Reviews

The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar

craftysilicate's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

rodneywilhite's review

5.0

This is maybe my favorite novel I've read in years. The way the narrative unfolds (and doesn't unfold) is so beautiful.

I think there are some commonalities with Faulkner in how the past and present are consistently intruding upon one another, and how time is more like an ebb and flow that occasionally washes over the story than a linear sequence of events. It also shares with The Sound and the Fury the structure of four personas telling the same story, each of them revising, clarifying, and complicating it.

However, and I mean this sincerely, Samatar has a much more deft touch than Faulkner and a better ear for the poetic.

I could go on and on, but this is such a formally excellent book, you just gotta read it yourself.

lezreadalot's review against another edition

5.0

I did it because I had to, because human beings cannot live without history.

4.5 stars. N. K. Jemisin's blurb at the front of this book says something to the effect of, "You need to read this very slowly and carefully and when you're finished you need to read it again." And I completely agree with that. And I don't think that's a good thing. I had to read the first part of this book about three times before the plot and the writing really started sinking into my head. That's not a compliment. I love when I read a line of prose and I immediately want to reread it because it's so beautiful and striking and impactful; I hate when I have to do it because I literally couldn't parse it. Maybe it says something more about my own reading comprehension than it says anything about the book, but this kind of density feels more hostile than anything. Not just the writing, but the fact that there was no context, and lots of time I just felt adrift as a reader. I hate info-dumping, but give me something. Lovely writing is the surest form of kryptonite for me, and it can really elevate my enjoyment of a book. But inscrutability does not equate to beauty! I'm right and I should say it! Fight me about it!  

The swordmaiden wears her loyalty like a necklace of dead stars. Their worth is eternal, although they no longer shine.

  
Uh, all that aside... I really fucking love this book lol. Four women, one rebellion and an incomparably wonderful and well-woven story. This is the kind of fantasy that I yearn for, the kind of ideas and prose and beauty that make me really enjoy reading. The world and the world-building are complex, but once you start to peel back the layers and get into the intricacies of the families and relationships, the religion and gods, the history and the people, the different tribes... the amalgamation of it all is really, really something. I really liked all the characters and the way we interrogated this war through their histories and their lives and their actions, but once I started to understand things, the plot really really shone for me. Things really picked up for me in Part Two when we started to go more in depth into the different forms of worship in this world. The Stone as a concept is so interesting to me, and I feel like I would have liked to spend even more time with it. While I did not enjoy the pace at which we were given information about the actual characters who we were following, I do think that some of the reveals about the history and mythology of the world were really well done, and we slowly learned about things that became more and more impactful for both the characters and the story in a huge way. The book is divided into four parts, and each of them have their slow moments that drag on a little bit, but they all did manage to grab me back in the end. Thematically, this book just went to some places that I absolutely eat up and I adored the ending. There's often a moment in books when the significance of the title hits you, and that moment in this book was so, so good.    

Your body remembers war. This body I love. War has shaped the beloved body.

I had my ups and downs with the writing, but this is truly, truly artistic in a lot of ways. Some of those ways didn't really work for me. The author has a tendency of sort of slipping into a flashback, in the middle of a paragraph, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, so much so that you're not actually sure where you are in terms of time. That gets a little frustrating sometimes, even though I know it's deliberate and done for style. There were a few sections where she eschewed quotation marks, which, I never care the reason why an author chooses to do that, it's just always annoying. But the barebones writing, the essential mechanical prose, certain phrases she would use, certain descriptions that were so awesomely vivid... the writing really was sublime. She often starts sentences with 'and', seemingly incongruously, but it gives a sense of continuance and musicality that I really ended up liking. 

I would have swallowed her whole if it meant I could take her with me.

I should note that getting the e-book really helped me start this again, continue it and ultimately finish it. It was just easier having the opportunity to search for names that might have only cropped up a few times before, or find the first time that a certain subject was brought up, or a certain place, and a lot of things that would have been more difficult with only the physical book. I really don't think this book would have lost anything if it had just been clearer on some of the details of the world-building. It would have been just as beautiful and complex. So I really cannot compliment it entirely for its style. But I still enjoyed it so much, in a way I don't even know how to explain. Do I recommend it? That depends on what kind of reader you are and how much patience you have. But this was really something special and I'm super glad that I read it. 

Content warnings:

Spoiler

war, death, descriptions of torture

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Dasya, the next time you open your eyes—say yes.

disabledbookdragon's review

adventurous slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

sakeriver's review

The most obvious thing to say about this book is that it is beautiful, because it is. Reading it, I felt lost in the beauty of Samatar’s sentences, sometimes so much so that I lost sight of the story for the language in which it was told. And yet, by the end, I was there. And captivated.

kimmetogram's review

2.0

DNF

mlore95's review

3.0

The Winged Histories is a difficult book to review. Much like A Stranger in Olondria, it's full of gorgeous, dense prose. Prose that can often be too dense, and often led to me losing interest and nodding off.Undeniably well-written, I feel this is a book that's easier to appreciate than it is to actually enjoy. It's full of myth, reflecting on the past, and stream of consciousness. Only rarely do we get traditional straightforward storytelling, and it leads to a plot that's hard to follow and doesn't grab attention. I appreciate this book, and Samatar's got some of the most beautiful writing in the genre, but this one really just didn't grab me like Stranger in Olondria did.

megatsunami's review

4.0

Gorgeous, personal, nuanced exploration of gender, spirituality, and revolution. (And this book is nothing like whatever probably came to your mind when I said that.) Would give 5 stars except that it took me like 100 pages to really get into the rhythm of the book. Sofia Samatar is extremely original and poetic but it takes a little work.

samiha_b's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

batesbarb's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is an absolutely beautiful book. Samatar's skill with words honestly feels a little unfair. The prose is lush and enveloping, but I found it difficult to connect to the story itself. It's been 5 years or more since I read A Stranger in Olondria, and I had a terrible time trying to keep track of the various nations and factions and how they related to each other. I kept forgetting who was fighting who and who was fomenting rebellion where. Perhaps if I had read Stranger more recently, I would have felt less lost. 

The rotating narrator construction really allowed Samatar to show her skill at voice and tone (the sections have beautifully distinct tones and focuses, so that even the ostensibly third-person sections have a very clear source and it is obvious they are centered around different women), but it undercut what momentum the story built. As soon as I felt like I had even a basic grasp on the structure of the world and the people in it, the story would move to a different woman, and I'd have to start all over again figuring out who anyone was and how they related to each other. The first two viewpoint characters were the most distant and least connected, which I think amplified the problem for me. 

All in all, my feelings about the book are quite muddled. I kept moving back and forth between being absorbed and enticed by the beautiful prose, and frustrated and alienated because I couldn't keep track of or connect to the actual people and events of the story.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Emotional abuse and Colonisation