Tag Archives: 50BookPledge2015

Review | The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu

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GraceofKingsSometimes, you just want to completely immerse yourself in a good book. Such is the case with Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings. A doorstop at over 600 pages, the book was so good that I still wanted to read more after I finished. The story is so captivating that I lugged the book around on the subway to work every day, and devoured the entire tale in only about two weeks.

Liu is a master at world building. He has created a nation united under a single emperor, yet still feeling the tensions beneath its origins as seven separate kingdoms and the bloodiness of the emperor’s path to power. Enter our two heroes: wily bandit Kuni Garu and fierce warrior Mata Zyndu. Mata also happens to be the latest generation of a long family line whose power was deposed by the current regime. Kuni is on the path to power, yet his power lies in his background as a bandit, and his being, at heart, a commoner. Enter as well the gods, several of whom have a stake in the future of this nation, and like the gods in any ancient legend, have no qualms about interfering in human affairs.

Kuni and Mata become fast friends as they wage war against the cruel despot. They are united by a common goal, yet as time passes and circumstances change, both are revealed to have vastly different philosophies about the meaning of justice and how the world should be run.

I absolutely fell in love with this story, and I’m thrilled to see so much influence from Chinese folklore and mythology. So often, when I read these great epic novels — Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones — the influence is very clearly Western, and the characters usually come off as such. This is the first contemporary novel from a traditional publisher, that I’ve read (or at least can remember) with such scope and depth and such an epic, mythological, legendary feel, that struck me as being influenced by Eastern folklore. As an Asian Canadian, this is definitely important to me. (Another title of note, with a clear influence from Eastern mythology, is Amy McCulloch’s The Oathbreaker’s Shadow, a fantasy adventure YA duology.)

The Grace of Kings is the first book in the Dandelion Dynasty series. It is an entertaining story of intrigue, battles and political plotting. Beyond that, it also raises some interesting philosophical questions about what justice really means and how best to rule such a fragile nation. Above all, it’s a book to lose yourself in, so definitely set aside some time to treat yourself to this tale.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro

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22536182“There’s a journey we must go on, and no more delay.” So goes the blurb behind the advance reading copy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant. It’s a beautiful book, the stylized tree on the cover combined with the text on the back conveying a world of magic within its pages.

And indeed, Ishiguro invites us into an Arthurian style world, where a mist causes forgetfulness, and an elderly couple sets out on a quest to find their son. The language evokes a world of myth, the childlike Middle Earth in Tolkien’s The Hobbit rather than in his later trilogy. The themes are universal — love and forgiveness and the power of memory.

In Giant, amongst the encounters with knights and battles with dragons, amid the backdrop of political turmoil in England, the heart of the story lies in the love between the elderly couple Axl and Beatrice. A fog of forgetfulness has hidden memories of their past together, and at several points the question is raised whether some memories are best left forgotten. This is a particularly poignant question in light of the setting of the story — right at the crux of change, the death knell of the Arthurian age and the beginning of modern Britain. How much of Axl and Beatrice’s Britain will survive in memory, and given the various armed conflicts in their Britain’s history, how much would we ultimately want to remember?

As with any quest, there is a particular point of no return, the crux as it were of the entire adventure. For Axl and Beatrice, this takes the form of a legend about a boatman. According to the legend, couples who truly love each other may be ferried across to an island where they would be together forever. Yet before the trip, the couple must pass a test to prove the depth of their love, and if they fail, they are doomed to wander the island alone for all eternity. It’s a beautiful metaphor for death, and recalls the romantic ideal of love so strong that it lasts beyond death.

There are a lot of beautiful moments in Giant, and the conversations between Axl and Beatrice at times brought me to tears. But something was missing. I can’t quite put my finger on it, and it’s possible that my expectations were just too high (it’s an Ishiguro, after all). But I was expecting to be transported. And with such a mystical framework for the narrative, with such lyrical language and mythological encounters, I was expecting to lose myself in the world that the author has created. Yet I wasn’t. The story felt just a tad too crafted, the language just a tad too designed that it never quite clicked into a natural cadence. I appreciated what the author was trying to do, and I liked his characters and his themes, but I never quite fully connected to the story. This is a shame, because I love Ishiguro’s work, and I really wanted to lose myself in this book. It wasn’t bad, but it could have been so much more.

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Thank you to Random House Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | 9 1/2 Narrow: My Life in Shoes, Patricia Morrisroe

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Shoes9 1/2 Narrow is touching, funny and uplifting, a charming memoir about significant events in author Patricia Morrisroe’s life told through the framework of the shoes she wore at each incident. It’s fascinating to realize just how symbolic a choice of footwear can be.

I love how she credits meeting her husband to the shoes she wore — she happened to be tying her laces at the same time he passed by — and then later details how his collection of a certain type of athletic shoes became a cause of strain in their marriage. I also especially love the section when she wore a pair of fashion forward shoes at a new school to be cool only to discover that the popular girls were all wearing a completely different style — the incident turns into the type of “mean girl” misunderstanding that must have been much more painful than the author’s lighthearted touch leads us to believe. Having grown up studying in an all-girls’ school, where we had to wear uniforms, I know all too well the importance of choosing the right accessories, and the right pieces of clothing over which we had some degree of control (i.e. shoes).

My favourite part of this book by far is the relationship between Morrisroe and her mother, told through the lens of their constant battles over footwear. It’s a relationship other women may remember with their own mothers or daughters, and again, the lighthearted comedic touches of heated debates over shoes belie the deep bond between them. The tone of these segments stand out as well — in a mostly amusing series of anecdotes, there’s a poignancy to her encounters with her mother that tell a tale far beyond a story of shoes.

The book reminded me of a shoe-related skirmish I had with my own mother, over the height of the heels I could wear to my high school prom. Having been constrained by a school uniform all my life, I had Disney princess-ish visions of glamour for prom night, and those, in my mind, equated to high heels. I wanted four inch stilettos, my mom wanted nothing higher than an inch. We compromised with 3 inch chunky heels, and I was feeling like a glamourous princess for maybe the first hour, until I realized why my mom had been so adamant about low heels. Limping around at the end of the evening, I was grateful that she’d forced me into rounded toes and chunky heels.

That memory is one in a series of many memories of high school and of my mother, yet even now, whenever I see a pair of four inch stilettos, or otherwise wobble around in heels wishing I were in flats, I remember my mom and my high school prom. It’s fascinating, the impact footwear has on us, and Morrisroe captures this feeling wonderfully in her memoir.

Whether Morrisroe is arguing with her mom over a particular type of shoes, or falling in love with her husband over another pair, shoes play such a big role in our lives, and our choice in footwear tells so much about us. There are shoes I associate with particular friends or family members, and shoes I associate with particular moments in my life. And by framing her life in shoes, Morrisroe succeeds in drawing us into her life, and helping us visualize precisely the type of footwear that got her to where she is today.

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Thank you to Gotham Books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.