Category Archives: 5 Star Book Reviews

Review of Possession by A. S. Byatt

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 73: Possession by A. S. Byatt (1990)

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

S. Byatt’s Possession is exactly the type of treasure I hoped to discover when I embarked on reading through the Time Magazine top 100 novel list, a truly gorgeous work in its use of the English language, method of telling the story, and its truly rich characters. There were several times I would stop and remark how beautiful a poem, letter, or dialogue was. I could identify with almost all the characters in this book and see a portion of myself reflected in each of them. It is a novel of stories within stories that is often told by the imagined writing and correspondence between the characters. It begins when Roland Mitchell, an underemployed scholar of the fictional poet Randolph Henry Ash, discovers in a volume Ash used two drafts of a letter to an unknown woman. Roland retains the letter and begins his quest to discover who this unknown woman is and to see if their relationship, whatever it may be, sheds any light on the work of Ash. Once his investigation leads him to the poet Christabel LaMott he is introduced to Maud Bailey, a feminist scholar with a keen interest in LaMott both as a writer and as a distant relative. Together they discover a collection of letters between these two poets which leads them into a re-evaluation of the lives of both the poets the study and themselves as they both become captured in this quest to uncover the story of this previously unknown but highly impactful relationship. Although Roland and Maud have not published their discovery, rumors begin which also brings Maud’s former lover and scholar Fergus Wolf, English Ash scholar and Roland’s boss James Blackadder, American Ash scholar and collector Mortimer Cropper, American feminist and Cristabel LaMott scholar Leonora Stern, and a scholar who studied Ellen Ash, Randolph’s wife, Beatrice Nest into the pursuit of the correspondence, Maud and Roland who disappear for a time, and the truth of this previously unknown relationship.

Possession is a phenomenal story, but the creation of the poetry of both Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMott as well as a beautiful set of letters between them is incredible. This was a joy to read. The narration evoked a rich sense of the people and the landscapes they encountered. Some of the best use of descriptive language I have ever read. The correspondence was frequently as poetic as the actual poems created and it made me wish I could read more of both poets. There were surprises all the way to the end of the book and I was awestruck with this incredible piece of literary artwork. I loved this book.

Review of the Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

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I received an advance readers copy of the Warm Hands of Ghosts and I am a fan of Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale series as well as her middle grade series Small Spaces. The Warm Hands of Ghosts takes the reader back to the historical fantasy genre of The Bear and the Nightingale, but this time the environment is primarily the hellish environment of Belgium in 1917 during the World War I battle for Passchendaele. Katherine Arden does a phenomenal job of presenting the environment of a world at war through the eyes of Laura and Freddie Iven. Laura begins the narrative home in Canada after several years as a field nurse for the medical corps, while her younger brother Freddie later joins the Canadian army in the trenches near Ypres. There is both a spiritualist and an apocalyptic framing of the war (particularly in a Jehovah’s Witness sense) and into the soul stealing space of war enters the beguiling but also devilish Faland. There are some similarities to the Smiling Man of the Small Spaces series, but the devil in a different context calls a different tune and plays a different game.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a story of humans caught in the inhumanity of war, of men and women who will sell their souls to forget what they have endured, of love that allows broken men and women to slowly rebuild their shattered lives, and of the death of a world as it gives birth to a new one. Laura and Freddie are both believably broken and yet still heroic characters who struggle to embrace this world at war instead of becoming ghosts of their former selves. It is the story of an ugly era of history beautifully written, of love struggling against the demons both outside in the world and the ones that dwell in the shattered hearts of the characters, and humanity trying to come to terms with the inhumanity of World War I. I appreciate the careful way she narrates this war that saw the advent of modern technologies like aircraft, long range artillery, submarines, and machine guns which was still primarily fought using the tactics of the 1800s and the disconnect between the experience of the soldiers at the front and the generals making their plans in houses miles away from these hellscapes. Even in this place of devils and destruction love still exists and it is the only hope for the lost men and women who journey to hell and back again for one another.

Review of the Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

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Five Star Book Review

Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

Erin Morgenstern is the author for two of my top ten all time books: The Night Circus and The Starless Sea. I read the Starless Sea when it came out in 2019, and this was my second journey through this incredible world. She writes in a way that is as beautiful as the magical worlds she describes in her two novels. The Starless Sea is not a book that everyone will love because it is like a nesting doll: stories within stories and worlds within worlds. If you can hold these multiple stories which all allude to the central storyline within your imagination and you want a journey to a fragile but magical world then this is the story to take you into a world where acolytes record the stories they hear buzzing in the air around them, keepers maintain and care for the world of stories on the harbor of the starless sea, and guardians attempt to guard the world. It is a world where fate falls in love with time, where the moon arrives in a great storm and interrupts the world of a lonely innkeeper, where a pirate in prison tells stories of sweet sorrows to a young woman who brings his food. The parliament of owls, bees, key collectors, swords of prophecy, a story sculptor, two lovers lost in time, and more surround the story of Zachery Ezra Rollins, the son of the fortune teller, and Dorian the former member of the Collectors Club as they are brought by doors painted by fate to the magical world of stories.

“To seeking” is the greeting of this world and the proper response is, “to finding.” This sentiment is appropriate for a book that invites you deeper and deeper into this magical world as you are invited into the experience of Zachery as he discovers the mysteries of the world at the end of its life and the dangers of those that attempt to defend it at all cost. It is a multi-tiered world of harbors along the sea full of stories and myths where lovers are torn apart and reunited. Is the book occasionally confusing as the characters attempt to muddle through the broken magic all around them, yes, but I also found myself content to linger as the strings of the plot from the various stories converge into the ending of a world and the beginning of a new possibility.

As one of the stories in the book tells us, this is a book, “For those who feel homesick for a place they’ve never been to. Those who seek even if they do not know what (or where) it is that they are seeking. Those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them.” There is something spiritual in the Zachery’s quest into this world, and it is a world I want to continue to explore. Reactions to the Starless Sea seem to be polarized-some find it confusing and hard to finish and it is very different than most fantasy. It is a love story to stories and imagination and it is not your traditional linear story, but as a lover of stories and magic it was a beautiful journey into a place that I didn’t know I was homesick for. The harbor on the starless sea could be at times troubling, at times incredibly comfortable, but always with an edge of the unexplained and magic. The book is a door that opens into a magical world and if you choose to open it may what you are seeking find you.

Review of Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz

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Miroslav Volf has been an influential theological voice for me since his publication of Exclusion and Embrace and I have learned a great deal from his writing over the past two decades. Volf has been wrestling with the question of what makes a life worth living in his publications for the last eight years and this book feels like the successful culmination of years of writing, teaching, and seeking wise partners from his position at the Yale Divinity School and the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. His previous books on this topic (Flourishing: Why we Need Religion in a Globalized World and For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference) have helped frame the questions that now A Life Worth Living provides a guide for working through. A Life Worth Living models the class that Volf, Croasmun, and McAnnally-Linz teach at Yale, as well as at Danbury Federal Correctional Institute where they invite their seekers to consider several faith and wisdom traditions as they pose several key questions that are a part of seeking an authentic life. These questions include: What is worth wanting? What is the place of happiness in an authentic life? What is the authority are we responsible and what traditions form our vision of truth? How does a good life feel and what role do negative emotions/suffering have in the good life? What is worth hoping for? How should we live and what provides for a meaningful life? How do the various answers come together to form a life worth living? How does our good life fit within our bigger picture of the world? What do we do when we fall short of our visions of what life should be? How do we react to the suffering we experience and the suffering we encounter in the world around us?

One of the gifts of this book is it invites the reader into an encounter with a diverse set of wise voices who provide very different answers to each of the questions the book poses and provides a spectrum of possible answers for one willing to engage the questions. It is not a difficult book to read and it does not expect any previous engagement with philosophy or theology, instead coming out of the experience of teaching both undergraduates and inmates it simplifies the voices which come from across the religious and non-religious spectrum into an approachable set of stories. But the simplicity of the presentation does not take away from the deep nature of the reflection prompted by the questions that the book presents. This is an invaluable resource for those seeking to live a life that authentically reflects the values of the person trying to construct a life worth living.

Review of Babel: An Archane History by R.F.Kuang

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R. F. Kuang, Babel: An Archane History

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

Babel is a book that is going to evoke a strong reaction from its reader. I love languages and have done a lot of work in translating and so a magical system which is built upon the distortion in meaning between languages when they are engraved on a silver bar was a fascinating concept. The attention to translation and understanding languages as systems of value and meaning may be boring to some readers, but for me this discussion resonated strongly. It is a story which can celebrate both the magic of the university but also the dark side of academia when it becomes tangled with the goals of the empire. The book deals with the difficult reality of colonialism and the difficult choice that the non-white students at Babel must make as they discover the ways in which their work is being used to exploit the countries of their birth. This is a smart, well written story set in a nineteenth century world modified by the advantages of enchanted silver working.

Robin Swift loses his family to sickness in China and is given a chance to come to England to be prepared for Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford University. Robin Swift and his classmates Ramy, Victoire, and Letty become incredibly close as students at Babel, and as either non-white students or women they must navigate the wealthy, white, and male world of Oxford. They live a privileged life as Babel students who receive a full scholarship and a generous stipend, but they are also asked to commit themselves wholeheartedly to their studies. All of them are gifted students who have been trained for much of their life for this course of study. When Robin meets a person who looks like an older version of himself, he finds himself entangled with a secret society called Hermes. The Hermes society opposes the work Babel does to further the colonialism of the British Empire. Robin later sees the impact of the Royal Institute of Translation on his motherland of China and how it is allied with the trading companies who want to export opium to his home. This experience initiates a chain of events that sets Robin and some of his friends in opposition to the work of not only Babel but the empire itself.

R. F. Kuang does an excellent job of helping the reader see the world through the eyes of Robin, and to a lesser extent Victoire and Letty. It portrays the world of a brilliant young man who is often viewed as both important to the work of the Institute and by extension the empire, but who also is never fully accepted as a person who belongs at Oxford or in England. The characters are caught in the tension between the magic of the place and the devilish manipulation of the world using language. It is a sharp book both in its intelligence and its cutting and sometimes painful perspective on the abuse of both knowledge and people.

Review of Uprooted by Naomi Novik

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Naomi Novik, Uprooted

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

I read Uprooted when it came out in 2015 and loved it, and a part of my reading habit is including books that I enjoyed previously and rereading them. I’ve read most of what Naomi Novik has written and this is my favorite of her books. Uprooted is set within a fantasy kingdom where a corrupted and malicious forest yearns to destroy the people who find themselves planted near its boundaries. The region is protected by a wizard named Sarkan, but who is commonly known as the Dragon. Every ten years the dragon selects a seventeen-year-old woman to come to his tower for the next ten years. Agnieszka is the protagonist of the story who is the surprise choice of this immortal wizard to spend the next ten years of her life in the Dragon’s tower. Agnieszka soon proves to be a difficult student but a gifted witch with her own relationship to magic which is more intuitive than Sarkan’s more precise and rigid approach. Despite their different gifts and approaches to magic their gifts weave together to allow them to do magic neither would be able to do alone.

The malicious wood plants devious seeds to attempt to entrap Sarkan and Agnieszka and to provoke confusion and conflict in the surrounding kingdoms. The wood makes an intriguing antagonist with its inhuman and corrupted drive to consume, and its ability to corrupt animals, humans, and objects. The story maintains an air of continual tension where the stakes are the destruction of the two kingdoms surrounding the wood. The wood’s manipulation of the vain Prince Marek springs a devilish trap which threatens to destroy Sarkan and Agnieszka as well as the kingdom. Naomi Novik does an impressive job of articulating a beautiful vision of magic within her world that can move between the elitist and rigid abilities of Sarkan and the folkish and musical abilities of Agnieszka.

Uprooted is both a fantasy story but also a coming-of-age story. Agnieszka as a young woman discovers her talents as a magic wielder and her voice within the political struggles of the kingdom but she is also a young woman discovering attraction. The intertwining of Sarkan’s and Agnieszka’s magical abilities unlocks feelings for both but there is also a vast gap between them to be overcome. It is a dangerous but beautiful world with well written characters, a constant threat of destruction by the environment which seeks revenge on all humanity, and a compelling vision of magic. The book invites you to walk barefoot into these dark woods and stay rooted in the magic of the place.

Review of the Melody of Trees: 10 Tales from the Forest by Helen Whistberry

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Helen Whistberry, The Melody of Trees: 10 Tales from the Forest

For me a five-star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

The Melody of Trees is a collection of diverse short stories where trees or forests play some role in the story. Each story is short enough to be read in one setting but unique and complex enough to be intriguing. The stories span from mythological to science fiction, some are delightful fairy tales while others are dark stories of ash, death, and darkness. ‘Forest’ is told from the perspective of Forest as an ancient god observing the life and death occurring within its boundaries. ‘Girl of Glass’ is the story of a witch’s daughter who makes a desperate magical bargain to escape her unloving home that requires a heavy sacrifice. ‘Revenant of High Lonesome’ is an interesting combining of fantasy and western themes as a gun for hire determines that a promise made is worth taking on the authorities of a faithless town. ‘The Melody of Trees’ is a story of two people who find themselves in an odd sort of futuristic prison where they must use their skills as an artist and programmer to find an escape. It is a story of the beginning of relationships and learning to trust, but also creativity and intuition. ‘An Invitation of Shadows’ is the story of a young boy who escapes a murderous father leaving behind his loving mother, but learns he has a special power and a difficult choice to make: to heed his mother’s last wish and flee or to return to attempt to save her and his siblings. ‘The Watcher’ follows a cranky elderly man who is living in a retirement home and finds his only solace in watching the field and the forest near the home, but when his environment begins to change in nightmarish ways, he finds that he is also being watched. ‘Written in Ashes’ is a story of doors that should not be opened, of warnings unheeded, and of a darkly magical curse that lies just beyond the normal world for those whose curiosity gets the better of them. ‘Flora and Milo’ is another magical story of a missing mother, an absent father, and two children who follow the animals into the forest learning who is friend and who is foe and the magic the daughter possess. ‘Bad Day on the Job’ is a delightfully absurd story of two hit men in a supernatural world of werewolves, monsters under the bed, summoned demons, ghosts, and a mob boss who crossed the wrong woman. ‘A Gnashing of Teeth’ is another story in a science fiction world where humanity is at risk of being consumed by an invading race of strange beings that resemble the ancient pictures of Seraphim, and a ‘wise one’ who provides hope for a group of survivors.

I found each of the tales engaging and the overall book a delight. I intentionally attempted not to give away too many secrets in my brief summaries of each tale so new readers can discover the strange twists that the stories include. The stories are just long enough to introduce you to a new world and an interesting set of characters, but each story still manages to be complete.

Review of Sunyi Dean The Book Eaters

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Sunyi Dean. The Book Eaters

For me a five star book is something that either I want to read again or something that is so profound it makes an immediate impact. There are lots of ways that books can be compelling: a unique idea, an interesting set of characters, a complex plot, an artistic use of the English language and more. Reading is also a subjective experience, so what appeals to me as a reader may be very different for you. I read a lot for both pleasure and work but these short reviews are a way for me to show my appreciation for the work and the craft of the author of the reviewed work.

The Book Eaters is a work of dark fantasy set in contemporary England. The first time I saw the title and read the synopsis I was intrigued by the idea of a people who ate books instead of food and I was curious to see how this idea played out in the story. The story alternates between the present-day struggle of Devon and her son Cai and the traumatic story that places this mother and son on the run from the families of book eaters. Devon grows up in a world where she is isolated from the rest of the world by her family and grows up on fairy tales of princesses. These carefully curated stories are fed to her (literally since she is a book eater) and form her world and imagination, but she is also curious for the other stories that she is not supposed to read or eat. She begins to see signs that life is not the fairy tales she has been fed as a child, but as an adult she discovers that her role in the families is to be essentially breeding stock and she will be unable to raise the children she bears. Devon is permanently scared when the connection with her daughter is severed suddenly and she is sent to another marriage to bear her second child.

Devon’s second child, Cai, is a mind eater. Among the book eaters there are children born who consume human minds instead of paper and although there is a drug that allows them to consume books instead of minds they are always looked upon as a danger. Most of these children will become ‘dragons’ who are kept by the ‘knights’ in the story but as the time near for Cai to be taken by the knights and Devon to be removed from his life the family who produces the drug to treat the mind eaters disappears. In the present day the story follows Devon and Cai as they attempt to find the Ravenscar family who manufactures this drug which will allow five-year-old Cai to no longer eat human minds. In the meantime Devon must find a human for her son to feed on every two weeks as she attempts to avoid the families and the knights who want her and her son dead.

What makes The Book Eaters a compelling read is the realistic character development of both Devon and Cai who are looked upon as monsters but are bound together by the love of a mother and son. It is a book full of betrayals and broken people, of fairy tales that hide the darker side of reality, of the difficult choices love can cause us to make, and princesses who find a way to save themselves. The isolation of the families reminded me a little of the Ravenwood/Duchennes family in the Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl series Beautiful Creatures although that is set in a Southern U.S. gothic world rather than an English one. A compelling plot which realistically develops a group of characters who are shaped by the curated narratives they have been fed and the trauma inflicted upon them as they attempt to survive in a world that views them as monsters.

Review of the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

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Time Magazine Top 100 Novels

Book 53: The Lord of The Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

This is a series of reflections reading through Time Magazine’s top 100 novels as selected by Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo published since 1923 (when Time magazine was founded). For me this is an attempt to broaden my exposure to authors I may not encounter otherwise, especially as a person who was not a liberal arts major in college. Time’s list is alphabetical, so I decided to read through in a random order, and I plan to write a short reflection on each novel.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite books. I first read this work as a teenager and I return and read through it every couple of years. I continue to be amazed at the depth of the story and how I continue to be enriched by each reading. Tolkien is a master at developing a complex world complete with complex cultures, languages, and histories which form the backdrop for the incredible journey of Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry, Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, and Boromir. The work is a classical battle between good and evil on an epic stage and throughout the work spins a defiant hope in the midst of incredible odds.

The test of any great book is how it holds up after multiple readings. Even after walking the paths with the characters many times and knowing how the journey unfolds it still remains a phenomenal journey which continues to reveal new aspects each time. The battle scenes at Helms Deep and Minas Tirith are some of the most moving fantasy battle scenes I’ve read both in their reserve in the details of the battle and their stirring defiant language that lets the reader ride with Rohirrim or stand against the darkness or Mordor.

This is a hopeful epic of heroic perseverance with good ultimately triumphing over evil. After reading several nihilistic or fatalistic works on this list that narrate the ending of an age it was enjoyable to revisit this rich story where the protagonists come through the darkness and emerge into the new age they helped form. Even though the main protagonist, Frodo, comes out permanently scarred and unable to enjoy the homecoming at the end of the work he leaves behind a hopeful new beginning for his beloved Shire, a world safe under the reign of Aragorn, and a place where Sam can raise his new family and tell the stories of the fellowship to new generation.