mchand

I went to Trader Joe's yesterday and in addition to the things I was meant to purchase, I also got apple cider scented foaming hand soap, maple & sea salt kettle corn, ultra moisturizing pumpkin hand cream, and a little white and orange pumpkin to go with the big heirloom pumpkin I also impulse purchased earlier this week. Because it's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers.

While we're on the subject of gourds, let me also recommend this recipe for gluten-free pumpkin bars from Texanerin. Though, really, it's more of a pumpkin cake, tall and fluffy and full of fall spices. I wrote up the details over on gluten_free.

Another Ana and Din mystery. It was fine! But, like the first book, it lacked charisma. I'd put it down fully intending to pick it back up again once I'd eaten dinner or brushed my teeth or ensured the kitten wasn't quietly unravelling the fabric of the universe, but once I got back I'd do literally anything but pick it up again, sometimes leaving the actual book open next to me while I played hours of picross, watched trashy documentaries on Netflix, or read articles I'd had languishing in open tabs for months.

The world is interesting, but the main characters still aren't doing it for me. Like the first book, I was more intrigued by the secondary characters. Here, the warden Malo with her brash confidence, traumatic past, and uncertain future, and in the last book, the investigator who was better with a sword than a notebook and whom I'd inadvertently—and with absolutely no encouragement from the text—pictured as Gimli from The Lord of The Rings movies. Din, in many ways, reads as a means to an end, a recording device more than a fully developed person with his own voice and thoughts, and Ana, well, I figured out what she was before Din, but that's not saying much.

Contains: smoking (especially as a form of self-medication); hereditary enslavement; descriptions of violence and dead bodies; body horror.

Set in a place that is probably not Earth, or Earth at a very different time, where kaiju rise up out of the ocean during the wet season and head for land. In the Empire, the Engineers maintain the sea walls that keep the leviathans out; the Legion fight them back; the Apothetikals develop organic means to alter the plants and animals—and people—that make it possible to survive in this hostile land, and the Iudex investigate the crimes. The wet season's coming and Dinios Kol, Imperial engraver and (apprentice) assistant investigator, has been sent to the scene of a ghastly murder to engrave it in his memory and report back to his master, the reclusive and eccentric (and possibly autistic) Anagosa Dolabra.

This is a plot-driven mystery, more focused on the details of the investigation than the development of the characters, and for me that made it feel a little empty. The ad copy wants you to believe Din and Ana have a Watson and Holmes thing going on, but that is barely the case. The characters are mostly a means to an end, a collection of characteristics rather than actual people, and this includes our first person narrator, Din. He's a nervous little (queer) guy, basically, only tall, did he mention he's tall?? He's tall, gang. And dyslexic. I liked him well enough, but I never felt like I really knew what he was about.

The book has a fantasy science-fiction vibe, and a bunch of new guys, like whenever RJB needed to explain a crime he just invented a new type of guy. It was starting to feel a little silly. Like, "Oh, didn't you know about this type of guy? It's the only way this mystery makes sense!" I don't think the mystery is the kind that can be solved just by paying attention, rather it's the kind with an extensive drawing room scene near the end that explains it all.

And I guess I've been reading exactly the right amount of Adrian Tchaikovsky because I kept wondering what was up with the leviathans, like what's their deal? Has anybody bothered to ask why they want to come on land? Maybe it's part of their life cycle, maybe there's something there they need—but this is not that book. It's a fantasy murder mystery set in the middle of a seasonal kaiju attack that must be stopped, and that's fine, it's just one more way the story lacked depth. But the mystery and the world building were enough to keep me engaged, and I'm curious to see what happens next so I've already checked the sequel out from the library.

Contains: body horror; a lot of blood; fear of contagion; sword violence.