Stacked Shelves

I’m a horrible blogger. Several times this past year, I thought I should just quit this. But I keep being drawn back. So, I’m going to do a little catching up and see how well I remember some of the books I read much earlier this year. Stay tuned. Today, however, I’m just going to write about one. I’ve been singing the praises of The Fifth Season all year even though I’m late to the party: It was published in 2015, and Jemisin is well-known as a gifted writer in the sci-fi and fantasy world. Since then, she has come out with the next two books in The Broken Earth trilogy and has won the Hugo Award three years running. No author has ever done that, let alone a black, female author. Back in 2015 she was the first African-American to win the Hugo for Best Novel. Actually, this year’s Hugos were dominated by women as female authors won in all the major categories. This is important. I’ve been noticing odd twitter posts lately about how women really don’t play video games or ar

I wasn’t sure how many stars to give The Immortalists on Good Reads. I liked the book – it was, actually, a good read (see what I did there?). But I didn’t love it. Oddly, I kept thinking that maybe it was over-edited. Sometimes you read a book and think, this really could have used another pass by an editor. This time, I wondered if too much was cut. The book begins with the four Gold children, Varya, Daniel, Klara and Simon (oldest to youngest), visiting a fortuneteller. She gives each of them the date of his or her death. Fast forward (maybe 10 years?) and their father, Saul, dies. Saul’s death provides the catalyst for Klara and Simon to leave New York together and begin living out their destinies. (Klara is 18, but Simon is underage and considered a runaway.) Spoilers ahead. And here I came to my first problem – one that continued throughout the book. Every child talks about missing Saul, yet as readers we hardly knew him. Why was Saul’s death needed t