Critiques et Commentaires

Un court livre hyper percutant, à la croisée entre le récit (des bribes du procès des dirigeants d'Orange), l'essai (sur le monde du travail et le langage managérial), et l'objet littéraire pour parler de cette langue et porter ce récit. Le chapitre 23 est l'illustration parfaite de la violence des entreprises et du mépris insondable de ses dirigeants pour leurs employés.

It has the tropes of the genre : a tired detective in a metropolis he doesn't quite know, powerful men, booze and prohibition, sleazy journalists, and of course, melancholia, jazz and femmes fatales. But the rest is a very smart departure in an alternate history: what if the smallpox brought to America was a non-lethal variant? The Native community would be thriving, along the Mississippi, it would have a city and a state built on their power and syncretic beliefs. That's Cahokia, where the delicate balance that holds it all is threatened by a gruesome murder. It's a book that takes you in, and embraces you and makes you believe that Cahokia is real and pulsating, on the right bank of the Mississippi.

The ending felt a bit rushed but all the built-up and atmosphere was extremely well done -- the climate catastrophe was realistic, people coping, trying to live their lives, still going to their mindless jobs in offices or serving coffee while the world slowly goes under water...

I wanted to go as far as possible with the published books, and this one got back on the main plot with a lot more to learn, deduce, suspect and guess. The writer said she was working on the following ones, so I can leave the series for a while and be on the lookout for the next one when it's published. All in all, the whole series is really worth the time, even though it's a bit long sometimes, everything matters, all the details build up an very interesting universe, with its people, customs, landscapes and monsters of all types... it's pretty unforgettable.

The first half of the book is full of the promises one could expect after reading the first two : more clues, more local mysteries, more answers. I can't say I feel entirely satisfied, even though there's a lot of good moments. I can't say much about the second part without spoiling, but I felt it veered into horror a bit, and while the plot is extremely surprising, a bit of frustration lingers. I'll be looking for more answers in the fourth book I guess.

So here's the second volume of the series and as it's almost double the size, there's a change of pace in the story. Now it's a long march east in hostile land, with its challenges and encounters, and it will take up until the end to have a bit more revelations and clues as to what's really going on. There are some really interesting parts and a few that are a bit boring or repetitive (then again, the land itself seems very repetitive), but all in all, it's well worth it!

So, take a few fantasy tropes (wizards, dragons, barbarians...), twist them a bit (two smart women travelling together, one of them a barbarian), add an interesting take on magic and knowledge and who has it and shares it -- or not, and you would have already a pretty interesting novel. But the author adds a deeper layer with hints and unsettling details, and a few more obvious clues near the end, and suddenly you're not entirely sure what story you've been reading. I think I'll get on the three following books, because I've grown very curious about how it will all be explained. So no, there won't be a lot of answers at the end of this one, which is frustrating. But it's a quite brilliant introduction to something very very original.

It's a short novella with a bit of a convoluted plot and mystery, but I found the characters amazingly fleshed out. There was something almost poetic in the world and the way they all navigate it, not everything is explained or described thoroughly, which leaves questions but also a lot to interpret.

There was a lot of interesting elements in that first novel of a trilogy, with the worldbuilding, magic and beliefs system. The characters were also mostly engaging, but I didn't feel like I needed to start the second book of the series immediately. Maybe it just means that my expectations were too high.

This book had been on my lists for ages, before I even knew who was Arundhati Roy, and I was surprised that it took me a while to like it. There was something holding me back a little. It's a slow drama, like a train crash in slow motion, often foreshadowed through the labyrinthine construction between the present and different times in the past. Eventually, it started to make sense and the incredible writing gripped me.

It took me a while to finish this one, not because it's boring, quite the contrary. There is plenty of action, and Harrow makes you care about her characters in such a way that the tension and set-backs are almost too much at times. As in her other novels, she knows how to dig in the themes of loss, anger and reconciliation. Her vivid prose drips metaphors much better than this one, and her use and reinterpretation of fairy tales and children rhymes is really interesting. A fun and terrific book!

Sympathique recueil de petites énigmes, avec une uchronie steampunk marrante à découvrir au fil des enquêtes (à la résolution un peu simple). Le charme s'estompe parfois avec l'accumulation de références littérales à Arsène Lupin, Agatha Christie et évidemment Sherlock Holmes, ou au name-dropping d'artistes contemporains -- quitte à marier la Reine Victoria à un Tsar, et à faire de la France un pays révolutionnaire solidariste (et Giscard président du gouvernement en exil), autant y aller pour de bon dans l'invention d'auteurs et de cultures, non ?

De prime abord, une fable pleine d'humour et de gravité sur l'obéissance, le langage, les besoins et ceux qui les décident, et sur les chats bien sûr... Et puis en arrière-goût, ce truc un peu indéfinissable aussi, qui brouille peut-être le message, à forcer le trait sur le cliché du "notre petite communauté de l'île de chez nous pleine de sel dans le vent" versus "ceux-là tout gris du continent et des villes qui font partie des administrations dont on ne connait même pas les noms". Mais c'est aussi le principe d'une fable.

Sometimes you read a book just because someone in your household borrowed it from the library. To be honest, I didn't even know that the movie Ringu was orginally a novel, and as I have not re-watched it in a long time, it was a very enjoyable read : the writing is very cinematographic, very detailed. There are differences between the movie and the novel, and probably a lot of details I had forgotten. Now I'm wondering if I should read the two sequels (Spiral and Loop)...