Reviews and Comments

Pretty good. Another popular novel that comes with historical insights. Hard to rate... 3.5 - 3.75 stars?

Slow starter, but worth staying the course. Would never call the prose beautiful, but the story of the tea and the people, relationships and connections, was enjoyable. Deeply researched, providing ideas and resources for further reading.

Had to DNF — interlibrary loan, couldn’t renew. Not as fun to read as Ibn Fadlan, but worth tracking down copies to have on hand… definitely this edition, as it seems to have good annotations. I hope it also includes his sketches. But, wow, so much more tedious than Fadlan.

Liked the concept, but not the execution. CVV continued the story of Zélie, Tzain, Amari, Inan, Roën, and all the rest, in a nonstop drama of intense emotions, love, disappointment, betrayal, uncertainty, determination, violence, and very dramatic magic.

We found it hard to clearly visualize a good bit of the action, which could have been our own fault sometimes. It got to feeling repetitive, too: dreams & disasters, gonna do better, hearts a-flutter making it hard to think, people getting maimed and killed in dramatic ways, everyone saying they want to end the war, etc.

The many descriptions of light bursting out of people’s eyes, and glowing tattoos, etc., were on the one hand cool and evocative and on the other hand too plentiful. I did enjoy the descriptions of people, and wouldn’t have minded more descriptions of places, and more about the animals too.

Overall to me the story felt too melodramatic and grim, but I’ve noticed that I feel that way about a number of works and writers that other people have adored, from Catcher in the Rye to Flannery O’Connor. Presumably there is another installment in the works.

Milquetoast syncretism. Often the figure depicted as an avatar of Kali could easily be given a different color palette and done up as a fantasy warrior, especially a Nordic one. Take away the iconography and we've got generic RPG characters.

On the positive side, the first half of this experience provided a much-appreciated diversion into unfamiliar terrain, and in this day and age it's easy enough to look up more appropriate takes on each avatar, which I wish I'd thought of sooner than I did.

Good book, interesting and full of important topics, American history, academic history, however you want to look at it. The pictures, and white space, made reading easy… you could even say it helps the reader pace themselves and reflect on deeper meanings and connections. Also plenty of room to place sticky notes!

Had to quit because of difficulties keeping up with the library e-book situation… kept crashing, having to “return” and re-borrow. Hope to read in hard copy another time, which would be better anyway for note-taking purposes.

Conversational, and hard to rate. In some ways it rubbed us the wrong way, with incomplete information and generalizations, but to be fair it's probably a good book for beginners and simple public reference. Wouldn't trust it for details. You can easily read it straight through, unlike with some other reference books. It has a reasonable amount of photos.
3.5 to 4 stars, a good junior library general title, gift shop book, etc.

Overall, a powerful and well crafted book. It made me think. I enjoyed the characters, with their fears and passions.

There was quite a bit more death – let’s be honest and call it “slaughter” – than I am comfortable with, but that’s part of the package. We’re not supposed to be comfortable with it. Likewise some of what happened to the main characters.

The animal names also took some getting used to – the world is very much like Earth, and there are, for example, several species which seem to be a mix of big cat, dragon, and steed.

I enjoyed her descriptions, especially of the people.

It’s just fabulous to read a modern fantasy adventure story that seems to do for Yoruba/Santeria traditions what countless Arthurian fantasies do with Celtic/Arthurian legends. I would be really interested to hear or read what people who are familiar with the Orishas think about how Adeyemi repackaged them for the general public to read. I imagine I was a not uncommon reader, going into this story having seen the names of a couple of Orishas on various consumer goods (jewelry, art cards, etc.), and knowing nothing of Santeria except the word – so as the story unfolds, it’s not all completely alien territory, but it’s certainly not familiar either.

Now what I really want to know is where QuickDraw McGraw’s sidekick Baba Looey came from, and I think I heard that name in another, equally random, context, decades ago in the forgotten dawn of time …

Anyway, I would love to see these books come out in an illustrated second edition (preferably paperback), with line drawings of the various big cat-like “ryders,” as well as the characters and some of the landscape.

Context is underrated; reading this novel in 2022, in the midst of so many examples of humanity's damfool self-destructiveness is weird. So many decades of aspirational scifi were based on what seemed like reasonable if fanciful speculation... then what happened?
Anyway, this 1985 novel based on a 1957-8 short story is a pleasant enough diversion, not one of Clarke's masterpieces, but a classic enough genre piece.
We do however take issue with the in-story reference to Buddhism as a religion which has never been responsible for bloodshed.

Probably better to read Hyperbole and a Half first, but you don't have to. We enjoy these books because they present anguish and weirdness so well, and it's not often that we also feel respect for someone who must also be more deranged than ourself. Note: while we wouldn't call them graphic novels or picture books, they are of a largely graphic/comic format.
Solutions seems sadder than Hyperbole, but also wiser... Makes sense that there's a time gap lived between them.
Fwiw we liked Hyperbole better because of the stupid dog, but that's almost irrelevant.
These books are not for everyone, either -- I gave one to someone I thought would like it, and she very much did not.
They are poignant and particular and probably not compatible with denial. They can be painful. But they're also funny.
If you liked Matt Groening's Life is Hell and Love is Hell, from the years before The Simpsons, you might like these.