Posted on by Cassidee Lanstra

Tristan’s Folly by Marcus Lee: A Review

Yay! I was able to get a spot on Storytellers on Tour’s promotion of Marcus Lee’s new book. Tristan’s Folly picks up where Kings and Daemons left off. I can tell you one thing, the action was immediate. That’s something that I enjoyed in the first book as much as the second book. Lee knows how to pull his readers in.

Straight off the bat, Taran and the crew makes new enemies, as well as new allies. It is fun to see the characters that we followed in the previous novel coming together in this book more. The banter between characters comes easy and made me smile quite a bit throughout the novel. While others are coming together, The Witch King is still up to his dark ways and cruelties.

Maya is one of those characters that is a breath of fresh air. She’s truly good and compassionate and wants the best for those are her. The love story being her and Taran is soft and sweet, just enough to flavor the book without overpowering it or making it feel like a romance. This is a nice contrast to the constant cloud of doom, the battles that are always near. Speaking of Maya’s kind soul, through her and Astren, Lee brings up some thought-provoking conversation about the cost of war, weighing the immediate effect against the the long term effect that will strike a chord with many. There’s such a shade of grey that comes with war. It is easy to say that it is never needed, but sometimes you have to fight back. Sometimes it simply comes down to survival of the fittest. I love books that dig deeper into your subconscious.

Tristan’s Folly is a book that makes for smooth reading. Lee doesn’t fall prey to too much imagery, he sprinkles enough in to capture your attention while keeping the book’s plot at the forefront. No long, meandering paragraphs where you gloss over. I appreciate this in a novel. I like my novels to be driven by the characters, and this is certainly the case.

I also like that we get a lot of Daleth’s POV in this. Often we don’t get to see much of the “bad guy’s” thoughts, we just see them through the eyes of the other characters. Daleth’s sinister thoughts are compelling and at times, humorous. His response and thoughts to Taran’s crew are so entertaining. He leads with strength, and though people know he’s evil, they’re still willing to follow him. Reversely, on the side of good, people are having to accept a leader that isn’t quite up to their expectations. There’s treachery and twists aplenty happening. This treachery adds to the earlier question, how much are you willing to sacrifice to win? For the greater good? Is it worth giving up your own happiness?

Lastly, I just wanna say: I think the storyline Lee gave Kalas is GENIUS. It is so unique and I can’t say much without spoiling it for those that haven’t read the books yet, but he’s such an intriguing character. Whenever he’s in a scene, I always perk up a bit more than before.

Marcus Lee made another compelling read in his series, The Gifted and the Cursed. The lines between friends and foes, dark and light, monster and man are all muddled. These are some fun reads! If you haven’t had a chance to read them yet, enter this giveaway Here. Thanks to Marcus and Storytellers on Tour for including me!

Check out the other bloggers on this tour by clicking Here.

Posted on by Cassidee Lanstra

The Fixed Stars: A Review

“Your whole life has been true. It happened to you.”

Thank you to Abrams Press for sending me a review copy of The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg. This memoir is a quick, intelligent read revolving around Molly’s life and her journey with identifying her sexuality. While married, she finds herself intensely attracted to another woman when she is called into jury duty. Throughout her life, she had thought she identified as straight. She thought of sexuality as linear: you are straight or you are gay/lesbian. As time went on, she found that what we think of as “girl crushes” were actual sexual attraction to women. She takes us on her journey of finding love with other women, the demise of her marriage and the road to healthy co-parenting, and her current partner’s help in her education on non-binary awareness.

This was one of the quickest books I’ve read in a while. Molly doesn’t preach at you, she gets the confusion towards sexuality and gender identification, as she experienced it herself. Understanding the fluidity involved in those things can be confusing BECAUSE of the fluidity. At one point Molly makes a comment about how she doesn’t think of herself in loving men or women, but in loving a person because they are who she needed at that point in her life, regardless of the body parts they have. She states things much more eloquently than I do and her writing has a balance of poignancy and warmth that is consistent with normal life. There’s a real takeaway here that it’s okay to not pin down your identification, just as much as it is okay to be absolutely sure of how you identify.

“I never fell in love with a man because he was a man, you know? I mean, I wasn’t falling in love with a penis. I loved his body because it was his.”

There was also a raw look at motherhood and the dissolve of her marriage, about moments of selflessness and selfishness. There’s emotions of separating from someone you dearly love, but doesn’t complete that part of your soul anymore. The terror and guilt of your child being affected by your decisions. The loneliness of motherhood can bring about some scary and amazing resolutions that Molly has to face.

“While a woman is taking care, who takes care of her?”

This book is beautiful, captivating, and personal. At the end, you’ll feel like Molly is an old friend catching you up about everything that happened to her in the last few years. If you are looking for a book about divorce, motherhood, gender and sexual fluidity, this is a perfect read. If you’re not, try it out, you might still get something out of it and learn from it.

The Fixed Stars releases August 4th! Thank you again to Abrams Press and Molly Wizenberg.

Posted on by Cassidee Lanstra · 4 Comments

Daughters of Smoke and Fire By Ava Homa: A Review

“Trees and flowers bloom despite human barbarism. Maybe I can too?”

Happy Release Day to Daughters of Smoke and Fire by Ava Homa! You can pick this novel up starting today. One of the first novels written in English by a Kurdish woman, this book is a beacon for Kurds everywhere. I was woefully ignorant of their plight beyond minor knowledge of ongoing turmoil in the Middle East. We have all heard of the different customs, torture, and outright genocide, but when you live the US, it’s easy to view these as nightmarish tales used to scare us into valuing our freedoms. This is a deeper look into the things we hear, and while it may not be the experience of everyone, it is certainly the experience of many Kurds. The Kurdish people are an estimated 30-40 million and are stateless, having been denied land, forbidden to speak their own language and practice their own customs.

“I can’t fucking stand the degradation anymore. If you are a leftist, they kill you; if you are an activist, they kill you; even if you don’t believe in anything and just say ‘Yes, sir,” they kill you. Maybe not physically, but they kill you inside.”

Leila is our primary voice and she’s expresses how the only people treated worse than a Kurd, is a Kurdish woman. She lives in a world where women set their own bodies on fire rather than go on living the painful lives they are allowed, where anything traumatic that happens to a woman is only what she deserved, where SHE can be punished for a man raping her. Through Leila’s eyes, I learned about the Peshmerga, a group that fights for security and an independent Kurdish state. They were partly responsible for the capture of Saddam Hussein and their name literally means, “those that face death”. They are quite revolutionary for their region. Leila’s brother is an activist that has followed in his father’s footsteps, and though he is younger, Leila looks up to his strength and courage in the face of tyranny. In the US, we make jibes about the government’s ability to make us discreetly disappear if they wanted to, without any real concern of it. Where they live, the government will bust in your house in light of day and shoot you for having banned books or torture you for the slightest bit of “progressive” thinking. Leila and her friend Shiler live under the constant threat of the morality police, that will sentence you as they please for any impure contact with a man. Leila, at one point, is hit by a car and is terrified that she will be ruined in the eyes of her father because of the possibility that her hymen broke from the impact. The world that these women live in is completely different from what I am used to. Leila eventually has an opportunity at life in a new area and she marvels at the differences. She is able to see the beauty in her culture and religion when not surrounded by an oppressive government, the beauty in the choice instead of the cruel hand suffocating her with the requirement of all that she’s supposed to be, all the rules of how a woman must act.

A large part of the novel focuses on her brother’s activism, which is modeled loosely around Farzad Kamangar. Throughout his imprisonment and torture that transpired because of his work, Leila publishes his words and it spreads like wildfire. His words offer hope and a huge focus for him is progressiveness for women. Throughout this, he inspired Kurdish women to fight, protest, and learn more about their forbidden culture and language. Hence, the title Daughters of Smoke and Fire. This novel is a testament to the willpower it takes to fight those who would do anything they can to take away your humanity and leave your life in ruin. It’s a recognition of the women that would rather die a fiery death than live a life where they are barely acknowledged as human.

“Women who lost all reason to live wanted their internalized, burning rage to manifest on the outside too. A dramatic death testified to an agonizing life.”

It’s a novel like this that reminds me why people flee their homes and face judgement for immigrating, or the possibility of being torn from their families because they had to leave too hastily to apply legally. Whatever you feel on the immigration process, you cannot read a book like this and not feel empathy for those that are forced to take this route. Sometimes it’s the choice between an unmarked grave in a oppressive country or a jail cell in a “safe” country. It’s the choice of a country that you know the language and customs, but could be killed at any moment, or a country that offers you security but doesn’t fully welcome you, that wants you to adhere to their customs.

Ava Homa writes a novel that expresses the pain and terror that the Kurdish people experience. It’s heart-rending in its injustice, but it isn’t self-pitying. It’s a novel about finding your strength when it doesn’t seem possible, about making revolutionary moments with simple words and actions, with a gentle hand in contrast to the abuse suffered. This is one of the best novels I will read all year, and easily five stars. Homa writes piercingly and her story will quickly grab hold and set root into your heart. I marvel at the strength and courage it must take to write a novel such as this, the author herself is just as important to the Kurdish cause as she has portrayed her characters as being.