing anything at all, but passive when it came to thinking hard and making decisions about her silence… which, in the meantime, led to several problematic events, one of those being so scarring that I can’t reconcile the shock of it with someone standing her ground for… no reason? Had she been truly convinced of her role, of the importance of her silence, and trying to achieve something meaningful, this sacrifice could’ve been somewhat “understandable”, plot-wise; the way she still behaved at that point (some 60-65% in…), it just made for cruel and unneeded scene.

As another example, one of the characters, at some point, tries to communicate with her in creative ways, pointing at words in a book, and she does… nothing? There was no mention anywhere of people being unable to read, and she can read the warnings on her cuff well enough, so, I don’t know, perhaps pointing at specific words and letting the other character do the math would’ve helped her communicate, and been the smart thing to do. Because the deep issue here is that she doesn’t communicate. At all. She can afford a few shrugs, but conveying everything through just that and glances is, in general, quite difficult, and this leads to exactly the kind of plot twist I mentioned above, because she can only make other people follow her while racking their brains to try and understand what exactly she’s trying to do.

And so, Speth keeps making one poor decision after the other. And when she finally wakes up, there’s been so much destruction in her wake that it’s difficult to suddenly empathise with her.

(Interestingly enough, throughout the whole story, sign language is never mentioned. Are there no hard-hearing/deaf people in this world? Was it banned, as subsversive communication method? Or is it charged, like nodding one’s head. This would’ve made for a formidable loophole.)

As far as characters go, at least I did enjoy the three Product Placers. Although they weren’t too developed, they and their missions were interesting and fun to read about.

Conclusion: Interesting setting, stupid main character. I do have an ARC of the second book, though, so I’ll still give it a chance.

Yzabel / December 21, 2018

Review: The Quantum Labyrinth

The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality by Paul Halpern

My rating: [rating=5]

Blurb:

The story of the unlikely friendship between the two physicists who fundamentally recast the notion of time and history

In 1939, Richard Feynman, a brilliant graduate of MIT, arrived in John Wheeler’s Princeton office to report for duty as his teaching assistant. A lifelong friendship and enormously productive collaboration was born, despite sharp differences in personality. The soft-spoken Wheeler, though conservative in appearance, was a raging nonconformist full of wild ideas about the universe. The boisterous Feynman was a cautious physicist who believed only what could be tested. Yet they were complementary spirits. Their collaboration led to a complete rethinking of the nature of time and reality. It enabled Feynman to show how quantum reality is a combination of alternative, contradictory possibilities, and inspired Wheeler to develop his landmark concept of wormholes, portals to the future and past. Together, Feynman and Wheeler made sure that quantum physics would never be the same again.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

This is somewhat a strange book, hovering between a biography and physics book, through the lives of Richard Feynman and John Wheeler, and it seems to me it has both the good sides and shortcomings of both. Shortcomings, as in, it can’t go really in depth in the lives of the two scientists, and at the same time, the physics aspect is sometimes too complex, and sometimes too simple, which makes for an unbalanced read. But good sides, too, for linking the characters and their work, and giving an insight into said work, and overall making me want to read more about, well, everything in there. Probably in favour of Wheeler, since I already know quite a few things about Feynman (although I don’t seem to tire of him anyway).

I wouldn’t recommend it as a complete introduction to quantum and particle physics, though, since some of its contents are just too painful to follow without some basic knowledge of the topic.

I do recommend it for a global coverage of what Feynman and Wheeler worked on in their lifetime, to get pointers about specific topics worth researching more in depth later.

Style-wise, the book reads well enough in general, but more than once, some analogies were weird and fell flat for me.

Yzabel / December 5, 2018

Review: Munmun

Munmun by Jesse Andrews

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

In an alternate reality a lot like our world, every person’s physical size is directly proportional to their wealth. The poorest of the poor are the size of rats, and billionaires are the size of skyscrapers.

Warner and his sister Prayer are destitute – and tiny. Their size is not just demeaning but dangerous: day and night they face mortal dangers that bigger, richer people don’t ever have to think about, from being mauled by cats to their house getting stepped on. There are no cars or phones built small enough for them, or schools or hospitals, for that matter – there’s no point, when no one that little has any purchasing power, and when salaried doctors and teachers would never fit in buildings so small. Warner and Prayer know their only hope is to scale up, but how can two littlepoors survive in a world built against them?

Review:

I admit I skim-read the last 25%; I tried to read more carefully, but at this point, either I skimmed or I DNFed, and I don’t like DNFing.

It is not without good ideas and potential, and it delivers good criticism of a society based on money: in this case, money literally defines your weight in the world, since the poorest people are tiny and get squished by just about anything and anyone, while the richest ones are so big that they tower over everyone and take a lot of space. The plight of the characters, too—the way they have to fight, the desperate schemes they come up with, are (unfortunately, realistically) close to reality, in that when you don’t have much, no matter how you try, your attempts are conditioned by the little means you have. (I do agree that “you have to make efforts to achieve your dreams”, but let’s be honest, it’s very easy to give lessons about how you managed to buy the house of your dreams when you got a nifty inheritance from your grandparents. Prayer’s plan to find herself a husband, as harebrained as it is, does reflect a desperate attempt at doing something with nothing.)

However, I couldn’t really connect with the characters, nor get into the writing style, which tends to combine words together. I get it, I get why it’s done, but for me, it’s jarring (took me a bit of time to realise that the “munmun” of the title is money, although that was because I wasn’t pronouncing it, only reading it at first). It’s like all those cutesy words like ‘preloved’ and ‘choccy’ and all that stuff which, for some reason, is considered as witty, but just falls flat as far as I’m concerned. After a while, I lose interest.

More like 1.5 stars for me, however, I do acknowledge that there are good ideas in here.