at one point in this book, a young man who committed a heinous crime after failing to achieve his lifelong dream commits suicide by walking into the sat one point in this book, a young man who committed a heinous crime after failing to achieve his lifelong dream commits suicide by walking into the sea. the mother of his victim says, essentially, what was there left for him to do? he'd failed in life and doubled down on that failure by doing something nauseatingly evil, so he might as well kill himself because there was nothing else he could make of his life. reading this passage feels both high-handedly just and tooth-achingly wrong.
penance takes a stark look at how people on both sides of violent and irredeemable acts are able to go on with their life, and the toll it takes on a society to create scar tissue around those wounds. and it's very frank that sometimes, the scar tissue isn't enough, and the wound goes septic and starts damaging other parts of the body. and what can you do at that point, other than just die.
i enjoyed that the book didn't really posit any solutions, and goes to great lengths to demonstrate all the culpabilities small and large that keep the cycle going, all the ways we harm ourselves and others trying to comprehend and digest what's been done to us and what we are capable of doing, all the forgivenesses we find ourselves incapable of making because we feel that someone somewhere ought to do penance for the pain we're in. it asks, over and over, what do we do now?
also the book knows too much about what tumblr was like in its heyday, and that is a crime that eliza clark has done to me....more
tbh this series should have been either 3 or 5 books; this book reads like the author realized belatedly that he hadn't solved all the problems he'd rtbh this series should have been either 3 or 5 books; this book reads like the author realized belatedly that he hadn't solved all the problems he'd raised in the previous three books and hashed together some solutions; more time to marinate in the choices might have made them ring less hollow. still some great character beats and relationship development, and a firm grip on swashbuckling tropes that we're sorely missing in modern fantasy....more
this is one of the most frustrating books i've ever read; i would really like to give it 4 stars but can't. this book simply loves to start ideas withthis is one of the most frustrating books i've ever read; i would really like to give it 4 stars but can't. this book simply loves to start ideas without finishing them, wandering away just as they get interesting. the story is about a telegraphist who survives a bombing in a strange way, then it's about a spy living in the home of the man he's spying on and falling for him, then it's about two men pining for each other over a marriage of convenience, then it's about a man with synesthesia learning to love the piano again while playing for gilbert and sullivan, then, briefly, it's about bombs again. all of this COULD tie into a coherent plot-- it's not like they're completely unrelated stories-- but the book fully commits itself to each one as it happens; rather than weaving several threads of plot through the book, it instead picks them up and drops them each with full force. a side character develops tuberculosis in the last ten pages simply to give another character a way to befriend him. it would be disorienting to read without the author's meandering, lyrical style, clearly meant to invoke classic magic realism but feeling instead like wandering through a garden with someone who wants to run a full behavioral analysis on each butterfly you encounter.
the romance is quite good, even if the author can't quite come to grips with whether or not she's written a romance-- the men kiss on page and appear to sleep with each other offstage, and then briefly the fact of their homosexuality is floated as a way to discredit one of them-- but at no point do either of them a) think about their relationship or their affection for each other internally in any way other than the literal, day-to-day facts, b) think about their relationship in the context of victorian ideas of homosexuality, c) dwell on moments of particular affection as in any way different from a platonic friendship, even to note that they would connote a particularly deep platonic friendship, or d) think about each other's physicality at all, other than to comment on the japanese character's japanese-ness. (that's a whole other review-- the author's handle on japanese culture generally, the way the british viewed japan at the time, and how to handle japanese characters seen through the eyes of blithely racist white characters we're otherwise supposed to root for, is pretty poor, plus, the audiobook narrator made very little attempt at correct japanese pronunciation, which made it doubly strange when a character's name being mispronounced-- exactly the way the narrator has already read it for 40% of the book, and will continue to read it-- becomes a point of discussion.) this is a relationship that one character destroys a marriage over and another character builds his entire life around ten years in advance of meeting the other, so it's clear that the author thinks she's written a profound connection, but nothing comes together to tie individual moments of closeness into a larger pattern. i will say that a conversation late in the story discussing mori's accent and (view spoiler)[the way it fluctuates depending on how much time he will spend with thaniel in the future (hide spoiler)] had me on the floor, emotionally. the romance is quite good. i will read the sequel for them.
the last point is about grace, the female lead-- the author clearly has empathy for her emotional position in an objective way, but all of the context we are given for why she behaves the way she does is just dressing. we see very little of her interior life beyond "wants to be a scientist but everyone is against her because girl" and "gets in the way of thaniel and mori being happy together." the former was boring and overdone 20 years ago, and the latter is simply bizarre, especially given that grace and thaniel's marriage is explicitly a means of social convenience for both of them-- mori pining over the loss of thaniel's presence in his life full-time is interesting, and grace's belief that thaniel will slowly become entirely the product of mori's manipulations, conscious or unconscious, is also interesting, but neither of these conflicts are given much page space, and when grace [ending spoilers] in order to prove her point, it comes as a velociraptor-like surprise sideswipe. all this amounts to grace being a moderately homophobic, moderately racist "woman interferes in mlm soulmates" fanfiction trope with a couple of "feminist frustration" sprinkles and a "moderate attempt at a scientific point of view on the magical realism elements" cherry.
i loved so many elements of this story. i thought the author's prose was lovely, each individual plot point was something i was interested in, i love octopuses, i love victorian magical realism, i love explorations of western and eastern culture meeting, i love gilbert and sullivan, thaniel and mori were both well-rendered and their romance had solid, emotional swooniness. but man. frustrating....more
i wish we could be normal about reviews and say that 3 stars is very solid, alas, our current culture doesn't allow for the nuance of the "3 stars is i wish we could be normal about reviews and say that 3 stars is very solid, alas, our current culture doesn't allow for the nuance of the "3 stars is good actually" review, and yall are gonna look at this and go "so this book sucks then." listen-- if what you want is a paint-by-numbers, find-and-replace ted chiang via the thing and jurassic park, this is a romp. fucked up supernatural thing happens, even more fucked up people try to figure it out, half-chewed human-interest-story parallel moral plotline about family and responsibility and hubris that the author uses to cover for the fact that he hasn't figured out a resolution. it's a good time! i had a good time. does it do anything well? eh. does it do anything new? even eh-er. i have plenty of thoughts about how the realistic storyline could better be echoed in the supernatural one, about how the supernatural one could be more coherently structured and rely less on half-assed third act twists, how much the story would be improved if the author had just sat down and thought a bit more about his heptapod-dinosaur-thing metaphor and how it echoed what he was trying to say about the main character's emotional state, but ultimately none of that matters in terms of whether or not you want to read this book. this book is gonna be what it is. the things that it does, it sure as fuck does them. 3 stars, perfectly adequate way to spend a few hours. ...more
there's a good writer somewhere in here. siegel can put a sentence together in a pleasant way and crafts dialogue that doesn't sound either too modernthere's a good writer somewhere in here. siegel can put a sentence together in a pleasant way and crafts dialogue that doesn't sound either too modern or renfaire-esque for her historical characters. i'll probably read what she writes next.
the content of this book is not good. the only reason to read this book is if you are desperate for historical gay romance in general or if you just saw the lion in winter and went "damn, i want more of that." and if either sounds like you, this book will be disappointing. historians are torn on richard and philip's relationship, and not in a "they were just besties" kind of way; there's only very thin arguments to be made for their relationship. i say this only because, if you are then going to write a romance between them, you better come up with not only convincing passion but a convincing reason why so little note is made of it in the historical record. the book does not do this. it barely makes a case for its own philip and richard, and every time it comes up against any of their historical conflicts or historical alliances, it can't find anything to say beyond 'well, they were so in love, you see.'
this is all the more galling because alone in their own heads (philip much more than richard, but richard too), the two leads spend a great deal of time mulling over their own ambitions and desires and how they come into conflict with their irresistible pull toward the other. this is interesting! and then immediately undermined, because every time they meet they just simply MUST kiss each other and every one of their political plans falls apart. you could write this dynamic in a way that works. this is not it. particularly egregious is when richard actively backstabs philip and comes to kill him in his tent; the author cannot find a reason for glory-hound, prideful richard not to kill philip beyond "sad." but he still doesn't! in fact, this becomes the first time they have sex! it is so entirely contrary to their internal characters that it's clear the author simply could not marry the outer and inner lives, much less draw a convincing romance around them. bummer.
the real sin of this book is all of the above, but it's worth noting that the author writes a big "DO NOT CANCEL ME" historical note in the beginning of the book stating that she understands these two men both went on many crusades and that she isn't trying to excuse any of that. and she doesn't! philip's relationship to christ is thinly drawn in the spectre of his father, and richard's is nonexistent. philip has a lovely relationship with his wife, who is very understanding of his homosexuality and doesn't care at all that he is never going to secure her political future by getting her pregnant; the only character richard talks to other than philip in any significant way is a knight of his, who is black. nothing at all is made of this. again, there is a way to write a novel of future crusader-kings as a profound gay experience thoughtfully and intersectionally. this is not it. this is trying to have your cake and not cancel it too....more
i'm inflating my review of this book; it's a solid 3 stars that i'm putting at four because we simply do not write this kind of fantasy novel anymore.i'm inflating my review of this book; it's a solid 3 stars that i'm putting at four because we simply do not write this kind of fantasy novel anymore. it's completely unconcerned with proving itself and just pleasantly trots along the plot without stopping to justify its decisions at any point. this is doubly refreshing given the author's choice to have her two romances, containing all three of her POV characters, occur on both sides of her conflict. we get both points of view (the king's magic is useful and strong and helps keep the kingdom going vs. only the king has it and we don't have control over how it's used) and the author cleanly and without artifice navigates the viewer through the nuances of the debate. the romances are sexy without too much extra fuss to convince us they're sexy. the flaws of this book all come down to the thinness with which the world and plot are sketched-- jax and callyn live in a crossroads town that gets enough traffic that characters are always running into each other accidentally, yet callyn's bakery and jax's smithy appear to be the only buildings in it and the only people living there; the two capitols and crossroads town appear to be the three places on the map where people live, and even then, the only people in them are our POV characters, the villains, or characters from the previous series set in this world. a brief diversion into a moving tourney is a breath of fresh air, but serves mostly as a reason why another character from the previous series can join the plot. the world is distractingly empty.
the author weaves marginalized identities into her narrative with the same lack of artifice that she gives the nuanced conflict: one character from a previous series has CP, another has lost a foot; these disabilities are rendered in both the ways they challenge the characters and the ways that other characters judge them with frankness and empathy (as one would hope from an #ownvoices author with CP); the world seems to be entirely free of homophobia, which would bother me in an isekai series with primogeniture if a) the king not being an "appropriate" spouse for the queen wasn't also a plot point, and b) if the gay relationship wasn't both compelling and between two people not from "our" world with no power to lose. race is... let's say not as deftly navigated, but by obscuring characters races or any semblance of racial conflict rather than clumsily attempting to render a marginalization with which the author has no experience.
this book is humongously readable and the kind of fantasy the genre has been missing while the industry lumbered around realizing that people from marginalized identities were just as interesting as straight white people. if we wrote this kind of book all the time it would be Just Fine, but we don't....more
an all time classic of worldbuilding. a keystone in the foundation of so much of today's fantasy, with rich, vivid characters and a rewarding, if thinan all time classic of worldbuilding. a keystone in the foundation of so much of today's fantasy, with rich, vivid characters and a rewarding, if thin, storyline. i've wanted to live here since i was 4....more
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