Now I Rise (#2) - Kiersten White

"She has no allies. No throne. All she has is what she’s always had:
herself.

After failing to secure the Wallachian throne, Lada Dracul is out to punish anyone who dares to cross her blood-strewn path. Filled with a white-hot rage, she storms the countryside with her men, accompanied by her childhood friend Bogdan, terrorizing the land. But brute force isn’t getting Lada what she wants. And thinking of Mehmed brings little comfort to her thorny heart. There’s no time to wonder whether he still thinks about her, even loves her. She left him before he could leave her.

What Lada needs is her younger brother Radu’s subtlety and skill. But Mehmed has sent him to Constantinople—and it’s no diplomatic mission. Mehmed wants control of the city, and Radu has earned an unwanted place as a double-crossing spy behind enemy lines. Radu longs for his sister’s fierce confidence—but for the first time in his life, he rejects her unexpected plea for help. Torn between loyalties to faith, to the Ottomans, and to Mehmed, he knows he owes Lada nothing. If she dies, he could never forgive himself—but if he fails in Constantinople, will Mehmed ever forgive him?

As nations fall around them, the Dracul siblings must decide: what will they sacrifice to fulfil their destinies? Empires will topple, thrones will be won…and souls will be lost."

I just love this series and it's reimagining of Vlad the Impaler as a woman called Lada. I love that Lada is allowed to be every bit as mean and bloodthirsty as Vlad, but also, somehow, demand sympathy from the reader. Well, from me anyway. She stands out as one of my favourite characters from all the YA series I've read in recent years. 

This book is - in short - about the fall of Constantinople and Lada's reclamation of Wallachia (you should read the actual history of this, if you're unfamiliar; it is fascinating). It is split into two stories that rarely meet, but both are extremely exciting and compelling.

And I Darken was a well-written and developed book, but I had mixed feelings on the romance and wanted a bit more in the character department. I did not expect either aspect to improve. I definitely did not expect White to fix BOTH of my issues with book one. It's not often a sequel can surpass my expectations so much, but this sequel is undeniably better than book one. Now I Rise both does away with the love triangle drama and far surpasses book one in terms of character work.

Lada doesn't get any less fierce during this book; in fact, she gets even more brutal. Yet she's not completely heartless; she has some very compelling relationship development with several side characters. While she just doesn't have as far to go in terms of development, I still enjoyed her journey and conflict over duty to family.

Then there's Radu, who I didn't particularly care for in the first book. Here, though, he got an incredible character arc. I am still reeling from this character arc. I cannot get over how much Radu has grown and changed. Radu's inner debate over which side truly deserves to win Constantinople really stands out throughout the book, in both his internal and external conflict. It's incredibly difficult to write characters on both sides of the fence, but White executed it brilliantly.

White's writing, while brilliant in the first book, also feels like it has matured. There where so many stunning description. The dialogue feel natural yet poetic. None of these side characters are one-dimensional. Even my least favourite side characters never felt like plot devices but rather fully fleshed out people that demonstrated different ways this war effects people; they're all morally ambiguous and they're all interesting. I must also call out White's brilliant way of writing about difficult topics. All the themes about religion and its role are brought up with delicacy and respect, yet never comes off as didactic or preachy. This series is so good at discussing religion in a non-offensive way.

The queer rep and dismantling internalised misogyny was brought through from the first book. Lada fighting to discover her own way of being a women, Radu feeling like an outsider and constantly unworthy of affection where all handled brilliantly. While this series is technically a YA it feels so much darker, brutal and complex. 

Age Rating 16+ Sex, death, war, murder. 

LOT - Bryan Washington

"Stories of a young man finding his place among family and community
in Houston, from a powerful, emerging American voice.

In the city of Houston - a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America - the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He's working at his family's restaurant, weathering his brother's blows, resenting his older sister's absence. And discovering he likes boys.

This boy and his family experience the tumult of living in the margins, the heartbreak of ghosts, and the braveries of the human heart. The stories of others living and thriving and dying across Houston's myriad neighbourhoods are woven throughout to reveal a young woman's affair detonating across an apartment complex, a rag-tag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, and a reluctant chupacabra."

I feel this is a truly important book, that highlights difficult questions and intersections of identity, but one that I didn't enjoy. It's a short book with just 220 pages which hold a number of interconnected short stories that are all set in Houston, Texas. We always circle back to the same young narrator and his family but his chapters are interspersed with those of other people in the neighbourhood, usually also young, queer men. I really enjoyed the first few stories since they skilfully set the tone, introduced me to the narrator's world and created a sense of belonging. But the more I read the more settled became the feeling of hopelessness and isolation. The characters are lost, don't dare to dream, have nowhere to go and become cold, cruel and bitter. And what is even worse is knowing that many of these stories are real. 

While I didn't love all of the stories, some really stuck with me, including: "Alief," in which a community reveals a neighbour's affair to her husband but is unprepared for the destruction that this revelation might cause. This one really stuck with me, and I just adored the choice of writing the apartment block as if itself was a living breathing entity. However, much of the prose was quite raw and unbeautiful. 

For some reason I did feel emotional distance from these characters. I’m still trying to figure out where that distance comes from – perhaps it’s because our narrators are men and that distance is Washington showing how toxic masculinity, racism and the brutality of trying to survive in a system designed against you has come to harm men of colour's emotional landscape. Because none of these characters where even close to lovable, or even nice, really.

Age Rating 16+. Mature content. 

The Frolic of the Beasts - Mishima Yukio

"Set in rural Japan shortly after World War II, The Frolic of the
Beasts tells the story of a strange and utterly absorbing love triangle between a former university student, Kōji; his would-be mentor, the eminent literary critic Ippei Kusakudo; and Ippei’s beautiful, enigmatic wife, Yūko. When brought face-to-face with one of Ippei’s many marital indiscretions, Kōji finds his growing desire for Yūko compels him to action in a way that changes all three of their lives profoundly. Originally published in 1961,  The Frolic of the Beasts is a haunting examination of the various guises we assume throughout our lives, and a tale of psychological self-entrapment, seduction, and crime."

Sorry for the break guys, just moved house and couldn't access my laptop. 

This was my first Mishima and I was thoroughly intrigued as to what kind of book a man with such a strange and interesting life story would write. He committed Seppuku in 1970 after failing to start a Nationalistic semi-military coup. Please do me a favour and just google this man, his life was certainly unique and he must have been quite a character. 

As I said, this is my first Mishima and I am walking away not really knowing what to think or how much I really liked this book. As with most theme-heavy, rhetorical works of fiction, the characters in The Frolic of the Beasts read more like archetypal placeholders in an allegory than they do representations of persons but that serves well one of the novel's principal themes: Fate's destruction of agency. With exaggerated characters and recurring poetry that echoes like a refrain, The Frolic of Beasts reads like an tragicomic opera, and who will emerge as hero or villain will be determined by whose story you find most sympathetic.

The prose is romantic with pleasingly rambling meditations on imagery even when describing the acts and aftermath of violence. Atmospheric descriptions of a hot Japanese summer leave the reader feeling even more claustrophobic and here is sense of unrealism to the prose, a rambling disjointed simplicity that recalls the sense of a fable. 

I found the premise of the novel deeply interesting and there where moments of real brilliance. However the character where just too one dimensional for me to fully undertand their motivation or their emotional state. This, unfortunately, undercut the impact of the novel for me. There are many moment where more exploration of the character's inner thoughts would have served to heighten an already interesting plot point. For example (SPOILERS) why does Yuko decide to invite Koji to work for her, what emotion drives that decision? Then when he is there, why does she not initiate the physical relationship that she obviously desires? A sense of guilt, the enjoyment of punishing Koji, the tantalising joy of a pleasure not partaken in? 

Because of this lack of emotional fleshing out I found the side characters and stories increasingly interesting. Kimi, for example, and her personal tragedy and story was impactful and almost fairy-tale like. 

Overall an interesting but not brilliant read. However I would like to trey a few more of Mishima's works to get a better understanding of his writing and thematic style. 

Age Rating 16+. Mature content. Rape, sex, violence.