Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. In this post, I will be doing a wrap up of all the books I read in February. This month I read 8 books. It was definitely a slower reading month for me, and I did not complete my reading challenge this time. Some books were also longer than the ones I read last month, while others were not all that to my liking. In fact, I am going to start with a book I didn’t like and which I DNF’d at 60%. These reviews have spoilers.
1. BOTM: Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian
My full review for this book is found here. This book is a retelling of the poem The Lady of Shalott by Lord Tennyson, and I confess it is not a favorite. In fact, I DNF’d it at 60% when Arthur’s myth was changed too much to my liking; the new twist was too much for me, and I could not continue. This is unfortunate because I am an avid reader of Arthurian literature (and retellings), and I was excited to read this book. Also, I had liked this author’s previous series, but this was a disappointment for me.
2. START A SERIES: Servant of the Underworld by Ailette de Bodard
This book is a whodunit set in the Mexica empire (also known as the Aztec empire) prior to the arrival of the Spaniards and the Spanish colonization of Mexico. The main character is the high priest of Mitclantecuhtli, the Lord of the Land of the Dead, Acatl, who suddenly finds himself as the lead investigator in the disappearance of a priestess of Xochitlquetzal, the goddess of love, beauty, female sexuality, and fertility, who happens to have been his brother’s mistress several years ago. Now, Acatl’s brother has been arrested and charged for her disappearance and Acatl is racing against time in an attempt to clear his brother’s name.
I really liked this book, and I really liked Acatl. He is an introverted and shy priest of the dead whose secluded and happy life is taken away from him when his superior makes him High Priest of Mitclantecuhtli. It is a position he does not want, resents her for, and that he is dismally bad at. However, he is at her beck and call and when she summons him to investigate the disappearance of a priestess, he doesn’t have much choice but to comply. Also, I liked the world in this book and the gods’ role in it, and in my opinion this is the best thing about the novel. The importance of the gods in the lives of the Mexica is something tangible in this book, and the author does an amazing job at letting us grasp it. It is as if we are there, and I loved that. This book was everything that Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia was not. This book was what I was expecting that one to be but was not (read my review for Gods of Jade and Shadow here.) I will definitely continue with this series.
3. NONFICTION: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
This book is an essay that addresses an important issue that perhaps has a relatively simple solution. In a world of increasing complexity, where specialists have become super-specialists (the examples provided here are from medicine because the author is a surgeon, but they apply to any discipline), mistakes are nonetheless still being made, and in the particular case of medicine those mistakes can be fatal. So what can we do to avoid those mistakes? Write a checklist and go over it every time. Checklists were first used in aeronautics and the aviation industry, where it is equally important to avoid mistakes in the fabrication and assembly of aircrafts to prevent disaster and the death of an aircraft’s passengers and pilots. The author here goes into the history of the checklist and advocates for the use of it in America’s ORs to help prevent the death of thousands of patients who might find themselves at the receiving end of a doctor’s mistake.
This book was recommended to me by a colleague who works as an editor and using a checklist here is just as effective in avoiding mistakes as it is in aeronautics and medicine. I found this book to be a very interesting read on something that we do practically every day because checklists can also be used as to-do lists or grocery lists or any kind of list really.
4. REQUESTED REVIEW: Pulse by Judy G. Walters
Pulse by Judy G. Walters is a fast-paced, gut-wrenching, and prone-to-tears (in some places), medical drama fiction book set in the emergency room of a hospital in Texas. Trigger warning for death of a child and drowning. The main character, Dr. Bobby Jackson, is a well-respected, well-liked, and successful emergency doctor whose prosperous medical career is severely weighed down by his utterly unsuccessful marriage to his abusive wife. After the death of their son two years before (no spoiler here because this happens at the beginning of the book, in the preface), Bobby is not in a good place. Leaving his job at the hospital where Jeremy died, he decides to start fresh at St. Mary’s Emergency Department where nobody knows about his past or has ever met his wife. Unfortunately, he cannot do the same thing at home and his relationship with Jaqueline is beyond repair.
The contrast between a successful career and an ailing personal life is what I liked most about this book. On the one hand, there’s the emergency room where everything happens so fast you barely have time to breathe without risking someone’s life in between, while on the other hand, there’s the main character’s life outside of the ER and the remains of his son’s death. This book is about grief and how the loss of a loved one can make you stop living altogether in the aftermath. Read my full review here. I gave this book an Okay rating.
5. Malice by John Gwynne
I first read this book in August 2021. I picked it up again because I needed a refresher to continue on with the series, and I am glad that I did. I am currently reading Book 2 in this series, and I am enjoying it very much thus far. And I was right! Nathair is The Black Sun, though it hasn’t been confirmed yet in the story. But I know I am right…
I enjoyed this book a lot more the second time around, as I was now more familiar with the world and the characters. The only thing that bothered me a bit was that a lot of things happen in-between one chapter of a character and another and most of those things happen “off-stage”, or off-page. Sometimes it’s been months since we last saw a character; other times, it’s only been a few hours. This was most apparent in Veradis’ storyline, where he only just arrives to Tenebral in one chapter and joins Nathair’s warband and then he is already Nathair’s first-sword two or three chapters later. I know that the story of how Veradis becomes a warrior isn’t all that relevant to the overall plot of the entire series but still, Veradis becoming so skilled as a warrior so fast made it a little less believable for me. Later, I realized that the events in this book take place in a two-year span (and a lot of things that happen do get told) but I was still a bit bothered by this.
Nonetheless, I still Really Liked this book.
6. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
This book is probably the one for which this author is most widely known for, and in it he tries to talk about something most people don’t want to talk about but that everyone will most likely have to because it is inevitable: death, and what to do when someone is dying and there is nothing left we (or medicine) can do for them. Gawande not only talks about patients who suffer from an incurable disease but also about old people and how we all reach (or are going to reach) a point where we must inevitably let go and accept that the end is near, including the afflicted person’s loved ones. We must learn, he says, to accept that we all die and that when it is time, to talk about it.
I admit some of the cases Gawande talks about in this book were hard to read about, but I liked that in doing so he is trying to humanize and personalize medicine. I Really Liked this book and will probably read it again.
7. CLASSIC: The Once and Future King by T.H. White
This book is a new favorite. It is a classic for a reason, and I enjoyed it very much despite my utter dislike for Lancelot and his affair with Guinevere. In this book, Lancelot is not portrayed as a ladies’ man (as in Half Sick of Shadows by Laura Sebastian) and that was a nice change. The edition I read of The Once and Future King includes The Sword in the Stone, the novella on which Disney’s eponymous movie is based on, The Queen of Air and Darkness, previously titled The Witch in the Wood, The Ill-Made Knight, and The Candle in the Wind. I enjoyed all four novellas very much, even though I read The Sword in the Stone at a much slower rate than the others and some parts of the physical printed novel were not included in the audiobook while some chapters of the audiobook were not in the physical book itself. This, I assume, is because the book has been revised and edited several times and not all editions are the same. However, it was a bit frustrating, and it made me read the first novella at a much slower pace than the others, still I enjoyed the story of Wart’s education very much. The last novella, The Book of Merlyn, is not included in my edition of The Once and Future King but I am still planning on reading it. Also, if there is a book that retells Arthur’s myth from the point of view of the Orkney brothers I would very much like to read it.
8. LIBRARY BOOK: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
This book is a fictional account of the life of Agnes Magnusdottir as she awaits her own execution for the deaths of Natan Kettilson and Pétur Jónsson. Based on true events that happened in Northern Ireland more than a hundred years ago, this book relates what is thought to have happened in the months before and after the murders as all three suspects, two women and a man, are arrested, imprisoned, and later sentenced to death by trial. Agnes Magnusdottir was executed on January 12th, 1830, and she is known as the last person to have been executed in Iceland. The axe head and the chopping block used to carry out her sentence are currently on display at Iceland’s National Museum.
The book is called Burial Rites because both Agnes and Fridrik were denied Christian burial rites, and their heads were displayed publicly shortly after the execution. However, in less than 24 hours, the heads were stolen, and they would be missing for almost 100 years. Today, both Agnes’ and Fridrik’s bodies are buried (with their heads) at the place of their execution, in the churchyard at Tjörn.
I don’t usually read books of this sort, but this book caught my attention because of the title. And I liked it because it is a very atmospheric read. I felt as if I were in the place where this story takes place, and I could feel the ice and cold that Iceland is known for (and very likely named after) as it was being described. The weather in this book, I think, is as much a character in this story as Agnes herself and I liked how easily I was transported to 1829, when Iceland was under Danish rule. Today, Iceland is an independent country, yes, but Illugastadir, where these murders took place, and the surrounding farms, aren’t all that different, yet life itself is so very different. I Really Liked this book and will probably read it again.
The only prompt I didn’t complete this month was Finish a Series. Thank you for reading.
