The City of Brass

OK! New Year! I'm gonna do this blog thing!

But for real, I had good reasons for not writing over the past few months, so sorry about all the amazing books you've missed hearing about. But it's fine! I'm back! And I've already read 4 books this year!

The first one I'm going to talk about is The City of Brass BECAUSE IT WAS AWESOME, OK?! I've seen it around, but haven't heard as much chatter about it as I have other books. It could be because everything I follow is YA centric, and this is technically adult fantasy (even though really, it could totally be YA; one of the two POVs is 16 and the other is 20 so really, it's just a technicality, much like Queen of the Tearling).

So, a summary:

It's the Napoleonic era and Nahri is a con-woman/healer/thief. Nahri has been on her own a long time, so she had to get creative to survive. She's learned how to spot a mark, how to read people, and how to swindle them. And she makes a decent living from it. But what she really wants is to be a doctor. See, Nahri has a special talent: she can sense what is wrong in a body and sometimes, she can even heal it. She also has a gift for languages. She can understand/speak any language once it's spoken to her. But there is one language she knows that she's never heard anyone else speak. She assumes it must be the language from her homeand, but she has no idea where that is or who her family is.

One night, she's performing a healing, and during her chanting, calling on a warrior for healing (for effect, because you know, words have no healing powers),  someone appears. A man who swears a lot and is very angry to have been summoned by a human. The problem, as he discovers, is that Nahri is not fully human. She's half Daeva (djinn {shafit}), which is an abomination all its own.

This warrior is Darayavahoush (Dara), and ancient Daeva who was once turned into a slave and served humans for hundreds of years. He doesn't know how she summoned him, but he knows the safest place for her is the City of Brass, where the djinn live.

In the City of Brass, Ali is a second son, prince who is raised to be something similar to a head of security for the nation. He will protect his kingdom with his life, never marry or have a family. His father is the king, and is testing him. For he knows Ali has sympathies and questionable loyalties. Not everyone is treated equally in The City of Brass, and Ali wants that to change. So he's secretly been funneling money into an anarchic organization--not so they can bring the government down, but rather, so they can help the half human, half djinn (shafit) members of their society who are so mistreated.

There is so much happening in this book, and it's all so well plotted and the world building is just magnificent. It deftly tackles racism, the meaning of justice, good and evil, all while building complex relationships between the characters.  Everyone in this book is so fleshed out. They are all morally gray (Nahri preys on the gullible to make her living, Dara started a war that killed thousands of innocents, and Ali executes a good man because he was told to). And that's just the main characters. The supporting cast is similarly well thought out and it was simply delightful. I can't wait for the mext book, because it's going to delve into secrets that I know were kept in this one.

So, basically--read it. Tell me what you think when you do (even though I will likely have forgotten half the story by then bc I have THE WORST memory).

P.S. The cover of this book is beautiful, so when you see it, I don't  know how you can resist it unless you're some kind of monster.

City of Saints and Thieves

I was intrigued by City of Saints and Thieves because it was one of Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers selections, but it was also YA. I've never seen a Teen book make this list.

The story follows Christina aka Tina aka Tiny Girl aka Tiny. Tina is an excellent thief. She has to be; it was the only way to avoid becoming a prostitute on the streets of Sangui City. She works with the Goondas, a street gang in the city, to make her living--and work toward taking revenge on the man who killed her mother.

When her mother first brought Tina to Kenya from Congo, she found a job as a maid for Roland Greyhill, an American businessman. There, she spends five (7? Can't remember) easy years of childhood, plays with Greyhill's son, Michael, and gets a new sister. But everything changes when her mother is murdered. Tina, 12 years old, takes her sister and flees to the streets because she knows exactly who killed her mom: Mr. Greyhill.

Tina stashes her sister in a nun-run school where she was able to get a scholarship, then goes to the head of the Goondas for help in taking revenge. She wants to kill Mr. Greyhill. But he has other ideas--among them taking Mr. Greyhill's extensive fortune. So he gives Tina a book: The Count of Monte Cristo (and c'mon, this is my all time favorite book. How could I not love this?!) So Tina decides the best formula for revenge is: 1. Dirt. 2. Money. 3. Blood.

So when she gets a chance to break into the house to copy info from Greyhill's computer, she takes it. With a little support from computer genius Bug Boy, she gets all the info she needs tot ake Greyhill down.

She also gets caught.

She has to spend the next week with Mr. Greyhill's son, Michael, who convinces her to try and find proof that his father did it--because Michael is positive he didn't.

This was a whole different type of mystery that was absolutely impacted by the setting. The situation is dire: Tina is beholden to this game, they're chasing down a murderer, being chased by murderers and militia. The book taking place in war-torn Africa just added a new element to what otherwise would have been a typical Nancy Drew type mystery. Tina has much greater concerns than whether her friends will betray her (she knows they will) or what clothes to wear (she lives on a roof, for goodness sake). She has to figure out how to survive on a daily basis.

And there are no happy endings like in your typical YA story. Tina doesn't fix Africa. She doesn't take down the bad guys or a corrupt government. She solves a mystery that has deeply affected her life, and then her life goes back to normal-stealing and surviving.

It was a phenomenal story, and the narrator was spectacular. I cried a few times. I can't imagine a life like many in Africa live. This is my second book recently that takes place there and deals with that violence, and it's horrifying. But I do hope more books are written (and read) about it.

How Dare the Sun Rise

I decided to change it up with some non-fiction this time. A few of the authors I read and follow on Twitter were talking about it a few months ago, and since I needed a change, I decided to borrow it.

I'M SO GLAD I DID BECAUSE IT WAS AMAZING!

I mean, it's someone's life, so how do you say it isn't amazing? But Sandra, who is only 23, has faced so much. And while it seems like a lot to me, a privileged white girl who lives in the U.S., there are thousands of people who have similar experiences to hers.

Sandra spent her childhood in the Republic of Congo, but her tribe is from Rwanda. There is a lot of prejudice toward Rwandans from the Congolese, so even though they lived in a nice house and her parents had good jobs, they always knew their lives could change in a moment. She is one of 7 kids, and her oldest brother was kidnapped and turned into a child soldier. Even though they got him back a few years later, he was injured and traumatized from his experiences. Sandra was the second youngest, only a few years older than her younger sister Deborah. Her childhood sounds pretty typical: going to school, playing with friends, following older siblings around and mimicking them.

Then they learns soldiers are coming, and they become refugees in their own country. They pack everything they can fit in a car, and a driver takes them from their home. They get attacked on the way, most of their possessions are stolen, but they finally make it to a refugee camp. The camp is the kind of place where everyone lives in tents, bathrroms are holes in the grpund, and you have to stand in line for food and water. There is never enough of either. It's drastically different from the way she spent most of her childhood, but that doesn't last either.

The camp gets attacked. People are being shot as they try to leave their tents. The men outside Sandra's tent tell them they won't hurt them, they will keep them safe. Her mother is the first to come out, holding her younger sister Deborah on her hip. Multiple shots are fired at them and they both fall to the ground.

Man, I'm crying just trying to type this up.

Sandra runs the other way, manages to make it out of the tent, but gets caught and a man holds a gun to her head and prepares to shoot her. Keep in mind, she is 10 years old. He gets distracted and she manages to escape into the woods, the blaze of their camp lighting the way. It was called the massacre at Gatumba. The men who led it stepped forward to brag about the 166 lives they destroyed and they were never brought to justice.

It was SO. HARD. TO READ. I knew it would be.

In the rest of the book, she finds her family, they apply to move to America as refugees, and they are accepted. The family faces a whole new set of challenges: learning English, figuring out American food, fitting in at schools, facing microaggressions, flashbacks, and more.

Sandra now speaks about her experiences and tries to bring awareness about what's going on in her country. She's spoken at the UN, shared the stage with Angelina Jolie and Oprah Winfrey, and all this before she was 20. She is the cofounder of Jimbere fund, an organization that helps rural communities in Congo.

Her book was incredible. I definitely recommend it to...well, pretty much everyone.

Life After Life

See? I read things besides YA!

Life After Life is by Kate Atkinson, a bestselling author with an impressive backlist of books. When this book came out a few years ago, everyone was talking about it and I desperately wanted to read it. But then, there were other books I desperately wanted to read, and I was in school, and it was really thick, and and and. You know how it goes. Ultimately, I'm glad I waited. If I had read this when it came out and when everyone was hyped up about it, I would have been desperately disappointed.

It was OK. At first it was really confusing.  It follows Ursula Todd, a British girl born in 1910 who dies on the day she's born. You're probably wondering: wait, the main character is dead? The answer is yes and no. Her life is saved when the physician snips the cord around her throat, and she takes her first breath. As Ursula grows up, she dies numerous times. But then, time resets and she has the chance to live these moments over--to change whatever it is that killed her. The catch is, no one actually knows this is happening to her. It's like the reader is a god looking down on the world and watching another god reset this girl's life over and over to see what will happen.

Ursula only experiences very strong senses of deja vu. She knows something terrible is going to happen and that she can find a way to prevent it. This is especially poignant when World War I ends in 1918 and the family's maidservant goes out with her beau to join the crowds of people celebrating. Know what else happens in 1918? The Great Influenza. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about what happens. #nospoilers

It was interesting to read the same experiences and watch them play out differently. It was interesting to see what a huge impact something that happened when she turned 16 has on the rest of her life, and then how her life changed if that didn't happen. It was almost like a choose your own adventure story. You remember those, right?

Overall, I liked it. It was well written. It wasn't a bad story. It just wasn't riveting. It might have been more interesting if I had read it for a book club, if I was planning to discuss the different events with a group of people. But having read it on my own, it wasn't what I was expecting. And your expectations can make a huge difference in how you feel about a story. Sometimes, the there's too much hype.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

I just finished listening to Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston. It's not usually the type of story I would read because 1. It's YA fiction which I mostly don't read and 2. It's about a girl who is raped. I decided to pick it up because I heard good things from a friend. Also, because I met E.K. Johnston once. She stopped at the Barnes and Noble where I work on her way home one time and I got to meet her. She's awesome, btw. She's also won my undying loyalty so there's that...

But back to the book! Exit is about a girl named Hermione Winters. She's co-captain of her cheerleading squad about to enter her senior year of high school. The story opens with her attending her final cheer camp. She's taking it very seriously because at the end of her senior year, she wants her team to win nationals, a huge cheerleading competition. At camp, there's a lot of work to do, but there's fun, too. She's surrounded by her team, and teams from all over Canada, and get the chance to bond with many different people. Then, there's the dance. Hermione is having a great time. She's dancing with her friends, loving the music, out of breath, and someone hands her a drink. The next thing she knows, she wakes up in a hospital bed with her best friend Polly hovering over her. She doesn't remember anything else.

Let me just tell you hard it is riding a bike while bawling your eyes out. It's hard. I mostly listened to this while taking bike rides in the morning, and I'm glad I was alone. This is not the kind of book that you walk away from the same when you're done. Once I started, I felt this visceral need to finish the story, and I didn't want anyone interrupting it. It's hard to immerse yourself in the world of this girl whom this terrible thing has happened to, and then look back up at the real world and realize life is going on.

I feel like two elements had a huge impact on this story.

First, Hermione's fierce best friend, Polly. If anything tragic ever happens to me, I want someone like Polly there to stand up for me and hold me together. Polly was there every day when Hermione needed someone to take care of her. She was also there when it was time for Hermione to be strong on her own. Polly defended her, protected her, and told her the truth when she needed to hear it. She was profoundly unselfish in a way that I imagine it's hard for anyone to be. I want my own Polly and I want to be that strong for someone if anyone I know ever needs it.

The second element was the fact that Hermione didn't remember her rape. This made her post-trauma experience very different. She knew that she was raped, but since she remembered no part of it, she didn't feel like she was raped. She didn't have flashbacks or nightmares. She wasn't frightened to be around men or have someone touch her. She mostly behaved throughout the book like any other teenager, and had to make sure those around her treated her like one. She was relatively emotionally stable. The book demonstrated how different assault experiences have different effects. Just because she wasn't in hysterics doesn't mean it didn't happen, and I think it's an important comment on how our culture responds to rape. The book brings up important questions of victim-blaming and coping mechanisms. Hermione has a loving and supportive family, friends, a team, a therapist. There are numerous people for her to turn to if she needs help. This certainly made a huge difference in her healing process. Those who don't have such a support system in place are at a huge disadvantage.

I don't know if 'love' is the right word for how I feel about this book. It was impactful. It was riveting. It made a strong impression on me. And it was so worth it.