Reviews Catch Up
Apr. 15th, 2025 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearBlack Water Sister by Zen Cho:
This has been on my shelf for a while and I finally got around to it. It turns out I've read something by this author before - Sorcerer to the Crown - a while ago, which I remember enjoying. That was historical, England-set high fantasy, while this is contemporary, Malaysia-set urban fantasy.
It follows Jess, a young ethnically Chinese woman, who has grown up in America. She moves to Malaysia with her parents, which is where they are from, and starts being haunted by the ghost of her recently deceased grandmother. Things get much more dangerous and complicated when she gets embroiled in a conflict between different gods.
It was mostly fine. I liked Jess, the setting was immersive, there was a lot of really interesting cultural stuff, and the dynamics between the different characters were entertaining. It lost me a bit in the second half, though - it felt like it got too complicated and a bit too hard to follow. And the most interesting aspects were given less focus later on. I largely liked where it ended up, but it felt like it skipped over various important things and only hinted at others, so wasn't wholly satisfying.
The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K Le Guin:
This was short, sharp and very brutal.
It's about the effects of humans colonising a forest planet in order to take its resources, and what impact this ultimately has on the indigenous people.
It's violent and unpleasant and has a lot of very upsetting detail - but it's very effective and packs a real punch.
There's some very interesting exploration of language and culture, and the descriptions of the aliens is really well done.
But yikes - not an easy read and I'm glad it wasn't longer.
Wanderstop:
This is a beautiful, poignant, reflective, hilarious, incredibly weird and also soothing computer game that needed to be at least a twice as long as it was.
You play Alta, a gladiator who is suffering from burnout, and finds herself in a magical valley, where there's a tea shop, run by the most wonderful person in the world - Boro.
Boro is now my favourite character in anything ever, and making the tea was really fun.
A lot of the interactions with the various customers were very, very weird, but I enjoyed tidying and collecting and growing trees.
It was also quite buggy - multiple times, the action buttons stopped working and I had to quit out and reload the game, and several times I made the correct tea that was required by the game told me it was wrong.
I didn't feel like Alta's learning journey seemed all that complete by the end of the game, but I cried when it was over.
Solution? I'm going to start again and go more slowly the second time around.
This has been on my shelf for a while and I finally got around to it. It turns out I've read something by this author before - Sorcerer to the Crown - a while ago, which I remember enjoying. That was historical, England-set high fantasy, while this is contemporary, Malaysia-set urban fantasy.
It follows Jess, a young ethnically Chinese woman, who has grown up in America. She moves to Malaysia with her parents, which is where they are from, and starts being haunted by the ghost of her recently deceased grandmother. Things get much more dangerous and complicated when she gets embroiled in a conflict between different gods.
It was mostly fine. I liked Jess, the setting was immersive, there was a lot of really interesting cultural stuff, and the dynamics between the different characters were entertaining. It lost me a bit in the second half, though - it felt like it got too complicated and a bit too hard to follow. And the most interesting aspects were given less focus later on. I largely liked where it ended up, but it felt like it skipped over various important things and only hinted at others, so wasn't wholly satisfying.
The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K Le Guin:
This was short, sharp and very brutal.
It's about the effects of humans colonising a forest planet in order to take its resources, and what impact this ultimately has on the indigenous people.
It's violent and unpleasant and has a lot of very upsetting detail - but it's very effective and packs a real punch.
There's some very interesting exploration of language and culture, and the descriptions of the aliens is really well done.
But yikes - not an easy read and I'm glad it wasn't longer.
Wanderstop:
This is a beautiful, poignant, reflective, hilarious, incredibly weird and also soothing computer game that needed to be at least a twice as long as it was.
You play Alta, a gladiator who is suffering from burnout, and finds herself in a magical valley, where there's a tea shop, run by the most wonderful person in the world - Boro.
Boro is now my favourite character in anything ever, and making the tea was really fun.
A lot of the interactions with the various customers were very, very weird, but I enjoyed tidying and collecting and growing trees.
It was also quite buggy - multiple times, the action buttons stopped working and I had to quit out and reload the game, and several times I made the correct tea that was required by the game told me it was wrong.
I didn't feel like Alta's learning journey seemed all that complete by the end of the game, but I cried when it was over.
Solution? I'm going to start again and go more slowly the second time around.
