The Harbors of the Sun review

 

"How did you know that would work?"
Stone glanced at him. "You mean telling the truth?"
Moon nodded. Stone just looked at him. "What?" Moon demanded.
Stone sighed and slung an arm around Moon's shoulders. "Nothing." (p.19)

Now that I've finished The Harbors of the Sun, I have officially finished reading the Books of the Raksura. Since this is the last book in a series, my thoughts may end up being a bit of a retrospective on the series as a whole.

The Edge of Worlds and The Harbors of the Sun make up kind of a Raksura duology, and as such, they're two parts of one longer overarching story. The first three Raksura books could be considered almost as a trilogy, but with more self-contained plots. You could in theory read the first three books out of order and still make sense of them. The Harbors of the Sun would not make sense without The Edge of Worlds. All of the same characters are here, and most of them aren't re-introduced in great detail for your convenience. Which is fine, I just wouldn't want to read these books too far apart from each other.

Also, for some reason Edge of Worlds and Harbors of the Sun don't have character lists at the back of the book! I'm pretty sure all five of the other Raksura books have these, so I was surprised that they're lacking here, especially when these two books might have the largest cast of characters compared to any of the other books. Maybe it was some weird publisher decision, I don't know.

The Harbors of the Sun picks up right where The Edge of Worlds leaves off, with two characters being held captive by the Hians and the rest of the cast trying to retrieve them as well as the dangerous ancient artifact that the Hians stole. Like The Edge of Worlds, there are quite a few different POV characters. Moon probably still gets the most POV-time but Bramble gets a fair bit too, and we also get chapters from Heart, Jade,  Ember, and a very cute interlude from Frost (which was a highlight for me). There are more moving parts to the plot then there were in the early books, so I think this decision makes sense. Near the end, there were a couple of times when I felt like including certain characters' current perspectives decreased the narrative tension slightly, but it wasn't a huge deal. 

Compared to the previous book, which was the first half of this story after all, this one feels like it has a bit more of an emotional arc to it. Jade and Moon are still reckoning with reconciling their roles in the court with what happens when there are massive threats to the Reaches. There's also more to do with the Fell, the half-Fell flight we met in The Edge of Worlds, and various groundling civilizations. I think this book has more interaction with different groundling groups than any of the previous ones, which is interesting. 

I think my favorite parts of this book were the character interactions and the half-Fell flight. Pearl and Malachite were a possibly-unexpected but totally badass duo, Frost's chapter where she interacts with Ember and Pearl was adorable, and Kethel getting lowkey annoyed about everyone threatening to kill it all the time amused me quite a bit. Consolation was fascinatingly strange and I was very glad that Malachite saw potential in her. Also, Bramble was a fun POV character because she was straightforward and practical and just felt like someone I'd like in real life. Just an ordinary Arbora determined to do her best in the tough situation she's in.

As for what I didn't like as much, I had a bit more trouble visualizing the Creepy Ancient Ruins in this book compared to ruins in previous installments, and the falling action (?) felt really really long. Every time I thought things were about to wrap up and the characters were going to go home, the story kept going. This wasn't bad, per se, but I think it's possible that the end of the book could have been tightened up slightly. Still, it resulted in an open ending without any particularly loose ends, and this is the end of the series, so maybe Martha Wells just wanted to spend enough time on the ending to get all that the way she wanted it.

Also, I struggled a bit with the character names, which has been a recurring theme for me in this series. It's not a huge problem, and it's probably a me thing, but for instance, there were multiple times when I was reading a scene and got Shade mixed up with Stone, because I read fast and their names begin and end with the same letters. Sometimes I had to go back and mentally recontextualize conversations as a result. Briar doesn't have a big role in this book, but in previous books having Briar and Bramble both be part of the supporting cast could be a little challenging to keep straight. Sometimes Martha Wells' supporting characters fall into the category of, "probably very distinct to the author, but a little hard to tell apart as a reader." There are lots of characters that do stand out, but many of the warriors and hunters sort of blend together. Murderbot arguably also has this problem with its supporting cast at times. But if you reread Murderbot as often as I've been doing, that becomes way less of an issue.

This is a series-ender, as previously mentioned so let's talk about how it ends. I mean, I think it ends the series pretty well. I think you could potentially stop after The Siren Depths, if you wanted to, but if you don't want to, then here are The Edge of Worlds and The Harbors of the Sun. I think The Siren Depths and The Harbors of the Sun both have good endings. The Siren Depths' ending is a little more about Moon coming to terms with his place in Indigo Cloud and the fact that he is valued and cared for, whereas The Harbors of the Sun ends more on Jade and Moon learning that they can come back together after facing really difficult decisions when there were much bigger things than themselves at risk. So I like them both, in different ways.

If I had to choose a least favorite installment of the Raksura series, I would probably go with the Stories of the Raksura volumes. This is not because they are bad. I just don't particularly care for short stories and anthologies in general, so these were never going to be my favorites. That being said, there are a few stories from the Stories of the Raksura that I really like ("The Tale of Indigo and Cloud" and "The Dark Earth Below" come to mind), so I think both volumes are worth reading at least once. Not sure that I'll purchase them physically, though.

Overall, I've really enjoyed Moon's journey throughout the series and it's also been really fun to see what kinds of strange new settings Martha Wells can come up with. This is definitely a series I would recommend for someone looking to investigate her fantasy back catalogue, or to anyone who's interested in an inventive secondary world with absolutely no humans. Moon is a prickly but lovable main character and the interesting structure and politics of Raksuran courts is like catnip to me, a known political intrigue enjoyer.

Personal Idioms I Think More People Should Get On Board With

 Hi. Welcome to the blog post. There are certain things I say in everyday life that are references that no one but me understands. This is not my problem. This is everyone else's problem. But luckily, I've graciously decided to share some of my niche personal idioms with you, so that you can get on board.

1. Bright lunch for tomorrow

This one is sort of a family in-joke. There's a hymn that has a line about "bright hope for tomorrow," and for some reason my dad transformed bright hope for tomorrow into bright lunch for tomorrow. Every time you pack a lunch for yourself to take to work or wherever you're going tomorrow, that's bright lunch for tomorrow. Enjoy it!

2. Grabby Hands

Grabby hands originate from the book Well Wished by Franny Billingsley. If you've never heard of this book, it was published in 1997 and only has around 500 ratings on Goodreads, so that may have something to do with it. In the book, the main character Nuria has a number of inside jokes with her father figure, and one of them is "grabby hands," which is what she says when she wants something. I like to say "Grabby hands" and make grabby hands when I want someone to pass me something very interesting. Grabby hands can be whatever feels the grabbiest to you. Just remember not to actually grab, since like, that's rude.

3. A Suitable Basket

With this one, it's slightly easier to just link you to the exact moment that this comes from.

Basically, in the 1982 version of The Scarlet Pimpernel, Marguerite is waiting to go on a date with Percy, and he's late. When he comes in, he says he had a devil of a time finding a suitable basket. Marguerite says, "A...suitable...basket?" In such a distinctive way that I've never forgotten it. Every time I go looking for a basket to hold some knick knacks on a display table at work, I think about suitable baskets. I think we all should spend a little more of our time considering suitable baskets.

(Also, this movie is free on Youtube and it's one of my childhood favorites. It's a good way to spend two hours).

I suppose that's all for now, but expect a sequel to this post when I inevitably think of more of these.

Well, I did it. I read A Court of Mist and Fury

2.5/5

It took me eleven days to read this book. Let's discuss.

Overall: I didn't like it. It was boring, badly-written, and barely avoided contradicting itself a lot of different times. Was it better than the first book? I guess it depends on how you define "better." I think the pacing in this book is much more of a slog, and the world-building seems malleable from moment to moment and book to book. The characters are flat, even though we're assured over and over that they're complex, and the various tasks they have to complete during the story were mostly boring. I occasionally liked some of the moments between Feyre and Rhysand, but never for long.

For the record, I know a lot of people like this book. How should I put this? I genuinely, neutrally, do not care. And I think that if you like this book for whatever reason, you shouldn't care that I dislike it. After I finish this review, I'm hoping to never think about this book again.

Now begins me thinking about this book and its problems for what is hopefully the last time.

I think the largest and most overarching problem this book has is that SJM is an over-writer who doesn't trust her readers to infer anything. Everything in this book is heavily implied, and then stated outright for good measure, just in case you missed the implications being hammered into your skull. This makes it very easy to read this book with your brain off or not fully paying attention; if you miss something, chances are SJM will restate it 200 pages later when and if it becomes relevant again.

Here's an example from page 293 of what I mean with the over-writing:

Azriel, surprisingly, had returned from the mortal realm by lunch. Mor had intercepted him first, but I'd gotten a secondhand report from Rhys that he'd found some sort of barrier around the queens' palace, and had needed to return to assess what might be done about it.

Assess—and brood, it seemed, since Azriel had barely managed a poilte hello to me before launching into sparring with Rhysand, his face grim and tight. They'd been at it now for an hour straight, their slender blades like flashes of quicksilver as they moved around and around. I wondered if it was as much for practice as it was for Rhysand to help his spymaster work off his frustration.

 That last sentence is what really gets me. It's incredibly obvious from the two preceding paragraphs that Azriel is sparring with Rhysand because he's frustrated. Why did we need Feyre to tell us that directly? 

Because she's going to tell us everything, no matter how obvious it is, and we just have to deal with it. Or not pay attention, since there's literally no reason to.

As for the romance. Like I said before, it occasionally had its moments. These moments were mostly strung between long periods of Feyre "bantering" with Rhysand, flipping him off, and musing about how He Wears So Many Masks (His masks never felt super distinctive to me, for the record). In concept, I think them being friends before they get together romantically is interesting, but I don't think it's executed well here 

(Me thinking things aren't executed well is an ongoing theme of this review, if you couldn't tell. The TL;DR version is basically: "Some interesting concepts buried in bad execution and way too many words.")

Rhysand is, of course, totally absolved of any and all responsibility for everything bad he's ever done by both Feyre and the narrative. We are often reminded that Rhysand is also traumatized by Amarantha; interestingly, Tamlin literally never gets the same consideration, outside of Feyre musing that maybe she and Tamlin were "too broken" to make things work. So remember, it's okay for Rhysand to break all of someone's bones as a trauma response, because that guy was an asshole anyway, but it's not okay for Tamlin to lock Feyre in the house, because that actually impacts Feyre in a way she doesn't like.

I don't even like Tamlin, and I don't think he should be absolved of his actions, for the record. But I think if we're going to fully absolve Rhysand of everything up to and including drugging Feyre repeatedly for months (even if it was supposedly for her own good), I think we can extend a little grace to Tamlin, who is a dick but also genuinely traumatized by seeing Feyre die last book. Plus some of his actions seem genuinely nonsensical when compared to how he was in the previous book. I feel like I remember Tamlin not liking his dad, so why is he so determined to uphold his dad's traditions of subjugating the masses via punishments for insufficient tithes?

I did think the scene where Rhysand has an approximately five-page monologue explaining his side of the whole story while Feyre stirs soup was funny, although I don't think I was supposed to. And I was surprised (though perhaps I shouldn't have been) that we somehow managed to squeeze the one-bed trope into this story.

Speaking of tropes, I really don't understand the usage of fated mates in ACOTAR. Like, first of all, are mates fated? What are mates? What is the purpose of the mating bond? Rhysand and Tamlin's parents were BOTH mated pairs, and they both apparently had bad relationships. Rhysand says outright that despite being mates, his parents weren't right for each other. But then when Rhysand and Feyre are mates, we're supposed to believe fate drew them together and they're 100% meant for each other. So...which is it? And why is the guy always the one who feels the mating bond "snap into place" first? (I'll be honest, it reminds me a lot of imprinting, from Twilight).

Another thing I wasn't particularly into is how much misogyny and patriarchy and violence against women SJM decided to include, particularly since narratively, most of the it serves either as Dramatic Backstory or as opportunities for Rhysand to say that "Sexism is Bad, Actually." I think if you include things like fairy women getting their wings clipped in a way that feels like a thinly-veiled allegory to female genital mutilation, you should have a reason for including it that goes beyond, "This will make my hero look good when he says this is bad." And I was really irritated at how impressed Feyre gets when Rhys tells her that Amren and Mor are his second and third in command. Is the bar really that low?

In conclusion, despite all odds, this is a book. Despite all odds, I read all 624 pages. I do not want to continue :)

July Reading Update

The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee

By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, "Dear Miss Sweetie." When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society's ills, but she's not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race and gender. (Synopsis excerpt taken from Goodreads)

To begin July, I decided to read some library loans of books I've been meaning to get to for forever. There were mixed results, I guess. I started by reading the first 100 or so pages of The Downstairs Girl before I decided I wasn't going to finish it. I'd try Stacey Lee again, but I found the writing awkward and the execution of the premise surprisingly boring. I also found it really strange and off-putting that the main character was being set up for a romance with someone she's been secretly spying on for years? (For context, she's secretly living underneath the male lead's family's print shop, and there's a pipe or something that allows her to listen in on their conversations. She's been doing this for years, so she feels like she knows him, but they have NEVER ACTUALLY SPOKEN).

So yeah. Unfortunately, this was a miss for me.

 

The Stars Undying by Emery Robin

Princess Altagracia has lost everything. After a bloody civil war, her twin sister has claimed not just the crown of their planet Szayet but the Pearl of its prophecy, a computer that contains the immortal soul of Szayet's god. Stripped of her birthright, Gracia flees the planet—just as Matheus Ceirran, Commander of the interstellar Empire of Ceiao, arrives in deadly pursuit with his volatile lieutenant, Anita. When Gracia and Ceirran's paths collide, Gracia sees an opportunity to win back her planet, her god, and her throne…if she can win the Commander and his right-hand officer over first.

This is a space opera inspired by the lives of Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Mark Anthony. It's brimming with politicking and intrigue and also a lot of ~implications. I liked the world and the politicking, but struggled a bit with the implications. Particularly in the first half of the book, the characters spend so much time implying things or almost-but-not-actually saying things that I sometimes had trouble following the arc of various scenes and conversations. This is arguably an intentional writing choice, since it eventually becomes clear that Gracia is telling her story to Anita, the only character of the main three without a POV. Anita, being part of these conversations, would already know the Implications at stake. But I don't! And I would have liked a little more help.

Additionally, Gracia is an unreliable narrator and periodically informs the reader that she's lied about various things. This was interesting in theory, but in practice I often found myself a little lost as to what the extent of her deception was. Again, maybe this was intentional - Gracia admits that she lies, but leaves the truth vague to keep the issue muddied, something like that. But as a reader, even if this was on purpose, I found it a bit frustrating.

So, overall a fascinating but flawed read. I'm not sure if I'll ever feel compelled to reread this one in the future, but I don't regret reading it at all and I would definitely recommend it if a space opera based on Caesar, Cleopatra, and Mark Anthony sounds interesting to you. I know very little about the actual historical events (besides the bare basics) and I was able to follow along just fine. There may have been some references (or again, implications) that were lost on me because of my lack of knowledge, but overall I don't think you need to be a Roman history buff to enjoy this book, just a space opera fan. 

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena's a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn't even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena's just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I. 

This is a compulsively readable contemporary thriller/satirical take on publishing, with a highly unlikable and unreliable narrator who is at every turn trying to defend and justify herself. I really enjoyed it, although I found the ending kind of out of place and odd. It felt tacked on to the rest of the story and arguably weakened the overall effect.

I think R.F. Kuang did an excellent job writing June as someone who is self-aware enough to anticipate the criticisms she'll get (for the most part) but not self-aware enough to care that her critics might have a point. June is constantly trying to convince the reader that she was justified, that we should like and support her, and I like how Kuang still lets the moments of dissonance and wrongness shine through the veneer of June's attempts to justify herself. I think the narrative voice in Yellowface is stronger than in Babel or The Poppy War - although, caveat, I haven't read past book one of the Poppy War trilogy, and don't intend to. I'll be interested to see if R.F. Kuang writes more books in first person in the future.

A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland

Kadou, the shy prince of Arasht, finds himself at odds with one of the most powerful ambassadors at court—the body-father of the queen's new child—in an altercation which results in his humiliation. To prove his loyalty to the queen, his sister, Kadou takes responsibility for the investigation of a break-in at one of their guilds, with the help of his newly appointed bodyguard, the coldly handsome Evemer, who seems to tolerate him at best. In Arasht, where princes can touch-taste precious metals with their fingers and myth runs side by side with history, counterfeiting is heresy, and the conspiracy they discover could cripple the kingdom’s financial standing and bring about its ruin.

Okay, I had SO much fun with this. Please disregard most of the part of the synopsis that's about the conspiracy. The conspiracy is as developed as it needs to be, more or less, but it is primarily a backdrop or a sandbox to facilitate the development of the relationship between Kadou and Evemer. This is a fantasy romance with a little bit of intrigue, not a mystery or a truly intrigue-focused story.

And that's fine! More than fine, even! More than anything, reading this book felt like reading a 100k slowburn on Archive of Our Own. And I must have read it at exactly the right time, because I loved it. I loved Evemer and all of his attempts to suppress and deflect his emotions; I liked Kadou and enjoyed the portrayal of his anxiety and his concerns about reciprocity with his bodyguards.

Do I have criticisms? Sure! Many of them can be tied into the fanfic-y feel of this book. Sometimes the dialogue felt a bit too modern, particularly when certain side characters were around. Certain scenes were obviously facilitated purely for self-indulgence (such as an extended scene where supporting character Tadek is quizzing Evemer on whether he's a virgin), but for the most part this story did a really good job of justifying its tropes. Did I giggle and kick my feet when Kadou and Evemer simply HAD to kiss in a dark alley so that no one would think they were there to investigate the counterfeiting conspiracy? Well, of course. I loved almost every self-indulgent minute of this self-indulgent book, and I even read the fanfic that Alexandra Rowland wrote (of this, their own book) and posted to AO3.

All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

And then I reread four books of the Murderbot Diaries. For the second time this year. Oops!

As for why I ended up rereading these books at this time, I would cite two main factors. One, I got one of my work friends to start the series, and hearing her thoughts on All Systems Red made me want to reread it. Two, I started reading A Court of Mist and Fury, and I procrastinated reading THAT bad book by reading these good books. 

If you don't know anything about the Murderbot Diaries, they're a series of novellas and novels following the adventures of Murderbot. Murderbot is basically a cyborg, although the in-fiction term is a "bot-human construct," and it was constructed to serve as a scary, inhuman, disposable security guard (SecUnit) for any humans or corporations who want to rent it out. It's also a rogue who has disabled its governor module, and it uses its free will to secretly watch a lot of media while continuing to pretend to be a regular SecUnit with a functioning governor module.

In All Systems Red, Murderbot is on contract with a survey team on a random planet and prepared for a typical boring survey job when things suddenly start getting weird and going wrong, starting with a big hostile alien lifeform popping out of the ground and trying to eat a couple members of the survey team. As glitches pile up, Murderbot and the survey team begin to suspect sabotage...and Murderbot's secret may be risked as they begin to investigate the truth.

Which is to say, the survey team is going to find out about Murderbot being rogue, and Murderbot is going to have to deal with that somehow.

I love the Murderbot Diaries. I read them for the first time in July and August of last year, and they quickly became favorites. Hence me reading the first four novellas three times each already. I'm also on a big Martha Wells kick in general. After I'm done suffering through ACOMAF, I may reward myself with the last book of the Raksura and maybe read my ARC of the upcoming Ile-Rien omnibus.