books Archives - Page 4 of 64

Yzabel / November 9, 2019

Review: The Nobody People

The Nobody People by Bob Proehl
My rating: ★★☆☆☆

Blurb:

When a group of outcasts with extraordinary abilities comes out of hiding, their clash with a violent society will spark a revolution—or an apocalypse..

Avi Hirsch has always known his daughter was different. But when others with incredible, otherworldly gifts reveal themselves to the world, Avi realizes that her oddness is something more—that she is something more. With this, he has a terrifying revelation: Emmeline is now entering a society where her unique abilities unfairly mark her as a potential threat. And even though he is her father, Avi cannot keep her safe forever.

Emmeline soon meets others just like her: Carrie Norris, a teenage girl who can turn invisible . . . but just wants to be seen. Fahima Deeb, a woman with an uncanny knack for machinery . . . but it’s her Muslim faith that makes the U.S. government suspicious of her.

They are the nobody people—ordinary individuals with extraordinary gifts who want one only thing: to live as equals in an America that is gripped by fear and hatred. But the government is passing discriminatory laws. Violent mobs are taking to the streets. And one of their own—an angry young man seething with self-loathing—has used his power in an act of mass violence that has put a new target on the community. The nobody people must now stand together and fight for their future, or risk falling apart.

Review:

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

It took me a while to get through this one. I’m not exactly sure why I wasn’t thrilled and not in the mood, but part of it probably had to do with the fact several characters have their arcs develop throughout the book, without enough screen time for each. When this happens Moreover, while there will be a second volume, and I didn’t expect everything to be solved here, some of these arcs were also cut short, without any proper ‘aftermath’ time being given. It’s akin to someone being deemed as super important because they will save us all, then that person suddenly refuses to do it, or dies, or is out of the picture for any other reason, and… that’s all. It’s supposed to be bad, but no one really dwells on it. It felt very strange.

I also struggled to get through and not skim. Not sure if it was the style (present-tense narrative is fine with me in small doses, but not for hundreds of pages). Or the apparent ‘main character’ who turns out to be sidelined pretty quickly, and wasn’t super pleasant to read about anyway. Or the plot jumping between characters but without really giving a feeling of cohesion. Probably a mix of all. In the end, the story deals with heavy themes (acceptance & rejection, internment for people with powers instead of trying to integrate everyone in a new society, being killed just for being different…), that affect the characters a lot, but… I didn’t really care about the characters. In fact, to the risk of sounding awful, the one character I enjoyed reading about the most was Owen Curry. Yes, that one. Also the circus/freakshow subplot. I guess that’s quite telling.

It wasn’t a bad story in itself. Depressing in parts, sure, because we already have enough of that intolerance crap in our real world out there. But that doesn’t make a story bad. As far as I’m concerned, though, the above made it a slog for me, so it was okay-ish in the end, but I can’t say I absolutely liked it.

Yzabel / October 17, 2019

Review: Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, And Why

Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, And Why by Stephen Martin
My rating: ★★★☆☆

Blurb:

Why are self-confident ignoramuses so often believed?
Why are thoughtful experts so often given the cold shoulder?
And why do apparently irrelevant details such as a person’s height, their relative wealth, or their Facebook photo influence whether or not we trust what they are saying?

When deciding whether or not someone is worth listening to, we think we carefully weigh their words and arguments. But those are far from being the only factors that hold sway with us.

In this groundbreaking new book behavioural experts Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks pinpoint the eight powerful traits that determine who gets heard and who gets ignored. They show how such apparently irrelevant details as a person’s appearance or their financial status influence our response to what they have to say, regardless of its wisdom or foolishness. They explain how trust is won, even when it may not be deserved. They analyse the nature of the charismatic speaker and the verbal and physical cues they employ. And they demonstrate how the tiniest of signals – from the shoes we wear, to the pitch of our voice and the warmth of our smile – can transform how others perceive us and so determine whether they are prepared to pay heed to what we have to say.

Above all, Martin and Marks show how looking and sounding right is often far more persuasive than actually being right.

In a world of ambiguity, uncertainty and fake news they compellingly demonstrate how, increasingly, the Messenger is the Message.

Review:

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

An interesting read altogether, although I sometimes found it too ‘light’ and superficial. Perhaps because of the many anecdotes it contains? On the one hand, they do help in getting the point, for sure, but after a while I felt that the book would be definitely more of an introduction (with the research quoted in it having to become the actual focus at some point) than a reference all of itself. Perhaps that was the goal all along, though.

In any case, I did find this research thought-provoking. It’s not the first time that I’m faced with concepts such as ‘we believe ourselves super good at judging people, circumstances etc, but in fact we’re lousier at it than we’d think’; and, let’s be honest, when I look around me at the kind of messages we get, at who broadcasts them, at how people listen to them… Yes, I’m willing to believe that -who- delivers the message is often better heard than the message itself (or allows for the message to be misunderstood in part). Is that a constant? Not necessarily, since behaviours, physical traits, and how we read them are much more complex than meet the eye; but it doesn’t hurt to keep in mind that, yes, we may just as well be influenced by a “dominant” or “handsome” appearance rather than by sound judgement, while remaining convinced our decision is perfectly rational and informed. If this only leads to think twice and get back to finding facts and information before deciding, it’s a good thing.

(I must also admit that the book gives a few good ideas about things like posture and tone of voice to use if wanting to impress people or convey a specific meaning. After all, once aware of what people in general tend to respond to, well, might as well try to use it and see if it helps when trying to convince them myself, right?)

Conclusion: 3 to 3.5 stars. It was informative in a general way, yet I think it would’ve benefitted from a deeper analysis as well.

Yzabel / October 7, 2019

Review: Gender Mosaic: Beyond the Myth of the Male and Female Brain

Gender Mosaic: Beyond the Myth of the Male and Female Brain by Daphna Joel
My rating: ★★★★☆

Blurb:

With profound implications for our most foundational assumptions about gender, Gender Mosaic explains why there is no such thing as a male or female brain.
For generations, we’ve been taught that women and men differ in profound and important ways. Women are more sensitive and emotional, whereas men are more aggressive and sexual, because this or that region in the brains of women is smaller or larger than in men, or because they have more or less of this or that hormone. This story seems to provide us with a neat biological explanation for much of what we encounter in day-to-day life. But is it true?
According to neuroscientist Daphna Joel, it’s not. And in Gender Mosaic, she sets forth a bold and compelling argument that debunks the notion of female and male brains. Drawing on the latest scientific evidence, including the groundbreaking results of her own studies, Dr. Joel explains that every human brain is a unique mixture — or mosaic — of “male” and “female” features, and that these mosaics don’t map neatly into two categories.
With urgent practical implications for the way we understand ourselves and the world around us, Gender Mosaic is a fascinating look at the science of gender, sex and the brain, and at how freeing ourselves from the gender binary can help us all reach our full human potential.

Review:

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

That was pretty much preaching to the choir here, so I’ll admit my bias from the beginning—I’m absolutely not convinced, science or no science, that gender has very legitimate foundations, and that your genitals determine how you behave, what you like, who you are, and so on. It doesn’t make sense to me that so many people insist putting everybody in a tidy little “man OR woman” box (and when you stand out of the box, you’d think it threatens the very foundations of -their- identity, which makes me think that there’s something fishy here anyway). So, I was definitely interested in reading more about this concept of gender mosaic, and… well, -this-, on the other hand, makes sense to me.

“Gender Mosaic” explores the binary perception of gender, how people in general tend to ascribe this behaviour as “masculine” and that behaviour as “feminine”, but also how we’re actually very, very seldom made of only masculine or only feminine traits. Most people have a bit of both, but due to the importance placed on gender (re: the little boxes I mentioned), what is seen as “deviations from the perceived norm” is usually also seen as something to stamp out, to hide, to reject (another of these things that make no sense to me: what does it matter that a little boy likes playing with dolls? What’s so frightening about it? That this kid will become a good father later?). Our genitals are part of our biology, sure, but they’re not the only factor that plays a part in how our brains develop: it’s not only about hormones, it’s also about external influences, social ones, stress, etc. Especially stress: this isn’t something I would have researched in relation to gender, not at first sight, and yet, in hindsight, studies that focus on this don’t look out of place.

Which begs the question: what truly affects us? Does a man behave “like a man “because he was born with a penis, or because external (social) pressures exerted on him since birth have affected him? If “boys don’t cry”, is it because they can’t (beats me why they have tear ducts, then), or because they are repeatedly told almost since birth that “real men don’t cry” (and shunned accordingly if they dare cry)? Are girls naturally better at cooking because they have a vagina, or because they’ve been traditionally stuck into staying at home and cooking? Are such differences between genders valid, or are they here in the first place because social expectations have increased them? And what of people whose traits don’t lean enough towards one gender—too often, they’re dismissed and conflated into the gender other people think is theirs, and this is harmful. A mosaic is a much healthier approach to this, to understanding what makes us human first and foremost.

Having a look at the various studies referenced throughout the book, I don’t think I’m an exception in leaning towards the latter explanations rather than the former ones. Said studies are also quoted in understandable, laypeople terms, and I found their relevance easy to grasp. Finally, I liked that “Gender Mosaic” discusses the scientific side, but also goes further in exploring what it means from a societal point of view: how we raise children, especially, and how so many pervasive behaviours that look “innocent” are actually deeply biased.

While I enjoyed these aspects, though, I’d also have liked seeing more clarity in terms of actual differences. “Men are like this and women are like that” arguments are all too easily used to claim that “men are superior to women” or “women make better parents”. However, science has also shown that there are physiological differences (not necessarily in brains—for instance, the way symptoms announcing impending cardiac arrest aren’t exactly the same in women as in men, causing too many of the former to be misdiagnosed, just like “male” is still too often used as the default template for “human” in many medical studies). It’s not that “Gender Mosaic” doesn’t mention it at all, but I found the line a little blurred here. For me, the problem is with gender (= the social & formative aspect, what it imposes on human beings, how it shapes them through peer pressure), which doesn’t mean that sex (the biological/genetical aspect) should be downplayed. I think the book wasn’t too clear on that, or perhaps went a little too quickly about it, and as a result, it would be easy to misunderstand it in parts.

This said, when it comes to genders, behaviours perceived as associated to genders—then, yes, my own perception of it, my own experience, definitely point me towards “this is indeed blurry, because we’re not made of all or nothing, and that blurriness is expected”.

Yzabel / September 27, 2019

Review: The Memory Police

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
My rating: ★★★★☆

Blurb:

Hat, ribbon, bird, rose. To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.

When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn’t forget, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?

Review:

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

I hadn’t read anything by Ogawa in 10 years or so, and I admit I don’t really remember anymore all the details, but I do remember I tended to like this author. Hence my seizing the opportunity to get and read this one.

It is a strange story in a way, in that, all in all, the characters are not so memorable themselves (their names are never revealed), and yet still leave an impression due to what they are going through. As inhabitants of an island where certain things disappear from memory at random, they are constantly faced with not knowing what the next thing to go will be, with the Memory Police coming to enforce this by making sure people get rid of all traces of the now-forgotten things (including also getting rid of those who are able to remember), and where one question lingers at the back of many minds: will the people themselves be forgotten someday?

The novel follows a woman who writes novels for a living, and whose mother was one of the islanders who retained their memories. While the narrator is affected by the disappearances, and does her best to lie low and be an abiding citizen, she also does uphold a tiny streak of rebellion, up to the day she decides, with the help of an old friend of the family, to hide someone who remembers in a storage space between two floors. As the disappearances increase, and the Memory Police searches more and more homes and arrests more and more people, not only does she have to face the fear of being discovered, but also her fears of what will happen in the end.

This said, the story is less about the dystopian state of the island (the size of the island itself is never specified: it feels like a small island with just one town, and at the same time it must be bigger than that), or even about providing an explanation as to the collective, gradual amnesia taking hold, and more about memories, about how various things are important for us, about exploring what forgetting could mean In time, the inhabitants lose the names of what vanished, and even when presented with a surviving item that escaped the police, said item doesn’t elicit anything in them. And there lies another question: are memories precious in themselves, or only for as long as they feel precious to us? The narrator constantly struggles with this, as another character does their best to help her recover her memories of disappeared things and she’s never sure this can even happen.

Woven into the narrative is also the story the narrator (an author) is working on, that of a typist who’s lost her voice and communicates with her lover by writing on her typing machine. At first, I wondered how this was supposed to tie with the main story, and was a little afraid it was here for flavouring more than anything else—but it does tie with it at some point, and in a very relevant way.

Conclusion: 3.5 to 4 stars. In terms of narrative and of memorable characters, this is not the most striking book ever, but it has the sort of gripping, haunting quality that won’t let go.

Yzabel / September 1, 2019

Review: Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
My rating: ★★☆☆☆

Blurb:

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold…

Review:

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

This was a pleasant read overall, but I admit I found the writing style hard to get into, and that downplayed my enjoyment of it.

Perhaps it was the translation, in parts, but not only. For instance, I had trouble with more than one paragraph dealing with one idea, and then suddenly switching to an action that had been started in the previous paragraph—I felt like saying “either finish this action first, or put it in the next paragraph.” I don’t know if it’s just me, if I have a strange sense of how things go together? It was just jarring to me. The time travel rule quickly became redundant, too.

In general, I also felt that this would fare better as a movie. The four vignettes’ endings were all in all easy to foresee, the characters are fairly cookie-cutter and sometimes have exaggerated gestures, and when some of them have downplayed reactions (such as Nagare not really expressing his feelings), we don’t get privy to their internal life much either, so the writing medium didn’t really bring much in that regard either.

This said, as mentioned above, I still liked the story. It had a certain atmosphere, a ‘locked room’ feeling since the action only happened in the café, but not in an oppressive way—more like an intimate, slice-of-life moment, that had its own charm.

Yzabel / August 30, 2019

Review: Gone

Gone by Leona Deakin
My rating: 3/5

Blurb:

YOUR GIFT IS THE GAME.
DARE TO PLAY?

The police aren’t worried – it’s just a game. But the families are frantic. As psychologist and private detective Dr Augusta Bloom delves into the lives of the missing people, she finds something that binds them all.

And that something makes them very dangerous indeed.

As more disappearances are reported and new birthday cards uncovered, Dr Bloom races to unravel the mystery and find the missing people.

Review:

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

This mystery/thriller deal with psychologist Augusta Bloom and her partner Marcus Jameson, as both start investigating (first for personal reasons) the disappearances of four people, all after receiving a mysterious card on their birthday. A lot of the investigation rests on psychology rather than on typical clue analysis by the police, in that there are very few physical clues, and so Augusta tries to find out more by relying on what psychological profiling can tell her. Which in itself was pretty interesting, all the more after she develops her theory about who/what exactly the vanished people are.

The novel also makes use of contemporary internet, both when it comes to its strong points and to its weakness: one of the involved policemen goes to the deep web to look for clues, for instance, but it’s also clear that relying on social media to glean information is definitely a double-edged sword, since it allows other people (shady characters included) to get to know you.

Then there’s the setting—I always enjoy being able to relate to the places in a story, so with part of the action set in London (and the UK in general), that was good for me. And it was good, too, to see the investigation progress with both the ‘private eyes’ and the police working hand in hand, rather than have one try to hide information from the other.

It was a good story in general, but I admit I sometimes had trouble with the pace (in places, it was just a tad bit too slow) and with really connecting with the main characters. For reasons I won’t detail because Spoilers, Augusta was fairly aloof and emotionally remote, so it was difficult to empathise with her. I found Marcus, in spite of his past as an ex-MI6 agent, was too quick to trust certain people, which jarred with what I had expected of him. Finally, the ending was slightly too rushed, and too open as well—but then, I took this book as a standalone, so I guess that if it turns out not to be, then said open ending will not be a problem.

Yzabel / August 22, 2019

Review: The Kingdom

The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg
My rating: 3/5

Blurb:

Welcome to the Kingdom… where ‘Happily Ever After’ isn’t just a promise, but a rule.

Glimmering like a jewel behind its gateway, The Kingdom is an immersive fantasy theme park where guests soar on virtual dragons, castles loom like giants, and bioengineered species–formerly extinct–roam free.

Ana is one of seven Fantasists, beautiful “princesses” engineered to make dreams come true. When she meets park employee Owen, Ana begins to experience emotions beyond her programming including, for the first time… love.

But the fairytale becomes a nightmare when Ana is accused of murdering Owen, igniting the trial of the century. Through courtroom testimony, interviews, and Ana’s memories of Owen, emerges a tale of love, lies, and cruelty–and what it truly means to be human.

Review:

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

Not as good as I had hoped it would be from the blurb, but still an entertaining and interesting read.

(I’ve seen it compared to/inspired by “Westworld”, but not having seen it, I honestly can’t tell, so that won’t play a part in my review.)

I definitely liked the premise: “the Kingdom”, an amusement park of the Disney World variety, with seven princesses, a.k.a the Fantasists (Ana and her sisters), and various themed areas, such as Mermaid Land, where customers can spend the day, have fun and live mini-adventures, far away from their bleak everyday life (the world outside seems in a constant financial, housing and environmental crisis). Moreover, the visitors can interact with the perfect-Disney-like princesses—always smiling, kind, helpful and aiming to please—and see “hybrids”, animals that used to be extinct, but have been re-created through a combination of genengeering and cybernetics (yes, including dinosaurs).

Of course, this immediately raised controversial questions as to the nature and role of the hybrids, whether the princesses or the animals, and the way they were seen and treated by people in general, and by their creators more specifically. The veneer of a dream-like life for the princesses is very early shattered when Ana describes how they are tied in their beds for the night, how firewalls prevent them from accessing the whole of Internet and communicate with the outside world, and how sometimes, some of them seem to lose their memories of the previous day or evening.

The story is seen through Ana’s eyes, as well as through snippets of interviews and articles, most of which are related to a trial following Owen’s death at Ana’s hands. I usually tend to like this kind of format, for several reasons (varied points of views that are easy to separate from each other, short “chapters” that are really convenient when I can’t read for long stints…), but some of those weren’t too relevant, or at least, only became relevant long after, which gave me enough time to dismiss them. These different narratives offer more and more information as to the “dark fairy tale” that unfolds throughout the novel, with Ana and her sisters developing more and more of a personality and feelings of their own, in spite of their creators claiming they cannot do more than what their programming allows them to. While we don’t get to see through her sisters’ eyes, Ana’s recounting of the story lets us see what a slippery slope it is, when AIs in human-looking bodies are meant to act like human beings, but at the same time constricted into prisoners’ roles that deny them any claim at even a scrap of humanity.

Why I didn’t give more than 3-3.5 stars to this book was, first, how the romance itself unfurled. I get what happened, I get what the characters did, but I never really got a strong feeling for their relationship, nor did I feel strong chemistry between them that would justify, well, an actual romance. I also found Ana’s narrative style somewhat dry and bland, which in a way fits well with her nature as an artificial intelligence, but didn’t do much in terms of gripping writing. And the last third of the book lacked coherence at times, as if everything collided together at the same time without tight reasons in the background—so in the end, it felt rushed, and poised on the edge of unfinished (“was that a standalone or will there be a sequel?”).

Conclusion: Not as gripping as I had hoped, although it does lend itself to interesting discussions about AI, artificially created beings that are nevertheless sentient, and how they should be treated.

Yzabel / August 21, 2019

Review: The Grace Year

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
My rating: 2/5

Blurb:

“No one speaks of the grace year.
It’s forbidden.
We’re told we have the power to lure grown men from their beds, make boys lose their minds, and drive the wives mad with jealousy. That’s why we’re banished for our sixteenth year, to release our magic into the wild before we’re allowed to return to civilisation.
But I don’t feel powerful.
I don’t feel magical.”

Tierney James lives in an isolated village where girls are banished at sixteen to the northern forest to brave the wilderness – and each other – for a year. They must rid themselves of their dangerous magic before returning purified and ready to marry – if they’re lucky.

It is forbidden to speak of the grace year, but even so every girl knows that the coming year will change them – if they survive it…

Review:

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

A strong premise that definitely caught my interest (what’s not to like about a female-driven version of “Lord of the Flies”, so to speak?), but whose execution unfortunately didn’t work for me.

The story starts with a typical “dystopian place where women are expected to behave in certain ways, and are under men’s yoke without any recourse”. Bleak (and sort of over the top), but that’s why it provides for a good starting point: heroines aren’t born from cozy lives where nothing unpleasant ever happens, after all.

Tierney is that person: a girl on the cusp of her sixteenth birthday, after which she’ll be exiled for one year with all the other girls born the same year as her, to live in some remote camp in the woods where they’ll all have to expel the “magic” out of them. (A magic that is clearly threatening only because it is meant to have an impact on men, of course, such as the girls being rumoured to be able to seduce anyone if left unchecked, and so on.) So that’s where we start: on the eve of that fateful day, with Tierney disagreeing with it but not having much of a choice, and determined to make the most she can out of it—she knows that no boy in the county will give her a veail (= propose to her before she leaves), due to her being the local tomboy, so she wants to work in the fields instead when she’s back, to at least have some kind of freedom by working outdoors. To no reader’s surprise, things don’t go exactly as planned, and Tierney finds herself leaving with the promise of enmity in that camp, rather than of working together to survive the upcoming year.

The “grace year” is clearly not a good year for these girls, and I did like that part of the world described in the book. Again, not a rosy part at all, rather an infuriating one at that, for the girls having to live in that camp on an island was an obvious attempt at breaking them and better subdue the future wives and female workers of the county. Is the magic real? Most people in Tierney’s town probably wouldn’t be able to recognise it if it stared them in the face, but they are nevertheless quick to seize this as an opportunity to get rid of a wife judged as too old now, or to smear someone’s reputation. You want to root for Tierney here, hope that she, at least, will find a way out of this, or a way to turn the table and bring change to her society…

…But that’s where the book lost me, for several reasons:

– The camp setting could’ve been a perfect opportunity to show us young women having to cooperate in spite of their differences, and perhaps finding and retaking their own power in a place where no one else would see and judge them. Unfortunately, it went down another road, one I don’t care for much, in a “one vs. all the others” way, complete with mean girl extraordinaire and appalling behaviours. Although the latter was somewhat part of the very patriarchal society depicted here, the problem was how it only contributed to pitch girls against girls, even more than in their hometown, instead of giving them a common ground on which to build something else.

– Tierney was introduced as resourceful, but there were several moments when she was helpless in situations where she should’ve made more use of her skills, and let herself be bullied to an extent that could’ve been lethal. Maybe I was expecting too much here? I expected her to catch on much more quickly on how the others would behave towards her, and have, I don’t know, some backup plan?

– Following this: the huge problem, for me, of having the female lead placed in dire situations… and get out of them only because men helped. This completely underminded the feminist aspects, from the man who helps Tierney in the woods, to the one who lies to save her skin. Not only did it make her look helpless, but it also enforced the message that, all in all, men were deciding everything about her life. Again.

– The romance. Unnecessary in such a plot, and without any real chemistry anyway.

– The world itself. I’m still not sure whether it’s a fantasy world, or whether the county is located in England or the future USA or something (mention is made of people from varied origins with different languages, then of English having become the common language; Vikings are also briefly mentioned). It was pretty much a bubble world, with only the county and the one town in it, and nothing else beyond this. Still unsure whether societies in other counties was the same or not, if they had grace years as well or not, etc.

Conclusion: I filed this one as “it was OK” because I did finish it and it had a few points I liked, but it could’ve been so much more, and ultimately wasn’t.

Yzabel / August 8, 2019

Review: Tangle’s Game

Tangle’s Game by Stewart Hotston
My rating: [usr 2.5]

Blurb:

Tense tech-thriller based on the growing role of blockchains, encryption and social media in society.

Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

Yesterday, Amanda Back’s life was flawless: the perfect social credit score, the perfect job, the perfect home.

Today, Amanda is a target, an enemy of the system holding information dangerous enough to disrupt the world’s all-consuming tech – a fugitive on the run.

But in a world where an un-hackable blockchain links everyone and everything, there is nowhere to run…

Review:

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

A techno-thriller with interesting AI-related themes, although in the end, I wasn’t awed by the story.

Set in a somewhat near future where transactions are handled through blockchain-based contracts and people’s quality of life is dependent on their social credit score as well as on their financial credit score, “Tangle’s Game” tells the story of Amanda Back, a successful investment banker who finally got a complete grip back on her life after an ex-boyfriend stole her money and left her betrayed. Flying back to London, and after an invasive search episode at the airport, she comes home only to realise that said boyfriend has involved her in a dangerous game where a mysterious USB stick and the information it contains is key. The only problem? Amanda isn’t a hacker, or a conspiracy theorist, or a whistleblower, and is probably the last person with the proper connections to do something with said information.

The premise really hooked me in, and I quickly wanted to know more about how this would all unfurl: who were the enemies, how would they try to get the info, what was Tangle’s exact part in that, who could be Amanda’s allies… Most of all, I was interested in Tatsu, the little AI contracted to help her decrypt the contents of the USB stick. I always have a soft spot for AIs, and Tatsu was definitely endearing.

By contrast, though, I never really warmed up to the human characters. Mostly they were “unlikeable” as people (Amanda is pretty much self-centered, Tangle is no better and probably somewhere on the sociopathic ladder…), but that in itself is not a deal-breaker for me—they can be the most rotten pieces of crap in the world, I can still find them likeable as characters, provided the execution goes this way. It wasn’t much the case here, in part because these characters as a whole made problematic decision after problematic decision, in a way that made me keep wondering how on Earth they were still alive. (I’ve been a tabletop RPG player for over 20 years. Trust my experience when I say that “’eceiving mysterious information and just hanging about in one’s own flat—where everybody know they can find you—while trying to come up with ideas about what to do” is a sure way of being assaulted at night by men in black or other unsavoury characters.) I was actually glad when one of the bad guys finally called them on their ability to come up with plans that may work in movies, but never in real life. And that was worth for pretty much the whole cast, not only Amanda, who at least I would’ve expected to be the most clueless.

The last 20% picked up, and with Tatsu still involved by that point, that made me want to read until the end at any rate. The ending itself is fairly open, and leaves much unresolved, but in a way, it also makes much sense: things got mired, then exploded, and now the world’s in turmoil… and the fragile situation at the end, teetering between hope and potential catastrophe, fits that pattern.

Conclusion: 2.5 stars. Mostly I didn’t care much about the human characters, and there were a few plot holes that annoyed me, but I did enjoy the part played by the AI, and the way Amanda (and Tangle, too, after all) considered it.

Yzabel / July 22, 2019

Review: The July Girls

The July Girls by Phoebe Locke
My rating: [user 4]

Blurb:

Every year, on the same night in July, a woman is taken from the streets of London; snatched by a killer who moves through the city like a ghost.

Addie has a secret. On the morning of her tenth birthday, four bombs were detonated across the capital. That night her dad came home covered in blood. She thought he was hurt in the attacks – but then her sister Jessie found a missing woman’s purse hidden in his room.

Jessie says they mustn’t tell. She says there’s nothing to worry about. But when she takes a job looking after the woman’s baby daughter, Addie starts to realise that her big sister doesn’t always tell her the whole story. And that the secrets they’re keeping may start costing lives…

Review:

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

Here’s a mystery about a killer, nicknamed “Magpie”, who every year, on July 7th, abducts and kills a woman. In this case, though, it’s not the police’s investigation we follow, but this story seen through the eyes of Abigail, a young girl born on July 7th as well: because on her 10th birthday, her father comes home covered in blood, and that’s when she starts questioning more and more what other secrets her family is hiding.

Just as much as a crime story—there is an investigation as well, after all—“The July Girls” is the story of a small family, specifically Addie and her big sister Jessie, who’s more a mother to her, since their mum has vanished abroad and never comes home. Their father is seldom around either, trying to make ends meet as an unlicensed cab driver, and it is clear from the beginning that Jessie loves Addie so much that she tries to shield her from basically everything, including their relatively bleak prospects in South London. And when things take a turn for the worst, we also get to see how the sisters’ life goes on, how Addie gets bullied at school because of her father, and how she tries to make sense of the events that unfolded until that point.

The novel spans about ten years in Addie’s life, which is good: it allows the readers to ‘see’ her voice mature, and her thoughts processes go from a girl’s to an adult’s. It’s also good in that it makes the killer’s arc into a slow-going investigation, as is definitely needed here, with the murders happening only once a year: if it had been solved in two years, it wouldn’t have been as suspenseful, for sure.

I kept guessing and guessing regarding who the killer might be, as there were a few valid options here. There were several twists and turns, and while a couple of them were slightly erring on the far-fetched side, I still found the novel as a whole a pretty good one, that kept me reading and interested until the end.