K.A. Ashcomb's Blog, page 34

Book Review: Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

This essay is a call to live by one’s conscience. Thoreau asks to resist being part of a government that rules by tyranny, is against humanity on man, or supports injustice towards a person even if the said injustice is what a majority wants. According to him, a majority’s opinion isn’t a reason to follow their example. A majority isn’t based on justice. I’m not sure if he gives a clear definition of what it is based on, maybe upon convention or being part of the views of others. He supports an ...

Book Review: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

A beautiful satire about our recent history of what it was like to live in Baghdad under the US occupation and in the chaos of the country where suicide bombing is the norm rather than the exception. Everyone in the book has lost someone. Everyone is going to sleep in the bed while outside there’s gunfire. The most memorable line in the book is about the maker of Frankenstein wondering if he will die from the falling bullets. Just a passing thought, and then he goes to sleep. The book is full of...

Book Review: Kraken by China Miéville

London is burning after a squid goes missing from the museum’s exhibition, which might lead to the end of the world. Billy Harrow was unfortunate enough to discover the disappearance while giving a tour to the museum for the visitors. He was the one who preserved the squid for the exhibition, meaning the strangeness of the whole thing will surely follow him. If that isn’t bad enough, he gets interviewed by odd officers, who break all the norms of being a copper, and they warn him not to say anyt...

Book Review: Amatka by Karin Tidbeck

It is odd to find a book like that echo inside you, which tells you, yes, it is. Amatka embodied the mood I have been feeling lately: grey, melancholic, disconnected, and stuck, all perfectly normal in this spectrum we call living. I loved the book enormously. Now read it. 

Okay, I might give you justifications for why this book clicked with me the way it did. But, oddly enough, it isn’t because of the dystopian setting. I haven’t been into such stories lately because I exhausted myself with ...

Short Story: Supreme Efficiency

He watched as the big clock of the office wall ran its seconds in bold red numbers. He waited for them to round up into the perfect equilibrium. Their beauty and meaning decided by someone with enough titles to know what is proper and functional to arrive at supreme efficiency. It was just that he had never felt like he fitted the ethos of effectualness. Around him, others were happy to tap on until a sound marked the end of their shift. Then they would get up simultaneously and leave in an orde...

Book Review: The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson

I have had this book for years, waiting to be read. The idea of a hiking journey through a Lovecraftian world accompanied by a cat sounds just lovely. To add on, the protagonist is middle-aged. Something more books should have, instead of teens running around and saving the world. Unfortunately, there ends my love for the work. The plot wasn’t for me. I couldn’t get invested in a lovesick runaway college student being chased after and brought back so that her father wouldn’t shut the college dow...

Book Review: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

This is a story about imperialism and Baru Cormorant, who has to figure out her identity and alliance when her home island is invaded by the Empire of Masks. Baru is a savant (as the book keeps repeatedly stating, especially in the middle of the book, so much that I hate the word) even as a child. She can figure out connections and the bigger picture just by looking at things. As a character, she can easily turn off the reader as her calculative nature and disregard for her emotions appear coldh...

Short Story: Pre-programmed

I have this theory that there are two types of people—those preprogrammed to have good fortune and excellent genetic makeup. And those like me, who draw a short stick always in the lottery, whose body is a minefield to be navigated and negotiated, and who is a test to the point of the whole existence. So years, I have tried to fight to get to the other side, and for years, I thought my theory to be rumblings of the self-pitying me. I encouraged myself to stop trying to see past the surface into ...

Book Review: The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

I am not sure how to review this book or start this review. Maybe I should say that this is a horror short story about two friends, Swede and our protagonist, who are on a canoe trip and stay over on an island. Then things gradually start getting weird, and the willows surrounding their tent get closer, and there are strange noises at night. Clearly, all is not what it seems, and the barrier between this world and the eerie is getting thin.

That’s the premise in a nutshell. Then we get to the...

Book Review: Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune

Dead is only a beginning, as the book’s slogan says. Wallace Price is a scrooge. He’s a heartless lawyer who has forgotten what life is all about and how to care about others. The only thing he cares about is winning cases and things being efficient. Then he dies, and a reaper, Mei, takes him to limbo (a tea shop), where he can accept his death and move on to the other side with the help of Hugo, the lovable ferryman. And because this is a book, the story isn’t as straightforward.

The book’s ...