Critiques et Commentaires

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)...

A fast-paced trip in the dyke San Francisco of the early 90ies that reminded me of my early 20ies in Paris: frienships, drama, sex and too much alcohol in the usual dyke hang-outs (they're all closed now, so maybe it's just a bit of nostalgia). All in all a fun read.

It's not just that the title of this anthology is genius, these are stories of ghosts, encounters, lost lands, resistance and connexion, and they are heartbreaking in a million ways.

Hilarious and frantic, this book grabs you and seem to take you nowhere -- or at least, no further than the East Village, but then, right at the end, the author unties all the threads he had playfully tangled all along, and leaves you breathless and content.

Des journalistes, des marchands d'art, des vieilles et des vieux rebelles, un secret, quelques mystères, et un roman bien fichu pour parler de la place de la femme dans l'art.

Always enchanting, the Singing Hills novellas are little gems of storytelling, you want to read them all quickly and make them last as long as possible at the same time.

Un court essai à l'écriture percutante et drôle, qui remet une pièce dans la machine de l'interprétation des contes pour enfants.