This just made me sad. Sad that I fell for yet another poorly written superhero story. The premise is so good! A hero and a villain with amnesia run into each other at a support group and decide to help each other. But all the tension and unexpected places this could’ve gone are wasted almost at the start. I skimmed the final battle. Not even worth commenting on the problematic “inclusion” of gayness. 🙄
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I read 10-12 novels a week in grad school and some heavy literary theory. No interest in non-fiction now, and mainly read sci-fi and fantasy. Using this account to track/share my reading from 2023 onward (and maybe backward, if my completionist tendencies kick in). On Mastodon @ottsatwork@artsio.com.
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Otts reviewed We Could Be Heroes by Mike Chen
Otts wants to read The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein
The Steerswoman is the first novel in the Steerswoman series. Steerswomen, and a very few Steersmen, are members of an …
Otts reviewed A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
Girl, your whiteness is showing
3 stars
This mystery series is starting to feel predictable, which can be a comfort and largely why I read one every winter. But I’m tired of the bitchy exchanges with Ruth (they’re not even funny or endearing), the constant need to refer to Myrna by her size and Blackness … The addiction angle in this one was shallow, but at least there’s developments with Jean-Guy, Clara, and Peter.
Otts reviewed In the Act by Rachel Ingalls
Hilarious
5 stars
The tiny annoyances that accumulate in a marriage erupt into a delightful what’s-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander story. Wonderfully petty. A quick read that could easily work on stage, as a Black Mirror episode, or a movie. Eat it up. I need to look up more of Ingalls’ work.
Otts wants to read Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
"A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful rising literary voice. With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. …
Otts reviewed What we see when we read by Peter Mendelsund
At least it’s a quick read
2 stars
Girl, look: I have an MA in literature. I did not plod through tons of literary theory including French deconstructionists—who here understands Derrida? Shut up! Stop your lying!—for some book jacket illustrator to repackage reader-response criticism and tell me it’s new … Oh! Look at all the pretty pictures!
Otts reviewed The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler
Gimme, gimme more Nayler
5 stars
“The Mountain in the Sea” was my favorite novel of 2023, so I jumped on this. A novella this time—of course I wanted more. Still, Nayler is able to tell a compelling story involving animals, technology, and humanity’s immense capacity for destruction and cruelty. For all the book’s brevity, or maybe because of it, the betrayals are deeper between these characters. The ending is not without hope though.
Otts reviewed The Road to the City by Natalia Ginzburg
Italian telenovela
4 stars
Such histrionics! " ‘You're playing at being sick. I'm the one who is going to get sick, working as I do morning and night, busting my arms for you all. When I pick up my plate I can't even eat I'm so tired. And you enjoy watching me die.’ ” Or,
" ‘Are you in such a hurry to see me die? I'll live to ninety just to spite you,’ shouted my aunt, hitting her on the head with her rosary.” 👀🍿 Cackling.
Otts reviewed System Collapse by Martha Wells
You know what you’ll get
4 stars
It’s been long enough between books that I looked up a recap of where we last left Murberbot. Glad I did, because then I was able to just enjoy this one. It’s more of the same, which is what it’s felt like for a while with Murderbot, but that’s OK! Very incremental character development on their part, but the character is interesting enough that I’m happy to spend more time with them.
Otts wants to read No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
"In a suburb outside Cleveland, a community of Indian Americans has settled into lives that straddle the divide between Eastern …
Otts wants to read We Could Be Heroes by Mike Chen
Otts reviewed Early Light by Osamu Dazai
Drunk men, one only slightly useless
3 stars
Three short stories, all featuring a drunk, somewhat useless man. I liked the second and third, about a writer’s ambivalence towards Mt. Fuji and a woman who ends up happily working at a bar to get away from her broke, no-good husband, respectively.
Otts reviewed Eastbound by Maylis De Kerangal
Small pleasures
4 stars
I read the Archipelago edition which was very pleasing to hold and touch. Its physicality really influenced my good opinion. A simple story contained inside a small book, set on the cramped spaces of a train on the Trans-Siberian railway.
Otts reviewed Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire
How the Doors operate 💔
5 stars
The Author’s Note broke my heart. I’m finding it difficult now to talk about this book and what it reveals about this series and the world(s) McGuire’s created.
I always loved that this series was fantasy with an edge. But the realization of the cost of all that wonder, for both the characters and us readers, cuts deeper this time. Book 8 and my favorite of The Wayward Children series.