★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

A Face Like Glass
Frances Hardinge
Ebook, aprox. 490 pages

In the underground city of Caverna the world's most skilled craftsmen toil in the darkness to create delicacies beyond compare. They create wines that can remove memories, cheeses that can make you hallucinate and perfumes that convince you to trust the wearer even as they slit your throat. The people of Caverna are more ordinary, but for one thing: their faces are as blank as untouched snow. Expressions must be learned. Only the famous Facesmiths can teach a person to show (or fake) joy, despair or fear — at a price.

Into this dark and distrustful world comes Neverfell, a little girl with no memory of her past and a face so terrifying to those around her that she must wear a mask at all times. For Neverfell's emotions are as obvious on her face as those of the most skilled Facesmiths, though entirely genuine. And that makes her very dangerous indeed...

Why did I read this book?
A world where facial expressions need to be learned, otherwise people's faces are always blank? How brilliant is that? That's all it took to get me interested in the book. I think I might have seen it recommended somewhere... but at this point I really can't remember.

1. Plot
Once upon a time, in an underground city where people were naturally unable to show facial expressions, there was a girl named Neverfell whose face was incredibly expressive. She'd always lived with her adoptive father, an old cheesemaker, in a secluded part of this aforementioned underground city, but one day she found a way out of his tunnels... and escaped into the big bad world outside. Mind you, I'm using outside as a relative term - she escapes the cheesemaker's tunnels to find larger, public tunnels, that's what I mean. She meets friendly nobles and unfriendly nobles, wins the favor of half of The Grand Steward (it's... complicated, I'll get there in a second), becomes his favorite food taster, spends half the book running and hiding, and eventually decides to save the poor and the oppressed by making them climb a rope ladder up into the Overground. Note, the Overground really is outside. It's where you and I live, with sky and birds and sunlight.

The plot twists and turns and I will admit it was hard, at times, to tell friend from foe, but then it got too caught up in court politics and I lost interest. And maybe even that isn't completely true, because I don't think I ever truly gained interest. Let me tell you something. 31 users on Goodreads have shelved this book as "Childrens > Middle Grade", while 51 users have shelved it as "Young Adult", and either way, it’s definitely too young for me. The stakes are high, true, but the author has a way of plucking our protagonist from trouble in the most Deus Ex Machina of ways ("and at that precise moment someone walked in"), to a point where I stop caring because I know she'll make it out, no matter what happens. Now, I understand this is probably what writers want to give a younger target audience, a little bit of hope, a little bit of "there's always a way out"... but I'm an older, slightly cynical reader, and it didn't work for me.

2. Characters
Our protagonist, Neverfell, is really young and hopeful and clumsy, and I can see why she's headlining this book. I couldn't empathise with her, though, because I kept snapping out of the story due to her jumbled thoughts. In a way, I felt like her "strangeness" and "craziness" were nothing but excuses to have Neverfell do these incredible deductions that make no sense in context, but are needed to move the plot along.

There are many other relevant characters, but I won’t get into them. What I will say, though, is that, in general, I didn't think there was much character development. The characters didn’t really grow throughout the book, except when the plot needed them to reveal themselves as hidden villains or allies – then, they’d sort of “snap” and become a different person altogether.

There is an honorable mention, though, for The Grand Steward of Caverna. In Frances Hardinge's own words, from her website, "the two halves of his brain take it in turn to sleep, so that one of them is always awake [...] one is cold, curt and does not suffer fools gladly, while the other is mute and unpredictable, communicating only in gestures". This, in my opinion, was all it took to create one of the most interesting, not to mention tragic, characters I've read in a while. It's bad enough when two halves of the brain work different shifts - it gets worse when they start thinking of each other as enemies.

3. Setting/worldbuilding
The setting is, by far, the best thing about this book. Hardinge explores various implications of the whole expressions-must-be-taught scenario, from the difficulties in everyday communication (you can’t tell what people are thinking, you’re never sure they’re not lying to you, you may not have the right face to portray what you’re feeling so you’ll have to approximate with an expression that may not be quite right) to the classist implications of not teaching the exploited workers any unhappy faces (since their expressions are all neutral, they’re unable to show anger or exhaustion, which in turn prompts the nobles to treat them as robots and push them further).

I also liked the magical side of Caverna – the underground city is very much part of the real world you and I live in, but you see, people have discovered some sort of magic that allows them to create True Delicacies. These include wines able to erase or recover memories, cheeses that bring visions of the future, and perfumes that influence social interactions. There is a whole range of magical artifacts that can be used to further the plot, and Hardinge makes use of all of them.

4. Writing style
I underlined maybe one passage, so style-wise, we can say I found this book unremarkable - but again, considering the target audience, I think it does the job just fine. The first half could have been shortened, though. As is, it’s too slow to build up, which then leaves only the second half to develop and wrap up the whole plot. A little more balance would have been great.

Long story short...
I did not dislike this book. It lacks the sharp edges and grey moralities that make me boost ratings around here, but it's not fair to demand that from a book that's somewhere between middle grade and YA. Were I a few years younger, perhaps ten years younger, I think I would have loved this – but alas, today, it will only get three stars.

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★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Melancholy Of Anatomy
Shelley Jackson
Ebook, aprox. 200 pages

Amusing, touching, and unsettling, The Melancholy Of Anatomy is that most wonderful of fictions, one that makes us see the world in an entirely new light. Here is the body turned inside out, its members set free, its humors released upon the world. Hearts bigger than planets devour light and warp the space around them; the city of London has a menstrual flow that gushes through its underground pipes; gobs of phlegm cement friendships and sexual relationships; and a floating fetus larger than a human becomes the new town pastor. In this debut story collection, Shelley Jackson rewrites our private passages, and translates the dumb show of the body into prose as gorgeous as it is unhygienic.

Why did I read this book? First, the title-cover combo did the job of getting my attention. Then, the blurb struck me as very experimental, perhaps even a little pretentious. I googled Shelley Jackson, found her novel Half Life, and realised she was probably the kind of writer my bookshelf would like to be friends with.

I was right. The Melancholy Of Anatomy might just be the most original book I've ever read. It's a short story collection, which opens with a short short piece titled Heart before splitting into four sections, according to the four temperaments: Choleric brings us Egg, Sperm, and Foetus; Melancholic delivers Cancer, Nerve, and Dildo; Phlegmatic is composed of Phlegm, Hair, and Sleep; and Sanguine closes the show with Blood, Milk, and Fat.

Style-wise, Jackson is just the kind of writer I like - her words are beautiful and intricate, but they never overpower her content. It would be easy to file something this experimental under the good old "style and no substance" category, but there's a moment in every single one of Jackson's stories where you just can't pretend you're reading mindless surrealism. I've read short stories by Haruki Murakami, and those, I had to make peace with - sometimes, they really don't make any sense. But Jackson's stories do. Foetuses float and cities menstruate, but the people who inhabit this world are very much like the people who inhabit our own - their struggles are our struggles, sometimes oversimplified, sometimes exaggerated. Sure, they obsess over eggs and fall in love with nerve bundles, but so do we. They exchange bodily fluids to ascertain relationships, so do we. They try to keep their houses and cities squeaky clean, sterile, so do we. They battle blood and fat and their own organic fluids. So do we.

Coming as no surprise, considering the references I just made, my favorite stories of the bunch were Nerve and Blood, which were incredibly bittersweet, and tremendously well thought out, respectively. Besides those, Heart, Foetus, Cancer, and Fat will stay with me for a really, really long time. There was just one little thing I could have lived without, and that was Phlegm. A reviewer on Goodreads stated she "could not read [it] all the way through because it made [her] want to cry and die", and I have to agree. I made it through the whole thing relatively unharmed, and I did find the human element of the story very good, but gods, why phlegm. Why.

I was fully convinced, then and there, that Shelley Jackson doesn't give a damn about her reader's comfort, and I love her for it. This is a surreal, sometimes gross, sometimes shocking book. But it's also one of the most honest takes on the human condition (with all its strange fluids and organic mishaps) that I've ever read, and for that, it gets four stars. Probably five in three months, when I look back and realise I haven't stopped thinking about it. Go read it!

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★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Angelopolis
Danielle Trussoni
Ebook, aprox. 320 pages

A decade has passed since Verlaine saw Evangeline alight from the Brooklyn Bridge, the sight of her new wings a betrayal that haunts him still. Now an elite angel hunter for the Society of Angelology, he pursues his mission with single-minded devotion: to capture, imprison, and eliminate her kind.

But when Evangeline suddenly appears on a twilit Paris street, Verlaine finds her nature to be unlike any of the other creatures he so mercilessly pursues, casting him into a spiral of doubt and confusion that only grows when she is abducted before his eyes by a creature who has topped the society’s most-wanted list for more than a century. The ensuing chase drives Verlaine and his fellow angelologists from the shadows of the Eiffel Tower to the palaces of St. Petersburg and deep into the provinces of Siberia and the Black Sea coast, where the truth of Evangeline’s origins — as well as forces that could restore or annihilate them all—lie in wait.

Why did I read this book?
I am a bit of an angel fangirl, I have my own angel books to publish one day (hopefully) and I read Angelology back when it came out in 2010. I was... disappointed, to say the least, but alas, I have a slightly masochistic streak that makes me want to give bad books a second chance.

So, Angelology had quite a few flaws - three different POVs in three different timelines, a terrible love story, and a final twist that caught exactly no one by surprise. I was hoping Angelopolis would correct some of these flaws, and while it did... it also created some new, equally bad ones. Let me walk you through them.

1. Plot
From what I gather, this book has one main plot point and that is... Verlaine, who is now an angel hunter, needs/wants to find Evangeline. Why? Well, let’s see if I can explain it. Professionally, he needs to find her so he can kill her, but personally, he spends half the book yapping about how important she is to him even though they haven’t seen each other or communicated in any way in over ten years. Besides, let me remind you all that Angelology ended with Evangeline perched on a bridge opening her plot twisty angel wings, and Verlaine looking at her from below, in complete despair because that meant the end of their love story, even though they’d known each other for 48 hours.

I have a very big problem with this. Evangeline was the main character in the first book, so why was she only given 2-3 pages of “screentime” in this one? Why did the author decide to transform her just-turned-Nephilim (that's a human/angel hybrid, for the uninitiated) main character into a plot device to fuel Verlaine’s manpain? I would rather have read about Evangeline’s transformation. How does this woman cope with life as a Nephilim when the events of the first book have taught her to fear them above all else? How does she cope with becoming a monster, every inch like the monsters responsible for the eradication of her family? How does she learn to use her new powers? Is he self-taught? Does she make friends among the old Nephilim families? How does this transformation change her, as opposed to how does this transformation change the guy who fell for her in the first book? Personally, I found the POV change rather unsuccessful, simply because it kept a curtain between me and the things I truly wanted to know.

About the plot development itself... it was weak. I’ve told you about Verlaine’s goal, but that goal is nothing but an excuse to unveil conspiracies and historical secrets related to Fabergé eggs (hence the cover), John Dee’s hypothetical talks with angels, a pre-diluvian seed bank, and a Panopticon for angels. I love alternate interpretations of Biblical texts and Christan mythology, I really do, but if your goal is to write entertaining fiction, sometimes you need to know where to hold back the history and focus on the actual story.

2. Characters
I’ve mentioned that Angelology, this book’s predecessor, commited the grave mistake of telling three different stories in three different timelines – two of those timelines were much more interesting than the others, and it just so happened that the least interesting of all was the contemporary timeline, the one where Evangeline and Verlaine meet. Why? Well, because the characters couldn’t keep me interested.

So let me tell you, if the characters were bad in Angelology, you don’t want to hear about Angelopolis. Here, characters are nothing but names and physical descriptions – they sit around, they talk, sometimes they act, but they never really feel, and the same goes for me. It’s hard for me to stay interested in a book if I can’t connect with at least one of the characters, and these people were nothing but walking, talking textbooks. Their motivations, when not strictly professional, were a mystery to me – and let’s be honest, even if we assume their motivations were all strictly professional, who wants to read a book about people robotically doing their jobs?

3. Setting/worldbuilding
Now, if there's one thing Danielle Trussoni is good at, is creating ambiance. From dark alleys in Paris to antique shops in St. Petersburg, from barren landscapes seen through the windows of the trans-siberian to greenhouses in Bulgaria filled with nothing but pre-diluvian plants... when Danielle Trussoni writes it, I can imagine myself there. The problem is... well, ambiance doesn't sell books unless you're Angela Carter (and your characters have a personality).

Apart from that, my biggest setting-related complaint goes to the way the author has chosen to frame her Nephilim. Back in 2010, I described this setting as "Nephilim are real and live undercover in their big-ass NYC penthouses" and "they're obnoxiously rich and throw parties round the clock and are responsible for all the evil in the world". This is all fine and dandy, more than fine and dandy, but the problem, I think, is that Danielle Trussoni doesn't know where to stop - if, in the first book, the Nephilim were connected to everyone from Adolf Hitler to Karl Marx, and I thought that was over the top, now they're also connected to the whole Romanov dynasty and Coco Chanel. Oh, and Jesus was a Nephilim too. We've gone from "interesting take on historical details" to full on conspiracy theory.


By now you all probably know I am a hardcore defender of the entertainment value of shows like Ancient Aliens, so... skip this book, go watch Giorgio A. Tsoukalos and his pyramid theories instead.

4. Writing style
I do remember liking, perhaps even loving the writing style in Angelology, but sadly, I didn’t feel that same wow factor in this book. While I have complimented the author’s ability to create ambiance and describe a setting to create a mood, the rest of the writing was definitely lackluster. The dialogues were wooden and unnatural - though perhaps we can consider that an unfortunate consequence of having only academic-type characters infodumping around coffee tables -, and the biggest chunk of writing was dedicated to exposition as opposed to character development and, you know, actual action.

Long story short...
Angelopolis is a disappointment. It doesn't live up to its already flawed predecessor, and it tries really hard to pave the way for a hypothetical third installment where, I assume, all hell will break loose and Evangeline and Verlaine will lead opposing factions into battle. It gets two stars from me, and before you ask... yes, yes, I'm pretty sure I'll still read the third one.

I have a slightly masochistic streak that makes me want to give bad books a third chance.

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Hello fellow White Christmas fans, and welcome to shipping central! First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who commented on the first installment of this recap, and/or reblogged it on Tumblr – also, thank you Mariam Watt for correcting me about Kangmo’s hearing aid! Yup. Cochlear implant. I will correct the previous post as soon as I can.

Like before, spoilers FOR THE WHOLE SHOW ahead, so don’t read if you haven’t watched it.

> Read more.

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Today, I bring you something a little different. After AHS:Coven ended, I realised I'd love to start writing episode recaps. I don't watch a lot of TV, but when I do, I tend to stay with the shows because there are various things I like about them - and the more things I like, the more I have to say. But, alas, Coven was too ambitious to start with, so I thought... why not recap White Christmas? It's a Korean drama, not one of the most popular, sadly, and there aren't that many recaps out there, so one more really can't hurt. Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

A series of deaths, including murder and suicide, take place over eight days in a private, elite high school deep in the mountains, with the students cut off from the outside world and in highly volatile and unstable emotional conditions. The drama deals with the question of whether evil is organic or environmental, and the potential for adolescents to be extremely empathetic as well as equally cruel.

And here's what I'd like you to know: I'm going to talk about all the things that I like. I'm going to talk about foreshadowing, costume design, character relationships, camera angles, and whatever else I feel like adding. I will make regular pauses to look at pretty faces, and I will be slightly sarcastic about the whole thing. I will also spoil you, a lot, because I want to do a sort of hindsight recap and discuss the way certain quotes and scenes influence the ending. Conclusion: don't read this recap if you haven't watched THE WHOLE SHOW.

Let's go!

[edit: Read More links aren't working for some reason, so please click here]

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★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization
Alex Irvine
Ebook, aprox. 270 pages

When legions of monstrous creatures, known as Kaiju, started rising from the sea, a war began that would take millions of lives and consume humanity's resources for years on end. To combat the giant Kaiju, a special type of weapon was devised: massive robots, called Jaegers, which are controlled simultaneously by two pilots whose minds are locked in a neural bridge. But even the Jaegers are proving nearly defenseless in the face of the relentless Kaiju.

On the verge of defeat, the forces defending mankind have no choice but to turn to two unlikely heroes-a washed up former pilot and an untested trainee - who are teamed to drive a legendary but seemingly obsolete Jaeger from the past. Together, they stand as mankind's last hope against the mounting apocalypse.

I know, I know, so many good books in the world and here I am reviewing a movie novelization, shame on me. Well, at least we all know who to blame.



And perhaps we should add Tacit Ronin to the list too, since it's my favorite Jaeger of all time. It's my inner bug enthusiast, I look at it and all I see is a massive praying mantis.



But anyway, to the book! I won't write an exhaustive review, because most of us have watched the movie and know all about the plot, the characters, and the worldbuilding - there's no use in repeating all of that! Now, I chose to read this novelization because Pacific Rim really did grow on me over the past year. If at first I was a little disappointed in the movie (not enough robots, I said over and over again, not enough robots), as soon as I rewatched it, I was dragged into the hype all over again. I just couldn't stop thinking about the nearly unlimited potential of this Jaeger/Kaiju concept. I might have read 90% of the Wiki in a couple of days. And then, because my thirst for knowledge and backstory was so strong, I decided to read the book. Aaaaaaand I was disappointed.

This book's main problem is the writing style. Raleigh Beckett acts as our POV character, and I'll be honest, he's quite entertaining and witty at first. There are lots of little side notes and in-jokes that make the book a lot of fun, even if you've just finished watching the movie. The problem is that... it doesn't last. After a few dozen pages, the book goes downhill, quickly turning into, to put it simply, a step-by-step description of the movie. I don't know what's the usual modus operandi for writing novelizations, but it seriously seems like the author sat in a movie theatre, watched Pacific Rim, and described everything he saw on the screen. Then, to make people pay for the book, he scattered about a few extra tidbits. Profit!

The implications of this are really bad. You see, I don't like using the old show/tell comparison, because I don't think it holds all the time, but I'll have to use it here - this book is nothing but tell. There's no emotion. The characters have no inner lives. There are no risks, no challenges, and there's no causality from one action to the other. Imagine Striker Eureka punching a Kaiju on screen. The book will say "Striker Eureka punched a Kaiju". It's just... not good enough. Oh, and there's no character development either.

The other big problem here is that the book has no structure. It doesn't even look like something that's been planned - the author jumps from major scene to major scene without bothering to set things up or pad the events. One minute two Jaegers have been lost, next minute we're running all the way to the Breach with a bomb strapped to Striker's back. About the aforementioned tidbits of extra information, I'd just like to say... I wanted to learn more about the side characters (Tendo Choi, the Wei triplets, the Kaidanovskys, maybe even Pentecost?), but the extra info I did get arrived in the shape of "official documents" and newspaper cut-outs. They were mostly worldbuilding extras, really - still interesting, but not quite what I had in mind.

Finally, I'd like to mention the ending. The ending was one of the best parts of Pacific Rim, for me. Why? Well, because the leads didn't kiss, of course! It was a welcome change, and I was really happy with it. Unfortunately, good things never last, and they actually did kiss in the book. I didn't deserve that.

So, let's conclude this. This novelization is not a good novelization, and I think it could have been. Pacific Rim is a movie that relies heavily on the visuals and little on the actual plot - Cherno Alpha taunting the enemy via banging its fists together, the boat sword, the way everyone in the theatre gasped when Otachi opened its wings.... these are moments you can't recreate half as effectively in a book, for obvious reasons, but that still doesn't mean there wasn't anything worth exploring in print. What about Raleigh's trauma after losing his brother, or Pentecost's health problems, or Mako's big damn moment where she finally got to pilot a Jaeger? How did these people feel, throughout the movie? The book could have delved deeper into the inner lives of the characters, instead of simply grazing the surface in a bland retelling of the movie. Besides, the extras really weren't worth it - so I'm giving this a two-star rating.

Now the question is... am I going to read the prequel comic? Probably. I'll most definitely buy the artbook, though.

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★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe
Alison Rowlands (Editor)
Ebook, aprox. 270 pages

Men and masculinities are still inadequately incorporated into the historiography of early modern witch trials, despite the fact that 20-25% of all accused ‘witches’ were male. This book redresses this imbalance by making men the focus of the gender analysis and also covers the issue of regional variation in the gendering of witch persecution.

Some of you may have heard about that TV show, American Horror Story: Coven. You may have noticed the uprising of girls in their 20s who really identified with the show and its characters, and chose it as a good way to tell the world... you know what, when I was younger, I wanted to be a witch too.



Now, I am one of these girls. And Coven was particularly valuable to me, because it proved that witches are still very much relevant - when I was younger, I'd watch Bewitched on TV, religiously, every single night. I'd watch Sabrina The Teenage Witch. I'd watch Charmed too, but at the time I think it was a little too grown-up for me. There were lots of witches on TV (and movies!) in the 90s. Remember The Craft? Practical Magic? Willow, from Buffy The Vampire Slayer? I grew up with these girls, these women, these witches, but all of a sudden... they vanished. And then Coven brought them back.








My mind immediately jumped into writing mode. I wanted to write my own witch story, and I had very particular ideas about what I wanted it to be - namely, I wanted it to include boys, not as warlocks or wizards... but as witches. Witches mixing herbs in the kitchen, witches dancing naked in the moonlight, witches petting black cats while a storm roars outside. Because you see, when fictional men get magical powers, they don't do any of these things (think The Covenant), and I want them to. I want to invite them into these stories, and I want to see how they play by the rules already in place. Do they accept them? Do they fight them? Do they try to make these environments about them? What happens when you take the century-old archetype of the witch - a woman, usually ambitious, who doesn't fit in, a little asocial, perhaps even full on antisocial, - and get a man to play the role?



That was my question, and lo and behold, I discovered this book - actually a collection of academic articles -, the title of which seemed quite useful to help me answer it. The use of "witchcraft and masculinities" immediately made me think of a book that would take on, not only the sex of the people tried as witches, but their gender, and the social roles associated with that gender.

Right on the first few pages, though, I realised this book had a very clear agenda - present an alternative to the feminist perspective, which states witch hunts were, to put it simply, a misogynistic institution. I don't see a problem with this in theory, but in practise, what happened was I ended up subjecting myself to 270 pages of historians bending over backwards to come up with explanations based on, to point out the most egregious article of the bunch, one case of a tried man.

Some affirmations were so ridiculous that I had to take note. Here's my favorite:

Contrary to their alleged special hatred of women, however, the witch-finders were, as most men of their age, neither misogynists nor philogynists.

Well, clearly they weren't philogynists, but can you really say they weren't... misogynists? Because I can't even say that about 21st century men. In my eyes, there's no redemption for a book that tackles an issue as gendered as witchcraft, acknowledges that the great majority of the accused (and tried, and condemned) were women, without presenting a reasonable explanation as to why, and then states this sort of thing. I have actually summarized the book for all interested, here:

Listen we know this society was pretty sexist, and we know men made all the decisions, and we know women were more vulnerable to this kind of social persecution, and we know it was widely believed that women, being the weaker sex, would be the Devil's first choices when it came to corrupting innocent human souls, BUT THE FACT THAT WOMEN MADE UP THE MAJORITY OF THE ACCUSED HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS.

Long story short, I was really disappointed with this volume. For once, it feels very scattered - the articles focus on different places and times, and there is no apparent connection between them (if we exclude "male witches" and "nope nope nope no feminism here"). The book keeps telling me that, in some parts of Europe, men made up the majority of the accused witches, but it didn't actually made me understand why - a major flaw, since this seems to be the book's main argument for the insufficiency of the feminist perspective. Last, but not least, I didn't like the tone of a few of the articles - calling a woman a "whore" in academic texts, really? How about "prostitute", or "sex worker"?

I still want to read a good, academic book about male witches. But I'd prefer one that doesn't disregard thousands of dead women across Europe to ask but what about the men. I'd prefer one that explores the cases of accused male witches inside the framework of feminist theory, instead of one that uses them as evidence that said theory is biased and insufficient. Surely, the world can do better than that.

This particularly snarky review has been brought to you by Pure Unadulterated Anger. You are welcome. Let's go rewatch Charmed.

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NOTE: This book was provided by the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.



★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Waking Engine
David Edison
Ebook, aprox. 400 pages

Contrary to popular wisdom, death is not the end, nor is it a passage to some transcendent afterlife. Those who die merely awake as themselves on one of a million worlds, where they are fated to live until they die again, and wake up somewhere new. All are born only once, but die many times... until they come at last to the City Unspoken, where the gateway to True Death can be found.

Wayfarers and pilgrims are drawn to the City, which is home to murderous aristocrats, disguised gods and goddesses, a sadistic faerie princess, immortal prostitutes and queens, a captive angel, gangs of feral Death Boys and Charnel Girls... and one very confused New Yorker.

Late of Manhattan, Cooper finds himself in a City that is not what it once was. The gateway to True Death is failing, so that the City is becoming overrun by the Dying, who clot its byzantine streets and alleys... and a spreading madness threatens to engulf the entire metaverse.

Happy 2014, everyone! Sure, I am a little late, posting my first review on January 28, but I assure you I can explain.

Today, I bring you David Edison’s debut novel, The Waking Engine. I found this book on NetGalley, possibly two days after signing up, and the blurb made me really, really curious. I mean, people who keep dying only to wake up again in a whole new universe? A City where everybody comes to die after they've finished their joyride? And of course... Death Boys and Charnel Girls? If you know me, you'll know that's when I decided to request the book.

1. Plot
Cooper is not your average book protagonist. He’s gay, he’s overweight, and he’s dead. (this is where I give David Edison a respectful high five because YAY PROTAGONISTS THAT BREAK THE MOLD!) When he wakes up in the City Unspoken, with no idea of how he got there, he is immediately adopted by a grey-skinned man and a pink-haired woman, who seem to believe he is the solution to the overpopulation problem that plagues the City because the dying can no longer die. Of course, you and I know where this is going. Cooper, is of course, the good old Chosen One. In the span of a few days, he develops totally rad powers, including sensing people's fear in verbal form and traveling through some sort of anachronic faerie-powered internet, and in the end, he does what Chosen Ones usually do. Meh.

This is the main plot – and it’s pretty bland, compared to the subplots. Look above. Look at the blurb. See the murderous aristocrats? Sure, I know we see nobles killing each other in 90% of fantasy books... but not while they’re locked inside a glass dome, not over something as fickle as wearing the same dress two days in a row, and definitely not when none of them can actually die (since their souls are bound to their bodies). It’s inside the dome that we meet Purity Kloo, a noble girl desperate to find a way out – so desperate, indeed, that she spends a week slitting her own throat only to come back every single time.

Sure, a story about murderous teenage nobles dressed in the metaverse's equivalent of Lolita fashion wouldn't have appealed to the target audience that The Waking Engine is trying to attract, I suspect... but I had a lot of fun with Purity's subplot, and would have switched it for Cooper’s without so much as a second thought.

Final words about the plot: it's convoluted. I love the idea of the City Unspoken, but a setting that is part our world part every other world in existence demands time, and Edison doesn't cut the reader any slack before overwhelming them with references to greek mythology (Omphale, right, well played), the AIDS epidemic of the 80s, Cleopatra’s historical relevance, the wise advice of a beluga whale, and the literal ins-and-ours of a cyborg Queen.

2. Characters
As far as protagonists go, Cooper sure breaks a couple of molds, but it takes more than that to write a good character. It’s not just that he’s uninteresting, he’s not even very coherent – he speaks like an angry New Yorker ready to break a few noses, but his inner monologue is equal parts disoriented, skeptic, and terrified, and his actions are reactive at best. Sometimes I felt as if I was reading three different characters. And then, of course, he meets attractive men and his brain goes into full shutdown, which is both amusing and exasperating. Focus, sir!

About Purity (our other protagonist, sort of), I found her to be just the right balance between... well, what her name suggests her to be, and someone I wouldn’t want to cross on a bad day. She’s smart, she’s competent, she’s a bit of a wildcard, and she’s sexual without being sexualised. I could see her leading a girl gang, really.

I won’t write about every character, so let me just wrap this section by saying this book achieved something really, really good with its female characters. Here, women move most of the plot, making this book something I’d like to show all those male writers who say “they can’t write women”. Listen, here’s the secret: write more than one-two, and give them a personality of their own. Thank you, David Edison.

3. Setting/worldbuilding
I’ve already written a bit about my love for the City Unspoken as a concept, but now I’d like to present a complaint about the way it was written. For a place where people of all universes come to die, the City was a little overpopulated by humans, no? Even the architecture of the place was awfully familiar – taverns, shady boarding houses, classy bordellos, sex workers on every street corner. If your City is a repository of culture for every universe, why does it look like every dark medieval-ish city I’ve ever read? Surely beings from other universes have priorities other than food-sleep-sex, no? If not, I call lazy writing. It takes more than supernatural powers and skin of an unnatural color to create a different species.

Now to the good points: I loved the Apostery, a temple for dead religions. (what an idea!) I also found the different types of “prostitutes” very interesting – I mean, it’s terribly morbid to have someone body-bound accepting their own murder every day in exchange for money, but it’s a good idea that fits perfectly with the bigger picture. I could have lived with a little less “whores” and “sluts” every two paragraphs, though.

4. Writing style
As a general rule, I don’t complain too much about elaborate writing styles, because I like them. Here, though, I found the “style” really overwhelming – there were sentences I had to read over and over again, just to extract some meaning from their structure and the excess of strange, possibly universe-relevant but plot-irrelevant words.

Conclusion: the ideas behind this book are all very good, but the execution left quite a bit to be desired. The main-main character, Cooper, is easily the least interesting character in the book. The setting wasn’t as exhaustively explored as it should have been – or, in any case, as I wish it could have been. The writing style was a little too much for me. It’s not bad, in any way, but I can’t lie – it took me a month to get through it, and that simply doesn’t happen with books I like. So, it shall receive a two-star rating, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed for David Edison’s next book.

The Waking Engine will be released on February 11th. You can pre-order it from the publisher here, or through Amazon here.

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★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Platão e um Ornitorrinco Entram num Bar
Thomas Cathcart, Daniel Klein
Dom Quixote, aprox. 240 páginas

Platão e Um Ornitorrinco Entram Num Bar...é um livro para todos aqueles que não querem levar demasiado a sério as coisas sérias. Não precisa de saber muito de filosofia para desfrutar em pleno deste livro, pois está escrito ao estilo de Marx (Groucho, não Karl). Os autores, ambos licenciados em Filosofia por Harvard, tiveram o cuidado de não deixar nada de fora e, como tal, através deste divertido livro qualquer leitor compreenderá as grandes ideias da filosofia ocidental e fará uso delas da melhor forma possível: com humor. O livro provoca o riso, mas também deixa o leitor a pensar. É um autêntico curso intensivo em que se explica a filosofia através de uma série de anedotas e histórias cómicas

Este livro promove-se como um "divertido [...] curso intensivo", e ... bem, é exactamente isso. Do Existencialismo ao Feminismo, passando pela Epistemologia e pela Fenomenologia, há filosofia para todos, geralmente ilustrada com aquele tipo de piada que não se conta a ninguém cuja opinião se tenha em elevada consideração (quer dizer... a não ser que a intenção seja fazer um inimigo para a vida).

No geral, este livro foi um passeio bem-disposto pela arte de pensar (sobre pensar), e embora tivesse preferido que algumas secções fossem mais aprofundadas, sei que não posso exigir isso de um auto-denominado "curso intensivo". Assim, é um óptimo livro para filósofos principiantes, ou para aqueles que queiram revisitar o ensino secundário.

Ah, e finalmente, pontos de bónus para a apresentação do livro em si - da capa dura ao design interior das páginas, está mesmo, mesmo bonito.

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