Also...and this is a post that had been brewing for months:

I really believe that Fablehaven tackles the whole "children put in dangerous situations even when responsible adults are in the picture" incredibly well.

Sometimes it's a little unsubtle getting the characters where we want them (which is a feature of the plot at large but whatever) but ultimately there are Three Main Methods of getting our child characters to the action:

They disobey the adults and put themselves into danger (Hi Seth!)

2. The adults, doing their best to protect the kids, have put themselves into harm's way and have been taken out of the picture. Now the kids have to step up because they're the only ones who are safe, because the adults protected them

3. The stakes are to the point where it's literally illogical to not let the kids help, because A) if they fail at their goals then the kids won't be safe anyway, and B) the kids' abilities are the only possible way forward

And this is why, although we can argue about some specifics, the adults in Fablehaven don't come across as negligent or incompetent. They're protective of the kids to the point that it's sometimes detrimental to their own goals. But they also respect them and their abilities.

And you get really interesting dynamics explored, such as when a child character (Hi Seth!) takes a massive (but calculated) risk to do something incredibly beneficial to their mission against the will of the adults. And succeeds.

And we as the reader really see things from all sides here. Because Seth's argument is that because he did succeed, it was a good choice. But his grandparents also see how risky his behavior is, and they're hesitant to reward him for it, and discuss punishing him anyway. Because they're like "we are incredibly impressed and glad that you pulled that off, but our responsibility is to keep you safe, and we can't let you keep putting yourself in danger"

And especially having two protagonists, one who is very much a rule follower, and one who is very much a rule breaker...I think is a very valuable way to present situations to kids. Because the narrative doesn't come down hard on either side.

And we see this really clearly even in book one, where Seth breaks the rules and causes a huge problem, but then Kendra saves the day by...breaking a rule

like Fablehaven really said sometimes rules are put in place by people who know more than you and want to protect you, but sometimes it is necessary to break the rules. You can't lean on authority unquestioningly, but neither should you dismiss it. The only way to navigate a world full of rules is to become Wise

and anyway I think this whole element of the series is done perfectly for young readers

rereading Fairest bc I have my own copy now (yay $2.50 at a used bookstore!) and so far it's as lovely as I remember

but anyway I do like how Aza's "ugliness" is characterized by people actually treating her badly because of it. People talk about the stereotype of YA protagonists being like "oh poor me I'm so ugly" in an attempt to make them relatable but the narrative actually treats them like they are gorgeous and every character that isn't a villain finds them attractive.

Vs. here it's like. yeah her self perception is all tied up in cultural ideas of beauty and she's definitely not objective either, and a lot of what she thinks is inherent to her ugliness is all wrapped up her related social anxiety, etc.

but! It's very refreshing to see a book that deals so much with beauty standards actually commit to it! It's not like she's just vain and obsessed with looks! You can tell she wants to be beautiful because she wants to be treated like a person! The way it is just that blatant! Most people are rude to her or ignore her! And she makes it worse in her head and compounds the problem by letting her own insecurity draw attention to herself, but at the end of the day, she's right! People would treat her better if she looked different!

The details that we get about her appearance are not even "ugly" traits, either! Like we get the pale skin, black hair, red lips combo pulled directly from the traditional Snow White fairy tale, where those traits are supposed to be beautiful and desirable! But in this culture, apparently those traits are a part of her ugliness, which just perfectly highlights how the beauty standards are inherently arbitrary! And yet! They affect her life in real ways! It doesn't matter much how we, the reader, picture her; we believe that she is ugly because people treat her like she is!

Anyway I especially love how her insecurity regarding her size is portrayed. The combo of feeling small and meek and timid on the outside but being large and imposing on the outside. She feels like she takes up too much space. She doesn't want to wear anything at all attention grabbing. She doesn't know what to do with her limbs. Her biggest fear about demonstrating her magical singing trick is that she would have to show people how she moves her stomach (the horror!)

anyway everyone ever should read Fairest. I could write 12.5 dissertations on it. fantasy books for 12-year-old girls are the most serious fiction in the world actually

and ANOTHER THING

something else I love about Fablehaven is the parallels between each book with what I'm going to call the Unexpected Helper

ok listen in book one it's Ruth. when after all is lost and the kids are on their own she figures out how to get through to them and they figure out how to turn her back into a human

in book two it's Warren. again the kids are on their own and then when Seth pulls the nail out of the revenant and Warren is freed from its spell

in book three it's Patton. after the adults get turned into shadows and Seth manages to get the chronometer on his own which summons Patton from the past

in book four it's Raxtus. when Kendra is on her own with a mortally-wounded Warren after Navarog's betrayal, and they're trapped in the gorge...and behold. A new friend

in book five it's Bracken, who, I might add, Kendra literally meets in a dungeon. because the mission failed and the whole team got captured.

And it's like. Yeah! These are kids and they cant fix it all by themselves. And when they get to the darkest and most hopeless of moments, what they need is help! They don't need to do it all alone!

And the kids are still allowed (and forced by the narrative) to be brave and heroic. Help doesn't mean the problem is gone. But what a beautiful theme like. You're in an impossible situation? Seek help, seek help, seek help.

Finished The Night Circus. underwhelming. felt like it needed at least two more drafts tbh.

sorry to everyone that absolutely loves this book like I do see it. I see the appeal. But imo none of the elements that made it interesting were used to their full potential. I thought the plotline would have benefited from a tighter causal chain instead of things just happening at some point because someone decided it might as well happen now, I guess.

It's definitely a valid choice to treat the reader as a sort of outsider in order to prioritize a sense of mystery, but in some ways I felt too far removed to properly care about any of the characters or stakes.

Lots of unnecessary summary; not enough convincing me. More moodboard than story. Also apparently no one involved in any step of the publication process knew how to punctuate.

Also I love the beginning of the fourth book for many many reasons but one of them is the whole kidnapping situation where Kendra really gets to shine. Like you might think that she's just your average blank protagonist, but put her in a room with Torina Barker and you'll realize that her main character trait is actually sassy. And she's been this way all along

I can usually mostly turn off my editing brain while reading for pleasure but whoever copyedited The Night Circus I just wanna talk...

ok I'm halfway through Babel and so far... hm. feels like it's taking forever. I like the characters and the premise, and I'm intrigued to see where the story goes. Doing my very best to suspend my disbelief that the addition of magic is changing very little about the rest of history bc that's what I signed up for upon starting this book; it's the concession I owe. Lots of summary but it doesn't feel as dull as that sometimes does. Sometimes it feels very...unsubtle, as if the author is being very careful to let me know exactly what I should think about something (this is a nitpick but for example. you didn't need to stop and tell me that the main character's being beaten as a child was wrong. yeah I know child abuse is bad.) but that might be more of a preference thing. (and I'm very aware that there are readers out there who might benefit from things being spelled out a little more, let's just say. I just tend to prefer books that trust me a more as a reader, and this one feels like it was written with an imaginary twitter audience always looming over the author's shoulder, which makes the historical setting feel a bit less immersive)

anyway that might be a little mean. I would say it's pretty good so far; I'm excited to see where the second half takes me (even though it feels like the first half lasted forever lol)

I love Kendra and Seth Sorenson with my whole heart they're like if a fairy tale protagonist girl who saves the day by meticulously following all of the fairy rules had a brother who was like. one of those kids probably obsessed with parkour. and they loved each other

Just finished North Woods by Daniel Mason in an effort to diversify my reading a little bit (and on a rec from a friend who only read litfic) and like. It was fine. The prose was very nice, and some of the characters were intriguing. I just kept hoping that it would all come together more interestingly and satisfying in the end. And then it was...fine.

I'm discovering that as a rule I personally tend to be unimpressed with the kind of novel that's really just a short story collection or a few novellas masquerading as a novel. To me it seems they are always desperately reaching to be greater than the sum of their parts, and they always fail.

Not that books like this can't be good (I liked Cloud Cuckoo Land okay*) but I don't tend to find that the loose connections between narratives really add that much. Like sure, that's a way to explore themes across narratives in a way that you might not be able to do with a more insular story. But I guess I find myself more uncharitable than other people I know with the whole "oooh and the storylines were all connected!" like yeah I know. because the author made them all up and made them connected. Which like, yeah, that's how all fiction works, but like. "They're all connected" isn't enough. They're all connected and therefore What?

Not that books like this don't usually have a "therefore What" in mind, but I have yet to read one that I feel actually accomplishes this as well as it ought, since that's usually their whole Thing™

Something that North Woods did do particularly well with its multiple narratives, in my opinion, is the variety of voice and tone that really embodied various distinct characters and writing styles in a way that felt natural and true to the different formats while still remaining engaging. That's one of the things that was enough to keep me reading to the end, and it's pretty impressive in its own right.

But as I went on, I was only really reading to finish, and then the big finish was. well. spoiler alert but they're all ghosts together I guess. so.

Okay so we just kind of stomped on some of the creepy and subtle ambiguity that lent a lot of charm and interest to the various stories by just completely ripping aside the veil, as it were. That's not an inherently bad choice depending on where we're going with this, but I guess nowhere is where we're going now that we're here. Why demystify your mystery if you're only going to make it boring and not really reveal anything new?

And the whole time I was waiting for what the whole thing with the panther was going to lead up to. Yes, there are two times where a (the?) panther explicitly comes into play, but the other mentions of it are woven so subtly and exquisitely throughout that for a while I thought that was the main throughline we were following, just as much as the house/woods. It's even on the cover! And for what? That it was there throughout? for What????? the vibes??

In the unlikely event that someone who sees this post has actually read this book, maybe you're going to be like "daisy, that's because you are stupid and don't have reading comprehension and are missing the obvious" okay great well then tell me. I am genuinely asking.

But also I do have to say skimming the goodreads reviews there is a lot of "it has themes of connection because the stories are all connected. this is very profound and also impressive"

And also! I'm going to say it! Some of the storylines are kind of shallow and melodramatic! This could have been interesting if we actually delved into the character more instead of just kind of skimming through their life story, hoping that the combined weight of the other interesting-enough pieces will sink the surface-level stuff into some level of profundity. Very pretty nature writing, though.

Anyway I don't feel bad being uncharitable to this book because I'm pretty sure it's a pulitzer candidate or something and has plenty of good reviews. (And there are a lot of good things about it!) Mostly I'm using it as a poster child for its structure, because the whole loosely-connected-narratives-across-history/place thing I feel like keeps cropping up in the kind of books that my mom's book club reads and that people say are really good but don't really do it for me. (And I feel like this style of book is getting more popular? maybe that's just me?)

Anyway if you're still reading: do you tend to like these types of books? why or why not?

*Cloud Cuckoo Land in my opinion was weakest when it tried to sell us on the connecting threads as well, but that's an idea for another post

I'm halfway into Annihilation and so far it feels like the novel version of a horror video game in the best way possible

what's up just finished Crime and Punishment here to report that it did rewire my brain

ok I finished Nona the Ninth now what

my best friend Camilla Hect??? My best friend Palamedes Sextus?!?!?!

Going insane over Fairest reread I love when beloved books from days of yore are as good as I remember

finished The Screaming Staircase! wish I had the next one on hand but alas I do not

this is annoying me so much. anyway spoilers for Babel under the cut

okay I'm not finished yet but. they are taking the absolute stupidest route with how they're trying to cover up the murder.

what they should have done from the start is dumped him overboard and then absolutely nothing else. Acted equally surprised as anyone else when he turned out to be missing. It was plausible that he could have just gone overboard accidentally when no one was looking. (or on purpose). That literally happens for real!

Lying about him being ill and pretending to be in contact with him immediately implicates them when he doesn't eventually turn up. that is sooooo incredibly sus

And then when they get back! and they're talking about continuing the charade that he's sick and isolating himself! they already lied to someone that he was due home later on a different ship! STOP trying to do elaborate things to hide the fact that he's missing!!!!! that's so stupid!!! just act as surprised as everyone else when he doesn't turn up!!!!

Robin as a character was already the WORST at exploiting any kind of plausible deniability ever (and I assumed that was just part of his character) but the fact that this was the best plan the four of them collectively could come up with

like every time they lie about his whereabouts or attempt to cover his absence that removes the possibility of him disappearing through circumstances unrelated to them

anyway I am grinding my teeth like grrrrrrrr you guys are sooooo stupid do not do that