Reviews and Comments

[Repost from Mastodon] A few days ago I finished Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim and it's an amazing fairy tale which balances European and Asian influences almost perfectly. Based on Andersen's The Wild Swans it follows a princess whose evil stepmother turned her six brothers into cranes on a quest to lift the curse. It's clever and quite funny. This definitely should have made the Lodestar ballot if you ask me. I must admit, I was a little on the fence because the evil stepmother is such a tired mysogynist trope. But Lim cleverly subverts it in a way I have rarely seen and as a person who's lost her mother at a young age it touched me deeply. The protagonist is memorable, the love story is decent as far as YA romances go, the world is interesting, and I can absolutely see how I would have devoured this as a teenager. The only things that bothered me were a) a mention of heaven which I didn't think fit in with the rest of the mythology and b) the trope of the love interest's quirky little sister who immediately invites the protagonist into the family. I've read different versions of this character way too often by now and I think all those Alices need to retire for a while until I can stomach them again. I'm also a little tired of fairytale retellings but Lim does an amazing job here, picking my favorite tale ever and leaning heavily into the dark aspects, especially the part where the princess is accused of being a witch and sentenced to burn at the stake. It's all very dramatic and highly impressed me as a child. It was great to revisit that narrative in a completely new setting.

[Repost from Mastodon] I finished Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and loved it. It's an exciting spin on classic haunted house tropes, pitching a free-spirited young woman from Mexico City against her cousin's family in law. Those creepy British landowners with a troubling interest in eugenics are up to no good and in order to save her cousin our heroine has to uncover their family secret. A familiar story, polished and brand new as if you read it for the first time. I found this book more approachable than Gods of Jade and Shadow, mostly because it was clear from the start where Moreno-Garcia is going with this. It's a love letter to gothic fiction, acknowledges the genre's feminist origins and highlights its inherent subversive undertones, all while skillfully adding colonialization and Mexican history to the mix. It made me think a lot about the genre's distrust against rich people, old families, strategic marriages and tradition. Mexican Gothic makes good use of these, never framing anything as a particular surprise. We already know the moment Noemí arrives that something's gonna be super wrong and just watch it escalate. The novel shares many ideas with the 2022 movie The Invitation but surpasses it in every regard because of this awareness. Finally I was super impressed with how SMG handles the topic of inappropriate lust and the thrill of encountering a dangerous yet overtly sexual person. I feel straight (and bi) men get all the delicious femme fatale action where our hero kiiinda wants to sleep with a woman he may have to kill later on in the plot and I almost never see this dynamic the other way round. The scenes between Noemí and Virgil were refreshing and a lot of fun. I feel the fact that people shy away from this dynamic is still deeply rooted in mysogynistic rape culture and I love how Mexican Gothic doesn't skip a beat when it comes to the question of rape. Yes, she finds that guy subconsciously hot and may or may not be manipulated to do so. No the fact that a part of her may be thrilled by his touch does not constitute consent. This is not an attempted seduction and she appropriately calls it out. Yet Noemí is never punished for her own desire - sexual or orherwise - just as a male hero lusting after some hot vampire chick usually gets away without consequences regarding his bodily integrity. I didn't know how much I needed that.

So yeah, all in all a wonderful read. Utterly enjoyable. I am thrilled.