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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
EmilyMB has commented on (7) products
Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch 1)
by
Ann Leckie
EmilyMB
, September 11, 2015
This book was so much fun to read. "Breq" is on a quest for vengeance--but can't stop herself from trying to save one of her former lieutenants (once she didn't even like!) along the way, which might just get her killed. Not to mention she's throwing herself into a conflict that divides a civilization right at the heart, on a very personal level. I really loved how the ship Justice of Toren's dozens of ancillary bodies allowed her to see from multiple points of view at once. This allowed Leckie to combine the immediacy of a first-person narrative with some of the wider range of third person. The ancillaries' habit of singing together is a delightful detail, and the cruel irony of the lone survivor being the body with a lousy voice was both funny and heartbreaking. Leckie used the device of multiple bodies to question just how unified any person's identity really is (you'll never hear the phrase "of two minds" the same way again), while still maintaining a fun pace with plenty of action and hints of mystery.
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Spirit Gate Crossroads 1
by
Kate Elliott
EmilyMB
, August 27, 2015
The Crossroads Trilogy is one of my favorite things ever! In Spirit Gate, something sinister is afoot in The Hundred. It's been generations since anyone has seen the Guardians, immortal dispensers of justice, in the Hundred. Have they been abandoned? Or are the Guardians just a legend? Marit and Joss are reeves who patrol the land with their giant eagles, trying to keep the peace. But then Joss breaks the boundaries by trespassing on a Guardian altar. When Marit discovers an abandoned temple and a secret army, she realizes something is terribly wrong in the Hundred... Beyond the mountains, Mai has found herself married off to Captain Anji, a leader of the nomadic warriors who conquered her town. A deadly conspiracy forces them to flee across the mountains, along with Mai's uncle Shai and Anji's most loyal troops. When the arrive, no one in the Hundred is at all pleased to see strange soldiers, and they're commanded to go back where they came from--which will mean certain death. But then the creeping terror haunting the Hundred reveals itself at last, and Anji might be the only one who can save them. Of course, there's always a price... Everything in this book felt so alive and real to me: the characters with all their unique personalities and conflicting goals, the lush setting, the hints of ancient and awesome magic, the growing sense of dread that there's something Terribly Wrong, and of course the giant eagles. It's an epic start to an even more epic trilogy, and I enjoyed every page. I raced through the sequels, and have pre-ordered the first book of the sequel trilogy, Black Wolves, coming out this fall.
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Servant of the Underworld Obsidian & Blood 01
by
Aliette De Bodard
EmilyMB
, March 01, 2012
Servant of the Underworld is an engaging historical mystery set in pre-European contact Tenochtitlan. The setting alone is a refreshing change (unless you live in an alternate universe where every other historical mystery is set in the pre-contact Americas, in which case I'd like some of your used books). It's also sort of fantasy (at least to non-Aztecs), in that it depicts the Aztec religion as entirely real: for instance, you really can go down to Mictlan and talk to the Lord and Lady of the Underworld, or fight underworld demons. You probably don't want to, though, if you can avoid it. Unfortunately, Acatl can't. Acatl, High Priest of the Temple of Mictlan, is summoned to investigate the disappearance of a priestess by apparently supernatural means. Her room is drenched in blood, and the only other person there is... Acatl's estranged - and now blood-stained - brother, who doesn't remember what happened but swears he didn't do it. Uh-oh. To make things worse, it looks like the perpetrator used a jaguar spirit, which narrows the suspect pool to... anyone born on the day of the jaguar, ie umpteen thousands of people. So that's not much help. Things go downhill from there, as you might expect. Lots of fun.
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1421 The Year China Discovered The World
by
Gavin Menzies
EmilyMB
, October 09, 2011
My main thought while reading this book for the first time was, "I want the adventure novel RIGHT NOW." Because the tale of the Chinese fleet splitting up to explore the whole world, including the Antarctic, would make a great novel or movie. The scholarship is another story. Now, there are plenty of good pieces of evidence presented in this book (the Chinese definitely did make it to India and East Africa). I'm just not sure they're as definitive as the author presents, and think he took a few too many leaps from Point A to Point K without making sure all the dots in between connected. Quite a few of his pieces of evidence are essentially described as "possible Chinese junks/artifacts/etc., pending excavation." If we haven't looked at it properly yet, it's suggestive, but not nearly as strong a piece of evidence as we'd wish. There are several instance where he doesn't give enough information about a particular bit of evidence he presents for readers to be able to evaluate it. I'll give some examples: - The Vinland Map has been tested and debated over for decades in an attempt to authenticate it or prove it a forgery. Menzies mentions the debate, mentions that one point in contention was the presence of anatase in the ink (not usually found until the 1920s), and then says that someone found some anatase in another definitely authentic medieval map, so that argument can be dismissed. In fact, the anatase issue is much more complicated than that, let alone the other questions about the map he doesn't even mention. He doesn't give the reader enough of a summary of the issues to evaluate the arguments of either side, or even know that there are as many questions as actually exist. He makes it look disingenuously simple. - He mentions that some other studies found that two villages in Peru and the Navajo elders about a century ago understood Chinese. He does not say which dialect of Chinese, which would be an important point - many are mutually unintelligible. He also does not attempt to explain how it is that language populations separated for five centuries and surrounded by other language groups would somehow remain mutually intelligible. (I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's a major issue that needs to be addressed.) He doesn't even say whether the original studies he's citing addressed these issues. And so forth. It's certainly suggestive, and Menzies's thesis may turn out to be essentially correct, but I'd want a lot more examinations of the evidence before accepting most of it. However, the book is also a fun ride. For less speculative accounts of the voyages, you can check out books like When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433 by Louise Levathes or Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433 by Edward Dreyer.
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War With the Mein Acacia 1
by
David Anthon Durham, David Anthony Durham
EmilyMB
, October 05, 2011
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Acacia has a large, prosperous empire in which many people live pretty well - but there's a serious dark side: the secret trade of slaves for drugs the empire conducts with a distant, largely mysterious nation. The king abhors the trade, but is himself addicted to the imported drug; he endeavors at least to try to clean up some of these problems before his children come to power, for their sake. All Acacian plans go out the window when the Mein arrive on their quest for vengeance and conquest. The story has some familiar epic fantasy elements - I could compare it to A Song of Ice and Fire - but Durham puts enough twists in that it feels fresh and exciting again. One bit I particularly loved is what he did with the old trope, "Oh, our ancestors want us to take vengeance, so what can you do?" When the Mein say this, they mean it literally: their ancestors are all stored up in a big sacred warehouse, and they are most definitely capable of giving their descendants orders. I also liked that for the conflict near the end (trying to be vague here); I honestly could not guess who was going to win.
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Dark Matter Shedding Light on Philip Pullmans Trilogy His Dark Materials
by
Tony Watkins
EmilyMB
, September 30, 2011
Watkins gives a brief biography of Pullman and summarizes his works before the HDM trilogy, which serves as background material for his analysis of the major themes of HDM. This section is pretty straightforward. The book gets meatier when he analyzes HDM itself, investigating themes such as truth, innocence and experience, growing up, authority, and the natures of God and consciousness as portrayed in the books. There's also an interesting sidebar about the demons in HDM where Watkins goes through the process most readers have of trying to figure out exactly what Pullman's demons are; I found his comparison of HDM's tripartite human (body/demon/ghost) to the Holy Trinity especially fascinating. One problem, though: Watkins chides Pullman for misrepresenting the Church and various Christian doctrines (implying more that Pullman hasn't learned enough about them to understand properly rather than that he's deliberately lying). Yet he blithely asserts that a material universe without a higher power can only be deterministic, with no possibility of free will, and that morality can only come from a wholly good God. This ignores the many, many works in which atheists, agnostics, and other non-believers have argued the contrary. If Watkins is aware of these, he ought to have mentioned them even if only to dismiss them. It seems he may also be guilty of misrepresentation.
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Brown Girl in the Ring
by
Nalo Hopkinson
EmilyMB
, September 29, 2011
This was a really fun book. Post-apocalyptic (well, kinda - it was a slow, economic apocalypse) Toronto is a vivid and interesting setting, from the drug-dealing gangs to the nice old couple selling squirrel meat in the park to get by. The protagonist, Ti-Jeanne, is a young woman tough enough to survive here, but still overwhelmed and uncertain about things as a lot of young people are. She keeps forgiving her drug-dealing ex-boyfriend when she probably shouldn't, is stressed about the new baby, and her relationship with her grandmother Gros-Jeanne is complicated by Ti-Jeanne's wanting nothing to do with her grandmother's Caribbean religious practices. (Her mother Mi-Jeanne has been missing for years.) Then a politician living outside the Burn, in a nicer area of Toronto, decides a porcine hear transplant just isn't good enough for her and tasks a gang leader with fetching a nice, fresh human one - no questions asked. Unfortunately, he turns the job over to one of his dealers, Toby, who happens to be Ti-Jeanne's ex-boyfriend. To shake things up even more, Ti-Jeanne starts realizing that the loa her grandmother worships are real, and they want something from her...
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