I was under what I now know to have been the quite mistaken impression that this was a trilogy.  I was sadly, sadly disappointed to discover at the end of this book that it is not in fact a trilogy.  Indeed, it is now planned to be a full series.  I am very aware that this is likely the new Outlander series, where I will get 20 books into a series that is promised to be a 21 book set, with no estimated release date for the last one.  I just don't know if I can emotionally invest at this level again.  I miss the solid trilogies: Hunger Games, Legend (which added a fourth book years later, but the trilogy stood alone), Xenogenesis, Discovery of Witches (I know she added more, but the original trilogy was also a set), and Anne of Green Gables (again, the first three culminated an ending and if you didn't know there was more, all would be good in the world). This was not a solid trilogy. This was a telenovela, designed to suck you in and then using the ridiculously stupid amnesia plot twist to leave you completely hanging at the end of the book. 

This was just such a disappointment.  It was particularly a disappointment because all three books were really intricate.  The plotting was so complicated that half-way through the second book, I went back to the beginning of the first book to read it again because I want to make sure that I was following the interwoven stories of the secondary characters.  These side stories are so compelling and I didn't realize how much they would tie into the main storyline as things progressed.  They are written like backstory, not foreshadowing, and what is included there is really rich in detail that is needed to understand the big picture.  In the middle of the third book, I also backed up and reread about 10 chapters for the same reason.  And if I am completely honest, I also backed up because I didn't want to get to the end. This was because I expected that it was going to be over.  Now, I feel like there was no reason at all to have pre-ordered the book and started reading it on the day it was released.  I definitely should have waited until the series was completed before I even started the first one.

Likely, if there is ever an ending to the series, I might update my recommendation here, but after being rivetted through all three books, completely captivated by the magic and the politics, as well as the love story in this complex universe that was created, I just cannot recommend something that ends on such a cheap cliffhanger.  I really just felt like this was designed to make me have to buy more books and for her to get a deal with Netflix or Max for a series that never ends.  It was just such a disappointment.
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You don't have to read very far into this book to recognize it is a train wreck ahead.  I didn't know exactly what type of a train wreck, but the author's ability to write with forbordence (which apparently isn't an actual word, but should be).  The foreshadowing is intense, if cloaked in mystery.  The writing is exquisite and enthralling.  I could not look away, despite the horror of the self-centered narrator-protagonist.  Without spoilers, it is hard to describe her midlife crisis related choices.  Even being in her head since it was written in the first person and her momentary glimpses of insight into the damage she was leaving in her wake, it as hard to understand her choices and impossible to find compassion--even when the strings of hardship from her life were woven together to explain how she got where she was.  Mostly, she demonstrated a level of narcissism that I found unsympathetic at best and often irritating, even infuriating.  The sex is explicit and tawdry, but the writing of it is alluring. I don't know quite what to do with the recommendation here, since I was captivated, have been thinking about it for a few days since finishing it, have talked to multiple people about it, and had a strong reaction to the content of it and yet at the same time, I can't recommend it because the character is so completely unlikeable, but in that complex way that narcissists can be charming and convincing, making their choices seem acceptable.  But, it is  novel!   So, do I really not recommend a book because I had such a visceral response to a made-up character?  The answer is yes, I really can not recommend a book because I just didn't like the main character, despite the quality of the storytelling and writing.  Finally, it feels like the author has a clear agenda to justify, even glorify, the choices made by the narrator.  Maybe I am reading more into this, maybe not, but unlike similar books (Normal People comes to mind), sometimes it felt like there was a lack of awareness by the author of what was playing out and a little too much emphasis on how avant-guard and "ultramodern" the situation is.  At one point towards the end, the narrator is proselytizing about her newfound lifestyle in a way that only a newly born-again believer can, trying to convince others that they have found the secret answer to the meaning of life, and it is hard to tell if the author is poking fun of the narrator or is indeed preaching this to the reader.  Does this add to the complexity of the novel? Maybe.  But did it make me wonder if I just got sucked into reading a really long piece of propaganda? Yes, yes it did.

P.S. I marked this as "romance," even though it isn't a romance, just because of the explicit sex scenes that as stand alone sections would appeal to folks in those who love a good erotic novel.
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Not recommended. 
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This is the best book I have read in a long time and I absolutely could not stop reading it, while also knowing while I was reading it that I didn't want it to end.  Even during the weird Part IX that doesn't go with the rest of the book's style, I was so drawn in that I was confident it was going to eventually tie back in and be worth it.

A rare story about friendship, I just don't understand how this is shelved in "romance."  While the characters have romantic relationships, this book is about deep, long term, complex relationships amidst the pain of grief and loss, illness and disability, and outgrowing relationships.  The main characters are gamers and then game developers---with their lives are consumed by their shared passion for their work, which is also their play.  We watch them go from the youngest geniuses in the room to the oldest ones.  

Since I was born within an year of the main characters, it was just so much fun to walk through their story, which is so steeped in technology and the evolution of technology, knowing exactly what those limits were at the time.  The worlds was so different before cell phones when you couldn't get in touch with someone and the ways in which those differences are weaved into this story, along with all of the games I grew up playing gave the story rich emotional depth for me.  

I loved how one character compares friendship to a tamagotchi-- you have to pay attention to it every day or it will die.  And so much of this story revolves around how video games are and are not like real life.  Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, just like a video game.  Shouldn't we be able to do back to the safe point and try again, have a do-over.  This idea that when someone dies, we yearn to have a do-over, but also just anytime we do something that results in a less than ideal outcome.  The characters are so obsessed with Mario Bros at one point in the late 80's, that if they miss even a single coin, they would immediately restart the level.  As I read, I felt so much melancholia for the characters wanting to do that, but also reflecting on the ways in which I wish I could go back to the save point and start over.

Everything in this story relates life to video games.  A theory about child rearing and not wanting or guiding your child to be someone they aren't is to not get attached to the details of a new game project you are working on too early because that will just cut off the flow of ideas and stunt the potential of the game.  You have to just see where it organically goes first.  A theory about grief is that our brains create an AI version of those we love and when they are gone, your mind is tricked into thinking they are still here for a while.  But over time, the coding gets old and the hardware becomes obsolete until the high resolution, 3-D virtual rendition of them fades until it is just a black and white photo, without sound or smell or feel.  

There has been some push back against this book for its depiction of the relationship between a professor and a student that is abusive.  The criticism seems to be that the relationship is "normalized" in the book and, for sure, at the time the relationship is happening, the character in the relationship believes it is consensual and the other characters ignore it in large part, but if you finish the book, it is clear that with maturity, that is not how they situation that relationship in retrospect.  I think the way the author handles this issue is quite realistic and sophisticated.  I appreciated the nuance brought the topic, which clearly depicted not only how it was playing out at the time, but how the various people involved created narratives that allowed them to cope with the situation.

I love a book full of new ways to think about life and this one brought that, along with a wallop of emotion, initially in small moments, but ultimately in big waves.

I didn't realize until after I finished the book and looked up the author, that she is the author of another of my favorite books: The Storied Life of A.K. Fikry, which you can purchase here.
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Highly recommend.  

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Following a tough couple of reads, I was hopeful that this book was going to be a breath of fresh air.  And it was...until it wasn't.  

First off, this book is funny.  It takes place on a fictionalized version of The Great British Baking Show and it does a great job of developing the characters and their backstories, which are to some extent different than the on-screen stories that are being told about them.  Some of the dialogue is laugh out loud funny where I legitimately giggled while I was reading, which is pretty rare for me.  I loved the main character and her ex-lover now best friend and their witty banter and quirky relationship.  

I also loved the idea of the storyline, in which the child of two career-driver professionals realizes she doesn't want that life for herself and finds a way to navigate comfort with that.

But, and here is where I cannot proceed without spoiler alerts, so SPOILER ALERTS.  

The sexual assault in this book does not feel good or get resolved well at all.  It comes out of no where in the midst of a light, funny book.  It does not shift gears well and from this point in the story forward, all of the progressive, feel good parts of the book fall apart.  Rosaline, the book's namesake, is a really fun protagonist.  A bi-sexual woman who had a brief affair in college which leads to a baby girl and a series of menial jobs and a life of financial instability.  The daughter, now about 8, is nerdy, brilliant, and sassy, made even more so by Rosaline's no holds barred style of parenting, filled with direct information about relationships and sex and lots of swearing.  Rosaline's best friend is an ex-lover with whom she has remained dear friends despite a very tumultuous fling in which feelings were hurt and drama was had.  The ex-lover is her biggest supporter and has a dynamic relationship with the kid that is anything from trite or a trope.  Some of the best moments of the book are between these three characters.  For most of the book, Roseline's comfort with her sex life is impressive and her friend's chastising about not "slut shaming" herself at times is refreshing.  It is against this backdrop that the end of the book is just so disappointing.

At the beginning of the book, Roseline makes the unfortunate decision to hook up with the stable guy from the bake-off show whom she knows her judgmental parents will love.  And they do.  The three of them embark on a painful path of trying to get Rosaline to go back to college and get her life back on track.  The book was doing so well following this arc as Roseline realizes she loves baking and doesn't want to go to school or follow in her parents' footsteps, but the story completely falls apart when she yells at her parents once and then her mother basically completely changes her behavior and attitude and comes to understand and respect her choices.  Like, what?  Sigh.  That was a step too far.  The part where she creates the riff, pulls back from the relationship, and figures a way not to let them continue to shame and belittle her by putting up a healthy boundary was awesome.  The part where it just immediately fixes everything just felt hollow and made it seems like she was pretty dense for not having done that 8 years earlier.

In any event, that plotting problem was nothing compared to the decisions made about the romance arc, which was by far the most disappointing.  After the mediocre boyfriend gets worse and worse, culminating in a scene where he and his ex-girlfriend trap Roseline in his house for a non-consensual threesome that turns into his ex-girlfriend sexually assaulting Roseline, Roseline calls another bake-show contestant, who just so happens to be the hunky electrician her parents hate who came to her rescue when the faulty wiring in her house left her in the dark with a ruined cake in the oven, to come to her rescue and next thing we know the two of them are together and that is the happy ending.  There is just something about the bi-sexual woman getting sexually assaulted by the bi-curious woman being saved by the ultimate cis-het-man trope that did not sit well with me at all. 

END OF SPOILER ALERTS.
It was such a disappointment after such a great start, both in terms of plotting, character development, and laughs.

​Do not recommend.

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I am at a complete loss as to why the universe would have this book and Creation "recommended" for me back-to-back.  They are very similar reads, although set in different time periods and with slightly different writing styles.  The pompous, intellectual superiority of the narrators could not have been more similar, though.  In this book, the overused storyline, wherein the crotchety old, unsympathetic man shows a moment of humanity and then we have to get his entire backstory to explain how is life unfolded in such a way as to explain why he is mean and grumpy, unfolds painfully slowly.  The problem here is that while many things go array in his life--really so many as to make me start to roll my eyes by chapter 25--throughout basically the entire story he always acted superior and above everyone else. Even when he was doing kind, self-sacrificing things, he was still doing them from this place of an intellectual analysis of what it means to do good and be righteous, not beause he actually felt anything like an emotional connection to the other people or the worlds around him.  He really only ever cares for a woman who is lover and for his child.  Every other relationship is held at bay. 

For example, he tried to sacrifice himself several time in order to save or benefit others, but these attempts are in vein.  As a result or this and other overdone plotlines, he ends up witnessing not only the standard "horrors of war" tropes that are a dime a dozen, but also ones that seem deliberately manifested by the author for shock value, such as when he comes into contact with the "giant" who who is into beastiality.  Please don't think that is what turned me off the book, though. I was turned off a good 15 chapters before that happened.

The narrator is a Professor of Aesthetics, as if there could be a more arrogant sounding title.  He prattles on about the beauty of art and the natural world, about the philosophical connection between art and science, and about such things as the "aesthetics of justice."  As he moves through one traumatic, awful event after another, his conviction that he is in some way the most important person in all of the narratives comes across in the way that I think only a Professor of Aesthetics could narrate.  That he was an expert at everything from mountain climbing to art to languages to love started to lose credulity.  His ability to survive physical and psychological ordeals pushed the bounds of willing suspension of disbelief a mile too far.  But even more than this, the part where we spend the better part of 500 pages (of the total 880 pages) believing him to be obsessed with the practical application of the philosophy of ethics to his privileged existence only to have him go off on a side quest to avenge the death of girl he was in love with in a war zone by a guy in the other military made absolutely no sense whatsoever.  And then, to have this venture thwarted by the arrival on scene of the target of his crusade's small child was just too trite.  More eye rolling from me.

If you enjoyed Creation, you will love this book--and the other way around.  If you are me, you will not have enjoyed either. At all.

On a side note, I was hanging out with a friend who has been recommending books to me for many years.  In return, I have recommended for him many books, which he has not only read, but almost universally loved.  I once went so far as to take him to the library to find the book I thought he needed to read right then, at that moment in his life. When the book was not on the shelf, I tracked down the librarian, who found a copy of it on a display of books people should read.  So, I have brought a lot of joy to this friend-reader's literary life.  And what did I find out about the recommendations this friend has been making?  Well, apparently, he was quite bent out of shape that his first few 50-Books-Recommended-By-50-Friends recommendation were trashed on this blog and therefore started recommending spite books for me to read.  Which, in retrospect explains a lot about the books he made me read (and subsequently trash on this blog).  Having had this conversation with him, in the context of having had not one, but two "friends" recommend back-to-back books filled with pretty much everything I hate makes me wonder how many of you are deliberately doing this to me?  Does this explain my high rate of Do Not Recommend?  Have I spent years thinking I am just a hater when actually this has been a deliberate strategy to punish me for some unknown, historical slight?  

Do not recommend.

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This pretentious, intellectually condescending tome was a painful slog of misogyny and racism. The domestic and sexual violence and general disrespect for women and girls was painful.  As historical fiction, I don't doubt that was the reality of how learned men thought about and treated women, but I nevertheless just found the entire experience to be one of misery.  This story about an amateur philosopher and religious scholar turned spy to India and China in about the 4th century BC has hours of haughty, if interesting, discussions about the meaning of life, the problem of evil, and reflections on how, why, and by whom the world was created.  The narrator just happens to make the acquaintance of Socrates, the Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tsu, and others who schools him on these topics.  Perhaps the most interesting of these conversations were about other lesser known religious groups, like Jaimism and Pythagoreanism.  I have little doubt that the historical part of this historical fiction novel must have been extensively researched, but until the very end, the last section when we see some woman characters return and voice opinions, the women in the books are by and large relegated to their roles as concubines, sisters, and wives.  Wives, such as the narrator's 12 year old Indian wife, given to him by her father while he is traveling and spying there, and sisters, such as one of the sister of the prince of Persia (I think I am remembering this correctly, it might have been a daughter), but when he asks which sister, the prince doesn't know which one since he hasn't really met any of them and they are interchangeable since the purpose of marrying is to be married into the family.  The men pontificate and reflect on philosophy, while wars rage, people die, and the women are raped, beaten, sold, and traded.  Definitely not enough here to warrant all of that and make it worth getting through.

Do not recommend.

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