September 2024 book reviews
by Alana
Hard to believe the leaves are turning and September has come and gone. This time of year, my reading normally ramps up, but a vacation in the latter half of September to Netherlands and Germany slowed me down. I set a Goodreads goal of 130 books this year, which means I really have to pick up the pace this fall!
When I finish a book I enjoy, I often try to find other books like it. If you do the same, this month I’ve included a ‘similar to’ section for each review to either help you decide if a book is for you or to pinpoint what to read next.
There, There - Tommy Orange
A short story anthology about the ‘urban Indian,’ Orange’s debut follows twelve Indigenous narrators as they travel to the Big Oakland Powwow. Characters range in age, in walks of life, and in their comfort with their own Indigenous identity.
At times poignant, sad, or laugh-out-loud funny, the shifting perspectives share themes: the power in reclaiming your story to resist the lasting impacts of colonialism; the way addiction, violence, or suicide can feel like the only response to generations of injustice; the healing to be found in family, friends, and self-expression. A captivating, quick read.
Similar reads:
Richard Wagamese’s Ragged Company also explores Indigenous identity in urban settings, with rotating PoVs
Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon Over Crusted Snow quietly builds tension towards a violent act in a way that evokes Orange’s plot
Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing also uses multiple interlinked narrators to tell a story about belonging and sense of self
Becoming Kin - Patty Krawec
Krawec’s incisive nonfiction work is a call-to-action to correct erroneous beliefs about Canadian history. The Anishnaabe author dispels the mythmaking that justified colonization and blends anthropological, scientific, and historical fact to show readers that the settler narrative about Indigenous people as primitive is straight up incorrect.
Reconciliation, she argues, begins with a more accurate understanding of history and of Indigenous ways of knowing, and the Two Row Wampum Treaty forms the backbone of the book’s structure. This short, informative read offers strategies to become good kin: to resist paternalism in reconciliation work, to co-exist with reciprocal respect, and to educate ourselves to be better allies.
Similar reads:
Linda LeGarde Grover’s Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibway Year places similar value on storytelling as a means of reclaiming identity and history
Robert P.C. Joseph’s 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act is always the first book I tell folks to read if they’re educating themselves about Indigenous history in a Canadian context. I will add Becoming Kin to this recommendation as well; both provide concrete next steps and take a didactic tone.
Robin Wall Kimmer's Braiding Sweetgrass also blends science, personal history, and graceful prose
The Fox Wife – Yangsze Choo
Seductress, deceiver, forlorn lover, adept conversationalist, and cunning strategist. Fox spirits in Chinese myth have many meanings. Choo’s novel is told from the perspective of one such spirit. Snow is a mother in mourning on what begins as a quest for revenge and morphs into a journey of healing.
Qing Empire Manchuria and China come to life in this intricate magical realism tale - features wily matriarchs, ardent private investigators, political intrigue, betrayal, and reconnections across time and pain. Told in riverlike prose that tugs the reader along with the certainty that where you're going will be worth it. I’ve put the rest of Choo’s books on hold at the library because I enjoyed this one so much.
Similar reads:
Suelynn Tan's Daughter of the Moon Goddess for those who love Chinese myths retold
Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale for a similar dark but beautiful treatment of folkloric themes
Nghi Vo’s The Singing Hills Cycle for four novellas that similarly weave magic realism and mythology with a strong feminist lens
The Buried Giant – Kazuo Ishiguro
I didn’t especially enjoy this book while I was reading it, but I found that, like most of Ishiguro’s novels, it stuck with me afterwards. Set in Arthurian England and told in a distanced, measured voice that recalls the chivalric odes of Dark Age troubadours, the story follows Axl and Beatrice, a husband and wife travelling to reunite with their son.
The mist-shrouded England they journey through is pitted with pockmarks of war and scars of violence from dragons, giants, and humans. Tensions are high between Britons, Saxons, and the townsfolk, knights, and priests the couple meet, and everyone struggles with a faulty memory where motivations and histories slip away. What becomes of a land with no collective past? Is forgetting vendettas and cruelties a better guarantee for peace – between nations, between friends, or in marriages? Quiet, allegorical, and deliberately disorienting in its structure and prose, I’m still digesting this read.
Rec’d by a bunch of people!
Similar reads:
Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana for another country forgotten through magic
Stuart Turton’s The Last Murder at the End of the World that I reviewed last month also explores how memory or its absence can break down civil society
I kept thinking about Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon when reading this book; it’s similar in its epic feel and foggy Arthurian setting. I read Zimmer Bradley’s books when I was 15… so I could be misremembering them completely (which would be an apt application of Ishiguro’s theme, haha).
Once There Were Wolves – Charlotte McConaghy
Inti Flynn is an Aussie biologist leading a project to reintroduce wolves in rural Scotland. The project is designed to combat climate change, boost biodiversity, and reforest the Scottish countryside, but Inti faces resistance from the local farmers who fear that wolves are savages that were rightly hunted to extinction on their island. Murder ensues, wolves are blamed, and a complex quest for truth featuring Inti, her mute sister, the local sherif, and vigilante townsfolk ensues.
A book more about human than animal savagery, and how our preconceptions cannot always be trusted. Fiercely feminist (big trigger warning for violence against women), McConaghy delves into the darkest parts of human nature and shows how complicated the healing process from domestic violence can be. A gripping, sad, beautiful novel that will stick with me for a long time.
Rec’d by my brother
Similar to:
Toni Morrison’s Beloved for plot that explores violence against women and the ways victims might carry that violence forward
Richard Adam’s The Plague Dogs for how perceptions and human responses can create monsters of animals
Anthony Doer’s Cloud Cuckoo Land for imagining a world without forests and witnessing how acts of violence build
Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries & Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands - Heather Fawcett
A quaint and delightful response to the faerie-mania that's seized the fantasy genre ever since Sarah J. Maas' A Something of Blah and Blah series. These short, Victorian era journals of Emily Wilde, Cambridge professor of dryadology, put a refreshingly unsexy spin on this tired subgenre (her journal even has footnotes and citations!).
Emily is an introverted reader and researcher of all things faerie, and in each book in this series she tackles perplexing elements of fae lore, from the frigid Nordic ice kings under the mountain, to the mercurial boggles, Grimms, and seelie queens of the Irish wilderness. Add in Emily's irritatingly social and welldressed Irish colleague/tenure-tracked rival Wendell, her faithful dog(?) Shadow, and a host of quirky sidecharacters, and Fawcett's novels are charming reads rich with legends from cultures around the world.
Similar reads:
Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons series for that real small niche of people who like fantasy novels narrated by prim female academics
Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes for fans of the heart and warmth of cozy fantasy
TJ Klune's Under the Whispering Door for those who enjoy irascible protagonists that grow on you
With Blood Upon the Sand - Bradley P. Beaulieu
Book 2 of this epic fantasy desertscape of a series. Ceda, Blade Maiden and assassin's daughter, continues her mother's plot to murder all 12 of the kings of the desert metropolis Sharakai. Political intrigue, a rotating PoVs from (mostly) compelling characters, and awesome movie-esque fight scenes against a backdrop of dunes, dueling rings, and dusty alleywalls.
A bit plodding in its pacing and longer than I needed, but a good read if you're craving epic fantasy that's not in a Europesque swords and sorcery world.
Rec’d by Shannon
Similar reads:
Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series for edgy fantasy where no character’s safety is guaranteed
Guy Gabriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan for Arab-world inspired fantasy
Any Brandon Sanderson if you enjoy intricate and consistent world-building
