A Jungle of Tales

  I actually discovered this story by browsing Netflix and clicking on a Chinese TV series titled ‘The Untamed’ that was described thus: “In a magical world of inter-clan rivalry, two soulmates face treacherous schemes and uncover a dark mystery linked to a tragic event in the past.” I watched the first two episodes and thought they were all right, with some enjoyably cheesy special effects. However, the plot and world-building were a bit confusing, and apart from the main characters - mischievous sort-of-reincarnated dark magic user Wei WuXian and overly serious Lan WangJi - I had trouble keeping track of the characters. The credits listed “based on a novel by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu”. Hang on! Isn’t that the author of ‘Heaven Official’s Blessing’?   Yes, yes it is! However, due to censorship issues in China, the central relationship in the show was, according to Wikipedia, reduced to some heavy subtext. I therefore went to the internet to try to find a transl...

  Saw this list of questions circulating on BookTube*, and figured – Why not?   * The section of YouTube that focuses on books   1. Best book you’ve read so far in 2021. Most of the ones below I loved, but for fiction I have to pick 'Conjure Women' . The characters are well-written, the plot had a bunch of twists I didn’t see coming, and it is just really well-crafted overall. For non-fiction, it is absolutely ‘Wild Swans: Three daughters of China’ , an engaging multi-generation memoir of a Chinese family through a tumultuous century.   2. Best sequel you've read so far in 2021. Nothing I’ve read was a sequel, so have to skip this one.   3. New release you haven't read yet, but want to & 4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year. I don’t really track new releases, so I have no idea. But I HOPE that someday soon we get an English translation of the light novel ‘Seraph of the End: The Vampire Mikaela’...

  This young adult romance/coming of age tale begins with Trinidadian teen Audre facing exile: Her mother caught her with the pastor’s granddaughter and is sending her to live in Minneapolis with her father. Her grandmother, Queenie, reassures her: “Your first tabanca is a heartbreak that feels like a bit of death, yes…you been taught that Spirit speak the loudest when we deep in the water, drowning in trouble and fear…And, dahlin’ let me tell you something for truth: America have dey spirits too, believe me.” In Minnesota, another girl, Mabel, is likewise coming to terms with her own queerness. Luckily, she has far more supportive parents – and when Audre, whose father happens to be a family friend, arrives, they soon grow close. But then Mabel falls ill. Audre desperately calls on her grandmother’s healing wisdom to try and save her, while Mabel forms an unexpected bond with a writer on death row.           ...

  This sci-fi alternate history series posits: What would have happened if aliens invaded during the middle of WWII? I first read these books back when I was graduating high school and remembered it as an engaging story. I wondered if it would hold up, now that I’m older and know more about the real history. The answer is: Yeah, pretty much! In fact, I’m rather surprised that this hasn’t already been adapted for a TV series or movie franchise, given the popularity of WWII stories and the increasingly mainstream appeal of science fiction and fantasy. Unusually, the first book begins with the alien perspective. Fleetlord Atvar of The Race is preparing to launch his attack on Tosev 3 (Earth), which his emperor hopes to make their third colony world. Atvar brings up an image to show his officers the kind of enemy they expect to face: a Saracen warrior on a camel or a knight in armor. Kirel added, “These are recent images, too: they date back only about…eight hund...

               I read Heaven Official’s Blessing, a Chinese web novel about a well-meaning but rather ill-fortuned martial god and his demon/ghost king boyfriend last year and was instantly enchanted. While the story could get a bit silly in places, I loved the characters and the mix of fantasy martial-arts adventure, mystery-solving, horror, and romance was engaging enough to make me easily breeze through 244 GoogleDrive chapters (which was how the translation was available). So I was very excited to hear that there was going to be a Netflix animated adaptation and re-read the original book in preparation. My original positive assessment still mostly stands, and indeed has improved in places. There were some nice little bits of foreshadowing I missed the first time around. For instance, early in the book it says, regarding how Hua Cheng became a ghost: Some say he was born crippled without a right eye a...

  This book caught my eye first for the amazing cover art (just look at that up there!) and then because the concept of a story centered on Native women protecting their traditions and families through seeds reminded me of an organization called Native Seed Search that I ran across when my family briefly moved to Arizona. I was feeling un-rooted myself and was discovering that the way I found my footing in a place was through its plants. I really liked that this organization existed to preserve Tohono O’odham crop varieties and the arid-land farming techniques associated with them 1 . This tale jumps back and forth across time from the mid 1800s to the early 2000s and largely takes place in Mní Sota (Minnesota), with some episodes in Nebraska, where survivors of the Dakota War were removed. The characters feel very real – mostly likeable but not at all perfect. Beautiful descriptions of and interactions with wild and cultivated plants alternate with episodes of...