Welcome to Litsy!

Fourth candle of my #Hanukkahchallenge is a winter fairytale told in four different voices: the daughter of impoverished Jewish moneylender, a tzarina, her faithful servant and a peasant girl. The stories they tell bring to the forefront not the magic but the difficulties of women‘s lives in all walks of life. #reread #told_by_a_woman #iamthatjew

This is a stand alone book in Leckie‘s Imperial Radch universe and it's possible to appreciate without reading her other books, though having the background helps.
I loved the characters, their development and the way that the questions of belonging to humans in general and to one's family are asked. I was very disappointed by the way the romantic line was resolved - it was both too adolescent and too forced. #told_by_a_woman, #bookclub

“The first time I entered Jerusalem‘s Old City, I walked down a flight of stairs that began on the current street level; at the bottom, I was stunned to step onto the paving stones from the street level during the Roman period, as though I had traveled through time instead of rock.”
Have you ever been there? Did you feel the time captured in stone? #told_by_a_woman #iamthatjew

I'm not sure whether it's me not being focused enough on the audiobook or were there too many technical details that were unnecessary for the smooth plot development. Well, I felt a bit overwhelmed by the technicalities. But I loved the intrigue, the inner struggle of the protagonist and the hopeful ending - there is a very interesting future ahead for Murderbot and some other security units.
#told_by_a_woman

This short story is set a bit back in time with regards to book 5 in the series, when Murderbot was just starting his life on the Preservation Station. Though the plot is overcomplicated with too many twists for such a short story, the protagonist is there to bring the readers joy by showing his growing understanding of human character in general and becoming more attached to the humans surrounding him.
#told_by_a_woman

The cranky and cynical Murderbot is back and now it's for the full length novel. Wells is successfully keeping the light style of the narrative while building a wider narrative and allowing our hero to move into the bigger world, more exciting adventures, new humans to befriend and new character traits to develop
#told_by_a_woman

Disclaimer: this is not a happy book and I started reading it when the October war was raging for almost a year, making the sad narrative difficult to intake. I stopped reading and came back to it almost two months later, making a conscious effort to finish the book despite the narration going into the WWI and drawing uneasy associations for me. Maybe if I were to read this book in better times I would feel different about it.
#told_by_a_woman

This is a gothic story spaced with the language of magical realism and eerie, dark bits of old fairytales with a twofold narrative: that of a man, troubled by memories who married a mysterious young woman and another one of a girl, almost abandoning her family to live a magical life with a friend. My expectations for the ending vacillated from happy to tragic until the storylines met to find the end... There will be no spoilers..
#told_by_a_woman

Bailed after 1/3 of the book: huge disappointment. There is an amazing world where words have power and translators are doing magic. But there is no action at all, the characters lack substance and the anti-colonial agenda is being pushed down the reader's throat with much force, but little understanding of nuances
#told_by_a_woman
#bookclub

With all the right premises of a secret wizarding society based in an antient library, the book turned to be a disappointment. Very little happens in terms of plot development, the characters are flat and the female ones are so stigmatic as if taken from some patriarchal encyclopedia of female heroines. And the sex scenes reek of dubious consent. Not sure I'm going to continue the series
#SeriesLove2024
#told_by_a_woman