Summer Vacation 2021

 This is just an announcement to say that I'll be on vacation for the next 2 weeks! I finally am getting a break and I'm super excited about it. I'll be back posting the second week of August, so have a fun time until then!

This Is Beautiful: Art Fair

 This past weekend was the Art Fair in the town I'm in. It's a pretty big fair, lots of people come from the community and the local art guild or wherever. The weather wasn't great, but it was still so nice to be outside and looking at art and surrounded by people. I've really missed art museums particularly during the pandemic, and this brought a little bit of that back. Plus I just really like art!

Supporting local artists is very important to me as well, I usually try to buy something at these kinds of events. Artists have a really hard time making money so it's always good to support them, plus if you can afford it having art in your place is always nice. Everyone wins! Support your local artists. 

“The Lost Hero” by Rick Riordan

I’m continuing on my Rick Riordan revisit with this next series about Greek and Roman gods. Very exciting. So this is the first installment of the Heroes of Olympus series, and it’s in the same universe as the Percy Jackson series, but Percy isn’t the protagonist anymore.

What’s interesting about this series is that Riordan has changed up the structure. There isn’t one main character now, there are in fact three now. This book follows around Jason, Piper, and Leo. Similarly, the chapters aren’t titled amusing lil descriptions of the actions in them, they’re just called the character’s name who is narrating. Boo for the boring titles, but makes sense from a writing perspective. And it makes sense because this is a series that Riordan is writing as a more experienced writer, he wants to include more perspectives and viewpoints in his characters so he includes more point-of-view characters.

To summarize: once again this book follows Jason, Piper, and Leo. Jason wakes up with no memory in the back of a bus with Piper and Leo. This is a bus with 3 demigods on it who don’t know who we are, so naturally it gets attacked. They end up at Camp Half-Blood and figure out that Piper is a daughter of Aphrodite, Leo is a son of Hephaestus, and Jason is a son of Jupiter. Hold up though, Jupiter is the Roman form of Zeus, what’s up with that?

Anyways the three of them all go on a quest to rescue Hera, the queen of the gods, who is being held captive by a giant. Along the way they battle some storm spirits, save their satyr friend Coach Hedge, and rescue Piper’s dad who has been kidnapped by another giant. They run into Thalia (who you may remember from the Percy Jackson series) and it is revealed that Jason is Thalia’s brother. They battle the final giant together and emerge victorious. Only once they return to camp is it revealed that there’s an entirely separate camp for children of the Roman gods that Jason is from. The Roman and Greek demigods have a bloody history, so they have been separated. And it is likely, that Percy Jackson, who has been MIA for this whole book, has been sent to the Roman camp in exchange for Jason.

So the idea behind this book is quite cool, it’s very similar to American Gods where the gods can exist in different appearances and personalities based on what the population thinks they are like. So one god can have both Greek and Roman personas (so Zeus and Jupiter). It’s an interesting way to expand the world, Chiron alludes to the American Civil War being between Greek and Roman demigods. And that during the war against the Titans in the Percy Jackson series the Roman demigods took the Titan mountain on the west coast while the Greek demigods defended Mount Olympus.

And as I mentioned earlier, a strength to this book is that there are more voices and more diversity. Piper is a member of the Cherokee tribe of Native Americans, while Leo is Hispanic. They also are the children of Aphrodite and Hephaestus, two gods who we haven’t seen much of until this point. It’s cool to see how he brings in their families and stories about religion and spirituality into how they think about the Greek gods and this new family.

Honestly, the part of the book that I can’t stand is how Jason and Thalia are siblings. It feels forced and pretty unnatural. Thalia never mentioned having a sibling, supposedly because her mom lost Jason when he was very young, aka she gave him to Hera as an offering and Hera got him to the Roman demigods. And when they meet up Thalia keeps just talking to Jason unnaturally…? As in she knows that he lost his memory but keeps being all mysterious about where they should meet up, insisting that he knows where it is because their family went there. It feels like something a god would do to be all mysterious rather than Thalia, who is a demigod. And has been annoyed with gods previously for being mysterious on purpose like that. Also there could have been no connection between the two and the story would have worked just fine, didn’t need that bridge between the two camps. But we’ll ignore this and just keep going.

What’s clever about this is that Riordan takes a break from Percy for the installment book, gets readers interested, and the next book in the series (The Son of Neptune) is all about Percy once more. It’ll be nice to hear from him again!

This Is Beautiful: Catsitting

 So for the past week I've been catsitting for a friend of mine. She has these two munchkin cats and a really nice place and it's been a lot of fun! I think there's something about hanging out in a different place with a different person's pets that is just so nice and refreshing. I'm not sure, I think it's the change in pace and change in scenery but it's nice.

Also cats are so cute and fun! I love her munchkin cats, they're super small and cuddly. Pets are wonderful.

"The Stone Sky" by N.K. Jemison

 Well this is it, the ending of N.K. Jemison's Broken Earth trilogy. For the first two novels, see posts here and here. Honestly the ending was super satisfying, in a way that I haven't really read in ages. I think the key to a good ending is not to throw in any super huge plot twists, I should be able to look back and think that I knew this was coming, and to wrap up remaining loose ends while leaving the future open.

The story starts as Essun wakes up after the battle that ended The Obelisk Gate. She's weak, and has been in a coma for a while, but she now knows where her daughter is and wants to get there. First though, she has to get this comm to a safe place for them to live, which involves a deadly journey through a desert. Meanwhile her daughter Nassun is on her own journey to Corepoint, a place on the other side of the world to harness the gate and use it to end the world. On the journey though, Schaffa (Essun's old enemy but now Nassun's parental figure) loses his mind to Father Earth. Nassun arrives wanting to save Schaffa by turning everyone into Stone Eaters, essentially humans made of stone. Sprinkled throughout this are then a third viewpoint character: Hoa, Essun's Stone Eater friend. He narrates what his life was before he was changed into a Stone Eater, and what led to that transformation.

Of course the book ends with Nassun and Essun meeting at Corepoint. Nassun wants to turn all of humanity into Stone Eaters to save Schaffa, while Essun wants to bring back the Moon to fix the world. Their interaction doesn't last very long, but it's heartwrenching. All of three books was leading up to this. Essun wants her daughter back, but Nassun doesn't trust her anymore. Their relationship is truly broken beyond repair, but Essun can keep Nassun from using the Gate and turning herself to stone (the price for using it). Essun redirects the energy to instead turn herself to stone, essentially yielding to Nassun's wishes, and Nassun then changes her mind, and brings the Moon back instead of doing what she wanted. In the aftermath, Essun turns into a Stone Eater, and Nassun returns to help remake the world.

What's really touching about the ending though is the "Acknowledgements" section, where Jemison talks about how her mother's death heavily influenced the plot of the book. Clearly a lot of the ending particularly is her trying to work through these feelings of motherhood both for her mom and herself. It's really touching to know the source of all the pain and love in this book.

I've mentioned a couple times how the orogenes are a pretty apt metaphor for racism and prejudice. In this book, we learn through Hoa that the orogenes were originally made to serve as someone to subjugate. Basically there was a race of people, the Niess, who were rumored to be better and more sophisticated than everyone else. Once they were conquered, this was disproved. So, the people made their own Niess, as orogenes, to exploit. It's a pretty cool statement about prejudice, where people will invent things just to have someone that's lower than themselves.

But the ending, my goodness. It was super satisfying to see the war with Father Earth being ended, and most of the characters going to rebuild. I would have liked to know more about Essun's companions, like Tonkee, Hjarka, and Danel, or even those she left behind a little more. But seeing Essun emerge as a Stone Eater to continue her work was nice, if a little flowery how they talked about spending eternity with friends and family. Of course it's a hopeful ending, I don't see how it could be anything else at this point. This series puts you through a lot. 

I cannot recommend this series enough, I thought the whole journey was incredible and the ending sure does deliver.

This Is Beautiful: NEO: The World Ends With You Demo

 Last weekend I finally got around to playing through the demo that was put out for NEO: The World Ends With You (NTWEWY). I honestly was nervous going in, I've been waiting for this game for so long, the possibility did exist that it didn't live up to my expectations. Or that it didn't have the same feel from the original game. Or anything could happen that would ruin this for me for whatever reason.

None of that happened, the demo was incredible. The game looks so slick, the graphics are beautiful. The fighting is a lot of button mashing, but that's alright as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure I'll get better at it as we go. The characters are so charming and funny, the ones that we got to see anyways. There's more to come very soon. I love the characters and mechanics that return, like scanning and the red hooded Reapers. It was all so amazing that I couldn't put the game down for multiple hours, until I beat the demo.

Honestly it was so reassuring to play that and know that this game is going to be incredible. I can already tell that I'll play the hell out of it, and I'm so much more excited for when it comes out later this month!

“The Obelisk Gate” by N.K. Jemison

This is the sequel to The Fifth Season, a book that I previously wrote and gushed about. The sequel is just as good! It builds on the world and the characters extremely well.

To summarize, this book takes place in a fantasy world where orogenes are humans who can harness the earth’s energy to accomplish amazing feats. They can move mountains, or turn people into stone. As a result, they are feared and abused, seen more as a tool or a weapon to be used and disposed of than as people. Essen is an orogene, and she has two children who are also orogenes as well. She finds out one day that her husband (not an orogene, a still) has brutally murdered her son and ran off with her daughter. She vows to find them. She ends up in a city that’s underground, and welcomes orogenes as members. This is where she reunites with her old mentor, Alabastor, and he tells her that she has to use her orogeny to harness the power of these obelisks across the globe and bring the moon back. The moon’s orbit has brought it far from the earth, but if it can be returned then stability would reign.

Over the course of the novel we learn about Essen being trained by Alabastor and how she grows more powerful. We also hear from Nassun, who has been travelling with her father to a place where they can turn orogenes back into stills. The other point of view character is Schaffa, a Guardian. Guardians are superhuman people who can kill orogenes if they cannot be controlled anymore. Schaffa used to be assigned to Essun, he ends up founding a small training facility for orogenes and Guardians. This is where Nassun ends up. He takes care of Nassun, and the two share a close bond.

Then there’s also the Stone Eaters. These are a race of beings who used to be human, but centuries ago became more rock. They can pass through the ground as easily as swimming when they want, and they have their own factions and desires as well. Alabastor is friends with one named Antimony, and Essen has her own named Hoa. It’s revealed that Hoa has been going around attacking other Stone Eaters who would do harm to Essen, and he begins to reveal more about their world.

Essentially, only an orogene can activate the Obelisk Gate, the network of obelisks, and harness all of that power. But the Stone Eaters have been around for ages and want to influence who and why someone would do that. And it centers on the moon. In this world, periodically there are Fifth Seasons where the world becomes deadly. Returning the moon would fix that, but also get rid of orogeny. It has something to do with Father Earth where the orogenes (as the legends say) took away its child (as in the Moon) and Father Earth now takes his revenge on the humans. The book ends with both Essen and Nassun, who has recently started training with another Stone Eater, resolving to bring the Moon back.

As you can tell from the summary, there’s a lot of things going on in this book. Unlike the previous one, the three point of view characters are separate a lot of the time, other than Schaffa and Nassun meeting, the three lines stay pretty separate. The result is a lot of plot and story to get through.

One of the strengths is definitely Jemison’s world building. In the last book we learned about orogenes and how they are treated in this society. Here we now learn more about the Stone Eaters and the obelisks. Information about the Guardians is hinted at, but I think more of that will come in the finale to this trilogy.

Another aspect that I think is fascinating is how this series plays with myth and legend. So much of the information that the characters have about their past is through legends. It is hard to tell what is literally true, and what is false. For example, the story about orogenes taking away Father Earth’s child is present in the first book, but it isn’t until now that this is revealed to be rather literally true. Then there’s the Father Earth character. Is this a humanoid being? Or is it a force of nature? I hope that this is expanded on in the next book as well!

I wrote about this previously, but the diversity in the book is so great! At one point Nassun is said to have braids in her hair, referencing how people of color tend to wear theirs. Plus Tonkee, a trans women, starts a relationship with another woman. It isn’t a focus, but it’s nice to have casual queerness that doesn’t have to be justified.

I’m looking forward to the finale! What a read that’s going to be.