I’ve seen this book around for ages. I wanted to read more Canadian fiction and this is one that caught my eye. The concept is that people stopped dreaming and the Indigenous people were being hunted for their marrow because that would allow people to dream again. It sounded interesting!

But it’s also an award winning book. I do not like award winning books. And this one is no different.

The premise of the book does not play into the book. There’s maybe one full dream sequence, you never find out what happens when you lose the ability to dream, and I don’t know who gets the marrow once it’s extracted. It’s weird that this premise is even there at all because this could have been a fictional account of running from Residential Schools, a thing that I seem to remember learning actually happened, and 95% of the book could have remained nearly identical.

The book very much reads like something I would have read for grade 8 and analyzed chapter by chapter. I think the book ultimately is best read in that way, taken apart to study the symbolism rather than read as a whole. Read all together without those pauses, you realize that there’s no tension and that not a lot happens. They are being chased, but you never see the villains except at the very start and very end. There is no real view of how the world has changed since the world was destroyed and, without that contrast to see how people who can’t dream are different from people who can, you don’t really know why anyone would want their marrow in the first place.

It is interesting to see the Canadian Government as the villain, but that’s also historically accurate. There’s probably a deeper meaning, but I’m not reading books to find the deeper meaning someone else wants me to find.

Overall, I think this wasn’t my thing. It’s a literary book instead of a genre one, and therefore followed different conventions that I’m not that interested in. I know that I don’t like award winning books, and should have probably known better. Still, if it’s your thing, you might like it. It’s Canadian, Indigenous, and it has queer rep that was done pretty well. ((Except for the ending. Nice, but came out of nowhere.))

Today in books I’ve been meaning to check out, Magic for Liars! The premise of a murder mystery Harry Potter for grown ups sounded interesting and I figured I might as well check it out.

The story follows Ivy, the normal sister who has opted for a life of private investigation. As someone impartial but aware of the magical world, she is brought to the magical academy to figure out what really happened to one of the professors who was found split in two and very dead. Her twin sister who she has a strange-to-estranged relationship with is a teacher at the school and she gets wrapped up in the universe trying to figure out just what happened.

The mystery was pretty easy to solve, as the answer is in a throw away line pretty early on in the story, though the reason why becomes much more interesting. There were a lot of interesting elements in the way the magic and the world functioned, as well as the pasts of the characters that get brought in so that they can be entwined into the core narrative. It was pretty well crafted as a story, even if you don’t care much for the mystery.

But then there’s the characters. Nothing is bad, mind you, but there was a lot that was unnecessary. Ivy gets into a relationship that doesn’t do anything to add to the story, and the two sibling relationships that feature are much more interesting. There’s also a lot of time spent on very obvious red herring characters that I could have done without, but that’s more about the genre conventions of a mystery than anything else.

I did like that there was a lot of Ivy’s bias in the story. It may not have been intentional, but the way some characters were perceived felt very much like it was because of the perspective and not because of what they were actually like. Also, because Ivy doesn’t understand magic, we never get a full explanation of how magic works, which I think worked to the book’s benefit.

Overall, I really enjoyed it! It’s a pretty light read with some good moments for the characters. Ivy was an interesting protagonist, even if she did get a bit stuck in her own head from time to time, and her observational abilities in a world she was unfamiliar with made the story come alive. The mystery component was not my thing, but otherwise I really liked it.

I got this book for really cheap. I’d seen the title around here and there, and didn’t have very high expectations. James Patterson Presents is a banner that has so far had not so great books inside it. With Girls of Paper and Fire, though, I was pleasantly surprised!

Lei is kidnapped from her family to be a concubine to the king and gains the title of Paper Girl whether she wants it or not. As she grows accustomed to her tasks and lives in fear of the king calling on her to perform the duties she was kidnapped for, she falls for another one of the Paper Girls.

It has to be said that the book has heavy themes of sexual assault. I think it’s handled mostly well, with very little of the assault itself happening on the page unless she escapes, and focusing the attention squarely on her reaction to it. There’s other bits of brutality that are much more explicit, such as the murder of the dog that happens in chapter 2 ((Which amounts to nothing, the dog is not significant, it’s murdered to heighten the tension)) or the other Paper caste people who step out of line.

The world is interesting in that it actually feels Chinese. There’s a lot of touches, particularly in the terminology and the rituals that are used, that really evoke the feeling of the culture. Even in how the demons are described, something about it just feels very Chinese. I’m not sure why. It may be that I’m Thai, or that I grew up with a lot of Chinese friends, but it feels very authentic even as a fantasy world.

I will say that the middle sags and can be skimmed, though, and there’s some character issues. Besides Lei, no one changes so much as you learn more about their context. With a cast this large it’s understandable, but I was hoping for at least a few of them to get actual arcs.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It’s definitely worth a read, particularly if you find the hardcover for as much of a discount as I did.