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It’s Meet the Blind Month: Let’s Talk About That

October is National Disability Awareness month, or as the National Federation of the Blind calls it, Meet the Blind Month. Meet the Blind month always gets under my skin as a name, and today I want to talk about why. I’m also going to talk more generally about how you should talk about blindness with blind people.

As I said last week, these are my views. I do not purport to represent all blind people. I’m sure there are many who disagree with me. And I certainly don’t represent all people with disabilities. Further apologies if this post is a bit scattered. I’ve been pretty sick all day and I’m not at my best organizationally-speaking, but I wanted to get this out there.

So, Meet the Blind Month. I understand the point. I do. A lot of my friends will put up posts or statuses answering some common questions they get about their blindness and inviting their friends and followers to ask more. In case I haven’t been clear, I’m all for that. But I find the name Meet the Blind Month to be frankly demeaning, doubly so because  it comes from an organization meant to empower the blind through increased independence. I am not some rare specimen in a petting zoo to be put on display in October. (Oh look, a blind Jameyanne. Look how it picks out matching clothes. How fascinating.) More importantly, I dislike the implication that the public doesn’t have to interact with the blind any other month of the year. We don’t just come out of the woodwork in October.

Honestly, though, I don’t really like National Blindness Awareness Month or National Disability Awareness Month, or any of the other myriad names we have for the same thing. I understand that, as much as I would like our society to be at a point beyond awareness, we aren’t. Most people have never met or interacted with a blind person, and blindness can make people uncomfortable or frightened. So yes, we want to build awareness about blindness and what blind people can do independently, but I wonder if we should go beyond that. Why not seek to build awareness by seeking more than awareness? Why not call it Blindness Rocks Month? Or something less terrible but you get the point. Let’s not just be aware of blindness. Let’s celebrate the accomplishments of the many incredible blind people out there who have done great things, not despite their blindness but with their blindness and because of their blindness.

Terms like “awareness” sound a lot like other ways sighted people try to avoid the issue–perhaps part of the NFB’s purpose behind rebranding the name (Meet the Blind Month is still terrible). So I want to talk about how to talk with a blind person. This has been coming up in my life a lot lately with my transition to a new job and all the new people I’ve been interacting with.

I identify as blind. Not visually impaired or visually challenged, not low vision, and certainly not sightless. This is an intensely personal choice. I can see light and color with my left eye. I can even read print—if it’s 72 point font and my nose is pressed to the screen or the page—but my vision is not my primary tool for navigating the world. I read Braille. I travel with a Seeing Eye dog, I primarily use smell and taste to judge if a meal is finished cooking. I know when to cross streets based on auditory cues. So I’ve found that blind more accurately describes how I use my vision and what I might need in any given situation. The other descriptors sound like I am missing something, and that is the exact opposite impression that I want to give. This post on using the word “disabled as” opposed to “special needs” does a really good job of explaining why some disabled people prefer to identify as disabled or as their specific disability. It’s a great read and I highly recommend it. Terms like “differently abled” or “special needs” might seem like they’re more politically correct, more humanizing, or more accepting than other options, but they in fact highlight differences and make it harder to fight for disability rights, which are at their core equal rights.

Another note, I used to be big into person first language—“a person who is blind” or “a person with a disability”—but lately I’ve found that to be clunky and awkward, and I don’t mind referring to myself as a blind person. I don’t feel as strongly about this and my choice is more about how grammatically awkward person-first language feels to me.

Another big thing for me is I hate it when people try to skate around visual words in a conversation with me. I speak the same language as you, and you don’t need to alter what you were going to say because I can’t see. Expressions like “see you tomorrow” are not going to offend me. You can totally ask if I saw a movie or if I watch a TV show. In fact, trying to avoid visual words just makes it awkward for everyone.

Again, my choice of how I identify and what language I like to use is entirely mine and entirely personal. Other people identify differently. Other people find some language ableist that I don’t mind. I have a friend, for example, who finds the use of “blind” to mean “ignorant” in research studies to be ableist. I don’t have a lot of experience reading research papers like she does, but in regular conversation I don’t mind it. I also tend to make blind jokes and make fun of myself all the time, though I know other blind people who would never joke about it.

If you’re curious, I recommend checking out this list of ableist language. It’s pretty comprehensive. As the author says, not everyone is going to be offended by all of these, and some will claim the terms for themselves as their identity, the way I claim blind as my identity. But it’s worth being aware of the roots and meanings of some of these terms and phrases. Even I was surprised by some.

I can see how this can be complicated terrain to traverse as a sighted person, but sighted people have their own preferences for identity and language too. Just like sighted people, all blind people are individuals. Don’t assume that just because I prefer to go by blind, the next person you meet prefers blind too. If you’re interacting with a blind person, take your cues on how they identify or what language they prefer from them. I always try to be clear about my preferences when it comes up, but if someone isn’t being clear, don’t hesitate to ask. It might be awkward, but it’s respectful.

And speaking of questions, if you have any about this or anything else, let me know. I’m happy to clarify anything I’ve said here, and there are many more blind posts to come.

Peter Pan Review

Cover of Peter Pan by J. M. BarrieI was looking for something more cheerful to read after Animal Farm, but I was still looking for short books, so I picked up Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie. This is the book that the Disney movie is based on, but the Disney movie changed a lot, as you might expect.

Peter Pan follows the three Darling children, Wendy, John, and Michael, who go off to Neverland with Peter Pan, a boy who never grows up. They meet the lost boys and have adventures and face down the dread pirate Captain Hook. But the book also follows the Darling parents, and deals with their grief and loss and guilt when their children vanish one night and don’t return.

This was a fun little book. I loved all the fantastical adventures the kids have. I really love how it dives into the children’s desire for a mother and the parents’ loss of their children. I was also intrigued by the way even the adventures in Neverland felt like the children were pretending. There’s definitely a reading that all of Neverland is make believe, and I love that the book neither confirms nor denies that. Basically this book gave me feelings.

There were a couple things that bothered me about this book. There’s a group of people on the island of Neverland who are always referred to as the redskins, and they are very stereotypical native Americans. Also Wendy, as the only girl among Peter Pan and all his lost boys, is relegated to the role of mother, so she only does all the cooking and cleaning and everything while the boys have the adventures. She seems perfectly happy with that, and that’s fine, but it bothers me that she gets this role purely because she’s a girl. This book was published in the early 1900s, so obviously these problems are products of the book’s time, but I still think it’s important to recognize that by today’s standards, it’s problematic.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book a lot. I honestly don’t remember the Disney movie that much, but it was fun to see where it came from and what else the book did. I love the themes of childhood and adulthood and belonging to someone else, and as I said, the fantastical fairy tale elements are great.

Have you read Peter Pan? What did you think?

The Trials of Apollo Review

Way back at the beginning of this year, before I started writing individual book reviews, I read the first three Trials of Apollo books by Rick Riordan. I’ve been meaning to write full reviews for these books for a while, since the fourth book just came out and I’m on the waiting list to get it from the library. But the bar got in the way. I feel like I say that about a lot of things, but it’s true. The bar got in the way of everything.

Anyway, here I am now. For the sake of space and time, I’m going to review the first three books all in one post. I will do my best to keep this spoiler-free for all three books, but I can’t promise, so if you haven’t read any of these books and you think you might want to, I’d stop after the review of the first one.

The Trials of Apollo series takes place after the Heroes of Olympus series (the second Percy Jackson series). It stars the sun god Apollo, who has been cast down to earth by Zeus to live as a mortal. I won’t say why because that’s a spoiler from the fifth Heroes of Olympus book. This new series features many of our favorite characters from the two Percy Jackson series, but they’re more side characters than main characters, which is nice because it feels like something new rather than just a continuation of what we’ve already done.

Okay, enough background. Let’s dive in.

The Hidden Oracle

Cover of The Hidden Oracle by Rick RiordanSo Apollo, now a mortal, lands in New York City as a normal teenager. No magical powers to speak of. Not even demigod powers. But it gets worse. Because he’s a god, he has a lot of enemies, monsters and such, and he has to figure out how to survive as a mortal so he can reclaim his godliness. He teams up with another demigod, Meg, and together they head to Camp Halfblood. Meg technically claims Apollo as her slave and gains the power to order him around and he has to do what she says. I forget how that works but it’s a thing. Adventures ensue, but pretty soon Apollo learns that his oracles have gone quiet, and he and Meg set out to find what’s keeping the oracles quiet. And Meg might have some unfortunate secrets of her own.

This book was classic Rick Riordan fun. It reminded me a lot of the very first Percy Jackson book, with the going to Camp Halfblood and having fun camp games and camp adventures and such, and I liked that. I will say, as the eleventh book I’ve read in this world, all with the same kind of structure, it’s starting to feel a bit familiar, but it was still a lot of fun. I really enjoyed Apollo’s character development. He starts as a really arrogant, pretty insufferable guy, and it’s a bit painful to be in his head. But at the same time, it’s understandable, because he is a god. And there’s nowhere to go but up from there. And up he goes. Also, the ending of this book and the reveal of who the bad guys are is just awesome.

The Dark Prophecy

There will be spoilers for The Hidden Oracle here. Sorry, I can’t avoid them. So if you haven’t read the Hidden Oracle and you think you want to, stop here. These are major spoilers. You have been warned.

Cover of The Dark Prophecy by Rick RiordanAfter the end of The Hidden Oracle, Apollo sets off to Indianapolis with Leo and Calipso. Yay Leo! And of course they’re traveling by dragon. They’re going in search of the next oracle, but Apollo is also hoping to find Meg and to pry her away from her evil stepfather, Nero. And again, adventures ensue.

I admit I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the first one. I loved getting to see Leo again, because yay Leo! But Apollo was a bit insufferable in this book. I felt like a lot of the character development he had in the first book went out the window. At least his self-centered narration made it seem like that. But even so this book was a ton of fun and I just breezed through it. Basically these books are candy to me.

The Burning Maze

Same warning as above. Spoilers. Lots of spoilers.

Cover of The Burning Maze by Rick RiordanThe prophecy we get at the end of The Dark Prophecy points to the big bad guys going to attack Camp Jupiter. So Leo heads off to warn them, and Meg and Apollo head to the American southwest to journey through the labyrinth, which has rebuilt itself, to find the third oracle. They are led by Grover, and they eventually team up with Piper and Jason. Yay Grover! Less yay about Piper and Jason—I was never a huge fan of them, they’re kind of boring.

Again, this book is a lot of fun. It gets decidedly darker toward the end, which I like, but it’s still a lot of fun. I also really enjoyed the puzzles in this book, and the stakes have definitely gone up. Meg has a lot of great character development here. But I have to say that by this point, reading them in quick succession as I did, they all started to feel the same, and it was annoying that Apollo didn’t seem to be learning anything as a character. Like I know he’s a god, but three books is still a long time.

On the whole, these books were a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the fourth book and then finishing the series when the fifth one comes out. But they are starting to feel very similar to one another, and I’m honestly not enjoying them as much as I enjoyed the Percy Jackson books.

If you’ve read The Trials of Apollo books, what did you think?

Animal Farm Review

I’m four days into my new and improved blogging schedule and I’ve already falling behind, because I was too tired to post last night even though the post was already written. This is why I left my weekends open. In the meantime, I’m pressing on with the review I meant to post today. I’ll post yesterday’s book review over the weekend, and everything will be fine.

Cover of Animal Farm by George OrwellAfter I read Oathbringer, I was looking for some shorter books to read, and one of the booktubers I follow recommended Animal Farm by George Orwell. This booktuber led me to some of my favorites of 2018 and 2019—And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer and Longer and Beartown by George Orwell and The Final Empire and The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson—and I didn’t actually read Animal Farm in high school. So I picked it up.

If you don’t know, Animal Farm is about the animals on a farm in England who rise up and overthrow their human owners and then run the farm themselves as a commune, but pretty soon things start descending into a totalitarian regime.

This is going to be a short review, because I don’t have a ton to say. I did not like this book. It was well-written, and I liked watching the animal’s new society fall into totalitarianism—it felt like a natural, well-done descent. But while I recognize that it was well-written, I didn’t like the writing style. It was far too tell don’t show for my taste, and I felt like I was being handed the story and the message without needing to work for it. It was also very, very obvious that Orwell had an agenda when writing this book. He wanted to tell readers that communism is bad. And personally, whether I agree with the message or not, I don’t like books that are written for the purpose of conveying a message, particularly a political or moral message.

As usual, this is one hundred percent my own opinion, and I’d love to discuss whether you agree or disagree with me. So have you read Animal Farm? What did you think?

Oathbringer Review

Cover of Oathbringer by Brandon SandersonThe first book I read in October was Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson. This is the third book in The Stormlight Archive series, which I started last spring. I actually started reading this book in August after the bar, but it was so long and so much was going on in my life that it took me until the beginning of October to finish it.

Again, this is the third book in a series, so I can’t promise there won’t be spoilers for the first two books. If you’re new to The Stormlight Archives series, go check out my review for The Way of Kings, and if you’re not caught up on the series, you can read my reviews for Words of Radiance and the novella that comes between Words of Radiance and Oathbringer, Edgedancer.

Oathbringer starts up directly after the end of Words of Radiance. Again, it follows Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, and everybody else we’ve come to know and love in this world. In as much as you can say that any one of these books has a main character as its focus, Kaladin is the main character of The Way of Kings, Shallan is the main character of Words of Radiance, and Dalinar is the main character of Oathbringer. So we get a lot of his backstory and finally learn what he asked the Nightwatcher to take from him when he visited her. It’s horrifying. In the present, Dalinar is trying to unite the ravaged countries of the world to fight against the voidbringers, who have taken Alethkar and many other countries. It doesn’t go so well. Meanwhile, Kaladin has gone to find his family, and along the way he discovers the former Parshmen turned voidbringers may have some legitimate grievances. Shallan, on the other hand, is really struggling with some serious PTSD that manifests as her trying to be anyone but herself–since she can create illusions, she does this literally.

I really liked this book, but there were a few major things that kept me from loving it as much as I loved The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and Edgedancer. I’m going to start with those, and then I’m going to gush.

This book started slowly. Part of the reason it took me so long to get through. I’d say the first quarter to a third of it dragged much more than the other books. I also felt less attached to Dalinar than I did to Kaladin and Shallan, so I had a hard time with him being the focus. This definitely changed over the course of the book, but it weighed me down in the beginning.

That love triangle that was hinted at in Words of Radiance took shape in this book. As I feared, it was a disappointment, but not for the reasons I thought it would be. I normally hate love triangles because they feel like drama for the sake of drama, and they take up too much time in the plot. This love triangle didn’t feel developed enough to matter. Like I didn’t realize that this was the love triangle until it came to a head in a conversation between Shallan and Adolin at the end of the book. Like Shallan’s only sign of interest in Kaladin was in weird looks. Granted I don’t have a lot of experience in flirting so maybe a lot went over my head. As it was, I just felt like the love triangle was shoved in there for the sake of having a love triangle—it felt neither natural nor necessary—and the resolution was rushed and annoying.

Finally, there were a ton of point of view characters in this book, like a ton more than even the previous books, and at important scenes, like the final battle, it became a bit hectic and hard to follow, especially since a bunch of new characters were introduced during the final battle.

But given the size and complexity of this book, these are really minor complaints. The plot of Oathbringer is brilliant and intricate. There are some amazing battle scenes, and some awesome political intrigue. And oh the character development! Dalinar’s character development is amazing, but there’s also great character development from Shallan, Adolin, Elhokar, Jasnah, Renarin, Kaladin, and even the voidbringers. Like great character development. And as much as I complained about the beginning dragging, this book pulled me in at about the one third mark and I finished in about three days, which is a lot given that the second two thirds was about thirty-five hours long (I was listening to the audiobook).

This book was a wild ride, and I loved almost every minute of it. The parts that I didn’t love were more like mildly annoying than bad. I feel like reading this series has opened whole new horizons of reading for me, because now I’m not nearly as daunted by larger fantasy books as I once was. I am dying for the fourth book to come out. I read that Sanderson is estimating 2020? I’m really hoping that’s right.

In the meantime, what other epic fantasy series should I try? Wheel of Time? Game of Thrones? Something I haven’t heard of? And if you’ve read The Stormlight Archives I’d love to discuss.

Two Conversations

Since I finished the bar, I finally caught up on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It’s an excellent show, if you haven’t seen it, and it’s very funny. What I particularly like about it is that it has the effect that some of my favorite books have on me. Sometimes, when books have a particularly strong and distinctive narrative voice, I walk around after putting them down thinking in that narrative voice. This happens to me with Mrs. Maisel too, which basically means that I walk around thinking, and sometimes talking, like her, and ultimately leaves me with the impression that I could be funny too. Sometimes, I catch myself inventing standup routines.

Don’t get me wrong. I would never, never, never ever do standup. Never ever. Never.

But then I realized that the standup routine I’ve been honing in my head for a few weeks perfectly ties in with my desire to start a series of posts about how blind people do things, so I decided to share it with you. In written form, because as I said, never.

There are a lot of things you take for granted which are a challenge when you’re blind. Take traveling by airplane. Once you get to the airport, you have to find the ticket counter. I usually do this by asking the first person I pass for directions, and then when their directions inevitably prove insufficient, I ask someone else, and someone else, until I eventually find my way to the line. Then I can either ask for assistance getting to the gate, which is faster but comes with its own indignities, or I can find my way by myself, basically by asking one person after another until I get there again. The check-in counter people never like it when I try to walk off by myself (last time I tried this one woman actually started yelling at me), but I usually ask for assistance, because despite feeling like I’m being manhandled all the way, it’s faster, I know I’m getting where I’m going, and I avoid the desperate sense of fumbling panic I get whenever I try to do it myself. Also, you’d be surprised how many people have no idea where they are.

But don’t worry, I’ll get to practice my independent airport travel, because my escort will get me to the gate, find me a chair somewhere, and leave me there. And either I’ll have to use the bathroom, or the gate will change and before I can ask for help the gate agent has run off to the new gate.

When I’m finally on the plane, there’s the obligatory argument with the flight attendant about how it’s safer for my dog to sit under the seat in front of me and no I do not want to sit in the bulkhead and no it is absolutely not the law I sit in the bulkhead. And then someone sits next to me.

On the best of days, I’m one of those extroverted introverts who would rather walk to my destination than talk to the random stranger sitting next to me on an airplane. But if I’ve gotten this far, it’s not the best of days. I really do not want to talk to whoever sits next to me. But they want to talk to me. They always want to talk to me. Because I am fascinating.

I’m not fascinating because I lived in Italy for a year or because I went to Harvard Law. I’m not fascinating because I’m a space lawyer at the FCC or because I’m working on a novel.

I’m fascinating because I’m blind.

And if any of the rest of that stuff comes up, it’s always with the question “But how did you do that?”

Before they even say a word, I know my new airplane buddy and I will have one of two conversations:

“I saw you get up from your seat at the gate and walk to the jetway all by yourself. How did you do that? Actually, how do you do anything? How do you exist?”

Or: “Oh my gosh I have a dog too!”

You know what? This isn’t funny at all.

I brought a book to read or work to do on this flight. Or maybe I was hoping for a chance to nap. But my new airplane buddy has questions, and they think they’re entitled to ask them, however personal they may be.

But here’s the thing. I always answer.

Last spring, this #AbledsAreWeird hashtag was going around Twitter. It made me really uncomfortable, and I wrote this long post about how I felt it was counterproductive to yell at able-bodied people who reacted to disability strangely or tried to help in unhelpful ways. I talked about how, if we want the ableds of the world to accept us, we can’t call them weird. We have to be willing to start productive conversations with them.

So no matter how gross I feel on that airplane, and no matter how much I just want to plug in my headphones and ignore the person sitting next to me, I answer their questions.

But I’ve still spent a lot of time these last few months thinking about my #AbledsAreNotWeird post and wanting to do more with that. I feel like I spend a lot of time and energy actively avoiding the topic of my blindness. Yes, I answer people’s questions. Yes, I talk about it on this blog occasionally. But I’m one hundred percent avoiding the book discussion at my work for National Disability Employment Awareness Month because I just don’t want to be the blind girl in the room objecting to the representation of disabled characters in the book. I didn’t even read the book because I knew from the description it would make me angry. But I do want to do more, because blindness is part of who I am. I live with these same two conversations every day, and I want to do my part to change that.

So I’m starting a series of blog posts on how I do things as a blind person. I won’t pretend to speak for all blind people, and I certainly can’t speak for all people with disabilities. But every Monday, I’m going to talk about how I do something. I have a ton of ideas, but if you have specific topics you’d like me to talk about, please let me know.

It’s ambitious, but I want to use these posts to start new conversations.

When someone sits next to me on an airplane and asks how I got from my chair to the jetway, or how I use a computer, or how much I can see, I answer their questions. Because like it or not, I’m probably representing all blind people with my reaction. It shouldn’t be this way, but it probably is. And I answer their questions because I hope the next time they sit with a blind person on an airplane, they’ll ask if they watched the Red Sox game last night instead.

2019 Check-In the Third

We are midway through October, friends, which means we are more than three quarters of the way through 2019. So it’s time to check in on the goals I made for myself at the beginning of the year.

I set some pretty ambitious goals for myself this year, and so far I’m doing pretty well. I got a job, graduated, studied for the bar and took the bar, moved to D.C., and started that new job, and while I wasn’t totally calm throughout all that, I didn’t completely lose my head either.

Before you ask, I get my bar results in less than two weeks. I’m trying not to think about it. Thinking about it is horrible.

Last time I checked in, I talked about how I hadn’t been doing well with my goal to exercise more. It seemed like every time I tried, I either got really, really sick, or I sprained my ankle. But my ankle is pretty much better now, and I haven’t been sick in weeks (knock on wood). Since I moved down here, I joined a barre studio, and I’ve been going at least twice a week, sometimes three times a week. I really like it, and I especially like how much progress I’ve made in just a few weeks. I certainly couldn’t do some of the moves I’m doing now. I’ve also been going to the gym in my apartment building, though I admit not as regularly as I would like. There’s just so much to do between work and making food and  writing and keeping my apartment reasonably clean that it’s hard to find time. It’s easier to go to a class that I signed up for and paid for than it is to find a random half hour to go downstairs to use the elliptical. I’m still working on that. I need to treat it like a class and go straight down there after work without starting some other project. But on the whole this is a massive improvement over my zero-exercise life during law school and while studying for the bar, and I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

I fell a little behind on my reading goal in August and September. I read three books in August and two in September. But I’ve already read five books in October, so I’m confident I’ll be able to pick up the slack and finish at 100 books for 2019. So far I’ve read a grand total of 73 books this year.

On the writing front, things are definitely going well. As I’ve said a million times, and probably will not tire of saying any time soon, I signed with a literary agent in February. It took me forever (thanks bar exam), but I finally finished the revisions to my middle grade fantasy novel last weekend. I set out to complete three drafts of major projects this year. So far I’ve completed one. There isn’t that much time left, but I’m pretty close to finishing my middle grade sci fi adventure book, which will make two projects. And November is NaNoWriMo, which should give me a boost. I’m pretty sure I can meet this goal, though if I don’t, I will still have accomplished a whole lot, and I’m proud of that.

Finally, I fell off the blogging bandwagon a bit in July, August, and September (thanks again bar exam). I’ve started back up again, as you’ve no doubt noticed, and I’ve created a calendar through the rest of the year. I’ve also mapped out a regular schedule that I think will be helpful for everyone. First, I’m starting a new series of posts about blindness. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I wrote this post about the #AbledsAreWeird hashtag last spring. I want to contribute to the conversation around blindness and how someone who isn’t blind can be helpful in a positive way. Also, October is Meet the Blind month, so now seems a good time to start. Don’t worry, we are definitely going to talk about that name. I have feelings. I’m going to put these posts up on Mondays, so look for one soon. I’m planning to post book reviews of the books I’m currently reading on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll use Wednesdays for catch-up days for books I read over the summer but haven’t reviewed yet. And I’ll write about writing on Fridays. My plan is to write the week’s posts over the weekend and schedule them, because I don’t have a lot of time on weeknights. We’ll see how well this goes. I’m not planning to post anything new on the weekends, unless I need to play catchup with my schedule like I did this week.

So as we’re heading into the home stretch of 2019, I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve accomplished and what I can accomplish in the next few months. And I’m already considering what my goals for next year should be. After this year, I honestly don’t know.

September Reading Roundup

This will be a short post. Honestly I feel a bit silly writing it at all, because I only read two books in September, and I just reviewed both of them this week. But for consistency’s sake, here I am.

September was, as I’ve said, a pretty crazy month. I moved down to D.C. at the end of August. I spent the first half of September learning my way around my new neighborhood in Arlington as well as learning the metro system and the route to and from my new workplace. Then I started work at the FCC. That was a whole new kind of exhausting. During law school, I longingly looked forward to the time when I would work a nine-to-five job and have oodles of time in the evenings to do whatever I wanted. This is not how it works. There’s food to be cooked and dishes to be done and vacuuming and general cleanup, and after eight hours of work I’m tired.

I’m really enjoying my work at the FCC. I’m learning a lot—I still don’t feel like I can do anything on my own but I’m understanding what’s going on a little more every day—and I’m exactly where I want to be. But when I get home from work, I’m tired. And on top of that, I spent a lot of time in September finishing revisions for my middle grade fantasy novel. Those are done now, and since then I’ve read four books and I’m onto a fifth. But I only read two books in September.

One was an audiobook, and one was an audiobook for the first half and then Braille for the third quarter and then text-to-speech for the last quarter because I got lazy. Unfortunately, I had mixed feelings about both books. Collage of the covers of the two books I read in September, Abaddon's Gate and Akata Warrior

First, I read Abaddon’s Gate by James S. A. Corey. This was the third book in The Expanse series. After the first book, which was fine, and the second book, which I loved, I found this book to be kind of so-so. I’m not sure if it was because it suffered from being a middle book in the series or if my growing suspicion that this series isn’t for me is correct. I’m going to read the fourth book when I get it out of the library, but if it’s like the third book I might give it up. My full review is right over here.

Second, I read Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okoraforh, the sequel to Akata Witch. I actually started Akata Warrior in August but it took me a long time to get through. There was a lot I liked about this book, particularly Sunny’s relationship with her brother. But it also felt kind of scattered and telly. I admit this might be because of all the times I changed how I was reading it, and I’d definitely be willing to reread this book or read any subsequent books in this world. But on the whole I liked the first book in the series a lot better. And if you’re interested, my full review is here.

And that’s it. I’ve been reading more now that I’m settled into a routine, so expect more reviews soon.

Akata Warrior Review

Cover of Akata Warrior by Needi OkoraforThe second book I read in September was Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor. I read the first book, Akata Witch, last year and then again in May. You can find my full review of Akata Witch over here. As usual with my reviews of sequels, I can’t promise no spoilers for the first book in the series, so that’s the place for you to start.

A couple disclaimers about this review. It took me a long time to read Akata Warrior. Not through any fault of the book. I just had a lot going on. I started it in mid-August, when I finally got the audiobook out of the library. But I didn’t finish it by the time the audiobook expired, and the waiting list was really long, so I picked it up in Braille. But I’m really slow at reading books in Braille these days, because I can’t do it while I’m doing something else, and I tend to just fall asleep when I go to bed at night. So as we got toward the end of September, I just turned on text to speech and had my BrailleNote read the rest of the book to me. The long time reading the book and the three different formats I read it in almost certainly contribute to my feelings about this book.

My second disclaimer is that it took me two readings to really love Akata Witch, and that might be the case for Akata Warrior. I’m still on the library waiting list, and if it comes up again I may reread to just see.

Now that I’ve said all that, let’s dive in.

Akata Warrior starts out about a year after the end of Akata Witch. Sunny, Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha have all grown and learned in their powers both individually and as a team. But the end of the world is looming, and they’re the ones to stop it. Adventures ensue. Sunny gets into trouble defending her brother, jeopardizing not only her life but the whole coven and the mission. Sunny also gets separated from her spirit face and loses her powers. There’s also a giant spider and plenty of adventures   in the spirit world before we even get to the chaos monster.

As you might have gathered from this description, a lot happens in this book. As usual, I really loved all the stuff about the kids learning their powers. I also really loved Sunny’s character growth. We get more about her family in this book—particularly her brothers—and I loved that. Also, her internal growth when she loses her powers is amazing. There’s this scene when she’s playing soccer in a thunderstorm and grieving the loss of her juju, and it’s just amazing and beautiful.

On the other hand, this book felt more scattered to me than the last one. In the first book, I felt like everything the characters learned played a role in the climax. In this book, when we reached the climax, things were happening, and I was like, “Wait, when was that a thing?” And that made a lot of the book, particularly the ending, feel very telly.

Like I said, it’s entirely possible I would feel differently on a reread of this book, and I’m willing to give it that chance. There also seemed to be at least a possibility of more to come after this book, and I’m on board for that.

On the whole, this wasn’t my favorite book in the world. I definitely liked the first book better. But there was a lot of really great stuff in this book, and it was a good follow-up to the first book. I look forward to giving it another try now that my life has calmed down a bit. As always, let me know if you’ve read this series. I don’t know anyone else who has, and I’d be really interested to talk about it with someone.

Abaddon’s Gate Review

Cover of Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. CoreyI didn’t read too much in September. Given that I was unpacking and organizing my new apartment and learning my way around my new neighborhood and also D.C. and then starting a new job and also working on revisions for my book, this isn’t at all surprising. But I finally got my hands on the third book in The Expanse series, Abaddon’s Gate by James S. A. Corey, and now that I have a little more time on my hands, I’m going to give individual book reviews a try again.

As usual, there won’t be any spoilers for this book, but as it is the third book in a series, I can’t promise there won’t be spoilers for the earlier books. I have spoiler-free reviews for Leviathan Wakes and Caliban’s War here and here, so if you haven’t read those that’s probably a better place to start. Otherwise read on at your own risk.

We pick up a bit after the end of Caliban’s War. Holden and co are doing pretty well running their own ship and taking odd jobs to keep the lights on. The protomolecule has been doing pretty well too. It’s left Venus and flown out past Neptune, where it formed a giant ring that appears to be a wormhole to who knows where. Everybody is pretty freaked out by this. Ships from Earth, Mars, and the OPA are all flying out there to study it, but of course they’re war ships and no one can forget Ganymede. And on one of those ships is Clarissa Mao, sister to Julie Mao, the protomolecule’s first victim in the first book, and daughter of big bad Mao who Holden got arrested. Honestly I can’t remember his name. The point is, Clarissa is bent on revenge, and she’s put in place a plan to get Holden out to the ring and then to destroy him. And I don’t want to say more than that because there will be spoilers.

This book came down somewhere in the middle for me. I enjoyed the science, and the politics were kind of fun. But we were missing my favorite characters from Caliban’s War. And the reverend and the security guy whose points of view we had didn’t really interest me. Okay, I liked the security guy. Also, it just took a long time to get going. I was more than halfway through before I really got into it, and then I couldn’t put it down. I will also say that I really loved Clarissa’s arc and hope we see more of her in future books. As with the other books, I found it a little too violent for my tastes (pro tip, this is not a book to read while you’re eating lunch).

On the whole, this was a fine book. I enjoyed it, in the end, but it took a while to get there, and there were enough aspects that weren’t to my taste that meant I ended up kind of disappointed.  I’m starting to think that this series just might not be for me. I’ll probably give the fourth book a shot, and I might try the television show, but we’ll see.

My opinion here is pretty much entirely based on personal taste. This is a really well-written book, the characters are fun and interesting, and I bet the series is going somewhere really cool. If you’ve absolutely loved the first two books, you might really like this one. So definitely don’t let my scattered and meh opinion dissuade you from reading this. And if you’ve already read Abaddon’s Gate, I’d love to know what you think.