Reading Wednesday
Nov. 30th, 2022 07:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyJust finished: Assassin of Reality by Marina and Serhiy Dyachenko
A few notes:
1. The spelling of the late Serhiy's name is different across various places and on the cover, and the title is different in Russian, so if you speak Russian and can't wait, just search for "Marina Dyachenko Vita Nostra book 2" and you'll find i.
2. I very seldom just copy-and-paste my Goodreads reviews but I wrote an essay on it and Amazon won't even let me review it yet, so in an attempt to drum up the hype that this book deserves, I'm pasting the entire thing behind a cut in hopes that my little audience here will go out and read it when it comes out in March.
3. Don't start with this one—read Vita Nostra first or it'll make no sense. You can read it now if you haven't already! The review doesn't have any major spoilers for Vita Nostra though.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I am truly honoured to be one of the first people who gets to read this in English after waiting several years for there to be a translation. As such I’ll try to restrain my actual reaction, which was an elated squeal so high-pitched that only dogs could hear it.
A few years ago, I read Vita Nostra, and it absolutely blew my mind. It’s a shimmering gem of a novel—inventive, atmospheric, transcendent. It gave me nightmares. I had to make everyone I knew read it. It’s also a very complete book, and without spoiling the ending, I couldn’t imagine how Sasha’s story could continue from its brainmelting conclusion.
But, continue it does, in a novel that is every bit worth the wait. Fifteen years after the events of Vita Nostra, a different Sasha, one who made different choices, dies in a car accident. The night before, she catches a vision of our Sasha, whose third-year exam at the Institute of Special Technologies did not exactly go as planned. “Our” Sasha is forced by her sinister mentor Farit to return to the Institute, where she must correct her mistakes before she is allowed to graduate. The stakes, this time, are not just the lives of her loved ones, but the very nature of reality itself.
I fell in love with the Sasha of Vita Nostra, and her persistence and ambition in the face of her own terror and the perplexing, overwhelming absurdity of the Institute. Assassin of Reality gives us an older, wearier Sasha, one who pushes back against the Institute’s structures and fights for her life, her humanity, and her agency, even if that fight comes at a tremendous personal cost. I also loved the deeper glimpses we get into the lives of those around her, especially Lisa, who is just a fantastic character. It’s a complex, philosophical, challenging book, but it’s grounded in the raw fallibility of the people (and metaphysical constructs) at its heart. Sasha’s fragile and fraught relationships with her classmates, her burgeoning love for Yaroslav, a pilot with secrets of his own, even her growing friendship with Yaroslav’s aging father are rendered with sympathy but never romanticization. The Institute, too, is a character in its own right, claustrophobic and uncanny.
I couldn’t rave about this book without also mentioning how wonderful the translation is. I can’t imagine how challenging it must have been to translate a book in which language plays such a central role. Without giving away too much of the story, language is a major plot point, there’s wordplay, and Russian and English are not exactly similar languages. And yet it doesn’t feel like a book in translation—the prose absolutely sings off the page.
Assassin of Reality is a worthy successor to what’s probably my favourite fantasy novel of all time. Its sole flaw is that I know there is a third book and I still speak neither Russian or Ukrainian. I would give it more stars if I could, stars that only exist on planes of reality that we mortals have yet to explore.
Currently reading: A Snake Falls To Earth by Darcie Little Badger. I am almost done this but people keep interrupting me.
Melancholic Parables by Dale Stromberg. You know when you read a book and you think, "oh wow, I am the highly specific target audience for this thing?" This is one of those books for me and I realized it while reading the copyright page. It's a collection of dark, whimsical microstories, centred around the various incarnations of a woman named Bellatrix Sakakino. She dampens electricity. She dies and relives the best moment of her life, and when that doesn't work out for her, returns to her infant body with her adult memories intact. She is radioactive. She dreams, wistfully, of a fruit that went extinct before she was born. Interspersed with these stories are clever scenes and observations that read half as Twitter shitposts, half as magic realism. It's awesome.
A few notes:
1. The spelling of the late Serhiy's name is different across various places and on the cover, and the title is different in Russian, so if you speak Russian and can't wait, just search for "Marina Dyachenko Vita Nostra book 2" and you'll find i.
2. I very seldom just copy-and-paste my Goodreads reviews but I wrote an essay on it and Amazon won't even let me review it yet, so in an attempt to drum up the hype that this book deserves, I'm pasting the entire thing behind a cut in hopes that my little audience here will go out and read it when it comes out in March.
3. Don't start with this one—read Vita Nostra first or it'll make no sense. You can read it now if you haven't already! The review doesn't have any major spoilers for Vita Nostra though.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I am truly honoured to be one of the first people who gets to read this in English after waiting several years for there to be a translation. As such I’ll try to restrain my actual reaction, which was an elated squeal so high-pitched that only dogs could hear it.
A few years ago, I read Vita Nostra, and it absolutely blew my mind. It’s a shimmering gem of a novel—inventive, atmospheric, transcendent. It gave me nightmares. I had to make everyone I knew read it. It’s also a very complete book, and without spoiling the ending, I couldn’t imagine how Sasha’s story could continue from its brainmelting conclusion.
But, continue it does, in a novel that is every bit worth the wait. Fifteen years after the events of Vita Nostra, a different Sasha, one who made different choices, dies in a car accident. The night before, she catches a vision of our Sasha, whose third-year exam at the Institute of Special Technologies did not exactly go as planned. “Our” Sasha is forced by her sinister mentor Farit to return to the Institute, where she must correct her mistakes before she is allowed to graduate. The stakes, this time, are not just the lives of her loved ones, but the very nature of reality itself.
I fell in love with the Sasha of Vita Nostra, and her persistence and ambition in the face of her own terror and the perplexing, overwhelming absurdity of the Institute. Assassin of Reality gives us an older, wearier Sasha, one who pushes back against the Institute’s structures and fights for her life, her humanity, and her agency, even if that fight comes at a tremendous personal cost. I also loved the deeper glimpses we get into the lives of those around her, especially Lisa, who is just a fantastic character. It’s a complex, philosophical, challenging book, but it’s grounded in the raw fallibility of the people (and metaphysical constructs) at its heart. Sasha’s fragile and fraught relationships with her classmates, her burgeoning love for Yaroslav, a pilot with secrets of his own, even her growing friendship with Yaroslav’s aging father are rendered with sympathy but never romanticization. The Institute, too, is a character in its own right, claustrophobic and uncanny.
I couldn’t rave about this book without also mentioning how wonderful the translation is. I can’t imagine how challenging it must have been to translate a book in which language plays such a central role. Without giving away too much of the story, language is a major plot point, there’s wordplay, and Russian and English are not exactly similar languages. And yet it doesn’t feel like a book in translation—the prose absolutely sings off the page.
Assassin of Reality is a worthy successor to what’s probably my favourite fantasy novel of all time. Its sole flaw is that I know there is a third book and I still speak neither Russian or Ukrainian. I would give it more stars if I could, stars that only exist on planes of reality that we mortals have yet to explore.
Currently reading: A Snake Falls To Earth by Darcie Little Badger. I am almost done this but people keep interrupting me.
Melancholic Parables by Dale Stromberg. You know when you read a book and you think, "oh wow, I am the highly specific target audience for this thing?" This is one of those books for me and I realized it while reading the copyright page. It's a collection of dark, whimsical microstories, centred around the various incarnations of a woman named Bellatrix Sakakino. She dampens electricity. She dies and relives the best moment of her life, and when that doesn't work out for her, returns to her infant body with her adult memories intact. She is radioactive. She dreams, wistfully, of a fruit that went extinct before she was born. Interspersed with these stories are clever scenes and observations that read half as Twitter shitposts, half as magic realism. It's awesome.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-30 02:19 pm (UTC)No, and how? It's the copyright page!
no subject
Date: 2022-11-30 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 11:50 am (UTC)I guess a jaunty copyright notice sets the tone for the book you're going to read.
doesn't this make you want to read more?
Date: 2022-12-01 01:09 am (UTC)MELANCHOLIC PARABLES.
Copyright © 2022 by Dale Stromberg.
All rights reserved. No wrongs reversed.
If you wish to use any part of this work for a purpose normally restricted by copyright, contact the author. Fair use is specifically encouraged and is to be interpreted broadly. The author also welcomes anyone who has paid for a copy of this book to share it with whomever they like.”
Re: doesn't this make you want to read more?
Date: 2022-12-01 09:36 am (UTC)