I feel pretty terrible about this review. In a time when I think it is particularly important for us to reflect on the Holocaust, the violence of othering, and the horrors of ghettos and "camps" and determining human survival based on the official papers you carry, I am very sorry to report that this WWII book about all these topics is not to be recommended by me.  WWII historical fiction is usually a pretty easy sell for me, so this is almost certainly not why I didn't like it.

It started weird. This is because the story takes place in two time periods, while also telling a fictional vampire horror story that one of the characters wrote.  But you do not discover that is what is happening until really far into the book and it makes for a very confusing read.  And it felt almost like the author was deliberately trying to make it confusing.  Maybe she thought it would build up like a mystery and, to a large extent, I would call it a mystery, but it felt forced and unnecessary.  Yet, if you ignore the bizarre allegory vampire storyline distraction at the beginning, I found the book interesting enough at first and quite enjoyed the early character development that was mired in intrigue.

But even setting aside that problem, it just became more and more complicated as it jumped back and forth between narrators and time periods and between the actual story and the story-within-the-story.  I love a complex plot that makes me pay attention, but I kept thinking that this was a plot strategy meant to hide the ball.  And indeed, there were pieces of the story that were obviously being withheld--huge pieces of the story, like why one of the main characters has facial disfigurement from some type of trauma that most everyone in the story seems to know about and is alluded to over and over, but isn't spelled out for the reader until way past the point that I still cared.  It ended up just not being this big deal after all the hype to get to it. And again, I just felt like it was deliberately being done that way despite it not making any sense not to tell the reader.

Perhaps the most prominent reason for my not liking it was the gratuitous, graphic details of the violence that felt added for shock value.  Not that the Holocaust wasn't shocking and I don't disagree that some level of description of the details is appropriate and I don't want to discount that for survivors the horrors went on and on and on, each more horrific than the last.  There was just something about the way it was written that left me feeling like it was another game the author was playing with me as the reader.  I don't know how we learn about the time period without hearing about the details of the violence, but here it was done in a way that as I was reading I was aware that I was reading this book about this horrible thing that was designed to convey to me how horrible it was instead of letting the story unfold naturally.  In the context of the other unusual plotting choices, I just could not get into it.  So much so, that I had to take several breaks from it to read other things before coming back to finish it.

Not recommended.

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​This is not what I was expecting.  Not only was it no what I as expecting, but even when I was well into the story, things would happen that I did not see coming.  Twice in a short period of time, I was out walking and audibly gasp at the unexpected turn of events. It wasn't that I didn't find the story plausible, because once it happened, it was obvious that it could have happened that way, but I was just so surprised and I cared so much about the story and he characters.

The "women" here are the women who joined the military as nurses and were deployed into combat hospitals during the Vietnam War. From deciding to enlist to deployment to coming home to the many twists and turns of life after that, I loved everything about this story.  The complicated relationships, the struggles, the trauma, the recovery, the heartaches, and the way she writes about the constant, crushing sexism of that era was all so tangible, so well conveyed.  

I didn't realize this was the same author who wrote The Nightingale, which is an absolute all time favorite of mine.  If you loved one of those, I think you would love the other, even though they are quite different in nature. The writing is impeccable.  I can't say that I am anything close to an expert on either WWII or the Vietnam War, but I know enough to have been impressed by the amount of research that had to have gone into the books.  I'm focused on my 50 bookish friends list, but I loved this book enough that I contemplated diverting from the list to read more of her books.

When the book was over, I left wishing there was more.  Not an epilogue -- I didn't think that was warranted, but more of the details of the story along the way because the storytelling was just so good. The depiction of the friendships that weave through the book were so vivid and impressive.  I loved the ending.  I love the middle parts.  I loved the twists and turns and the heartbreaks and most of all I loved the women in the story.
 
Highly recommend.  
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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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There really is something I just love about a WWII resistance novel.  I have a number of favorite books in this genre, like The Nightingale and Beneath The Scarlet Sky. The story was an interesting series of unpredictable plot twists, but certainly explored concepts of family secrets, guilt, love, and betrayal in above average ways.  Some of the content felt unnecessarily graphic, but it is a novel about war and rape, so I can't say it was entirely out of place.  It didn't feel gratuitous exactly.  It is stripped of any real romance, really, the couples who are in love do not have happy lives and the themes of love are more focused on friendships and are tied in with guilt and loss.  It is not a light read, but the writing is solid and the story kept my attention and was in no way trite.  Overall, I liked it and would recommend it.

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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Warning: The first book will suck you in and then leave you hanging at the end, such that not reading the next three in the series, the prequel, and the parallel book with the backstory for one of the characters feel inevitable. 

Second warning: Despite being drawn in and reading not just the four books released in the series, but the other 2 related books, you will still be left hanging as the fifth book in the series is not slated to be released until January 2025!  You will wonder, is this another Outlander series where I will be living in an alternative world for months on end and left without a conclusion for years at a time?

So, here I am.  This not-so-young adult fiction set in a world of magical fantasy where factions of humans and other creatures, big surprise, do not get along.  What I love about this series is, unlike many fantasy worlds, none of the factions are all good or all bad.  Sort of like real life where every country and culture has some--or a lot--of problematic aspect, but also those same problematic people have some wonderful customs, values, and people.  The story is all about how we collectively villainize people collectively across borders, but also how we oppress people in our communities who do not comply with societal expectations.  Just when I got comfortable hating a particular group, the point of view would shift and it was revealed that all was not what was presented.  There are multiple unreliable narrators here, reminding the reader of the complexity of cross-cultural understanding. 

I loved the character growth and revelations, as the depth of many of the characters and their secrets are slowly divulged.  I also particularly love that even though there are strings of romance that are both sweet and a little titillating, these are not simplistic young adult romances of my youth.  For characters to have multiple love interests, be unclear who they love, what they want, and whether that should even be important in the context of a world at war is so unusual in a novel, let alone one in this genre. 

Be aware, this is a war novel, with a lot of pain and violence.  There is sexual and domestic violence, torture, and brutal combat scenes.  This was sometimes too detailed and went on for too long for my taste, but on the other hand much of it is steeped in the magic of the world and these scenes provide additional information about what is possible in ways that foreshadow other uses of the magic, so I can't say that it is entirely gratuitous.
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Recommend. 

P.S.  I am aware now of the backlash against this book as being written by a white (straight?) author about discrimination since there is a lot of very offensive language and themes that mirrors language used by Nazi and KKK groups.  I have to wonder if folks who had that criticism read the series because one of the things I liked about the book was how it starts each thread of the a person's story with how they were raised, including their xenophobic and patriotic indoctrination, and shows how they do or do not grow over time as they are exposed to various hardships in their life.  Some become entrenched in bigotry, while others resist the extremism and embrace love.  I don't know how you tell this type of story without writing about what that looks like. 

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There are some things about this book to really love, particularly in the second half, but I had to really slog my way through the first part of it.  There is a lot of graphic intimate violence use to set the scene for what at first feels like an intergenerational story about trauma and "survival" that doesn't feel like survival at all.  The story itself, though, gets muddled before it gets sorted out at all, as it begins to unfold on two timelines--the original one of misery and a second one in which a movie is being made about the first one and so research ensues that leads to being able to fill in some of the blanks in the historical timeline. 

Eventually, and I do mean eventually because it takes a very, very long time, the two storylines start to make sense and remarkably intertwined as the connections become clear.  The second half or so of the book shifts away from the abuse and neglect, but leaves the pain and dysfunction that comes from unstable and unsafe early lives.  The impact, of course , of intergenerational trauma plays out through the lives, leaving expected fallout in its wake.  

Once we move beyond the backstory, the book significantly improves as the main character becomes obsessed with learning to fly as a young girl and remains fixated on that throughout her life, leading to adventures and relationships, with story twists and turns that are unanticipated, but not entirely unforeseen. 

If you can make it through the sexualized violence, addiction, and generalized misery that is the backbone of the story and like historical women's fiction, you'll do well with this one. Also, if you are interested in flying airplanes or travel to the north and south poles, you will probably find those parts of the story particularly interesting.  For me, the start was too much of a struggle to get through for a recommendation, even though by the end I liked the story.

Not recommended.

This is an historical fiction about a matriarchal community in Korea where some of the women are free divers, holding their breathe in very cold waters to bring up food for their families and to sell.  It chronicles several generations through various historical events, including being caught up in a war they did not care about.  The storyline is really interesting. Especially since I knew nothing about this community or the history of the area.  I read a translated version, since it was written in Korean.  I want to think that when read in Korean that the writing was better because in the English version, I found the writing wanting, particularly in the lack of nuanced vocabulary.  Often, I suspected that the original probably had more to say than the simplified English I was reading.  It also includes graphic description of violence that were particularly brutal to read.  Other than that, I liked this book and recommend it based on plot, not prose.
Recommend

I really wanted to like this book.  It is a story within a story, taking place in two timelines, it is historical fiction about women doing interesting things I didn't know about, and it has some twists in the plot, which I typically like.  Unfortunately, I found the big reveals to be more of a distraction and something that kept me engaged.  I don't know if the "hints" were too opaque for me or if the build up went on for so long that I lost focus, but I just didn't love this the way some people have.  I just didn't get drawn in.
Not recommended.