Booknotes 4.24

I’m a month behind on these, I know. (Cue some rambling about how letting things sit for a bit adds seasoning and thoughtfulness to the reviews.)

The Trials of Empire, by Richard Swan, published 2023, fantasy. Third in the Empire of the Wolf trilogy. Harrowing. Maybe a bit too much horror for me? I’m not sure how I feel about it, but it was well crafted and I enjoyed the Slavic influence on some of the names, and I still plan to keep reading Swan.

Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, published 2003, nonfiction. Whew. This took me over a year to read because of shuffling priorities, but it’s very readable and quite good. Highly recommended if you want to get the flavor of Stalin’s reign and the brutality and insanity it fostered. “Stalin was now so omnipotent that when he mispronounced a word from the podium, every subsequent speaker repeated the mistake.” Lots about Beria and Molotov and Yezhov and the rest of Stalin’s cronies. Also: six-hour nocturnal dinners lasting till dawn?! I can’t even. Last year I read Montefiore’s Young Stalin, and it too was good and eminently readable.

How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit, by Witold Rybczynski, published 2014, nonfiction. I didn’t know enough architectural vocabulary to fully understand the book (and still don’t), but I nevertheless enjoyed it. Lots of interesting stories about different buildings and how they were designed. And I enjoyed the typography comparison — something I do know something about! — during the part about tradition and revivals.

Children of Memory, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, published 2022, science fiction. Third in the Children of Time series. Wow. Not what I expected (and yes, different from the first two), but I really liked it — maybe even more than the others in the series. There are several interesting takes on sentience, and the core conceit messed with my brain in a way I am totally here for. Very much looking forward to Children of Strife next year.