...the Soul of Wit - Short Reviews

So close to the end of the year, I am now trying to quickly complete the last books for the challenges. If you find these aren't my typical books I'd usually read, you're right, I'm hurrying through them to achieve my goals and discovering one or two good titles along the way. Enjoy the short reviews!

Fresh Dirt from the Grave by Giovana Rivero

Among all the gory, crazy, striking, shattering horror I have been reading lately, it was a calm kind of pleasure to read Bolivian author Giovanna Rivero’s quiet horror stories, first time translated into English for us to enjoy.

Particularly impressive is Rivero’s range; each of the six stories featured here convincingly present a different point of view, a different linguistic style, a different tone, environment and context. So much so, that you might be fooled into thinking they have been written by different Bolivian authors. Maybe this praise should also be extended to translator Isabel Adey as well, since these stories feel like they were written like this, natural.

A story about oppressive and physically abusive church members and an opposing indigenous lifestyle, Blessed are the Meek, opens up this collection, followed by Fish, Turtle, Vulture, the account of the last moments of a ship captain, given by his partner who was on the ship he died and a tale of stifling redemption. I particularly enjoyed It Looks Human When it Rains, in which an origami teacher from Colonia Okinawa, a city built in Bolivia for the immigrants from Okinawa after WWII, who starts working in a prison teaching the incarcerated her art, all the while tries to keep her plants alive in cold weather – the latter being a struggle I know all too well. Painful, mysterious, eerie family secrets and stories resurface in Soccoro, Donkey Skin, and Kindred Deer, always giving off a very own, original flavor.

I certainly want to quickly re-read this small but strong collection. 

The Will to Battle (Terra Ignota Series #3) by Ada Palmer

Almost war.

I had read and pandemic induced re-read the first two books of Ada Palmer's brilliant Terra Ignota Series (Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders) breathlessly, both for the Otherland Book Club.
But I think I may have waited too long between the second book and this one to now read the final two tomes. Which isn’t my fault entirely, the publishing interval between the second and third book was so long that I am completely thrown out of the story and I now feel only a glimpse of the crazy joy I had reading especially the second book. I think this whole story should be read in one breath, but for me it’s too late for that now and the story just doesn’t feel as vivid anymore. Plus, to be fair to myself, this one was a lot more philosophical than the previous ones, so a lot of blah blah. Nevertheless, I will of course read the last book to learn how this all ends.
I’m still very impressed by Palmer’s brilliant mind.

Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume 1 ed. by Alex Woodroe

You know how they say if you can't say something nice about someone better don't say anything? Well I will partly apply that to this anthology as I ended up enjoying only one short story and I'll be discussing that one here and say nothing about the others. The story I'm talking about is In Haskins by Carson Winter: In the small town of Haskins everyone lives with a literal mask on their faces, and each mask comes with a predetermined identity. So say you're wearing the mask Jennifer, you will live as Jennifer who is a teenage girl, a cheerleader, has a footballer boyfriend and likes to keep busy. No matter who you are underneath, as long as you are assigned that mask, you are Jennifer. Until the mask festival, where once a year certain people swap faces and thus, swap their identities. So after being Jennifer for two years you are now Cole the truck driver and wife beater. What if you could really see through someone's mask, though? And you liked them so much you wouldn't want to swap?

A reflection on how far biology determines destiny, In Haskins totally blew my mind, and made it totally worth to read this otherwise mediocre anthology. I realized that in the last few anthologies I read, Winter's name keeps resurfacing among my favorites, so I'll keep an eye for his own collections.

Noor by Nnedi Okorafor

Anwuli Okwudili, aka AO was born with a disability which was furthered by a car accident, which led her to have a lot of major and necessary body augmentations. One day she's attacked at her local market and needs to run. She then meets a Fulani herdsman named DNA and the two of them need to survive the deserts of Northern Nigeria.

I was never fully invested in neither characters nor the universe of Noor, for some reason. The interactions, the energy between the two main characters felt a little forced, to be honest. Nevertheless, I appreciate the reflections on identity and disability treated here.

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel

I have to admit I'm not a fan of Neuvel's writing at all. I think he chooses the easy way out by writing about interesting subjects but almost always in the form of interviews or dialogue. Although I think that's legitimate and certainly good for some readers whose attention span is short, it feels rather like scripts than books for me.

Although I don't much agree with the form, I really thought the world of The Test, though. We're following Idir, who has migrated from Iran to the UK, and who is taking a citizenship test. What starts nicely with him cheerfully trying to find the answers to the test, a group of terrorists raid the classroom and force him to make a decision about who from two other candidates in the room he chooses should be killed. This is just the beginning.

Although really short and readable within a couple of hours if you power through, this book packs a punch - philosophical dilemma, migration, these absurd citizenship tests and their criteria, there's a lot in here.