The Annoying Antagonism in The Golem and the Jinni

The Golem and the Jinni, a novel by H. Wecker, achieved a fair bit of fame. I picked it up after getting recommendations from several different websites and people (though in the end, it was the marvelous cover that made me click the buy button); and I’m glad, because it’s a great book. It’s fresh both in terms of content and presentation. The wonderfully flawed lead characters and the devotion that develops between them out of kinship and mutual respect rather than some mindless instant attraction pressed all the right buttons. For the most part, I couldn’t put it down. But then, on a couple occasions, it annoyed me so severely I had to put it down and found it difficult to pick it up again.

The Abomination Vault: A Summary

The Abomination Vault is the official Darksiders novel written by A. Marmell. My newest Darksiders fanfiction story, Death’s Blessing, picks up immediately after it and leans quite heavily on some details of its plot, so I made this summary to aid the readers who either never read the novel or don’t remember it well. Beware of spoilers!

Strange Angels

By K. Koja

Image by Deanse

I got this book as a part of a strange fiction bundle, and like many books I buy in bundles, it’s been sitting on my e-book reader long enough for me to forget I had it, let alone why and even if, I wanted it. I picked it up this January, in a break I needed to take from The Golem and the Jinni by H. Wecker (a subject for another post), because the title resonated with my ongoing Darksiders obsession. But soon I discovered several more unexpected resonances.

My 2021 in Books

Once more, I managed to reach my reading goal of 30 books in a year. I’m glad and I’m proud, but it still feels like far too few. I don’t know if it’s possible for me to read faster without sacrificing comprehension, but I might well devote more time to this. So, for 2022, I upped the goal to 36 books. That’s 3 a month and I’m already lagging behind, lol.

Another “new year resolution” regarding this is that I’ll try to write shorter but more frequent reviews. Leaving it all for one post, with up to a year since the actual reading, doesn’t work. I won’t even try this time. I’ll only leave a couple notes on things I liked (or disliked) more than the rest.

From “What the Wind Knows”

By A. Harmon

The actual quote in the original form, with more text captured for context, can be found under the break. What follows here is a version I altered to make it more general and gender-neutral, because I was especially impressed and affected by the sentiments as they apply to my current obsession with War and Strife from Darksiders. I also cast one part as verse, because that’s how it sounded. Beautiful!

If all people loved their spouses as I love mine,
we would be a useless lot.
Or maybe… the world would know peace.
Maybe the wars would end and the strife would cease
as we centered our lives on loving,
and being loved.
…
I know the novelty will wear off, and life will intrude before long. But it is not the newness of love, the newness of us, that has captured me. It is the opposite! It is as if we always were and always will be, as though our love and our lives sprang from the same source and will return to that source in the end, intertwined and indistinguishable. We are ancient. Prehistoric! And predestined.

Image: Fractal flower by Luis-Bello

My 2020 in Books

I managed to read 26 books in 2020. That’s 6 more than last year and more than twice as many as in 2017. I dare say I’m moving up in the world! As usual, it was a mixed bag: most were good, a few were bad, and one or two were amazing. Here’s the list with short reviews: