Hai

I picked up this book from a Reddit comment saying it is Murakami's most signatory work. Having only read 1Q84 prior to this, I expected a tinge of magical realism plastered here and there along a banal plotline. The book pleasantly surprised me on that front.

In the real world, there is a typical Japanese worker; maybe not so typical, since his work is mind encryption. In the magical world, there is a man whose shadow got sundered from him by the Gatekeeper of the Town. The mind encrypter received a job from a mad professor to perform memory obfuscation. The shadowless man became the Dreamreader, evoking dreams from animal skulls everyday. Some clashes happened, some trouble arose, some memory regained, some secrets revealed, and then it was the end of the world.

The real world in which our mind encrypter lives has surrealist elements, and they are quite direct. They are described through the first-person view as a matter of fact, but somehow it leaves quite an impression on me. It is the real world, occupied by real people, but there is always something that is off, detracting my mind from visualizing it. It is an enjoyable feeling.

The book poses philosophical questions on the relationship between memory and identity. I did not particularly engage with this theme, nor do I warrant the sci-fi details much interest, but I do believe the book is invested in those areas, if that is your cup of tea. For me, I read the book in a hazy state of mind, haphazardly immersing myself in the world of dreams and shadowless townpeople, and I think it is how the book is intended to be experienced.

Raymond, a battered captain who crabs for a living. Jenny, his estranged addict of a daughter. Sitka, his coming-of-age granddaughter. All tried to mend the cracks in their relationship on a tepid reunion.

I know nothing about fishing, nothing about Alaska, and nothing about the gods. Yet, the book enchants me into the rocky world of Yatki Island with meticulous craft and raw poignancy.

The book gets increasingly harrowing towards the end, but I find the final chapters a bit rushed. If there were one more chapter at the end, it would have been a 5-star.

I picked this up hoping for a light read about magic and stones. Let's just say I did not look at the blurb long enough.

The world here ends every few hundred years with a "Season", during which human has to cope with extreme weather and such and such calamity. Among the human of this world are orogenes, who have some mysterious power on stones. We follows three orogenes of distinct ages as they wander around the land of Stillness, converging in the beginning of the end.

To be honest, I don't get how the orogenes wield control of the earth. The description lacks no details, yet my mind fail to conjure up any vivid imagery. Still, in those instances, I see the dream of taming Mother Nature, existing from as long as human has known of day and night. Even then, the Earth prevailed and denied all efforts to contain it, a bitter lesson much like real life.

Embed in the yoke of nature's indifference is a precarious society: an oppressing empire forcing unity and order, a caste formed from the fear of magical power, and a dysfunctional moral compass in apocalyptic time. Bespoke kernels of reality lie everywhere, demanding your attention, your reflection, your care. Each character feels as alive as they can be, filled with distinct traits and flaws that any mother, any lover, and any child might possess.

I did find some slight annoyances, especially with how in-your-face Essun's pain were re-iterated. These peeves are definitely personal and in no way affect the enthralling trip you will go on till the end.

I rushed to write this review immediately after I finished the book, which is about the highest of acclaim I can give to a piece of art.

Following a hero journey through 14th-century Black-Death-stricken France, the story blends terror with peace, despair with hope through each chapter and each city.

I am incredulous of how Buehlman paints the most horrific ecclesiastical imageries I've known using the calmest of prose. Reading the book makes you feel like you can miss it without proper attention, but the moment you catch it, it appears so vivid, so cruel, and so gripping, you can never excise it off your mind.

A tremendous success.

As Wil and Eliot ran away from so-called poets for their life, Woolf kept inching towards them. Their only chance of surviving seem to be a “word,” one with tremendous power, but somehow Wil could not remember it.

Spells, incantation, persuasion, rifle and blood, Lexicon is a thrilling book jam-packed with interesting concepts and gripping actions. The book blasts off with a good ol chase scene, and then alternates between two timelines effortlessly.

However, it was disappointing to see that not much is known about these poets, their jobs, their purpose, and the world they operate in. It is as if Harry Potter had ended in book 1. The ending was kind of a trope, and while it makes sense for the book to end that way, I could not help but to feel amiss after rooting for Eliot so much.

Overall, I still enjoyed the book, but I would probably like it even more had it been a trilogy, and not a one-sitting read.

A formulaic crime thriller. The plot contains the same tropes of violent crimes, sexual assault, damsel in distress, etc. The characters other than the narrator and her prince are mostly bland.

That said, the plot flows smoothly with no glaring holes. I especially like the information of the Amish and the minutiae details of the investigation process. The prose, while economic, is still palatable. Overall, a decent quick read.