Author Archives: Goddess in the Stacks

Book Review: Deerskin

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DeerskinDeerskin
by Robin McKinley
Fantasy
386 pages
Published 2014

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

You know, sometimes you just need some escapist fantasy. McKinley’s lyrical prose was just the ticket for me last night. There were a few times where I thought “I’d like to know what happens next, quit with the digression already” but then I got caught up in the digression itself! I’ve read several of McKinley’s books – The Hero and the Crown, Pegasus, a few others. She is a master of her craft, weaving magical tales that make you really SEE the world of the book.

Lissar/Deerskin survives some intense trauma in the beginning of this tale – it was hard to read, but McKinley hit the middle ground of being just graphic enough to really impress the horror of the assault on you, without being overly graphic. I think it could definitely be triggering, though, so be warned. Lissar survives, and escapes, and spends time healing before going among people again and learning to heal emotionally as well as physically.

The book is predictable – I knew where she was going and who she’d fall in love with from the moment she left home – but no less absorbing for that. I did like that for once, an author dealt with trauma recovery in a realistic manner, instead of just “oh well she loves him so the trauma won’t bother her anymore!” because PTSD doesn’t work that way.

Deerskin is another enchanting tale from McKinley, with parts that are genuinely hard to read. I wish the description had been more blatant that when Lissar is fleeing “her father’s lust” they really meant his assault, not just his desire.

From the cover of Deerskin: 

Princess Lissla Lissar is the only child of the king and his queen, who was the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms. Everyone loved the splendid king and his matchless queen so much that no one had any attention to spare for the princess, who grew up in seclusion, listening to the tales her nursemaid told about her magnificent parents.

But the queen takes ill of a mysterious wasting disease and on her deathbed extracts a strange promise from her husband: “I want you to promise me . . . you will only marry someone as beautiful as I was.”

The king is crazy with grief at her loss, and slow to regain both his wits and his strength. But on Lissar’s seventeenth birthday, two years after the queen’s death, there is a grand ball, and everyone present looks at the princess in astonishment and whispers to their neighbors, How like her mother she is!

On the day after the ball, the king announces that he is to marry again—and that his bride is the princess Lissla Lissar, his own daughter.

Lissar, physically broken, half mad, and terrified, flees her father’s lust with her one loyal friend, her sighthound, Ash. It is the beginning of winter as they journey into the mountains—and on the night when it begins to snow, they find a tiny, deserted cabin with the makings of a fire ready-laid in the hearth.

Thus begins Lissar’s long, profound, and demanding journey away from treachery and pain and horror, to trust and love and healing.

Book Review: Rebel of the Sands

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rebel of the sands

Rebel of the Sands
by Alwyn Hamilton
YA Fantasy
314 pages
Published 2016

More Middle-eastern themed fantasy! And by a Canadian writer, though she was only born there, she mostly grew up in France, so I’m not really sure it counts for my Read Canadian Challenge. But it is one I’ve been wanting to read for a while, and when I was at Barnes & Noble for Book Club, I noticed it on the bargain shelf, so I snagged it, along with another YA fantasy based on Norse Mythology called Valkyrie. There’s two more books in the series now, Traitor to the Thone and Hero at the Fall, so I’ve requested those from the library because I really enjoy this world!

Amani is a girl in a country that doesn’t value women, and treats them as useless property only good for breeding sons. The country is basically occupied by another country that the Sultan is “allied” with, but lets run roughshod over his people. She has her sights set on escaping her backwoods, dead-end town, and running to the capital city, where the aunt she’s never met lives. All of that is derailed when she meets Jin at an underground shooting competition, and then later hides him from the armed forces hunting him.

The country is definitely middle-east inspired, but there’s a lot of religion-bashing, and complaining about the culture oppressing women. It’s the same problem I have with a lot of knight-and-castle era fantasy – just because historically in OUR world those time periods weren’t kind to women, doesn’t mean they have to be the same in fantasy. It’s FANTASY! It can be anything you want! Break the tropes! It’s a fine line to walk, taking the good parts of a culture without just cherry-picking and appropriating the culture, and who’s judging what the good and bad parts are, anyway? So I understand it’s difficult, but bashing the culture in a book inspired by their mythology is not quite cool, either. I feel like City of Brass hit a nice middle ground of embracing the culture of the inspiration without bashing parts of it.

That gripe aside, I really enjoyed the world-building. I’m not quite sold on the characters yet – Amani is far too quick to abandon things she should fight for – but I’m interested enough to see how they progress in the next two books.

Rebel of the Sands was also a past Goodreads Choice winner, filling that prompt of the PopSugar 2018 reading challenge.

From the cover of Rebel of the Sands:

Mortals rule the desert nation of Miraji, but mythical beasts still roam the wild and remote areas, and rumor has it that somewhere, djinn still perform their magic. For humans, it’s an unforgiving place, especially if you’re poor, orphaned, or female. Amani Al’Hiza is all three. She’s a gifted gunslinger with perfect aim, but she can’t shoot her way out of Dustwalk, the back-country town where she’s destined to wind up wed or dead.

Then she meets Jin, a rakish foreigner, in a shooting contest, and sees him as the perfect escape route. But though she’s spent years dreaming of leaving Dustwalk, she never imagined she’d gallop away on mythical horse—or that it would take a foreign fugitive to show her the heart of the desert she thought she knew.

This startlingly original Middle-East-meets-Wild-West fantasy reveals what happens when a dream deferred explodes—in the fires of rebellion, of romantic passion, and the all-consuming inferno of a girl finally embracing her power.

Friday 56 – Deerskin

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DeerskinThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

Today’s quote is from Deerskin, by Robin McKinley.

“No one, afterwards, could remember where the initial idea of moving the portrait originated, although everyone vaguely, or hastily, guessed that it must have been upon the king’s orders. Because the curious thing was that it was not only Lissar who found the portrait’s magnificence oppressive, or eerie, or . . . no one was willing to pursue this thought because everyone insisted on grieving for the queen and loving her memory; but even the servants no longer went in the receiving-hall alone, when it was not in use, but always at least in pairs. No one ever remarked on this or made it difficult to accomplish; the feeling was too general. And so the beautiful queen stared down, glittering, and her people scuttled by her.”

My full review will be up on Monday!

Book Review: The Merry Spinster

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the merry spinsterThe Merry Spinster – Tales of Everyday Horror
by Daniel Mallory Ortberg
Fairy Tale Short Story Anthology
188 pages
Published March 2018

So this JUST came out. I’d had my eye on it for a few months, and put a request in as soon as my library ordered it. The author recently came out as trans, so it’s also part of my effort to read more inclusively. Ortberg definitely played with gender and sexuality in several of these tales; in one of them people decided whether to be the husband or the wife, independent of their gender, in their marriage. (One party to the marriage in the story stated “I’ve been trained for both roles.”) In another all of a man’s daughters used male pronouns and that was never explored further. That was slightly odd.

These were dark, twisted versions of these stories. “Our Friend Mr. Toad,” for example, involved gaslighting and psychologically torturing poor Mr. Toad. I found that one particularly disturbing. I enjoyed the title story, Ortberg’s version of Beauty and the Beast, which has a very different ending from expected. I also really liked “The Daughter Cells”, inspired by The Little Mermaid. I LOVED “Fear Not: An Incident Log.”

I think this was a great, albeit strange, little book. It’s unique, for sure, and a quick read. If you’re looking for a fairy tale collection that is VERY different, try this one.

From the cover of The Merry Spinster:

From Mallory Ortberg comes a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales. Adapted from the beloved “Children’s Stories Made Horrific” series, “The Merry Spinster” takes up the trademark wit that endeared Ortberg to readers of both The Toast and the best-selling debut Texts From Jane Eyre. The feature has become among the most popular on the site, with each entry bringing in tens of thousands of views, as the stories proved a perfect vehicle for Ortberg’s eye for deconstruction and destabilization. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children’s stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief.

Readers of The Toast will instantly recognize Ortberg’s boisterous good humor and uber-nerd swagger: those new to Ortberg’s oeuvre will delight in this collection’s unique spin on fiction, where something a bit mischievous and unsettling is always at work just beneath the surface.

Unfalteringly faithful to its beloved source material, The Merry Spinster also illuminates the unsuspected, and frequently, alarming emotional complexities at play in the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, as we tuck ourselves in for the night.

Bed time will never be the same.

Library Loot Wednesday!

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the fifth petalOff the “These Books “Blue” Us Away” (LOL) display, I found The Fifth Petal which seems to be a mystery/thriller set around Halloween in Salem, with plenty of witchcraft.

Holds I picked up this week:

Monstress Vol. 2 – I read Vol. 1 at a friend’s house last week after a different friend was raving about them. I’d seem them praised a lot online, and they’re great.

little bee refugeeLittle Bee, by Chris Cleave – Hits two prompts – “A book mentioned in another book” for PopSugar (it was mentioned in Tolstoy and the Purple Chair), and “A refugee main character” for Booked 2018.

Boy, Snow, Bird – a retelling of Snow White by Helen Oyeyemi, it also addresses issues of racism when the main family is exposed as light-skinned blacks who have been passing for white. It’ll be my first Oyeyemi book, but the descriptions of her others sound interesting, so it probably won’t be my last!

Island of Exiles by Erica Cameron – I don’t actually remember putting this one on hold! But it’s a desert adventure story and looks fun.

smoke eaters

We also dropped by my library’s 3rd annual Comicon, and picked up six books while we were at it. It wasn’t at our normal branch, so it was fun walking around an unfamiliar, much larger library. We picked up:

Smoke Eaters, about Firefighters fighting dragons.

krampus yule lordKrampus the Yule Lord by Brom, which I’ve been drooling over at my local game store for months. It’s out of season, I know, but I don’t care!

The first four books of Lady Trent’s Memoirs – A Natural History of Dragons, The Tropic of Serpents, Voyage of the Basilisk, and In the Labyrinth of Drakes. I keep looking at these at my local game store too, and the library had all four. (But not the fifth. I can probably request it though.)

TTT – Top Ten Books I Disliked but am Glad I Read

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sing unburied singHappy Tuesday! The Top Ten Theme this week is the top ten books you disliked or hated but are really glad you read, even if just for bragging rights. Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and she’ll have links to a bunch of other blogs participating in the Top Ten!

Sing, Unburied, Sing wasn’t exactly enjoyable, but it was important.

unbelievableUnbelievable, about a journalist’s experience on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, was exactly that. I didn’t want to believe it, but again, important that we know these things.

Dust Tracks on a Road was odd, and verified that I don’t particularly like Zora Neale Hurston’s writing.

tearsTears We Cannot Stop was a difficult read, but another very important one.

I didn’t like Station Eleven, but a lot of people did. I’m glad I read it so I know what people are talking about, even if I didn’t enjoy it like everyone else seems to.

The Jealousy Workbook is one I’ve talked about very briefly before, 20170626_213011but haven’t given a full review of. It helped a lot when my husband and I started on our polyamorous journey; I had some insecurities I needed to work through, and the questions and worksheets in The Jealousy Workbook are very thought-provoking. It was difficult work and not really enjoyable, but I’m glad I did it. (More Than Two, in the picture, is also excellent, but I mostly enjoyed my time with that one.)

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is something I read very recently for a PopSugar prompt. I’m glad I read it because everyone talks about it being a childhood classic – but reading it as an adult, at least, it felt….eh. Lackluster, really. Shallow and one-dimensional. (But it’s for kids, so I wouldn’t really expect complexity.)

I also read a Biology textbook a few years back, along with a workbook, and worked through it. I’m VERY glad I did that. I was homeschooled until eighth grade, and grew up conservative Christian, so my science education is…lacking. To put it mildly. I’ve been working on furthering my science and history education most of my adult life.

I know that’s only eight books, but that’s all I could think of! I’m looking forward to seeing other people’s lists. I might be reminded of something I missed!