2025 #26 Children of Anguish and Anarchy (Legacy of Orïsha, no. 3)

 

Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In my review of Children of Virtue and Vengeance, the second of the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy, I wrote: "I am still invested. I want to know where they are headed. I want to be invited back to the world of purples and golds. But I hope that the third book will let me stay awhile before the fighting begins. There's more to say about what lies behind the strife. There's more to tell us about what will be lost before we actually lose it. "

I'm sad to say that the long-awaited book did not fulfill this wish. If anything, there's even more fighting, and less substance. We have new enemies: King Baldyr and The Skulls and new allies: New Gaians. We barely get any time on Orisha to even care about what is happening in healing old wounds. There's a formula applied to the four main characters: Zelie, Tzain, Inan, and Amari -- each has regrets, each thinks about those who have passed, each cuts down and fights enemies...but there's not a lot else that is happening. We see hints of the deeper character studies present in the wonderful first installment, Children of Blood and Bone, particularly with Zélie teetering on the edge of her power being usurped for evil or for good, and there is one particular scene with Tzain, who is going through a similar struggle, that invests in the deeper themes. The book is too short to really get into too much world-building, so the net effect is one of a passive interest in the mythologies and theologies that seemed so crucial in the first book.

I don't know what it is to write a trilogy, and I imagine the creative commitment is immense. Is it still a good read? Sure, and if anything one might benefit more if they haven't read the other two (although I also want to recognize I probably should have gone back and reread the other two books because I was a bit iffy on some of the details). Adeyemi's descriptive writing is a pleasure, and her skill with it enlivens this particular book, especially in how she captures the Green Maidens, Mae'e, and Zélie's transformation(s).

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2025 #25 The Extinction of Irena Rey (Croft)

 

The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The premise--a translation of a story about translators and translation authored by a translator--is clever, yes. What I didn't expect was the humor that springs up like an unexpected mushroom in a field of moss. That gives it a 3. 75 for me.
There are moments of meta-translation like:
"Her face was the white of a freshly laundered sheet that someone other than me had laundered. (My laundry always turns out beige or gray.)" In this humble offering from Emi, we see how imagery in translation always connects to experience in one way or the other (remembering that the text we are reading was in fact written in Spanish, and we are reading it translated into English). Croft skillfully uses the slightly askew simile to call out some of the challenges of translation. But this is all operating on a deeper level, and occasionally detracts from surface-level enjoyment of the book.

The book is complex, sometimes overly so, and the narrator becomes increasingly unlikeable in her high-school level emotional intelligence (this is, however, somewhat soothed by the occasional footquips (as opposed to footnotes) from the translator (Alexis), who is somewhat of an arch-nemesis figure for the author (Emi) throughout most of the book (although the reason why is never totally clear, save for Emi's need to assign blame somewhere)). Apologies for the excessive parentheses in the previous sentence. The descriptions of nature and fungi are beautiful, but we are quickly yanked out of any idyll of the primeval Polish forest toward a speculative fiction that resembles Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. There's a lot of ideological whiplash and flights of fancy that did not enrich my experience of the book, clever thought it is. There's a mystery too -- the titular Irena Rey goes missing-- but I stopped caring too soon in the book.

I am glad I read it, and there were definitely parts of the book I thought were glorious in prose and imagination. But at the end I felt I had finished putting together a piece of furniture, and found myself looking at several screws and bolt or two that were "left over."

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2025 #24 The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection (McCall Smith) - No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #13

 

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After a fairly long hiatus from this series, I'm not sure if absence made the heart grow fonder or what, but this installment had everything I was looking for. I missed Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi's shoes, Mma Potokwane, and all the sundry characters. This volume is particularly rewarding for devotees of the series, with a guest appearance of some significance (it is on the blurb on the back, people, but I'll not be blamed for spoilers). Mma Makutsi and Mma Ramotswe seem to have (mostly) comfortably settled in as ... associates, and this story shows how friends can band together, laying aside petty differences. The most charming and touching aspect of the book comes at the end, where we see that Mma Ramotswe's true gift is to find the value in most people and things -- maybe not Violet Sepotho, however. :-)

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