Hag-seed - Margaret Atwood

“When Felix is deposed as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival by his devious assistant and longtime enemy, his production of The Tempest is canceled and he is heartbroken. Reduced to a life of exile in rural southern Ontario—accompanied only by his fantasy daughter, Miranda, who died twelve years ago—Felix devises a plan for retribution.”

This book is about a man called Felix, and he was the artistic director of a major theatre house until his assistant betrayed him and orchestrated a coup leaving Felix stranded in isolation. Sound familiar? Felix is our Prospero and he wants some revenge. So many years after he is disgraced he gets his opportunity. He stages his own version of The Tempest, using prison inmates that he teaches, to get back at those that wronged him. He takes on the role of Prospero in the play, and he also becomes him in his real life. 

Hag-Seed is a cleverly constructed, satirical retelling of The Tempest, executed through Felix and his band of convicted con men staging their own fanciful and strange retelling of the play. This overlap in storytelling succeeds in educating readers who have never seen the play, delighting those familiar with Shakespeare's tale of castaways stranded on a remote island plotting and scheming against one another, and being an on-the-nose representation of The Tempest. 

So Atwood has recreated The Tempest here and it’s wonderful. She has crafted all the themes of the Tempest into the form of this man’s life. And, ironically, he knows he is living The Tempest. He starts to actually become like Prospero. He becomes unhinged and can only taste that singular bitter pill known as revenge; it is literally all that animates him and it almost drives him too far into the depths of obsessive despair, though he has the power to come back. We all do. Very much in the tradition of the play, Felix comes back to himself. 

"But The Tempest is a play about a man producing a play - one that's come out of his own head, his 'fancies' - so maybe the fault for which he needs to be pardoned is the play itself." 

Felix's obsession with recreating The Tempest is about more than just revenge. His intentions are personal and rooted in grief, which adds depth to his motives and enriches the narrative. Felix wishes to memorialize his deceased daughter, Miranda (whose namesake is derived from the play). 

A truely interesting book. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I loved it, it wasn’t really my taste, but it certainly intrigued me and I would definitely recommend it to others. 

I think the only thing that stopped me from loving this book was the lack of vicsearal or brutal renderings of emotion that Atwood is know for. It felt gentle, mild.Not things you really want from a retelling of a story as frought as the Tempest. 

Age Rating 14+. A lot of swearing. 

Small Great Things - Jodi Picoult

“Ruth Jefferson is a labor and delivery nurse at a Connecticut hospital with more than twenty years' experience. During her shift, Ruth begins a routine checkup on a newborn, only to be told a few minutes later that she's been reassigned to another patient. The parents are white supremacists and don't want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child. The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey orders or does she intervene?”


What follows is a complicated legal and personal tale. Picoult wrote the book to try to encourage fellow white people to see how racism manifests in myriad ways. This is particularly intended for people who might never see themselves as racist. We trail Ruth as she is victimized by a cruel system. Kennedy is her white lawyer, a liberal with no notion of her own personal biases. Picoult also shows us Turk and Brit, the skinhead couple who spark the conflict.

We see some of how Turk and Brit became the way they are, and get an image of what the lives, worldviews, and tactical considerations are of people in this extreme end of society. Kennedy struggles with her own actions and perceptions. She is our avatar here, feeling righteous, but learning how racism pervades in unsuspected ways, getting educated by Ruth to the reality of pervasive discrimination.

All of these POV’s are handled masterly. With none of the characters coming away as paragons or utter villains. Of course Turk is the worst character but he is written with such realism and humanity, I kind of understood how an angry unloved youth might fall into the White Supremacist trap. 

There is a steady drip, drip, drip of small racial insults that Ruth endures and recalls. Her son gets a taste as well. If you can think of a racial slight, Picoult has incorporated it here. She uses not so much a broad brush as a steamroller to make sure we get the embedded significance. This is not a subtle book. But while it may use a very direct method, there is much here that shows the author’s skill. She does not, for example, settle solely on white on black bias. She also touches on the bias in the black community toward each other. 

A truly heart breaking book in its believability and frustration so expertly portrayed. An all round brilliant book to read if you want an introduction into the concepts of race. 

The only thing I had a little problem was the happy happy ending however there are many skinhead that have left the movement and I can grant Picoult some artistic license. 

Age Rating 13+.Complicated issues are discussed but in a simple way that any smart person should be able to grasp and would be a good conversation starter. 

Heartless - Marissa Meyer

“Long before she was the terror of Wonderland—the infamous Queen of Hearts—she was just a girl who wanted to fall in love.”

This book started off so well but unfortunately didn't live up to expectations further down the line. I will start of with the things I enjoyed. 

There IS quite a bit of the goodness of Wonderland's nonsense. Not enough though, which is annoying to me because hello??? WONDERLAND???? There were talking animals and rhymes and a king with the brain capacity of a peanut, and of course the famed croquet with flamingos and a mad hatter's tea party. Cheshire was also awesome! He was a delightful jerk and SO much like a normal cat + magical abilities.

The dialogue between the main characters Cath and Jest is light hearted and witty and the idea for Jest's character was interesting. I felt that that romance element was a little rushed but I feel that with almost all YA so I think that's just me. 

The beginning of this book surprised me with its frothiness. There is a lot of baking in this book, and the beginning was the equivalent of a strawberry cream puff, it was so lighthearted that the gradual darkening and the development of Catherine (she who is to be Queen of Hearts) almost sneaks up on you.


Now onto not so good things. 

It wasn't nearly mad enough. I was here for people to be screeching with madness but they bordered more on just the "insufferably stupid" lines instead of "intriguingly mad" which I was hoping for.


The plot was so stupid and boring it actually hurt. The entire plot of Heartless is: a spineless whingey girl tries to avoid marrying the king but not by doing anything active, just by whining about it in her room a lot. Dude. Duuuuude. DUDE. WHAT IS THIS. It started off so well and interestingly with Cath being all "I WANNA BE A BAKER!" But it quickly dissolved into 400+ pages of her being a wimp who NEVER DID ANYTHING FOR HERSELF or stood up for herself or thought for herself. She was as interesting as a vanilla cupcake. With no frosting. Like seriously

I also just couldn’t wrap my head around why on earth did Jest (the love interest) care about her?? And yes he did sprout the "You're different, Cath!" line which made me want to throw a lemon at his head. Can we let that line die? Please? Thank you? But he keeps saying how she's brave and strong and clever and literally she just makes macaroons and goes along with her bossy/awful parents' idea that she should marry the king that she really doesn't want to marry.

I mean, this'll come as a shock but: I didn't like Cath. She felt so pathetic. Plus she could NOT do a thing for herself, like make a decision or a stand, until she had a boy supporting her.

This is silly but...I didn't like the names?!? I mean, Cath Pinkerton...does not strike me as a name for the Queen of Hearts. For example, Mary Ann and Margaret and Jack and Peter and Abigail....I'm sorry. Did we FALL OUT OF WONDERLAND AND INTO NORMAL TOWN???

It was terribly slow. See aforementioned point of the only plot is "avoid avoid avoid marriage" and none of that time is used to build up Cath’s evilness or latent anger management problems. One second the sweetest most girly baker imaginable to, only in the last few pages, becoming a raging homocidal tyrant? I needed a few more heads lopped off a bit earlier to make it feel realistic. 

Also I am getting sick and tired of people using the Jabberwock as an antagonist in their wonderland themed endeavours. The Jabberwock isn’t a character in the original book, it is a poem told to Alice. It is fictional even in the fiction it is set. 

So overall a really promising and light hearted read, that didn’t come through in the plot or world development areas. 

Age Rating 12+. Nothing untoward but a few creepy triplets and one beheading scene. 

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown - Holly Black

"Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown's gates, you can never leave."

The best thing about this book is the writing. Holly Black is a good writer, the writing in this book is poetic...it runs excessively so at times, but I enjoy that sort of writing, so it didn't bother me. 

What did not work was the plot, and the excessiveness of the book. This book was overly long for the material that it contained. You could have easily removed a good 25% of this book without losing relevance, without losing much of the plot. There was too much needless introspection, too many flashbacks, and memories, and characters' POVs that felt largely irrelevant to the main part of the story.

To give credit where it's due, the first chapter is excellent. It opens with Tana waking up in a bathtub after a night of heavy drinking and partying. Head banging, she stumbles across the house to discover the horrific fate that has befallen her friends and quickly realises that she could very well be next. The story after that moves at a snail's pace; in fact, one might argue that it is non-existent for the majority of the book.

I also appreciated the representation in the bi Aiden and the transgender character Valentina and that it wasn't overly hyped up or over explained. It simply was. 

The concept of Coldtowns, where vampires and infected are quarantined with some willing and unwilling human, was extremely interesting at first, but ended up being a mess with a lot of holes and inconsistencies that my mind could not comprehend. This book's type of vampirism does not break any mould, but it was well-conceived enough. 

Overall, the reason why I disliked this story is because of the characters. I either didn't care about or outright disliked every single character, with the majority of my irritation directed towards the main character and her incomprehensible stupidity: Tana Bach. All of the characters felt like cardboard cut-outs and walking stereotypes. The vampires in this book were uninspired, they're a mix between goth-punk-wannabes, or exaggeratedly suave and evil Lestat/Louis-types of Anne Rice's Interview With a Vampire fame.
This world glorifies vampires, who are murderers, at the same time it glorifies the people who hunt vampires (Hemlok: Vampire Bounty Hunter is a popular reality show). Vampires have their own reality show feeds directly from Coldtowns, the world gathers to watch vampires party, dance, go to raves, suck on other people's bloods, chill out in sumptuous beds and making out with each other, dressed in glorious velvet clothes soaked through in blood. I thought this could be an interesting way to go about exploring how extreme beauty and preconceived romanticised ideas can change peoples perceptions but that was never fully developed. 

I cannot understand how the main character in this book can be so mind-numbingly dumb. Tana KNOWS how dangerous a Cold person is. Her mother literally RIPS her arms apart when little 10-year old Tana somehow felt the urge to be a do-gooder and free her mother from her chains in the basement. Being Cold, having a thirst for blood is like an cocaine addict needing a fix, only 10 times worse because you might actually kill a person and rip their throat out in your desperate need and thirst for human blood. It doesn't matter whom. A Cold person's bloodthirst transcends friendship, love, rationality.

Tana KNOWS this. She IGNORES it yet again when it happens. Not only does she choose to trust the vampire Gavriel, knowing nothing about him, despite his veiled threats and warnings for her NOT to trust him, she tags along with him and rescues him from his chains anyway. She also helps her Cold ex-boyfriend Aiden who jumps on her and tries to eats her repeatedly!!Tana does nothing but admonish him lightly. When she learns Gavriel's true identity, she STILL trusts him. Tana's foolishness, impetuousness, idiotic decision making never, ever stops, and I could not enjoy this book considering she is the main character.

Not to mention this particularly foolish moment: LET'S JUST KISS AND DELIBERATELY BAIT A HUNGRY HOMOCIDIAL VAMPIRE WITH BLOOD. Yeah a really great idea, especially a vampire we have only just meet like a day ago. I won't even go into the idiotic and forced romance between Tana and Gavriel, it made no sense and had no build up. 

Age Rating 15+. Lots of death and, while it is blood it plays out very much like drug use. 

The Kingdom of Ash - Sarah J Mass

"The final battle is here.

Aelin Galathynius has vowed to save her people―but at a tremendous cost. Locked within an iron coffin by the Queen of the Fae, Aelin must draw upon her fiery will as she endures months of torture. The knowledge that yielding to Maeve will doom those she loves keeps her from breaking, but her resolve is unraveling with each passing day…

With Aelin captured, friends and allies are scattered to different fates. Some bonds will grow even deeper, while others will be severed forever. As destinies weave together at last, all must fight if Erilea is to have any hope of salvation."

Wow this has been a long series, and a long journey. Emphasis on the long. I'm still perplexed as to why this book got so long in the end. Kingdom of Ash has some really strong moments, not to spoil anything but I cried in the Thirteen's and Manon's plot arch and Gavriel's too. Both where hard hitting emotionally and the writing was well executed. 

However there's so much filler and repetition that you have to fight through the boring parts to get to them. This is, at most, a 500-page story, extended with long, slow stretches of the characters journeying from one place to another, and repetitive scenes of battle.

The first 100 pages and last 150 pages were the most gripping, for me. The conclusion is suitably dramatic and the beginning details the horrific torture Aelin suffers at the hands of Cairn-- it's not a book for the squeamish. The disgusting scenes of torture also become a little repetitive after a while, but it starts very tense. How will Aelin get out of this?? The answer is really quite satisfying, too.

I also loved the strength of the women and the sheer grandeur that Maas can invoke in to her work but I do feel like this is a very long epilogue. There's battle scene after battle scene but not much of a plot. It's mostly about wrapping things up, tying up any loose ends and neatly establishing Aelin's awesomeness (which started to get frustrating). The way each of the main characters has to be perfectly settled into a hetero pairing is a little forced, too, I still don't and will never understand or like Manon and Dorian's romance.

The way Aelin is described in this book is strange to me, the amount of times she is described as skinny, thin ect is uncountable. I understand she is malnourished and what have you. But her appearance isn't really commented on as she starts to get better and considering the physicality of her role in this book, she really should have muscle mass. Fighting and being whip thin don't really go together, especially if you insist (as this character does) on taking on bigger opponents. Even if you're skilled, there's a thing called gravity and momentum that will make life hard for you. That's why wrestling and boxing have different weight classes.

Also a small pet peeve I have is that the Wolf Tribe is introduced so late. I mean, how awesome, humans and fae riding giant wolves. But they get no dialogue and a few lines of explanation. Could they not have been introduced earlier in this long book so we could learn more about the culture and their story? Missed opportunity. 


I also thought it was really gross when Dorian shape-shifts into a female form (an actual real women's form not some made up face) and even though they're in the middle of war, he's like, "I wonder if I have time to go to my tent and find out how to make women 'purr with pleasure.'" By which he means, of course, sneak off and masturbate. First of all, 'purr with pleasure' sounds like the sort of dirty talk a creep at a bar would use (you know, the ones with the pencil 'staches). Second of all, gross. You're in the body of the opposite sex and your first thought is, "Let's objectify it!" Oh Dorian, what happened to you? You used to be cool.

Well, I'm glad I read it to the end, and I do feel sad that it's over. Maas might not be my favourite writer, but any author who can keep you reading for more than 4,000 pages must have something good going on.

As the years of reading these book have gone on my patience with them has also been stretched thin. However I am impressed that Sarah J Maas was able to turn a normal YA, love triangle, pretty ball book in to a full on empire vs empires/ Lord of the rings rip off scenario. 

Age Rating 15+. As I said the torture scenes are graphic and there is quite a bit of stupid magic sex scenes but those mostly happen off page which is a small relief. 

The Silence of The Girls - Pat Barker

"The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, which continues to wage bloody war over a stolen woman—Helen. In the Greek camp, another woman—Briseis—watches and waits for the war's outcome. She was queen of one of Troy's neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece's greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles's concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army.

When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and coolly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position, able to observe the two men driving the Greek army in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate not only of Briseis's people but also of the ancient world at large."

This year has been a good year for Greek retellings and this has to be one of my favourites. The Silence of the Girls is a dark and weighty retelling of the Iliad. Told from the voice of one of the defeated, Briseis, the reader is offered a different perspective on the destruction of Troy.

Briseis, once a queen, is now a prized possession of Achilles--the same man who destroyed her city and butchered her family. Relegated to be Achilles’ “bed girl,” she is merely serving a purpose in the Greek camp.  Often referred to as “it,” she isn’t thought of as a human being. She struggles to maintain her place and function in a world run by her enemies.  

Briseis is a compelling narrator and I was often on edge waiting to see if she was going to survive the horrors of her new life. I felt the weight of her story and the empowerment of her words. However, I occasionally found the narrative to be bit temperamental and the sudden and unexpected shifts to Achille's POV felt clunky and confusing.

Pat Barker captured the grandiosity of these characters and events in a way that really struck a chord with me; I felt constantly on the verge of tears reading parts of this novel because Homer's musings on fate and free will and grief and glory - in short, what makes the Iliad so epic and timeless - are all echoed in Briseis' narrative. But Barker also manages it all from the sidelines, zeroing in on the experiences of a war slave who has no choice but to watch events unfold around her with no personal agency. Briseis is fully aware that she is not the hero of her own story, that she's narrating these events as a spectator to her own life. 

I also felt these were some of the best depictions I've ever read of these characters, notably Achilles and Patroclus. I find that certain writers have a difficult time reconciling Achilles' brutality with his heroism, and likewise Patroclus' ruthless streak with his kindness, but Barker captures the duality of nature well.  

Barker continues on the themes of war, providing a brutally visceral portrait in this telling of The Iliad, adding the voices of the women missing from the original. When her family is wiped out by the forces of Agamemnon, Briseis becomes the premier warrior, Achilles, trophy prize. Barker provides complex and nuanced characterisation, of the women as slaves, prostitutes, nurses, whilst giving us an Achilles that is less a hero, more a troubled man with his own demons. We get the clash of male egos when Agamemnon demands Briseis for himself after losing his woman. A bitter Achilles agrees but refuses point blank to fight for him any more. As we are immersed in the daily horrors of war, Achilles's pain and despair overflows after a personal tragedy but still has him able to feel compassion towards the grief of Priam. The Silence of the Girls is a stellar novel, beautifully written, where the stories of the women are told, made authentic with their opinions and views, amidst the never ending cost of war they are forced to endure. Would highly recommend. 

Age Rating 16+ Extremely brutal depictions of war, rape and strong language. 

Reality is Not What it Seems - Carlo Rovelli

“Do space and time truly exist? What is reality made of? Can we understand its deep texture? Scientist Carlo Rovelli has spent his whole life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. In this mind-expanding book, he shows how our understanding of reality has changed throughout centuries, from Democritus to loop quantum gravity. Taking us on a wondrous journey, he invites us to imagine a whole new world where black holes are waiting to explode, spacetime is made up of grains, and infinity does not exist -- a vast universe still largely undiscovered.”

This book was exceedingly interesting and a great introduction to a subject I knew very little to nothing about. I read a few reviews before I bought it and each one praised his “poetic” writing. I personally didn’t find this book to be very poetic at all. That isn’t precisely a bad thing just something I wanted to make clear.

It is well written, making complex concepts understandable to a layperson and someone of my age.  Metaphors where employed well to bring concepts into real life and I really appreciated the non-mathematical focus. 

Harking back to the ancient Greeks felt at first out of place, but was actually very insightful and made me re-mourn the loss of the Library of Alexandria. 

Over all a brilliant book for anyone that wants to be introduced gently to this subject. Covers enough ground for you too feel like you learn something and leave just enough for you to want to learn more yourself. I found myself furiously YouTubing other concepts during the reading of this book. 

Age Rating 14+. While accessible still is definitely higher grade so avoid this book unless you want to get frustrated, unless of course you are a wunderkind.  

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

"Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now..."

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a brilliant, endearing, scary as hell book.

Told with simplistic prose and stark attention to detail, Atwood describes life in the not too distant future where the United States has been transformed through military coup into a totalitarian theocracy. This dystopian horror story is made all the more real by the bridge Atwood has created between the world we know now and the world that could be – the story’s protagonist remembers the time before the change. This is, to my knowledge, a unique element in the dystopian genre, whereas in many others the setting is some time in the far future and there seems little hope for change or revolution.

More than that, the heroine, Offred (not her real name but the proprietary title she is given) is an approachable, likable character that brings the reader dangerously close to the action. Drawing an obvious correlation between far right conservative Christian movements and Muslim Sharia law authoritarian theocratic ideologies, Atwood has created a disturbing vision.

It's a bleak picture. Atwood uses the very claustrophobic perspective of Offred to great effect. Offred is the eponymous handmaid who find herself in a dystopia where her only societal value is also a curse: her fertility. Her world consists of her room, a stroll down the stairs, a garden, a walk to the butcher and her one and only societal mission: to get pregnant. She has to wear a cape that allows her to only look directly in front of her. She's isolated and stripped of her identity. Even her memories are slowly disappearing and losing relevance in a surrounding that offers nothing to link them to. Through this narrative Margaret Atwood succeeds in donning that same vision-confining cape on her readers' heads, immersing them in that same claustrophobic atmosphere. 

The writing is beautifully simplistic, showing how much we take our bodily autonomy for granted and the staving off of madness. The simplicity and matter of factness in the writing adds to the brutality of the piece. The way that the Offred desperately projects her story, a story that might never be heard, in need of human contact, of connection, was heartbreaking. 

This books does very well what it set out to do and that also explains why I didn't thoroughly enjoy it. I wanted more background. I wanted more explanations. I wanted more action by the protagonist. I wanted her spirit, still apparent in the secretly hoarding of butter and the plotting of small thefts, to break free and wreak havoc among the bastards. Make them lose without losing herself. I wanted the flashes of hope to last, to mean something bigger than survival. In short: the author succeeded in making me want exactly what the protagonist wanted. 

Age Rating 15+. Definitely an adult book with some strange sex/rape scenes and executions. 

The Power - Naomi Alderman

"In The Power the world is a recognisable place: there's a rich Nigerian kid who lounges around the family pool; a foster girl whose religious parents hide their true nature; a local American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But something vital has changed, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power - they can cause agonising pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world changes utterly.

This extraordinary novel by Naomi Alderman, a Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and Granta Best of British writer, is not only a gripping story of how the world would change if power was in the hands of women but also exposes, with breath-taking daring, our contemporary world."

Ooh, this is a toughie. I have a lot of mixed feelings about Alderman's The Power. It's an intriguing and clever concept, but this never really translates into an engaging story.

Imagine if one day, suddenly, girls developed a strange physical power: they can produce electricity inside them. They can use this power to hurt, to torture, and to kill. A world that is built on patriarchy is suddenly upturned - being a woman is synonymous with power and strength, men are the ones afraid to walk alone at night, the female body itself becomes an instrument of power.

With obvious nods to rape culture, The Power imagines what the world would be like if men, not women, had to live in constant fear for their physical safety. Alderman considers how this would affect a variety of people and issues, from terrorism to religion, and she does this through the eyes of four very different people.

There's Roxy, a white British teenager and the daughter of a gangster. There's Allie, a mixed-race girl who runs away after years of abuse and finds herself at a convent, revered as some kind of goddess. There's Margot, an American mayor and one of the few older women to develop the power. And then Tunde, a young Nigerian man and aspiring journalist who captures early footage of the power in action.

The four perspectives are unequal and uneven, with certain perspectives being much more interesting for part of the book and then becoming tedious, and others doing the reverse of that. Some of the characters verge on cliches and stereotypes too.

I felt like most of the book explored a concept without telling a story. After the initial discovery of the powers and the subsequent affect on the world, the book kind of stalled, and lots of chapters felt dragged out without purpose or direction. Allie's perspective became deeply entrenched in religion, more so than was interesting, and I quickly lost interest in where the other POVs were going.

Also, some parts seemed a little too simplistic. I honestly don't believe that Saudi women would embrace rebellion so readily and to that extent. The notion that Muslim women are just waiting to throw off their clothes, riot in the street, and have casual sex seems like a blinkered "Western" perspective. Sure, maybe this would evolve over time if Saudi women had power, but I find it very hard to believe that anyone would cast off centuries of cultural practices in a matter of days.

Social norms throughout the world shift daily as more and more young women discover their ability to harness the power. Some social adjustments are small and happen slowly; others are more drastic and arrive suddenly. Males must behave in ways that are unorthodox for men but are, in the real world, common practice for women. It often feels unfathomable that male characters in the book should suffer such atrocities, but readers are forced to recognize a disturbing fact: Women suffer similar acts of barbarism every day in the real world.

The Power is a real mixed bag full of fascinating ideas, lack of focus, over-simplified male/female power dynamics, and some clever subversive scenes. I particularly liked the part where one woman claims that some boys "secretly like it", a play on the notion of "asking for it" in rape culture.

A hard book to rate. I wonder if it would have made a better short story. 

Age Rating 15+. Quite brutal rape and war/death scenes. 

Circe - Madeline Miller

“In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.”

Anyone who knows me will tell you I absolutely love mythology, any period, any country. I especially love an artful retelling. They are difficult to find but this one definitely deserves to join their ranks. 

The thing that brings this whole novel together is Circe’s character. She is a woman who has done awful, evil things, and yet remains unfailingly, unflinchingly human. She is lonely, harsh and hiding herself in sarcasm much of the time. Yet there is not a moment in this novel in which I didn’t adore her. Madeline Miller does such an amazing job developing this character, weaving her thoughts into the narrative without manipulating you into feeling a certain way, keeping the narrative wide yet keeping it focused around Circe. Throughout this novel I developed such a deep level of admiration for both this author and this character, this character I’m sure will stay with me forever. 

This novel is so interesting because at its core, it is an exploration of the voice of women in Greek mythology. Circe is a character we see nothing of in the narrative of Greek mythology, a character with seemingly evil intentions and little motivation – and all this despite showing up in several different stories. There’s something supremely excellent about seeing a character like this who is essentially a plot device be given a story.  I absolutely love giving characters who have been given no agency the agency they deserve. 

I mean, everything about this book was just brilliant. The prose was just sparkling. I loved seeing how the different mythology joined together creating a flowing river of cause and effect difficult to see in the short single story. I also loved the myth interpretation: Penelope and Odysseus are both written perfectly, and seeing Jason basically get called an asshole while Medea stood on being young and morally grey and in love was so fantastic. The exploration of gods vs. mortals is just brilliant: 

You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.

The terrible beauty of the gods was beautifully conveyed. I don’t think I have read a book that has conveyed the gods to be so inhuman. Madeline makes a point to show that the God aren’t human, they don’t feel like humans, nor do they desire the same things. They are almost the distilled values of humans. All our vices and beauty heightened, without our softening complexity.
 
I loved the relationships — just as a special note, the relationship between Circe and Telegonus made me want to cry. I so enjoyed the bittersweet motherly love. Many books don’t show the reality, that sometimes your child is not what you expected, the relationship didn’t work out perfectly but you still have to love them and would do anything for them. Exploring this complexity was done with subtly and masterfully. 

Not an uplifting book. Sad and leaves you with a sense of heaviness. Not something I think I would read again. 

Age Rating 15. There is a rape scene and quite a bit of sex. Most of it happens off screen or is described through a fog of confusion so is never explicit.