Speaking Bones

Speaking Bones by Ken Liu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a great ending to the Dandelion Dynasty. Liu has created a world so full and complex that it seems impossible that it doesn't exist. Does some of the detailed descriptions of numerous engineering feats get a little contrived and complicated? Yes, but Tolkien's details of fairy life were a little long too. And the results of these contraptions become something beyond imagination, using nature and a little fantasy and using natural laws for human's purpose. In a world without oil or guns, it seems at once more organic and fantastical than our reality. Besides all of the innovations, I loved the explorations of communication--song, word, writings, dance, plays, food--within the cultures, between them, and through time. I loved too, the balance of faith and man's own ability to create through art or science. He explores hard questions about what love is, unity, the greater good, and what leadership looks like. ( I only wish a tiny bit more of Fara and Sovo, after they reunite, but really this epic is already thousands of pages long). Hands down one of the best world-building epics of all time.

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Only when she had lost herself in the stories of the scrublands, when she had abandoned herself to the mores and customs of her adopted people, when she had opened her heart to the austere beauty of another creation myth--only then would she truly find herself.

the palace was not only less; it was in fact no more

it is the act of naming, not the name itself, that is the sign.

The Bonesetter's Daughter

 

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story of a daughter trying to understand her mother. Then she finds a memoir that fleshes out her mother's life in China, before coming to America. That was the most interesting part and I wish there would have been more of that. But the whole book is really a study in the ways we don't or can't communicate--whether because of deformity, illness, personality, secrets, mis-translations, secrets, death, etc. Sometimes the miscommunication is necessary, even desired (war-time) but most of the time it leads to sadness, calamity, grief.

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A Fatal Grace

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So much better than the first installment in this series, this is the perfect cozy mystery. Two cases improbably intertwined with plenty of suspects, action, and perfect pacing. I enjoyed the quiet moments as well when characters recalled moments when they "met God" and others tried to give grace to others. On the whole, it's a pleasurable escape even if it does involve murder.

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Electricity is like a living thing.  It's desperate to stay alive.  It races from one form to another, through the metal, through the body, and into the earth.  And along the way it races through the heart.

Still Life

 

Still Life by Louise Penny
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A woman whom everyone seems to like is killed in the woods of a little village in Canada and Armund Ganache must figure out who did it and why. It's a pretty good detective story, with plenty of red herrings and and misdirects, but there were a few things that bothered me to the point of distraction. The main one being that soon after the discovery, Gamache assembles the town to update them and then asks for their advice. Why give the murderer a look into the investigation and give them a chance to get rid of evidence? If you don't know anything about archery, call an expert, don't ask the community! He also becomes too friendly with townspeople who may well be the perpetrator. Also, what is the point about the rookie, Nichols? Seemed unfinished in that regard. Still, it is a first book in a very recommended series, so might give it a second chance.

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A Gentleman in Moscow

 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This had a sort of Oceans Eleven vibe, although it involved only a Count and some hotel staff. I couldn't help but see George Clooney as Count Rostov, making the most of this in-house prison sentence on good food, good manners, and some carefully orchestrated hijinks. There were certainly some good life-lessons here, but at the same time, it never really felt real. The horror of what was WWII seemed to boil down to the difficulties of getting good ingredients, and the anxiety he must have felt waiting for Nina to come back was transposed by the difficulty of answering precocious questions by her daughter. But taking it for what it is, it was a joy to read, fun to see how he gets himself out of various difficulties, and the descriptions of food made me want to order some lamb stew or Bouillabaisse.

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how long did it take for them to fashion coins, crowns, and swords?  That unholy trinity to which the common man was enslaved for the next one thousand years?

if attentiveness should be measured in minutes and discipline measured in hours, then indomitability must be measured in years.

If you are ever in doubt, just remember that unlike adults, children want to be happy.  So they still have the ability to take the greatest pleasure in the simplest things. 

They had created the poetry of silence.

We are prepared to destroy that which we have created because we believe more than any of them in the power of the picture, the poem, the prayer or the person.

The Veiled Throne

The Veiled Throne by Ken Liu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

it's been awhile since I visited the Dandelion Dynasty but I love it now as much as I did back then, even if I can't clearly recall everything that went on before. Liu creates a world so completely--he explores the political, social, and personal impacts invasion and colonialism has on the invaders, the enslaved, and those who lay outside the conflict but debate about whether or not to get involved. The Asian-leaning "slik-punk" culture is also very detailed and so interesting. Even a competition between restaurants becomes fraught with mysteries, contraptions, wonders, and schemes in the hands of Liu. Throughout the book Liu explores the question of language, what it is, how it is preserved or not how we communicate our stories or information and how that affects future generations. Meanwhile, there are mysteries yet to be solved, alliances to be made, wars to be fought, and love to be rekindled. This book may seem a bit of a build-up more. than the actual event, but even when it lays down ground-work, it is still a fascinating read.

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Whether you're listening to a language you're born into a language you barely comprehend, every utterance is first filled by expectations before it is parsed for meaning.  

She had not known that she was cold until she was no longer cold.  Change was what made knowledge possible.  

But without embarrassment, it was impossible to learn.

Therefore speech, being thinking-breath, was as mortal as the speaker.  No matter how hard one tried, one could not hold on to speech.  For that, she loved it all the more.

Are we defined by the stories we know and love?

The Shadow King

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel is hard to critique, because it is more like poem in novel form. The Shadow King refers to a double of Haile Selassie, the king of Ethiopia, who inspired Ethiopian resistance fighters to attack Italian invaders prior to WWII. Navarre Ettore is a Jewish Italian photographer, who sees himself as simply a chronicler of the atrocities of war without seeing the damage those photos can do, and fears for his and his family's safety in a increasingly hostile anti-Semitic regime. Hirut is the protagonist, the subject of Ettore's photos, the bodyguard of the king's double, and a young woman caught between the dark and light of war and love. While the story is mostly linear, the unfolding story is interrupted by a chorus, who though not told in song or poem form, you can almost feel the collective consciousness recounting their parts in a multitude of concerted voices. It is also interrupted by descriptions of photos Ettore has taken, described so perfectly you can almost see them. The idea of of light and shadow plays so prominently throughout the book its significance cannot be missed, and yet its obviousness underscores and enhances rather than becoming tiresome and weary. Having finished it, I left with impressions that were more akin to a series of photos than of a moving picture of what has taken place and that alone shows a brilliance in the writing.

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