Monthly Archives: February 2018

The Dream Thieves

Book Review of The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2), by Maggie Stiefvater

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I borrowed a copy of Maggie Stiefvater’s The Dream Thieves from my local library. I reviewed the first,The Raven Boys, here.

Description from Goodreads:
Now that the ley lines around Cabeswater have been woken, nothing for Ronan, Gansey, Blue, and Adam will be the same. Ronan, for one, is falling more and more deeply into his dreams, and his dreams are intruding more and more into waking life. Meanwhile, some very sinister people are looking for some of the same pieces of the Cabeswater puzzle that Gansey is after…

Review:
I enjoyed book one of this series. I liked the beginning of this book and really liked the end, but the middle seemed to drag. I just got so tired of everyone being so miserable and no one saying the things that so desperately needed to be said. Further, while Stiefvater’s writing is beautiful there were times I wanted to shake the book and scream, “Stop being so bloody poetic and just say what you mean.” The prose got in the way of the story sometimes. Lastly, it was a little to convenient that the villain offed himself in the end.

However, the plot still kept me interested enough to want the next book and the witty zingers continued to fly. There really is quite a lot of subtle humor in the story and I loved that. All in all, maybe not as good as the first book, but still really good.

The Left Hand of Darkness

Book Review of The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin

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I have owned this copy of Ursula K. Le Guin‘s The Left Hand of Darkness for years. One would presume I bought it at some point.

Description from Goodreads:
On the planet Winter, there is no gender. The Gethenians can become male or female during each mating cycle, and this is something that humans find incomprehensible.

The Ekumen of Known Worlds has sent an ethnologist to study the Gethenians on their forbidding, ice-bound world. At first he finds his subjects difficult and off-putting, with their elaborate social systems and alien minds. But in the course of a long journey across the ice, he reaches an understanding with one of the Gethenians — it might even be a kind of love.

Review:
This is one of those books that is more a thought experiment than an actual reading experience. I can’t say I’m sad to have read it—especially now, so soon after Le Guin’s death—but I’ll say I’m glad to have read it, to be done reading it. As interesting as it was, I was bored for almost all of it. The world was breathtakingly described and, again, the moral and social implications of the Emissary’s circumstances were interesting, but the whole thing was soooo slow and indirect. Plus, while I understand the book was published in 1969 and therefore a product of it’s time, I was uncomfortable with the way women were positioned and described. All in all, I think of this much like I do Moby Dick. I’m glad to tick it off my list off books I’ve meant to read, but didn’t enjoy it all that much, though I can appreciate it’s worth.