I hated this book. I know that it’s super popular and everyone has raved about how Khaled Hosseini is a rising star, and The Kite Runner is an ingenious and personalized look at the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, I wanted to throw it across the room every few pages. Truthfully, I only finished it because I figured the positive reviews had to be based on something (anything!). But no, they’re really not.

The major overriding issue with this book is that the narrator is not sympathetic. At all. He is a spoiled, self-indulgent, self-absorbed, post-hoc rationalizing loser. I really wish that weren’t the case, but as mentioned above, I was looking for anything to redeem this book and didn’t find it. The worst of it is, the novel holds out hope of redemption — which is fine, great, good, I’m totally ok with a narrator’s repulsiveness being a lead-up to a character-challenging moment of introspection and change — and then doesn’t deliver. To say that it doesn’t deliver is also, unfortunately, the understatement of the year. The narrator’s choices at the end of the book, while in character, make the narrator in the beginning of the book as appealing as a beagle puppy. Had there been character growth by the end of the book, the entire novel would be a different experience. The choices made by the narrator early on are the choices of childhood, which are categorically forgivable. Or would be forgivable, if the adult narrator behaved differently. Which, as I think I’ve made clear, he didn’t.

The icing on the cake of this book, though, is the racialized brother. It’s not enough that he’s to be low-caste, born out of wedlock, raised by a cuckold, a servant in his father’s house (as was his mother before him), and subjected to violence. He also plays the part of the idyllic slave, the character who forgives any wrong done him out of an innate (pastoral) goodness and better nature. Blech. Maybe this portrayal is meant to make the narrator’s treatment of his brother less repulsive, but it only serves to make the entire thing more unpalatable.

Now, maybe I missed the point of this book entirely. Maybe the point is something like ‘caste systems really mess up the people who grow up in them and teach them to act like repulsive human beings all the time.’ Or, ‘no matter how much you try to move beyond your early choices, you will always be inherently the same.’ Possibly even ‘just when you think it can’t get any worse, meet the Taliban.’ Which are all good true points. About life. Not so much the makings for a novel, though.

I suppose it’s telling that there is so little information available in the United States about daily life in Afghanistan — before, during, or after the Taliban — that books with even a tiny window into that reality are hailed in this way. Nonetheless, my advice is this: read something else.

This book I did very much enjoy. I purchased it after reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and was looking forward to another novel where I could give myself over to the writing free of expectations. Although it sat on my shelf for some time before I got to it, Kafka On the Shore didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t as layered as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; I didn’t find it to be as immersive. Nonetheless, it was engaging and unexpected and lyrical at points.

With just these two novels, Murakami is becoming one of my favorite authors. I have read the odd short story of his and plan to sit down with the anthologies that are now available in the States. I checked a stack of other books by him from the library this fall, but returned them unread after getting swamped with other things. The pleasure of reading his works is definitely diminished when pressed for time, so I plan to return to them when my life is a bit more leisurely. Yes, I know, I work at home, how much more leisurely can it get, you’re wondering. I work at home, is my answer, and autumn has emerged as a busy season even outside the framework of the academic schedule.

Returning to Murakami: his writing is reminiscent of two other Japanese authors that rank among my favorites, Kazuo Ishiguro and Banana Yoshimoto. I tend to prefer the less traditional of Ishiguro’s works, as they provide the same ability to release expectations and get lost in the writing. I’ve realized that I enjoy that way of reading a book, getting carried along without being sure what kind of experience you’re having, unable even at the end to label or evaluate it. This only happens with excellent writing, of course, although there seem to be nations and cultures whose writers are more in this style than others. At any rate, I see similarities to Yoshimoto’s narratives in Murakami’s plots (such as they are).

If you were only going to read one book by Murakami, I’d still recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, mostly because I imagine you’d be hooked after that one. Once hooked, Kafka On the Shore is a nice follow-up.

On the whole, I was disappointed in this series by Garth Nix. The first book, Sabriel, was decently engaging. I didn’t love it, but it was clever and the level of the angst of the teen protagonists was bearable. It reads as a stand-alone book, and I enjoyed it more than the latter two books. In the interest of not giving away the plot, I’ll say that it shares elements of the early Chrestomanci books, the His Dark Materials trilogy, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and Harry Potter. Of course, if I told you which elements, I’d be giving away the plot, wouldn’t I?

Lirael and Abhorsen are a single book split into two volumes (this being, perhaps, before J.K. Rowling acclimated the world to the 700 page children’s book), and as such don’t hang together as well. The plot of the latter books are also slightly more preposterous — even for fantasy — and the teenagers more filled with angst. Overall, I wish I’d stuck with Sabriel and imagined any further adventures on my own.

Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey, is the latest novel in a series that I’ve been reading for a few years now. With each new volume, the books have declined, which is a shame because the first, Kushiel’s Dart is engaging and clever and compellingly well-told. The plot, however, is quite involved, and this element is where the later books decline in quality. Rather than having the roaming and involved adventure plot of the first book set the stage for more sedate and introspective plots in the later books, each subsequent installment sends the characters to even farther reaches of the world on even more preposterous pretexts. Don’t get me wrong: Carey is an excellent writer, with an impressive ability to describe and map cultures and politics. The later books seem at times to be driven more by that ability than by a believable plot, even for a fantasy novel. This has meant that the affection I hold toward the characters determines my willingness to continue reading.

The introduction of Imriel in the third book of the initial trilogy definitely perked up the storyline. The second trilogy, of which Kushiel’s Justice is the second book, shifts to his narrative voice with less success. The character of Phèdre is so vividly drawn in the first book that it is difficult to read a first-person narrative set in that world without hearing her voice. The character of Imriel is also much more constrained by circumstance than Phèdre. As a result, his choices are more traditional, and can usually be summed up by ‘whether to conform or to resist.’ In resistance, Imriel is guilt-ridden; in conformity, he is sullen. Neither of these modes is particularly appealing in an adult. I can’t say that I would recommend the Imriel books alone; it is only because I have become invested in the fate of the main characters over the course of thousands of pages and several years of my own life that I await the next installment, promised for next year. I have hopes that the third book will rely more on political intrigue and less on haring off around the globe, and therefore be more interesting. Which is to say, ‘more like the first three.’

Despite being very invested in this series, I didn’t at all enjoy The Sundering duology, and can’t recommend it. Unless you like really derivative stuff along the lines of Guy Gavriel Kay‘s Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, in which case, go for it!