Reading Wednesday 1/05

[liv]

Recently read: The pomegranate gate by Ariel Kaplan. (c) 2023 Ariel Kaplan; pub Solaris 2023; ISBN 978-1-78618-824-3. Someone around DW recommended it and it really sounded like my sort of book, so I put it on my wishlist and it showed up as a late December present. It is gorgeously written and original, but ultimately quite depressing.

I absolutely love the worldbuilding of The pomegranate gate! There are portals from Inquisition-era Spain to a fantasy world populated by powerful and almost immortal mazziks. Everything is described in very vivid, yet otherworldly, detail. There's loads of Jewish mythology blended with tropes of portal fantasy, and the story is impressively dramatic and original. I didn't find the characters entirely memorable, though, and had to keep referring to the cast list often enough that I got a bit bored.

Also I felt somewhat let down by the ending, which felt really rushed, and also instead of a resolution we get lots of betrayal and death and failure. I don't mind a sad ending, but it didn't feel like the book had built up to a tragedy; it was as unsatisfying as a happy ending suddenly shoehorned in when the protagonists are in an impossible situation.

That said, there is a lot to admire about tPG. I love that it's absolutely unapologetically traditional fantasy, it's not ironic or subversive, but it is modern in that it eschews gender and ethnic stereotypes, and not everybody is straight but it isn't specifically about making a big point of that. It's also unapologetically Jewish; you could absolutely read it as a completely made-up mythology with lots of invented words if you didn't recognize the terms and allusions, but it's very much rooted in what it is. TPG reads as if Kaplan probably cut her teeth on fanfic; I don't mean that as a criticism, but it has a particular style. I enjoyed that it explores in depth the idea of a human, even a special chosen human, falling in love with a supernatural being; it's not just an elaborate set-up for inhumanly sexy sex scenes, nor a soppy romance where love magically fixes everything. In fact it's mostly about pining rather than actual relationship.

I'm sorry I've forgotten whose review pointed me to this one. rachelmanija maybe?

Currently reading: Menewood by Nicola Griffith. Long-awaited sequel to Hild, which I absolutely adored. hatam_soferet lent it to me so I didn't have to wait for it to be officially released in the UK. So far I'm not loving it quite as much as the first volume, but equally I have devoured more than half the 700 page tome in about a day.

Up next: I got lots of books as Seder presents as usual. I think the one I'm most excited about is The last watchman of old Cairo by Michael David Lukas.

Comments

[rmc28]

I liked The Pomegranate Gate enormously but I don't think I ever wrote it up properly, so it probably wasn't me - but I probably got it from "recommended somewhere on DW" too.

I think it ended on a cliffhanger and the next book isn't out until later this year?

[liv]

Huh, I didn't realize it ended abruptly because it was expecting a sequel. Since basically everybody is dead I'm not sure where it's expecting to go; maybe I want to read another book in the same setting with completely different characters, but having a very sudden ending doesn't encourage me to that.

[goodbyebird]

The Pomegranate Gate is on my tbr as well; I believe skygiants' ARC review is what put it on my radar. And I actually added Hild today, so that's a fun coincidence.

[liv]

Hild is absolutely mind-blowing. I really really recommend you dive into it as soon as possible. But there is a giant content warning which is also a spoiler, and I notice you're very strongly against spoilers. Would you like a high level general warning and you can ask me for more details if it's the kind of thing likely to upset you?

[goodbyebird]

I don't have any triggers like that, but thanks for offering ❤️

[independence1776]

I wanted to like TPG but ultimately didn't and the ending is why. The book didn't work for me and I'm disappointed by that.

[liv]

Yeah, I definitely know what you mean. I really wanted a book like this to exist, and it's not GG Kay and it's not Novik, it's going off in a completely different direction. But I hated the ending. I'm prepared to cut Kaplan some slack as it's a debut novel, she has room to grow and the good parts are really good. But yeah, really disappointed.

[fyreharper]

I’m not familiar with Pesach as a gift-giving holiday; is that a your-family thing or just a tradition I haven’t run into? :curious:

[liv]

It's mostly a family tradition but we're not complete outliers. Basically when we were kids we used to give a prize to the finder of the afikomen, and lots of doting aunts and grandparents thought it was unfair for one kid to get a present and the others not, so we all got a small something. Kinder egg or similar tiny toy or a few sweets, nothing massive. Then we had a few years with no children at the seder, so we started giving eachother books. The idea is that you go to the charity shop and pick up random stuff that looks interesting, keeping the financial budget modest. And we just hand them out informally as we get ready for the second half of the seder, it's not a big ceremony like Christmas or a birthday. So I wouldn't classify it as a 'gift-giving holiday' exactly, but we sort of expanded the afikomen tradition a bit.