October Wrap Up

We're at the end of October and another month of less-than-satisfying reading has gone by. I made progress on my reading challenges, but most of my picks ended up being mediocre at best. At least I accomplished everything I wanted to do. Here's what I finished:

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Unhooked by Lisa Maxwell

Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston

In other big news, I also finally finished Les Misérables! I finished it this morning, so I didn't have enough time to write a blog post for it for this month. I'll have to do it in November instead. Once I do that, I will have finished the Back to the Classics Challenge and almost finished the Classics Club Challenge as well. So that's pretty amazing!

My reading plans for November all center around one novel - War and Peace. I first tried reading this gigantic tome back in 2017. I spent three weeks on it, finished it, and then realized that the edition I had been reading was abridged. I was so upset. I vowed to go back and reread the full version before the end of my Classics Club Challenge. Now, with only two months left before my end date, here we are. This is the very last book left to conquer. The 100th novel. I'm going to try and finish it in a month, but I do have December to fall back on as well if I need more time. I'm not exactly looking forward to this, but I feel like I have to do it now in order to be truly finished and complete the challenge. 

So, it will probably be a quiet month for the blog as I work my way through War and Peace once more. Hopefully I'll be able to move through it at a good pace and wrap up my five year Classics Club Challenge successfully! Wish me luck!

Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston

I first heard about Ashley Poston's Heart of Iron on YouTube, and it immediately caught my interest. A retelling of Anastasia set in space? Yes, please. I have very fond memories of watching the animated Anastasia film over and over again as a kid. I knew all the songs by heart and Anastasia and Dmitri were one of my first ships. My love for the movie hasn't exactly waned as I've gotten older either. I've been to see the Broadway musical in the theater twice over the past few years. Getting a chance to read a science fiction version of this story sounded amazing to me, so I started off my reading with incredibly high hopes.

The novel is split between four different narrators. The first, Ana, is an orphaned young woman with a mysterious past. She was found floating through space in an escape pod as a child by the fearsome pirate Captain Siege, and has been raised by the crew of that pirate ship ever since. She's a pirate herself now, and zips all around the galaxy helping out on dangerous jobs. Some troubling circumstances have given her a job of her own to do now though. Her trusty robot companion, D09 (or Di), who accompanied her in her escape pod as a child, is malfunctioning. She needs to find parts to repair him before he breaks completely and she loses her oldest friend.

The second narrator is Di, Ana's robot friend. Even though he is all metal and computer chips, he seems to be developing the capacity to feel emotions. He is hopelessly in love with Ana and would follow her anywhere, but he hates the idea of her putting herself into danger looking for parts to repair him. 

The third narrator is Jax, pilot of Captain Siege's ship. He is a Solani, a race of beings with a close connection to the stars and the ability to see visions of the future. He has a knack for getting the crew through all sorts of dangerous situations with his clever flying skills, and is game for helping Ana with her mission to repair Di.

The final narrator is Robb, a rich teenage noble (known as Ironbloods in this universe). He doesn't fit in with the rest of his family, who are constantly scheming to secure greater political power in their star system. His father has recently passed away in a robot rebellion that also killed off the entire royal family, but he suspects that there is more going on behind the death than the official reports state. He wants to investigate exactly what happened the night of the rebellion, and holds out hope that he will be able to find his father alive somehow.

As the story progresses, all four of these characters come together and are drawn into a deadly political plot with grave consequences for anyone who tries to disrupt the plans of the powerful Ironbloods that control the government. The future of their world is at stake, and Ana's past , Di's faulty memory core, Robb's father, and Jax's ability to read the stars all combine to set our characters on a path towards either saving their kingdom, or watching it fall to ruin.    

Overall, this story wasn't terrible, but it wasn't fantastic either. I thought that all of the characters were fairly likable and their narrative voices felt distinct from each other. Each of them had interesting moments and the constant switching between their perspectives helped keep the plot moving. My favorite voice by far was Di though, so I was always impatient to get back to his part of the story. The action sequences were appropriately exciting, especially at the beginning of the story when the plot was more swashbuckling than political. I enjoyed the romantic relationships throughout the story too (except for one really awkward element that I will get into later), and the diversity present in the cast of characters was truly great. The characters are, by far, the best thing about this novel.

Where the story let me down was the world building and plot. The way the world worked and how futuristic technology functioned within it was never fully explained. Things would be mentioned but left hazy, like how the Solani are unable to lie, for example, or the idea of people making unbreakable vows on "iron and stars." How do these things work? Why? We never find out. The background of the planets involved in the story are never really fleshed out and the plot points surrounding what exactly Metals (robots) are and how they work is left confusing as well--and this is a majorly important element of the story. The reveals that happen towards the end of the book didn't hit me as hard as they were meant to because I never fully understood how anything worked. The stakes don't feel high when you have only the vaguest idea of what is going on.

**Spoilers in the next paragraph**

The awkward bit that I referred to earlier cast a weird shadow on one of the relationships in the novel for me as well. Throughout the story, Ana and Di have a romantic relationship building up. I thought that idea of a romance between a human and a robot was really interesting, and I was enjoying it for most of the story. However, close to the end of the book it is revealed that Di was originally the personal robot assigned to serve Ana's birth family. He cared for her when she was a child and was the one who saved her life by escaping with her in the escape pod she was eventually found in. They refer to her sitting on his lap while he brushes her hair, telling her bedtime stories, etc. Now he has all these romantic feelings for her and it just seems...kind of wrong. It's like if Rosie from The Jetsons fell in love with Elroy. I couldn't feel the same about their relationship after learning that.

**End of spoilers**

I think the most frustrating part of the novel though was the fact that it ends on a real cliffhanger. It's not even one of those endings that can serve as a mini-ending and feel satisfying in and of itself. This is only half of a story, and I didn't like it enough to give it another 400 pages worth of my attention.  I guess I'll never know how the story ends, although honestly it's not too hard to guess. I've been saying this a lot lately when it comes to my young adult reading selections, but this story really wasn't for me. Again, it's probably fine for its intended audience. Could I possibly be growing out of this genre? I've been reading young adult fiction since I was...well...a young adult. I'm definitely not that anymore. It's something to think about, anyway. In any case, this is another book I can safely donate to my classroom library and clear a little more shelf space with.

Challenge Tally

Clear the Shelves 2021: 22/50 (donate)

Total Books Read in 2021: 45

Unhooked by Lisa Maxwell

 

After the strangeness that was Orlando, I decided to take a brain break with my next read and indulge in something fun. I decided on Unhooked by Lisa Maxwell. This young adult fantasy novel promised a dark retelling of Peter Pan on the inside flap, so I was excited to see how it would compare with some of the other Peter Pan retellings I've read in the past. Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson is a particular favorite of mine. I was hoping for something similarly mysterious and thoughtful here.

The plot of the novel follows a teenager named Gwendolyn Allister. As the story begins, school has just let out and she is moving to a new house in London with her mother. Her best friend Oliva has come along to help out, and both girls are looking forward to spending the summer together. On their very first night in the new place, however, things go terribly wrong. A group of terrifying winged monsters appear, kidnap both girls, and magically transport them to a different world. 

They are immediately separated upon arrival into this new place. Olivia is nowhere to be found and Gwen is taken captive onboard an old-fashioned pirate ship led by a handsome and mysterious captain. The captain soon reveals that Gwen has been brought to Neverland and he is none other than the Captain Hook from the classic story. Gwen doesn't believe him at first, but as she is surrounded by unexplainable things like flying monsters and fairies, she comes to realize that the captain is telling the truth. Things in this Neverland are different from the story she remembers though, and she soon becomes involved in a dangerous quest to rescue Olivia from the clutches of Peter Pan and save Neverland itself from imminent destruction. 

I am usually pretty biased in favor of Peter Pan stuff, but sadly, I did not love Unhooked. The beginning was promising enough. I thought Maxwell did a nice job setting a dark and foreboding tone upon Gwen's arrival in Neverland, and the Captain was enough of an anti-hero type to keep me interested in his story. As the plot went on though, I began losing interest rapidly and never really recovered. I think there just wasn't enough Peter Pan content in it for me. Aside from the setting and the character names, almost everything else was different, and not in a way that I found compelling. It became a pretty generic dark fey story, with plot points that made less and less sense the deeper I got into the book. The universe building felt haphazard, the magic system felt underdeveloped, the romance was rushed, and the story felt disjointed. The twists didn't grab me and the ending was odd. The final few chapters in particular contained a few events that were bafflingly unrealistic, and I say that as a reader fully willing to suspend my disbelief and accept the existence of Neverland without batting an eye.

On top of all that, Gwen's character was a grab bag of all the tropes I hate the most in young adult fiction. She was unbelievably naïve, misunderstood everything the first time around, was instantly and unexplainably attractive to all the main male characters, fell in insta-love, and was a "chosen one" destined to save everything. I didn't really enjoy reading about her, so that impacted how much I could enjoy the story overall.  

It's been about two weeks since I finished reading Unhooked, and already all I have left is a vague recollection of a messy dark fey plot and a heroine that was frustratingly dense. So obviously, this was not a new favorite. It was not completely terrible, but it just really wasn't for me. The young adult audience this was written for will probably like it. As it stands now, I'm just happy to have cleared another book off my shelves and have another novel to bring to my classroom library. 

Challenge Tally

Clear the Shelves 2021: 21/50 (donate)

Total Books Read in 2021: 44

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

 

For my first read in October, I wanted to complete another book from my Classics Club list. With only two books left to finish (and one gigantic reread looming), my options were limited. I decided on Orlando by Virginia Woolf. I read Woolf's To The Lighthouse not too long ago and didn't completely hate it. Modern novels are not my preferred genre, so my lack of enthusiasm for it wasn't a surprise. I still wanted to try one more by her though, so I got started on this one, hoping for the best.

The novel is set up as a fictional biography of an English noble named Orlando and follows him through about 300 years in his inexplicably long life. He starts off the story as a teenage boy living in Elizabethan England. He enjoys a life of luxury on his vast family estate and has lots of humorous adventures as he grows to adulthood. He meets famous figures like William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope, writes pages upon pages of poetry, and has several love affairs, including an ill-fated romance with a Russian princess. When he turns 30, however, his life takes an unexpected turn. He wakes up as a woman. For the rest of her life, Orlando lives as a female, even eventually marrying and having a son. She explores all sorts of differences between living as a man versus living as a woman, and points out many of the social pressures and expectations placed on each gender in a witty, irreverent way.

That's a very general summary, but it's the best I can do. The book doesn't follow a traditional narrative structure, so it's difficult to describe. It was a  high-spirited and fun story, and not terribly difficult to read in the way that many modernist books are. I finished it pretty quickly and even managed to enjoy it a little, which was more than I thought I would be able to say initially. That being said, I have a very strong feeling that I missed a lot of the points Woolf was making--like I wasn't in on all the jokes. That's not too surprising, seeing as it was written in the 1920s. Beyond not catching out-of-date references though, I consistently felt like I was missing the larger point of it all, like I wasn't smart enough for it. If I was studying this book in a college course and had a professor to point out all the important nuances, I probably would have really liked it.

 I did a little research on my own after I finished and learned that Woolf based Orlando's character on the poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West. Sackville-West was Woolf's romantic partner and close friend, and this book was essentially a love letter to her.  It was also an experiment in the genre of biography and is considered an LGBTQIA+ classic due to the gender shift. There's a lot of layers to the story and it's definitely a unique novel with a lot of different elements to think about. It's not really for me personally as a reader, but I'm glad that I experienced it just because it's so weird.

I finished this book during the first week of October and I've had such a hard time writing this review. I've worked on it a little bit each day hoping for a breakthrough, but it turns out that I just don't have much to say about it. I'm going to cut my losses and end things here. I'm happy to have finished it and I'm happy to be able to finally cross it off my Classics Club list. There's not much left to read on there now. It's hard to believe I'm so close to finishing!

Challenge Tally

Classics Club (#77 on my list): 99/100 books completed

Total Books Read in 2021: 43