Author: Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

An avid reader whose current interest lies in mysteries and thrillers. Line 'em up! Also personally love fantasies and any stories to do with magic, and a sucker for the occasional (good) romance.
discussion

Let’s Talk Bookish – Reading Slumps

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

Aria @ Book Nook Bits is the new host for Let’s Talk Bookish! If you aren’t following her yet, good check out her blog and give her a follow!

May 26: What Causes Reading Slumps? (Aria)

Prompts: There have been past LTB topics about ways to get out of reading slumps, but I was curious about why they happen in the first place. Do you fall into reading slumps often? What causes them? Are there patterns you notice with when you tend to read fewer books? What do you do to get out of a reading slump?

Welcome back to another week of LTB here at DTRH, everyone! Today’s topic is about reading slumps, which I’m sure is relatable to everyone in the bookish community, blogger or not. I actually wonder if there are those who love books who have never fallen into any sort of slump. Let me know in the comments below if that applies to you!

I don’t fall into reading slumps too often, although I do not think that is directly correlated to reading a lot. Getting busy and not having time to read is not what I would personally categorize as a reading slump, though feel free to disagree there. I feel like the slumps often happen when you read a few books in a row that aren’t particularly exciting, and no new upcoming books really tickle your fancy either. The dampeners on your excitement to read another book is what starts the slump I think, and if nothing gets in the way of that, it can quickly snowball into total slump, I think.

I really think the cause is like a lack of motivation. For whatever external reason it is, usually a bad book, or perhaps just a series of books that aren’t exciting, these kinds of dampeners can really lower the excitement and motivation to read. I think if you just act passively in these situations, it can be really easy for the motivation to slip away, and just get less and less excited to read.

When I get busy I tend to read fewer books, which I think is the case with most people. But it’s not a strict correlation there either of course. If I’m excited enough about a book, most likely I will just make time for it despite the busy schedule. Yet sometimes I don’t read when I’m busy; I assume no book is just interesting enough at the time for me to consider a particular priority. I think it’s really easy to put down books and stop reading and then fall into the weird paradoxical slump where you “really want” to read, but don’t actually read. Does anyone else do that?

Honestly I usually hard force myself out of a slump usually. Or what also really helps is talking to other bookish friends or members of the community who are excited for something. All these will usually re-ignite my passion for reading and make me want to read as well. Even if I don’t speak to someone, honestly if I just pick up any book that sounds a little bit interesting, or something more exciting like a thriller, often times the emotions of reading a book will also jog my love of reading and get me out of a slump. Even if this doesn’t necessarily always have a 100% success rate, I find that since I really do enjoy reading, it isn’t too too hard to climb out of the slump.

How about you all? Are slumps common or just a rare occurrence? And how do you get out of them if so? Let me know in the comments below!

3.5 star

Review: Orchid Child by Victoria Costello

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

Kate is a neuroscientist who covets logic and order, unless she’s sleeping with her married lab director, and then logic goes out the window. So does her orderly life in Manhattan when she’s fired over the affair and Kate’s mother presses her to accept responsibility for her fifteen-year-old nephew, Teague, an orchid child who hears voices and talks to trees but rarely people.
To salvage her career, Kate agrees to conduct a study in West Ireland where hostile townsfolk rebuff her study of their historically high rate of schizophrenia and a local chief Druid identifies Teague’s odd perceptions as the gift of second sight, thrusting a bewildered Kate on a trail of madness, magic, and armed rebellion that leads to her own grandparents, who were banished as traitors from the same town.
When a confrontation with the chief Druid endangers Teague’s life, Kate lands at the intersection of ancient Celtic mysticism and 21st century neurodiversity, where the act of witnessing old wounds can heal suffering in both past and present – even hers, if she can accept the limits of science and the power of ancestral ties.

Note: I received a copy of this an advanced reader’s copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. All opinions put forward are completely my own.

This book was advertised as: Celtic mysticism meets 21st century neurodiversity. A hint of fantasy in an otherwise realistic world is usually a classic archetype that I would enjoy, so I definitely had to give this one a try. So when I was offered a copy of this, I had to jump on the ship!

Orchid Child revolves around a neuroscientist, Kate, who has a messy past in New York with her old job. Things get even more tumultuous when she assumes custody of her teenaged nephew, Teague, and move together to Ireland for a new position studying schizophrenia and other psychological disorders in a certain population in Ireland. Combining a bit of mysticism with science and the power of familial ties, this is a story told in multiple POVs and explores what it means to be family over generations and in the community. It also has lots of reference to mental health related aspects.

The characters in this book were quite good. The main ones had distinct personalities, and even if I didn’t overly relate with most of them, I still understood the point of the character and what they added to the story. Each had a defined personality, and were quite believable, and were internally consistent. Many also experienced character growth in a natural manner that wasn’t jarring. The one thing here I would say was that there were a decent number of characters, so sometimes it was a bit more difficult to keep track of the relationships that were being defined, especially as we get through multiple generations, and flip through the past and present.

The plot was quite decent. I think this plot really revolves a lot more around the relationships that are built and explored. In a way it reads a bit like a mystery with some suspense elements built in too because of the secrets that are slowly unearthed, even if the main story doesn’t revolve around a murder. It has a number of twists and turns that were quite exciting, and I also think the flipping of the POVs between the past and present slowly coming together is always a type of storywriting that I enjoy. There were a few plot gaps that I personally wish were more explored, but I think that is just an author’s choice. I just had a few questions at some points that were never really answered, but perhaps they were considered side plots and not all too important to the main story, which I totally understand.

I really liked the themes of family, land, and ancestral homes in this book. I can also see that it’s somewhat based on the author’s discovery of her family roots. I think that was one of the strong points of this book, in addition to the way the mental health is treated both by professionals and the lay person. The tying of the mysticism into mental health was also well done, and I found it to be an interesting new perspective on how to look at it as well. There was also a bit of a historical element to it, which was great in tying it all together. Overall I would say I enjoyed the book and its contents, although there were times in the book where I felt that it was leading somewhere, but it actually took me somewhere else. Again this is likely the author’s choice mixed with my own expectations of what I think would/should happen.

One last point is that I like that the title is tied into the book naturally, or is at least, a part of the story that is clear. It really feels like a “coming full circle” moment, and I always enjoy that.

Overall Recommendations

Orchid Child is a story that mostly takes place in Ireland, revolving around our protagonist Kate as she navigates her new job in a foreign country that takes her back to her ancestral homeland. A story of familial ties and everlasting loyalty, the story really explores themes of mental health, support, and perspective of various members of the community on mental health and its stigma. If you enjoy themes of family, ancestral land, with a hint of mysticism, this may be the one for you!

5 star

Review: Babel by R. F. Kuang

Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

This was on my anticipated reads about a year ago, and two friends have highly recommended it to me since then, saying that I would for sure love it. Were they correct? I mean, obviously so.

Babel is a historical fiction with a touch of the fantastical. If you know anything about the biblical Tower of Babel, you already know a lot about this book. Babel takes place around the 1830s, following a young Robin Swift, who is brought from Canton to “Babel” tower at Oxford, taking over Latin, Ancient Greek, and Mandarin classes in his translational studies. This is of course, all happening at the height of the power of the British empire, who have amassed the world’s silver supply for their silver-working, which enhances the might of the empire to extraordinary heights. Robin eventually finds himself caught at odds between the colonialist goals of the British empire and his own conscience and those who oppose it.

I have so much I want to exclaim about this book, but I will start first with the characters. The characters and their relationships with each other were very well-developed considering this is also a part fantasy and the world is built around the historical Oxford as well. In terms of the university life vibes, it really reminded me of Ninth House in the way it was all set-up, which I also really enjoyed and rated at 5 stars. There were many detestable characters, but it felt like no character was there for no reason and although they came from all sorts of different backgrounds, somehow it felt like they were all connected, which I feel like is part of the whole “translation magic” in its own right.

The “magic.” I may not be a linguist or anything like that by trade, but I certainly love learning my languages. Silver-working essentially takes advantage of the meanings that are “lost in translation” between languages and manifests them through the silver to enhance things in the real world. As someone who has learned Latin and Mandarin, and even some Ancient Greek, this book really spoke to me on many levels. But that bias aside, Kuang’s work in explaining all the languages and providing all the context for understanding exactly how this power works was excellent, and this world-building was some of the best I have read recently.

This book was certainly a bit heavier than I expected compared to what I was expecting from the advertised premise. That being said, my bias for the world-building with a topic I love really distorts how I feel about what I wanted in this book, so take that with a grain of salt. I really wanted more of the world, and more of the exploration of linguistics and cross-language studies. However, ultimately this book is more about colonialism and the everlasting fight between those with privilege and power and those without. If that kind of political intrigue is not your cup of tea, you may want to avoid this book. However, if you are at all interested in the whole language thing and especially in translation like I am, it may honestly be worth it just to learn all about that. It was completely fascinating and enthralling and I definitely couldn’t put it down.

In terms of the plot, it was all really set up, and all the moral and ethical dilemmas that arose were excellently crafted and executed. Even as a third-party omniscient, it was impossible to swim through the murky murky waters of when you pass a line from moral to immoral, or from a good cause to revenge. That all being said, the plot was fairly predictable at many points, and there weren’t that many surprising twists. But this may be coming from a thriller/mystery-reader perspective, so take that for what you will. It really didn’t detract from the moment of when everything came to pass anyway, and there was a lot of heavy foreshadowing right from the beginning. Overall, just an excellent read that really made me think a lot, yet still a story I really got to immerse myself in and enjoy. I highly recommend this one.

Overall Recommendations

Babel follows a young Robin Swift as he makes his way from being orphaned in Canton to being part of the most prestigious faculty at Oxford handling the source of might of the British empire—silver-working. This allows meanings lost in translation to be harvested and manifested by the silver by using words in different languages to capture them. Soon it becomes clear that the British empire must expand ever outward, and it seems like their power knows no ends. However, there are certainly reasons why there are those opposed, and even the young students at Oxford may not be sheltered forever in their gilded tower…this is an excellent historical fiction with just a touch of the fantastical, and I highly recommend it.