The Neurospicy Bean

  Okay, I’ve been agonizing over this review for literally months. Pulley’s writing here is absolutely beautiful, her characters compelling, her world intriguing. She makes things that absolutely shouldn’t make any sense – talking mammoths anyone? – feel entirely natural. I was captivated from beginning to end. And yet. I have seen some legitimate criticisms of the way the book approaches its subject matter. The idea is that Mars is a human colony, specifically Chinese (although there are several cultural influences). Mars-born humans, being born in lighter gravity, are taller and generally more delicate than Earth-born humans. Earth-born humans (Earthstrongers) are comparatively extremely strong, enough so that a mere touch can pose a threat to a Martian, so they’re segregated from Martians. Our main character, January, is an Earthstronger refugee, while his love interest, Aubrey Gale, is a politician running on the platform of mandatory Earthstronger naturalization. There is a LO...

  I really have no idea what to think here. It’s not that any individual component of this book was actively bad; it’s just that there are so many different components going on that it all starts seeming very odd and hard to follow. Half of the book takes place in a futuristic world where one of the main characters, Mica, is being hunted by a cult that has infiltrated the government because they believe they can bring forth their god by sacrificing her. The other half takes place in Animkii’s world, where technology is forbidden and clans cling to survival through a system of rituals and structures that seems like a grab bag of a whole variety of indigenous traditions from around the world. It’s all a bit jarring.  Also, Animkii is shown as white on the cover, and although her race isn’t specifically discussed that I remember, like I said her world seems to be drawing very heavily from indigenous cultures, which feels a bit appropriation-y.  Come to think of it, I’m not s...

  This is such a clever premise for a book. It’s entirely different from any dystopian/apocalypse story I’ve ever seen, and it manages to be surprisingly horrifying in a way that lets it compete with any zombie apocalypse. That being said, the execution was a bit odd. There wasn’t as much tension as it felt like the story warranted? The stakes were clearly high, and a fascinating sort of political intrigue gets laid out across the book, but the actual tension was missing for me for a lot of the book. In the scenes where it worked, it really worked, but so many crucial moments got told in the form of a diary entry that a lot of the tension and drama got lost. Also, the story spanned a really long time. Which is fine because it gave it a very unique structure and, I think, allowed a story of parenthood and what we owe the world to be told that would be really challenging to tell if it didn’t span a lifetime. Unfortunately, it also meant that a lot of relationships sort of got pushed ...