Diary of a Literature Lover

Title: The Scorpion Rules (Prisoners of Peace book 1)
Author: Erin Bow
Narrator: Madeleine Maby
Published: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2015
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 390
Total Page Count: 555,850
Text Number: 2085
Read Because: ambyr's post, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The children of peace are hostages of the world nations, held by the governing AI, doomed to die if their home nation goes to war. Our protagonist is prepared to face that death with dignity—until the newest hostage, from a rival nation, bucks all convention. I don't get on with YA as a rule, and so avoid it; I don't want to spend this review bitching about a genre that's just not for me, but when a book so perfectly executes what I wish the genre would do, my success with it speaks equally to text and its relationship with genre conventions.

The tropes are still here: snarky antagonist, love triangle, dystopia. But it's quality writing, and those tropes are balanced in, grounded by, a thoughtful consideration of worldbuilding and an unrelenting commitment to character and psychology. The scale is horrifying, the specificities localized and intimate; the romance(s) both indicative of and wholly overshadowed by the world; the depiction of torture, trauma, and PTSD thoughtful and realized with a fantastic use of repetition. This remains as iddy as the genre can & should be, but frankly it's better quality than most of the genre is, and so takes a great premise and actually does something with it.


Title: The Swan Riders (Prisoners of Peace book 2)
Author: Erin Bow
Narrator: Madeleine Maby
Published: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2016
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 380
Total Page Count: 556,230
Text Number: 2086
Read Because: ambyr's post, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Despite that this is a different book than the first—changed setting, much-changed protagonist—my reactions are quite similar, finding and appreciating the same strengths. High-concept, speculative premise, and in the background-moving-foreground is an inconceivable scale; and, in the foreground, a focus on intimate social bonds, symbolic of and felt in the larger cultural context, grounded in a minute, exhausting focus on physical and mental trauma. It's iddy, with hurt/comfort vibes, but consistently well-written. I read these on audio, and look forward to revisiting them in print for a more considered experience. What a pleasant surprise it was to give this series a try.

Title: The Heart of the Antarctic: Being the Story of the British Antarctic Expedition 1907-9
Author: Earnest Shackleton
Published: 1909
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 1310 (670+640)
Total Page Count: 555,165
Text Number: 2082-3
Read Because: cold boys, haters edition; ( where to find, for nerds )
Review:
The Nimrod expedition was the first Shackleton led, 1907-9, placing it directly between Scott's Discovery (on which Shackleton was a member) and infamous Terra Nova, and later overshadowed by Shackleton's also-infamous Endurance. Hate to say it, because I'm certain I'd find Shackleton, the man, super obnoxious, but he knows what the people want. This is some of the best curated, most satisfying expedition writing I've read, intentionally accessible to the layreader, incredibly corporeal and crunchy in detail, right down to descriptions of sleeping arrangements and food poisoning, to photos of people in their bunks or in drag, while still willing to skim elements that might be repetitive recounted in full. Kudos, I think, to his editor, as Shackleton's letters imply much of that curation and directness comes from an outside influence; and it's utterly absent in Dr. David's extensive sections, which make for a slow end to what's already a mammoth text. The various appendixes are skippable, although whenever these guys write about penguins it's always a delight. I read this immediately after Riffenburgh's Shackleton's Forgotten Expedition and appreciate the larger context, specifically re: social frictions that Shackleton understandably elides despite their significant impact on the expedition.

This expedition exists in intimate conversation with Scott's, and the tension between them is both petty and amiable. But what fascinates me is that Shackleton, too, almost died in his effort at the Pole; in fact, almost anyone who did significant man-hauling in Antarctica almost died, cutting corners and overextending themselves in this supremely inhospitable climate. The more I read, the more the death of Scott et al. feels not like bad luck but simply an inevitability: some sledging party was bound to freeze out there, and it was nearly this one.

Title: Underneath Everything
Author: Marcy Beller Paul
Published: Balzer + Bray, 2015
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 305
Total Page Count: 553,705
Text Number: 2077
Read Because: no idea how I found this one, ebook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: The tumultuous social life of a high school senior
whose popular/outsider status and rotating relationships all come back to a messy friend-breakup. In a world where Burton's The World Cannot Give and Ojeda's Jawbone exist, this is a little redundant, mostly in a more cakes! way. It's almost without plot or stakes beyond friend group dynamics, an admirable commitment that pulls in the scope but is frequently infuriating, falling apart in the reveals and climax-that-isn't. I simultaneously buy the toxic, homoerotic dynamic and the crucial importance everything has at this age, and feel like, that's it, that's the big drama?; the writing needs to be better to sell this nuance. But I'd love nothing more than to collect fictional toxic female friendships that experiment with breathplay, so, can't fault that.