Tag: 9-rated

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Recommendations Watchlist

Movie Review: The Inugami Family

The Inugami Family (Japanese Movie)
Year of Release: 1976
Director: Kon Ichikawa
Based on the Book: The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo
Recommended for fans of: Gothic, Foreign Period Dramas, Eerie Mysteries, A touch of Horror, Brilliant Plot, Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Some time back, Words & Peace had recommended The Inugami Curse and I’d wanted to read the book ever since. I decided to take the shortcut when I accidentally discovered there was a subtitled movie adaptation too.

It’s a superb plot. The patriarch of the Inugami family clan dies, leaving behind several competing successors and a really crazy will. I don’t think it’s giving away spoilers to say that the will goes along the lines of “If A dies, B gets the property. If B dies, C gets the property….” It’s like the dreadful old man was setting them all up to murder, starting with A! Along the way there are some red herrings – the challenge is to identify which ones are red herrings and which ones are not.

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Miscellany

The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison

The Witness for the Dead
Series: The Goblin Emperor Series (but can be read as standalone)
Published: June 2021
Book Themes / Tropes: I can speak to the Dead, Judicial power politics, Court intrigue, A Good Person
Recommended if you like: Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, Chalion series by Lois McMaster Bujold, or generally any mythological fantasy work
Rating: 9 of 10

How many times do we come across truly good, kind people in fiction? People who do the right thing even if that doesn’t help them much politically, simply because it is the right thing to do? In Witness for the Dead, Addison has created a good person in the form of Celehar who works as a witness for the dead.

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Books Starred Recommendations

The Alleluia Files by Sharon Shinn

//Who drew the patterns of the stars, if not a god? Who designed the marvellous cycle of cloud and rain and river, if not a god? Who made you— and you— and you too— if not some god whose name we have forgotten?//

The Alleluia Files by Sharon Shinn is the third book in her Samaria series. It can be read as a standalone, as long as you have some background information of the past centuries on Samaria (which I am happy to provide below).

Here’s the deal:

We find ourselves on a different planet, where the Samarians, Edori and Jacobites co-exist. Samarians worship the God known as Jovah. When they ‘sing’ to Jovah, Jovah instantly (and I do mean instantly) sends help within the hour, in the form of rain, medicines and grain.

The Edori are nomads and sailors who believe that somewhere out there is a supreme universal being, but they’re not sure whether that being is Jovah or not. And then there are the Jacobites, bitter agnostics, who claim that Jovah is not a God — instead, Jovah is a machine!

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Books Starred Recommendations

Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton

Tooth and Claw

Oh, what an absolute gem of a book. Quiet and unassuming on the surface, yet so utterly charming and thought-provoking.

Bon Agornin dies one day, leaving behind two sons and three daughters. His sons, Penn and Avan, are in the clergy and government respectively, and his eldest daughter, Berend, is the matron in a wealthy family. The youngest daughters, Haner and Selendra, are unmarried, and are forced apart when their patriarch dies. Much of the story is about Haner and Selendra being uprooted from their old home and settling down in their new environment: Haner with Berend and her husband, and Selendra with her parson brother Penn.

The real pivot of the story?

They are all dragons. And dragons have a singular custom — that of eating dragon flesh of the deceased, because that is the only way they can increase in power and sustenance. Walton gives them other dragon-like characteristics and rituals too, but at the heart of the story is the grim truth that dragon eats dragon to flourish. It is to Walton’s credit that she makes dragon customs like these feel real but empathetic.

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Books Recommendations

The Queen’s Thief Series by Megan Whalen Turner

I had vague memories of the first 3 books of The Queen’s Thief series, which I read way back in 2006. I think I’d listened to the audiobooks, which I hadn’t liked very much, because the narrator made the characters sound too old.

When Mythothon #4 came up, I realized that this 6-book series would manage to chop off several prompts from that challenge. And that’s how I started off on this clever and wonderful adventure. A strange, miraculous thing about this series is that each book can be read as a standalone, but when the books are read together, the sum becomes greater than the whole.

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Books Starred Recommendations

Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Book: Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance (Series: Vorkosigan Saga)
Published: November 2012 (Baen Books)
Audiobook Narrator: Grover Gardner (Blackstone Audio)
Genre/ Trope: Space Opera, Humor, Meet the Family
Rating: 9 of 10 / Highly Recommended

A perfect feel-good read for a lazy summer afternoon! I was chortling my way through this book about Captain Ivan Vorpatril, a rather laidback bureaucrat in the intergalactic Barrayaran Empire. The good news is that the book can be read as a standalone, and is a very good gateway into science fiction.

Ivan Vorpatril is the scion of a powerful political family in Barrayar, but he isn’t very ambitious. He would just rather stick on at his comfortable government job and enjoy his bachelor’s life. His meddlesome cousin Byerly asks him for a favor to check-in on two immigrant women living under fake identities — and poor Ivan can say goodbye to his uneventful life!

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Books Starred Recommendations

The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

The Man Who Was Thursday: that title alone makes you want to grab the book. Since its publication in 1908, the book has gone through a series of covers, each better than the next:

Man who was Thursday
(This is my first book for the Cloak and Dagger 2021 Reading Challenge. But also counts for the the 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.)

How we Begin:

The book begins with a poem called the ‘Nightmare’ which seems to suggest that it’s all just a horrid old dream. The first chapter presents a psychedelic imagery of red brick houses, red sunset and a red haired man, i.e. the Saffron Park. Very dream-like indeed, till two poets begin to debate on whether Order or Chaos is the true spirit of poetry. I kid you not — one of these poets is an underclothes policeman name Gabriel Syme and the other poet is an anarchist named Gregory.

It seems that the Anarchists in the early 1900s regularly shot people and Presidents and caused ‘reigns of terror’ (read for yourself). In that sense, every secessionist movement and every terrorist outfit is essentially a manifestation of anarchism?

Anyway, to cut a long story short: the debate gets really heated. Our genius and poetic hero, Syme, finally outwits Gregory into exposing some unsavory secrets. Using those secrets, he then manages to infiltrate a band of anarchists called the Council. Each member of this Council is named after a day of the week (here lies a hint), and Syme gets appointed as “Thursday”. Syme’s real goal is to flout the plans of the Council, save the world, and expose the notorious head of the gang, the man everybody calls “Bloody Sunday”. Will Syme succeed?

Stop here, if you don’t want me to ruin the book for you with my spoilers.

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Art & Illustration Books Memes Recommendations Watchlist

Japanese Mythology Recs: Ogiwara, Mononoke & Moribito

Dragon Sword Wind Child

Lately, I’ve been consuming speculative fiction centered around Japanese mythology / Shinto creation mythology. Putting up a few reviews here as part of the Japanese Literature Reading Challenge 2021.

Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Noriko Ogiwara

This book is part of the Tales of Matagama series but you can also read it as a standalone. Saya lives in the village, with no memory of the past. She finds comfort in her worship of the God of Light and his children. But the God of Light has been at eternal war with the Goddess of Darkness, and only the Water Maiden can wield the Dragon Sword and bring that war to an end. Saya’s world comes crashing down when she discovers that she is that Water Maiden.

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Art & Illustration Memes

Friday Face Off #1: Dressed in White

The Friday Face Off meme was created by Books by Proxy  and hosted by Lynn. For each week’s theme, we select a matching book and compare its different book covers across editions. Perfect for a visual fix!

(I’m obviously late to this meme, but so eager to grapple with book cover art!)

Theme for Friday Face Off #1 is:

Dressed in White – could be a person could be a landscape – or something else completely?

In Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, there is literally a character dressed in white, a mysterious figure at the heart of this classic Gothic mystery from 1859. A gallery of a few of its book covers below:

My own personal favorite from these is the Vintage Collins edition in the middle row, to the left. I think that cover captures the theme of the mysterious lady seen at night, dressed in all white, very well indeed. This has been a fun Friday Face Off!

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Recommendations Watchlist

Hitchcock Movies: Shadow, Suspicion, Stranger, Lady & Sabotage

I binge-watched several Hitchcock movies this week: Shadow of a Doubt, Suspicion, Strangers on a Train, The Lady Vanishes and Sabotage. Time well spent, and here’s a quick sum-up!

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