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. 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

"In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers."

This is my first Kundera book and I will definitely be reading more of his work. This book definitely, however, wins the award for Most Pretentious Title Ever. People would ask me what I was reading, and I would have to respond by reading the title in a sarcastic, Oxford-Professor-of-Literature voice to make it clear that I was aware of how obnoxiously superior I sounded.

As far as the philosophy of this book goes, it isn't dense and is fairly easy to comprehend. I thought the writing style actually presented its deeper thoughts in a very accessible and relatable manner. The sub textual messages and thought-provoking ideas were actually my favourite part of the book. Kundera has a strange style that feels like, instead of introducing you to a new concept, he is rather putting words to a feeling you have always felt. Or that was what it was like for me at least. 

What I didn't quite like was the surface level, such as the plot and characters. I honestly didn't enjoy any of the four main characters as people, but I could see that they where merely tools for Kundera to explore certain theme. Kundera even owns up to that fact within the book. I felt for each of the people as they felt so very human in the most highly caricatured way. The descriptions of the quiet despair and entrapment where incredibly moving. 

And we haven’t even touched on the sex yet. Kundera’s book is  rife with sex, sex is the other engine driving this dually powered writer, sex both passionate and routine, sex filled up with deep emotional meaning and sex stripped down to its tangible physicality, sex as recurring motif in one’s life illuminating greater insights into one’s personality and sex as secret door into the aesthetics of our time.

To write, as some have, that the book is primarily about erotic encounters is I think to miss the point. Instead it is a book about tyranny, the large and the small, the ones we endure and the ones we resist, the ones we submit to for love and the ones that always rankle silently. The tyranny of kitsch, as understood by the novel, kitsch to mean a subjective, sentimental folding screen that hides away the sight of death. The questions that the book seeks to explore circle around the ideas of polar opposites, truth and lies, love and hate (or indifference), freedom and slavery, heaviness and lightness. 

The Kundera style is a very delightful bit and piecework manner. We focus on one character, that character’s perceptions, that character’s perspectives, in little miniatures, some essay-like, that elaborate on the character’s psychology or history. Then we shift to another character and learn new things about that person, sometimes touching on the same pieces we’ve seen already.

Overall a wonderful, crazy and unique book. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, however I think worth reading. 

Age Rating 16+. Adult content. Sex, sexual encounters, death and military occupation. 

The Golem - Gustav Meyrink

"The Golem is a haunting Gothic tale of stolen identity and persecution, set in a strange underworld peopled by fantastical characters. The red-headed prostitute Rosina; the junk-dealer Aaron Wassertrum; puppeteers; street musicians; and a deaf-mute silhouette artist.

Lurking in its inhabitants’ subconscious is the Golem, a creature of rabbinical myth. Supposedly a manifestation of all the suffering of the ghetto, it comes to life every 33 years in a room without a door. When the jeweller Athanasius Pernath, suffering from broken dreams and amnesia, sees the Golem, he realises to his terror that the ghostly man of clay shares his own face...

The Golem, though rarely seen, is central to the novel as a representative of the ghetto's own spirit and consciousness, brought to life by the suffering and misery that its inhabitants have endured over the centuries. Perhaps the most memorable figure in the story is the city of Prague itself, recognisable through its landmarks such as the Street of the Alchemists and the Castle."

This book is easily the most disturbing, unsettlingly, nonsensical, confusing book I have read in a long time, maybe ever. It feels like an incredibly macabre adult version of Alice in Wonderland. You are dragged from nonsensical reality warping situation to the next, each infused with dark occult symbolism. 

Gustav Meyrink's unique infusion of Kabbalism, Freemasonry and the Wandering Jew mythos into the Golem legend can get murky at ti
mes, but in light of the author's own divided spiritual pursuits it makes sense that clarity remains elusive. As an early fictional reflection of this restless search for inner truth, it is disjointed, confusing and thoroughly disturbing. This novel is at times highly episodic in nature (it was originally published in serial form), alternately dwelling on various possible explanations for what is going on, while only tangentially maintaining contact with the overarching narrative. What is truth, imagined, dreamt or the result of madness is always unclear and I think purposefully so.  Though it comes full circle in a manner of speaking, it is still deliberately vague in its conclusion.

While the actual prose and lyrical descriptions are truly wonderful and haunting in the best way possible, I found the actual content of the book too disturbing to enjoy. It is a relatively short book but I found it a slog to get through as you never really understand what is going on. The characters while all so very promising, such as Rosina, Miriam, and the silhouette artist, are never fleshed out and are reduced to boring paper cut-outs. While I can see that Meyrink is trying to make a point in this book, his use of occult symbolism and narrative structure is too abstract to get his themes across with any poignancy. 

Age Rating 16+. Thoroughly disturbing atmosphere with some sexual illusions.

The Cellist Of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway

"This brilliant novel with universal resonance, set during the 1990s Siege of Sarajevo, tells the story of three people trying to survive in a city rife with the extreme fear of desperate times, and of the sorrowing cellist who plays undaunted in their midst.

One day a shell lands in a bread line and kills twenty-two people as the cellist watches from a window in his flat. He vows to sit in the hollow where the mortar fell and play Albinoni’s Adagio once a day for each of the twenty-two victims. The Adagio had been re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, but the fact that it had been rebuilt by a different composer into something new and worthwhile gives the cellist hope.

Meanwhile, Kenan steels himself for his weekly walk through the dangerous streets to collect water for his family on the other side of town, and Dragan, a man Kenan doesn’t know, tries to make his way towards the source of the free meal he knows is waiting. Both men are almost paralyzed with fear, uncertain when the next shot will land on the bridges or streets they must cross, unwilling to talk to their old friends of what life was once like before divisions were unleashed on their city. Then there is “Arrow,” the pseudonymous name of a gifted female sniper, who is asked to protect the cellist from a hidden shooter who is out to kill him as he plays his memorial to the victims.

In this beautiful and unforgettable novel, Steven Galloway has taken an extraordinary, imaginative leap to create a story that speaks powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the human spirit under extraordinary duress."

The futility and horror of war are felt most acutely and despairingly when the young, the helpless and the innocent, bear the ultimate price. At 4 pm on 26th May 1992, in a war-torn Sarajevo marketplace, a mortar bomb killed 22 people, mostly women, as they queued for bread. In homage to each of those lost souls and in protest against the violence and conflict, an unknown Cellist enters the square at 4 pm each day afterwards for 22 days, to play his cello. He is completely isolated, vulnerable and a high priced target for the attacking snipers.

The narration is told through the eyes of 3 characters as they each navigate the shelled-out city at risk of losing their lives. One is an elderly baker travelling across the city to work and make sure he has bread for his family. Another is a man making the daily routine of fetching fresh water from the brewery. The third character is a female sniper watching and protecting the Cellist from the surrounding buildings of rubble.

A quietly stunning and thoroughly haunting book. The prose is sparse and contains a quiet tension and dread. The character's humanity and quite horror but acceptance are all communicated artfully. Truly wonderful prose. 

The author shows the impact of war on ordinary citizens (as opposed to soldiers), and the role of art in maintaining a sense of hope. This novel is not about the war itself, how it started, or any of the ethnic groups involved. It is about how people struggle to retain their humanity in the midst of death, destruction, and chaos. The author paints a vivid picture of what it would be like to live in a war zone, the drastic changes in the way people interact with each other, and the emotional harm inflicted by living with the threat of imminent death. But the book never becomes preachy or overblown, slips into the bombastic or overtly sentimental. It keeps it's sparse prose and characterisation. 

I must quickly mention that I did find Arrows character a little unbelievable and whenever she appeared she pulled me out the the story a little. Why is she such a good sniper?Why was she learning to shot in the "normal world"? Why is she allowed so much freedom to pick and choose her missions in a time full of strict martial hierarchy? 

Overall a haunting book well worth a read. It certainly sparked an interest in me about the conflict, that I shamefully knew woefully little about. 

Age Rating 15 +. Some realistic description of violence, aftermath of shootings and mortar blasts. 

And I Darken - Keirsten White

"No one expects a princess to be brutal. And Lada Dragwlya likes it that way. Ever since she and her gentle younger brother, Radu, were wrenched from their homeland of Wallachia and abandoned by their father to be raised in the Ottoman courts, Lada has known that being ruthless is the key to survival. She and Radu are doomed to act as pawns in a vicious game, an unseen sword hovering over their every move. For the lineage that makes them special also makes them targets."

Well, holy shit. Even with the positive reviews rolling in, that was completely unexpected. How do I begin to explain this vicious little nightmare of a book? All I know is: it's different to anything else I've read.

It is dark, gritty and compelling. It pulled me into its darkness from the very first chapter and I didn't come up for air until I'd finished all 496 pages of it. It's the kind of book that is everything that hooks you, fuelling your rage and your desperate need to turn the page, whilst also being a well-written, highly-original story.

"Fantasy" is a loose term for this book. You won't find any Throne of Glass-esque heroines or magic here. It's more alternate history, set in Transylvania at the height of the Ottoman Empire (based on history, though not historically accurate), and richer, more political than typical YA fantasy, and much nastier. 

Lada is a freaking fantastic, psychotic heroine. She is not one of those faux-antiheroines who proclaim their badassery and never do anything other than defeat the bad guys and fall in love. From the moment she is born, she is fierce, resilient and a little bit, maybe more than a bit, nuts. As she grows, she becomes ever more cold, cruel and calculating. She quickly recognizes what it means to be a woman in this world and she is not playing along. You're never sure whether to hate her, pity her or relate to her.  And I Darken explores Lada's disdain for women and her own confused feelings over whether she should deny or defend her femininity. This is paired with the revelation that there are many kinds of power and women have their own ways of wielding it, biding their time and eventually getting what they want. I will be interested to see how Lada matures in the next books and starts to accept her own femininity as a strength rather than a burden. 

However, though she is fascinating, the book isn't just about Lada. The third person narrative is also about the experiences of her brother - Radu, a beautiful, delicate but highly politically intelligent, boy whose weakness both aggravates Lada and draws her protection. I must admit that the addition of a gay character was completely unexpected but I welcomed him and the theme that came with him with open arms.

The contrast between a girl with traditionally masculine traits and a boy with traditionally feminine traits was a very interesting interplay and raised a lot of intelligent questions. They have a complex sibling relationship, once again quite unlike anything we usually see in YA, and it is filled with frustration, jealousy and misunderstanding. They both want to save and kill each other. 

The setting was beautifully done from both characters POV. Radu sees the Ottomans cities and religion as a place of refuge, beauty and security where Lada sees them as representing everything she hates. The duality of the Ottoman nation is incapsulated in the character of Mehmed, a childhood friend of Lada and Radu who grows up to be the sultan. He is both ruthless and a self proclaimed zealot, wishing to conquer Constantinople for religious reasons even at the expense of his men. He has a haram, which he sees as merely slaves to perform a function. But he also has moments of kindness and real connection with both siblings. 

The romance was not overwhelming, the relationship between Lada and Mehmed was build upon mutual dependency and was so interesting.  A women desperate not to be subjected and a man who has a haram but enjoys her outspokenness. I am not even sure of Lada loves him in a traditional way, she cares for him but not as much as her own sovereignty which I respected and agreed with. I also enjoyed the added layer of complexity that Radu's love for Mehmed added into the story, the inner sibling rivalry, self hatred and the contrast between two remarkably different ways of feeling the emotion of love. 

Age Rating 14+. Some adult themes such as the discovery of sensuality, torture and war.