Skip to main content

Featured

Series Review: The Kingston Cycle by C.L. Polk

Greetings and welcome to Reviews That Burn: Series Reviews, part of Books That Burn. Series Reviews discuss at least three books in a series and cover the overarching themes and development of the story across several books. I'd like to thank longtime Patron Case Aiken, who receives a monthly shoutout. This episode discusses The Kingston Cycle by C. L. Polk.  Full Audio Here    In an original world reminiscent of Edwardian England in the shadow of a World War, cabals of noble families use their unique magical gifts to control the fates of nations, while one young man seeks only to live a life of his own. Magic marked Miles Singer for suffering the day he was born, doomed either to be enslaved to his family's interest or to be committed to a witches' asylum. He went to war to escape his destiny and came home a different man, but he couldn’t leave his past behind. The war between Aeland and Laneer leaves men changed, strangers to their friends and family, but even after...
Post a Comment
Read more
Labels

Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

Go Tell It On The Mountain is about hypocrisy, loss, death, abuse, piety, pretense, denial, and self-delusion in a Pentecostal preacher’s household in 1930’s Harlem. The main story takes place in a day, with several vignettes reaching back.‬

John is navigating his sense of himself and his sexuality as a black teen in 1930’s Harlem. Because of when this was written there’s a lot that remains heavily implied, couched behind religious language and “holy” kisses. Some passages are shocking in their language, because the rest of the book is so carefully phrased, the few explicit sections have an impact that they might not have had otherwise.
John’s father (Gabriel) is a pastor whose religious devotion seems to have been unable to put a dent in his capacity to bring grief and pain to those around him. Indeed, the book seems to argue that it’s that very search for piety which created the ground for his abuses to flourish. I came to this book as an atheist and an ex-christian, and the depictions of the oscillating nature of Gabriel’s faith were familiar to me. He demanded reverence and piety from the women in his life, even while he was complicit with them (or was doing things they weren’t).

I read this book in under a day (today, in fact), and it’ll probably be one I read again.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment