Audely Bensen Writes

I read a blurb for this book and got worried. I'm currenly writing a book about what happens after a climate-change induced apocalypse, which is essentially the premise of Nick Fuller Googin's The Great Transition . I snapped it up from the library as soon a sit appeared on the shelf, and then stared at it for weeks, afraid to learn whether it would be a perfect comp for Predacide, or would be so similar that I should just give up now.  Turns out, neither was true. The Great Transition was an interesting look at the equivalent of an elder millennial who survived the world's worst, only to learn that change is never over. This was a marriage story, a parenting story, and a look at whether we can save our world before it's too late.  I loved it. The author did a great job of merging character-based framing with a commercial plot, all while asking literary questions. 

I got my copy of Tress of the Emerald Sea from World Fantasy Con, again. Despite being a fantasy fan since my teens, this was my very first Sanderson book.  I thought this was a very pleasant, wholesome story. It read like The Princess Bride, or like a modern Disney movie, where the majority of the narrative is fit for a bedtime story, while every now and then there's a line that is clearly For the Parents. It was sweet and funny and enjoyable.  That said, there was a lot about this book that I felt could only have happened because of who Sanderson is and how this book was created. Some of the world-building felt unexplained and unearned, and I'm unsure still at the narrator's role in the book. After mentioning this book to some new friends, I got the sense that maybe he was a tie-in to some other Sanderson books? As a new reader, I wasn't totally impressed, and felt that the jokes often fell flat, or I could see them go over my head.  All in all, I enjoyed this read. ...

I picked up Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee from the library. This was a quick, run read, only taking a couple days to get through. This is probably the most literary book I've read in a while. As I'm continuing to study what it means for a book to have voice, this was an excellent case to choose.  Reading Jonathan Abernathy gave me a peak into a familiarly anxious brain, if everything were ten times worse than it is. Everything about this world is terrible and yet believable. Fear kept Jonathan Abernathy from making the right choice, time and again, and the author did a great job of painting out the landscape for the reader while continuing to make Jonathan Abernathy's choices inevitable. Time and again his refusal to face his fears caused increasingly terrible things to happen.  If that isn't an allegory for the entire world, I don't know what is.