3.25 stars – The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve been a fan of Anna-Marie McLemore since high school, but over the past two years or so, I’ve seen a decline in quality in their books; for their last two releases, I chalked it up to co-authoring (Venom & Vow) and being constrained by what they had to work with, although that could be a stretch (Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix). With their latest release, Flawless Girls, having a concerningly low average rating (3.30 at present), I expected the worst, but still wanted to believe that they could come back with something better. And…Flawless Girls was better, but only by a slim margin.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Flawless Girls – Anna-Marie McLemore

The Soler sisters—Isla and Renata—are famously wild, raised to be rebellious and questioning of their restrictive society from a young age. But their grandmother knows that society will frown upon such disobedient girls, and there is one last resort to keep them in line: the prestigious Alarie House, a finishing school famous for the assembly line of polite, high-society women that it churns out. After Renata returns from the Alarie House plagued by madness, Isla decides to dig into the dark corners of the school to see just what made her sister crumble. But what she finds in the corrupted heart of the Alarie House may put all of the girls in jeopardy…

TW/CW: prejudice against an intersex person, fire, body horror, misogyny, dysphoria, descriptions of injury, violence

For the past two years or so, I’ve seen a decline in Anna-Marie McLemore’s novels, which is something that I’ve dreaded saying. I didn’t want to force such words upon the same lyrical talent who wrote When the Moon Was Ours and Wild Beauty, but alas…maybe it wasn’t meant to last. Although it wasn’t as disappointing as Venom & Vow or Self-Made Boys, Flawless Girls was thoroughly messy, even if there were some bright spots in it.

What I want to emphasize the most about Flawless Girls is that, for all of its flaws (no pun intended), it had promise—it was just severely underdeveloped. If McLemore didn’t want to flesh out the concept of the novel, I think it would have worked spectacularly as a novella or even a short story. McLemore’s narration, even it wasn’t as lushly descriptive as I’ve come to know them for, had the feel of a cautionary fable, which was a perfect fit for this story. Even if it did feel like we were being sledgehammered in the face with the main metaphor, it nonetheless had the feeling of a dark fairytale or a fable. To be honest, Flawless Girls could work even better if it were aimed at younger YA audiences just coming into the genre, and I don’t mean that as a slight to the novel at all. It’s not subtle, but as a transitory book between middle grade and YA, it could work. With some significant polishing, of course.

Said main metaphor is femininity—more specifically the performance of it. The institution of the Alarie House served as a pointed commentary about the artificiality of our expectations for women and girls, and how unattainable and manicured these expectations are. It was especially poignant with Isla, a Latina and intersex protagonist struggling with performing femininity with a nonconforming body. Isla’s story felt incredibly personal—I had no idea that McLemore was also intersex, and it’s clear from every page that this is the story of their heart. There’s so little intersex representation out there, but that’s not the only reason why Flawless Girls, with a little polish, could be so important—it’s a fable of the madness that befalls women and feminine-presenting people crumbling under the weight of beauty and behavioral standards. Could it have been more subtle? Without a doubt. Was it impactful nonetheless? Absolutely.

That being said…a recurring thought I had while reading Flawless Girls was that it felt like a front for as many gemstone facts as possible. Next to the metaphor about femininity and performance, gemstones were right up there with the most striking motifs of the novel, but they were everywhere. Once you get past the 30% mark, characters will just ramble on about any kind of gemstone fact that they can shove in the span of two pages. At that point, a motif that bloats so much of the narrative just isn’t a motif anymore—it’s just swallowing everything else in its path. It did play a key role in the ending, but if McLemore wanted to make said ending more impactful, slimming down the endless character interactions where they just talk about gemstones for five pages would have been the right move. Like with jewelry, placement is key—you can’t just drown the narrative in a single motif and call it pretty.

Also, the worldbuilding is a mess. A complete mess. In the synopsis and the beginning of the novel, it’s stated that the reason that Isla and Renata are sent off to the Alarie House is that they’ve been raised to be rebellious and questioning of authority, and as they are Latina girls, it’s safer to teach them to keep quiet so that they don’t garner any unwanted attention. That would have been a very timely theme…if there was any indication of what society that Flawless Girls was set in! I assumed that it was a vaguely historical setting (and the author’s note didn’t clarify much else other than it being “historical”), but we get no sense of where we are in time, save for pre-21st century. Flawless Girls could equally work as being in a fantasy world or historical fiction with a touch of magical realism…but we have no idea which McLemore was going for, because outside of the Alarie House, nothing about the world is explained. No explanation of how and why the finishing schools came to be, no explanation of the technology level, no explanation of the (presumably) patriarchal powers pulling the strings and squeezing women into these molds. No worldbuilding, only gemstones!

All in all, a disappointing and messy effort from a longtime favorite that felt half-baked at best, but still shone in places. 3.25 stars.

Flawless Girls is a standalone, but Anna-Marie McLemore is also the author of Wild Beauty, When the Moon Was Ours, The Weight of Feathers, Lakelore, Dark and Deepest Red, Blanca & Roja, and Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix. They also co-authored Venom & Vow (with Elliott McLeMore) and Miss Meteor (with Tehlor Kay Mejia), and have contributed short stories to several anthologies, including All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages, Eternally Yours, Color Outside the Lines, and many others.

Today’s song:

one of my favorite songs from this album!!

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I think…I think I’m one of the few people that didn’t pick this up after The Inheritance Cycle? My brother loved them, but I never got around to reading them. Hence why I bought this book in the first place–as a birthday present for him. It ended up arriving a good month before his birthday, so I figured I’d read it before I wrapped it up for him. (I was intrigued, anyway–Prometheus vibes, anyone?) The first half was painful to read at points, but it picked up at the halfway mark by a long shot.

Enjoy this week’s review!

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars–Christopher Paolini

Kira Navárez, a budding xenobiologist, has just uncovered an artifact that could determine the fate of the galaxy. When the coating of dust surrounding it grows a mind of its own, she knows that something is awry. What she didn’t anticipate was to be thrown into the beginnings of interstellar war, and approaching first contact with a potentially hostile species. Can she face the gravity of her consequences alone, or will she succumb to the war inside and outside of her?

BadSciFilm: Prometheus | The Other Sociologist

Let’s just start off with something I’d like to discuss: weaving pop culture references into literature. I’m 100% for it, most of the time–I love finding those hidden Easter eggs and discovering that the author may have a like mind. But there’s a certain art to slipping them in–drawing them from a variety of sources, spreading them out, making them subtle; placing them in a way that works for the story, but making them just noticeable enough to pop out in a way that makes the reader go “oh hey, That Thing!” without it being wholly distracting. I’ve read a variety of novels where this works, and lots that haven’t.

Remember how I said that I was initially drawn to reading this from the likeness to Prometheus?

Well…

Can we talk about the first half of the book? For lack of better words, and I hate to say this…it feels like Alien/Aliens fanfic. And it’s almost…self-aware of the fact? There’s no shortage of similar plot lines, and even the references scattered throughout only emphasize the fact. In the first 200-300 pages alone, we have:

Kira’s homeworld, Weyland
A ship AI called Bishop
Several references to a minor character (I think?) named Geiger
Kira using Ellen as a fake name (as in Ellen Ripley)

(I may have missed a few, but these are the ones that most prominently stood out for me.)

Paolini’s clearly drawn quite a lot of inspiration from the mythos of Ridley Scott and James Cameron–and I don’t blame him–but it really isn’t subtle. At all. There’s several little threads that felt veeeeeeeery similar to said films…

…And then the second half came along!

For me, the second half saved the novel, really. Whether or not that was influenced by the quote from David Bowie’s “Blackstar” at the beginning of Part 3 is up for debate. (Hey, I’m a woman of simple tastes.)

From there, Paolini’s originality and fast-paced plot truly shone through, making for a tense and riveting sci-fi.

My favorite aspect of the novel was absolutely the Jellies/Wrannui (wait, did I spell that right?). Their design, all of the little intricacies of their culture and society were so well thought out, and I had such a blast getting to know all of the ins and outs of them. I liked Itari a lot, even though they had a fairly small role.

As far as the characters go, I didn’t get super attached to any of them, but they all had at least a decent amount of personality and development. There’s a pretty diverse cast as well, so kudos to Paolini for that as well. The romance between Kira and Falconi definitely felt like an afterthought and didn’t add anything to the story, but all of the other interactions between the characters were alright. But on that subject…is it weird that my favorite character was a ship AI? I LOVED Gregorovich–he was the most fascinating out of all of them for me, and I loved the psychological aspect that Paolini explored with his character. Reminds me a bit of a Kaufman/Kristoff type of AI–a slightly more unstable Magellan, or a far more calmed down and sane AIDAN? You decide!

This is my first exposure to Paolini’s writing, and it was…hit or miss for me? It tended to be quite choppy and terse, which was both a blessing and a curse. (Whoops, did I just rhyme? Would ya look at that…) Sometimes it had the effect of making a scene appropriately tense, but it occasionally erased some of the emotion in the character interactions. The dialogue had a similar quality to it–not quite authentic, but not so bad that it made the characters feel/sound cardboard.

A lot of the reviews I’ve skimmed through have complained about some of how drawn out the scientific aspects of the novel were, but they didn’t bother me at all; in fact, they had the opposite effect on me. The research made the world feel fully fleshed out, and while it did have moments of sounding jargon-y, it didn’t take away from my enjoyment. Apparently Paolini spent years researching the science behind some of this novel’s aspects, and it’s clearly evident in every word. (And yes, it’s a really long novel, but I think that the battle scenes went on longer…maybe parts of those should have been cut out as opposed to all of the aforementioned content.)

All in all, a well-thought-out sci-fi that suffered from too much borrowing in the first half, but rocketed to a tense and gripping second half. 3.25 stars.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is confirmed to be a standalone, but will be the first in Paolini’s future Fractalverse. He is also the author of the Inheritance Cycle, consisting of Eragon (book 1), Eldest (book 2), Brisingr (book 3), and Inheritance (book 4).

Today’s song: