Book Review: The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Publication Date: June 8th, 2021
Pages: 418, hardcover
Source: Library

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.

But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman—he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother.

As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all. 

SPOILER WARNING!

The Wolf and the Woodsman was a bit of mixed bag. The beginning starts off really strong, with Évike’s village preparing for the arrival of the Woodsmen, holy soldiers who take one girl from the village to be given to the King. Reid throws us right into her world with the first line, informing us that the trees will run away when the Woodsmen come:

“The trees have to be tied down by sunset. When the Woodsmen come, they always try to run.”

Great, right?

For the beginning, I was fully thinking this would be a four or five star book. It reminded me of older McKinley or Yolen works. I did think Évike and the other girls her age read as a bit young; Évike is 25, but the dynamics and bullying she has to endure from some of the other girls her age made it seem like she was more in her late teens or very early twenties. This is an issue that stays with the book throughout. Évike never really came across as a 25 year old, just as a teenager. I’m not sure why I kept getting that impression, except that she was incredibly immature at times and acts in ways more suited to a teenager. I could ignore that, though, because I was in love with the world.

Then, well, Évike and Gáspár are the only two characters we’re with for at good long while, and the pacing–and story–sort of sputter to a slow crawl. I don’t mind character-driven books that move slowly. The problem I had was that, well, I could see why Reid was writing these scenes the way she did. She had to develop the relationship between the two leads; she had to introduce a plot device; she had to introduce two side characters. Maybe I’m not explaining this well, but she was never able to make me forget why she was writing these things, and it was very obviously set up for later plot. It felt a bit aimless and like she struggled with making it feel natural.

During this portion, Évike tells stories of her world, and this was something I enjoyed a lot. I don’t know anything about Hungarian mythology and it was great to first come across it in Reid’s writing. I’ve read other reviews that say this was boring and slowed the pace down again, and in a way, I can see how some readers would feel that way. There are, I think, at least three stories that Évike tells (I think Reid intentionally made it three to allude to the Rule of Three fairytale device). In my notes for this part I wrote down “starting to feel a little episodic” and I still stand by that. The events didn’t flow easily, as I said earlier.

(Big big spoiler for the ending here.) However… Reid has Évike lose the magical powers she’s only just developed in the novel as sacrifice for killing a sacred, mythical creature. While I agree this makes sense in the overall plot and world, I’m tired of female characters losing powers at the end of their arcs. It also made sense for Alina to lose her powers at the end of the Shadow and Bone trilogy, but it still feeds into a stereotypical story of how a powerful woman has to lose her powers at the end of whatever story she’s in. Either that, or she goes crazy from them. So again, while it makes sense, I’m still tired of seeing it happen. (End spoiler.)

Thankfully, if the reader can get through this part of the book, the middle and ending make up for a lot of the flaws. Reid finds her footing again as Évike tries to navigate a dangerous world and finds a family, and I loved all of this. The ending was great and had some amazing visuals that Reid was able to convey with her words. I could very easily see the things she was writing about, and it looked great in my mind.

So, when it’s on target, The Wolf and the Woodsman is spectacular, which is why it’s so noticeable and jarring when it loses itself a bit. Still, I enjoyed it enough to stick with it for 418 pages, and I’ll be looking into what Reid writes next.

A Trio of Small Book Reviews

Over the holiday season, I didn’t stop reading, but I did stop reviewing most of what I read. I did, however, write three small reviews for three books. Enjoy these extremely short, paragraph-long reviews!

Lore Olympus Volume 1 by Rachel Smythe

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

I would have liked this way more if the coloring wasn’t so dark and muddied. I’m not sure if this is an issue of the coloring not translating well from computer screen to on-page; maybe it looks fine online. But here, it was almost impossible to see things like expressions on the characters in the first few episodes. It was frustrating; the art style is interesting! Let me, you know, actually see it!

It did get better in later episodes, somewhat. And Smythe has a good sense of comedic timing and comedy in her drawings. I’ll still look into the next volume, but I may have to bring a flashlight.

We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

I’m not sure how, exactly, Daryl Gregory is able to make Lovecraftian horror actually interesting to me, but he manages somehow. This is the first book where I really got how terrifying Lovecraft mythology can be.

Time to tear through the rest of his backlog.

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente (reread)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

So glad I decided to ignore my library stack and reread this one. I first read it in 2012, a year after it released. Ten years later, I approached it a very different person than I was then, and Deathless rang with new meaning for me. I could understand it better than I did ten years ago, feel it more deeply. I haven’t gone through anything as traumatic as Marya and the cast have gone through, no, but the last few years have done a number on me, and it was interesting to look at a favorite book from a newer, slightly more tarnished lens.

Book Review: Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy Fairytale Retelling
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
Publication Date: October 19th, 2021
Pages: 512, hardcover
Source: NetGalley

Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl…

Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love–and she’s on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele’s dutiful servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja’s otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back… by stealing Gisele’s life for herself.

The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while Vanja uses an enchanted string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a lonely but lucrative double life as princess and jewel thief, charming nobility while emptying their coffers to fund her great escape. Then, one heist away from freedom, Vanja crosses the wrong god and is cursed to an untimely end: turning into jewels, stone by stone, for her greed.

Vanja has just two weeks to figure out how to break her curse and make her getaway. And with a feral guardian half-god, Gisele’s sinister fiancé, and an overeager junior detective on Vanja’s tail, she’ll have to pull the biggest grift yet to save her own life.

Once, many moons ago when I was just a baby Miranda, my friend and I were obsessed with a comic on deviantART. It was part of a challenge where several different artists created characters and storylines set in a world that the person in charge of the challenge had created. Week by week, the artists would post their own comics, and people would vote on which story and characters could go through to the next round.

My friend and I loved the storyline following two outlaws, Annie and the Professor (or as Annie called him, Ginger.) It was hilarious, the characters were well crafted, and the storyline was moving. I loved it so much, in fact, that I followed the artist for the next fifteen years, because I wanted to see what else she would eventually put out.

The artist was Margaret Owen, and I am so excited to be able to read her books.

Little Thieves is a loose retelling of The Goose Girl but focused on the villain of the story, the maid who steals the princess’ life. When Vanja steals something she shouldn’t and is then cursed by a Low God to repay her debt, she has only two weeks to break the curse before she turns to jewels.

To say this book is a triumph is an understatement. Owen takes the fairytale of The Goose Girl and upends it while still keeping the recognizable bits of the tale. It’s creative and the way she uses the bits from the fairytale make sense, in a way that leaves you thinking, “How did she come up with that?” I read the book almost entirely in one sitting. That’s how much I enjoyed it.

Perhaps what I enjoyed most was how clearly Owen has taken her ability to create comics and translated it into prose. Little Thieves is bursting with detail that I could visualize very easily simply because Owen knew how to describe what she was seeing artistically in her head into words. I sometimes have trouble picturing what an author is trying to describe; I didn’t have an issue here.

All of the things I loved about Margaret Owen’s comic on deviantART years ago are present in Little Thieves as well: Wonderfully layered characters, hilarious banter, an interesting world, and a romantic arc that made me squee. Yes, squee. Vanja herself is one of the best YA characters I’ve read in a long while. She does horrible things, yes, but given the world she grew up in, it makes sense. Owen treats her both with sympathy but also making certain she does, indeed, pay her debts. If the book had simply been entirely of banter between her and Emeric, I would have been over the moon. Owen simply has a way with words that can make you laugh like a donkey — then pages later, she’ll have you tearing up.

Some readers may find the villain to be lacking in nuance, but frankly, the world is full of men like the villain, and I find him all too believably real. The ending may also lack a bit of a punch to some readers; again, I didn’t mind it.

I honestly have very little else to say except that I adored Little Thieves, and I’m so looking forward to everything else Owen releases in the future.

Book Review: What We Devour by Linsey Miller

⭐

Rating: 0.5 out of 5.

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication Date: July 6th, 2021
Pages: 336, paperback
Source: NetGalley

From the author of Mask of Shadows comes a dark and intricate story of a girl who must tether herself to a violent ruler to save her crumbling world.

Lorena Adler has a secret—she holds the power of the banished gods, the Noble and the Vile, inside her. She has spent her entire life hiding from the world and her past. She’s content to spend her days as an undertaker in a small town, marry her best friend, Julian, and live an unfulfilling life so long as no one uncovers her true nature.

But when the notoriously bloodthirsty and equally Vile crown prince comes to arrest Julian’s father, he immediately recognizes Lorena for what she is. So she makes a deal—a fair trial for her betrothed’s father in exchange for her service to the crown.

The prince is desperate for her help. He’s spent years trying to repair the weakening Door that holds back the Vile…and he’s losing the battle. As Lorena learns more about the Door and the horrifying price it takes to keep it closed, she’ll have to embrace both parts of herself to survive.

DNF at 22%

This should have been right up my alley. Some light Beauty and the Beast elements in an interesting fantasy world? I should have loved this.

The issue started right off the bat with the world-building. There’s a lot of information thrown at the reader in the first few chapters, which isn’t explained well and left me deeply confused. The basic idea of it is intriguing, but the way Miller went about presenting her world made a muddle of it. 

The biggest issue I had was with Lorena. The book is told from her perspective, in first person, and it’s almost as if the book was written in third person for all that we see Lorena’s thought processes or emotions. She barely even reacts to things. At one point, another character tells Lorena to kill her, and there’s no in-text reaction from Lorena, either outwardly or inwardly. This is made far more apparent when she meets three side characters who frankly outshine her in every way. I could have read a novel about those three characters. I could not continue reading a novel about Lorena, who came across more as a placeholder for the reader than a character in her own right. 

So, it’s a no from me, unfortunately. 

Book Review: King of Scars (King of Scars #1) by Leigh Bardugo

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Publisher: Imprint
Publication Date: January 29th, 2019
Pages: 514, hardcover
Source: Own

Face your demons… or feed them.

The boy king. The war hero. The prince with a demon curled inside his heart. Nikolai Lantsov has always had a gift for the impossible. The people of Ravka don’t know what he endured in their bloody civil war and he intends to keep it that way. Yet with each day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. 

Zoya Nazyalensky has devoted her life to honing her deadly talents and rebuilding the Grisha army. Despite their magical gifts, Zoya knows the Grisha cannot survive without Ravka as a place of sanctuary—and Ravka cannot survive a weakened king. Zoya will stop at nothing to help Nikolai secure the throne, but she also has new enemies to conquer in the battle to come.

Far north, Nina Zenik wages her own kind of war against the people who would see the Grisha wiped from the earth forever. Burdened by grief and a terrifying power, Nina must face the pain of her past if she has any hope of defeating the dangers that await her on the ice.

Ravka’s king. Ravka’s general. Ravka’s spy. They will journey past the boundaries of science and superstition, of magic and faith, and risk everything to save a broken nation. But some secrets aren’t meant to stay buried, and some wounds aren’t meant to heal. 

After falling headfirst into the Shadow and Bone series on Netflix, I decided to go ahead and read all the books that take place in the Grishaverse. The Six of Crows duology will likely remain my favorite of Bardugo’s work, but Nikolai was my favorite character in the original trilogy, so I was looking forward to reading his story and getting his POV.

Which… well.

King of Scars is very uneven, which is surprising considering how deftly Bardugo handled multiple POV characters and chapters in Six of Crows. I think the main trouble I had with King of Scars is that, despite being the literal title character, Nikolai just doesn’t have as much of a presence here as I would have thought. It’s hard to explain, but I noticed a definite difference in his chapters versus, say, Zoya and Nina’s. We were in Nina and Zoya’s heads pretty firmly, especially Zoya; Nikolai, however, felt a bit more removed from the reader. Considering what a force his character was in the original trilogy, this was surprising. 

It honestly felt as if Bardugo was more interested in Zoya’s character than Nikolai’s. Which is fine, but maybe then just make the story about Zoya and stay in her head instead of trying to force Nikolai into the equation as well. 

Nina’s storyline felt too removed from the main one in Ravka, though I do see how it’s going to come together in the second book. It was also frustrating in the climax of the book to continually switch POVs from Zoya and Nikolai to Nina in Fjerda. If something big and epic was happening with Zoya and Nikolai, I didn’t want to cut away to Nina’s storyline in the middle of it. This is the issue with having multiple POVs spread across different locations undergoing different storylines. Six of Crows kept the crew together and going through the same events, so it flowed better. Here, it was just irritating. I honestly wish Nina’s POV had been taken out of this novel and given her own, maybe a novella. It would have worked better.

The potential romance between Nina and Hanne fell a bit flat to me, which was surprising, considering the fact that I wasn’t overly into Nina and Matthias as a couple. But Bardugo wrote them in a way that, while it wasn’t my cup of tea personally, I could see how they worked together, and their interactions had an ease and a flow to it that Nina and Hanne simply lack. It felt like Bardugo was trying to force the attraction and really make her readers believe it, which consequently made me not really buy into it.

I’m also uncertain how to take to the development of the lore in the world. Once Nikolai and the others are in the Fold, it just exacerbates the issues the book had been having with being more interested in Zoya’s character than Nikolai’s. He doesn’t do much during this part until the end; meanwhile, Zoya is learning and growing in groundbreaking ways. It was an interesting take on the Saints, but their inclusion didn’t feel entirely natural.

We’ll see if Rule of Wolves resolves these issues or if it’s just more of the same.

Book Review: What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Genre: Juvenile fantasy
Publisher: Subterranen Press
Publication Date: March 18th, 2021
Pages: 231, hardcover
Source: NetGalley

Ghost hunter, fox whisperer, troublemaker.

It is the summer of 2013 and Abigail Kamara has been left to her own devices. This might, by those who know her, be considered a mistake. While her cousin, police constable and apprentice wizard Peter Grant, is off in the sticks, chasing unicorns, Abigail is chasing her own mystery. Teenagers around Hampstead Heath have been going missing but before the police can get fully engaged, the teens return home – unharmed but vague about where they’ve been.

Aided only by her new friend Simon, her knowledge that magic is real, and a posse of talking foxes that think they’re spies, Abigail must venture into the wilds of Hampstead to discover who is luring the teenagers and more importantly – why?

What Abigail Did That Summer is the latest in the Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. This outing doesn’t star police detective Peter Grant. Instead, we spend time with Abigail, Peter’s precocious cousin, some talking foxes, and some ghosts from the past.

When one of her schoolmates tries to get her to visit an abandoned house, Abigail is suspicious, and realizes that there could be a connection to some recent disappearances of local teens. With the help of the local river goddess, and some talking foxes, she investigates. 

While Peter is not in this book, Nightingale is, but only as story editor and ultimately to help Abigail tie up some loose ends.

Abigail has a strong voice, and is a snarky, but endearing character. There are glimpses into her family life, and into some folk history for both humans and the foxes.

Book Review: The First Girl Child by Amy Harmon

⭐

Rating: 1 out of 5.

Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: 47North
Publication Date: August 20th, 2019
Pages: 408, trade paperback
Source: Library

Bayr of Saylok, bastard son of a powerful and jealous chieftain, is haunted by the curse once leveled by his dying mother. Bartered, abandoned, and rarely loved, she plagued the land with her words: From this day forward, there will be no daughters in Saylok.

Raised among the Keepers at Temple Hill, Bayr is gifted with inhuman strength. But he’s also blessed with an all-too-human heart that beats with one purpose: to protect Alba, the first girl child born in nearly two decades and the salvation for a country at risk.

Now the fate of Saylok lies with Alba and Bayr, whose bond grows deeper with every whisper of coming chaos. Charged with battling the enemies of their people, both within and without, Bayr is fueled further by the love of a girl who has defied the scourge of Saylok.

What Bayr and Alba don’t know is that they each threaten the king, a greedy man who built his throne on lies, murder, and betrayal. There is only one way to defend their land from the corruption that has overtaken it. By breaking the curse, they could defeat the king…but they could also destroy themselves.

From ​the New York Times bestselling author comes a breathtaking fantasy of a cursed kingdom, warring clans, and unexpected salvation.

I originally was not going to read this book because the premise made me uneasy. The idea could easily fall into cissexism if not deconstructed properly. However, I decided to put my hesitation aside and check it out from the library. After seeing the high ratings and number of reviews on the book, I figured, it probably would be a solid read at least.

I was mistaken. 

I will readily admit that I’m hard to please when it comes to Norse fiction — even if an author gets the cultural details right, their portrayal of the gods could irritate me. My wariness increased when I came across a Bible verse at the beginning of the book. Once the book gets going, it doesn’t get better. 

I’m going to try to explain this as best I can. Harmon comes at Norse religion in a very Christian manner. Odin is treated as a benevolent, all-powerful father figure that everyone primarily prays to. Thor is mentioned here and there, as is Loki, who also plays a part in the fantasy island’s creation story. Furthermore, only nobles really prayed to Odin, and even then it was with a heavy dose of distrust. Odin is not someone you’re meant to readily believe and trust in. The commoners and farmers would pray to Thor or Frey, as they were the “Big Three” of Norse religion. 

At the beginning of the book, Dagmar rescues his sister’s newborn son. Instead of praying to Frigga or Freya to save the infant, he prays to Odin. Why? Odin has no familial attribute. He would have heard the prayers and gone, “What the Hel are you praying to me for? Leave me the fuck alone.” And that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, Odin’s going to come on by and see what he can do to “bless” the child. Freya finally gets a mention on page 37, but at nearly 100 pages in, the only gods mentioned were Odin, Thor, Loki, and Freya. Odin is the sole god who created the island the characters live on, again a rather Christian idea of a single deity being the one to create a world, whereas the Norse religion believes in multiple beings creating the world. 

Valhalla is treated as the be all, end all for the afterlife, with no mention of Hel or Freya’s afterlife. When a king is killed by an altar falling on him, another character mentions that “he will dine in Valhalla tonight”. Sorry, no. Only warriors who died in battle got into Valhalla or Freya’s realm. Everyone else goes to Hel. 

At another point, a father-to-be is waiting for his wife to give birth. In Viking times, the fathers were always in the room with the laboring mothers. Always. For days on end, even. There were rarely any exceptions to this rule. Yet the book’s character does not spend time in the room, and no one makes mention of this, suggesting to me that Harmon did not do any deep research into this. If it was a choice to move the plot along, even worse, in my opinion.

Oh, the author is also sure to include “not all men”. Because, you know. Gotta make sure the men are pacified, here.

I was already on the fence about it by this point, about 80 pages in, so I decided to skim. On page 225, we’re told that “only women can bear children”. 

Hello, cissexism! I was hoping I wouldn’t see you here. 

At that point, I decided to put the book aside. We are not going to get along. The deconstruction of gender roles is shallow at best. The religion is Christianized window dressing, and the research into the culture of the Vikings just isn’t there. I’m disappointed but not surprised.

Book Review: The Last Rabbit by Shelley Moore Thomas

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Genre: Children’s Fantasy
Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books
Publication Date: February 9th, 2021
Pages: 288, hardcover
Source: NetGalley

In the vein of The Girl Who Drank the Moon and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, an modern fairytale about sisterhood, forgiveness, and redemption.

On the magical island of Hybrasil there lives a Magician and four enchanted rabbit sisters. One by one, the rabbits have been leaving the island, accompanied by a Boy and his boat. He takes them wherever they choose. When the rabbits leave the island, they can turn back into girls.

The last rabbit, Albie, remains. She does not want to leave, but the island is sinking. Before deciding where she wants to go, Albie visits each of her sisters. Caragh has joined a circus. Isolde is the captain of a pirate ship. And Rory wants to go home to the family’s house in Cork.

Through many furry twists and hoppity turns, we learn how one mistake can lead to many consequences, and that forgiveness and family are always within reach.

On the magical island of Hybrasil there lives a Magician and four enchanted rabbit sisters. One by one, the rabbits have been leaving the island, accompanied by a Boy and his boat. He takes them wherever they choose. When the rabbits leave the island, they can turn back into girls.

The last rabbit, Albie, remains. She does not want to leave, but the island is sinking. Before deciding where she wants to go, Albie visits each of her sisters. Caragh has joined a circus. Isolde is the captain of a pirate ship. And Rory wants to go home to the family’s house in Cork.

Through many furry twists and hoppity turns, we learn how one mistake can lead to many consequences, and that forgiveness and family are always within reach.

Book Review: Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children #6) by Seanan McGuire

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Tor
Publication Date: January 13th, 2021
Pages: 174, hardcover
Source: NetGalley

A young girl discovers a portal to a land filled with centaurs and unicorns in Seanan McGuire’s Across the Green Grass Fields, a standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-wining Wayward Children series.

“Welcome to the Hooflands. We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.”

Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated, of late.

When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to “Be Sure” before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines―a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes.

But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem… 

Across the Green Grass Fields is the sixth installment of McGuire’s Wayward Children series, touted as being a jumping off point for readers new to the series. I think perhaps this is why I felt so underwhelmed by it in the end — the novel follows the same basic set up as many of the others, where a child has a difficult time at home, then comes across a door and enters another world that seems perfect for them, only to wind up being sent back to their original world. As someone who has read the entire series, it just felt like taking a step back in how the stories have progressed from the first novel which introduced us to that set up. 

Usually I find McGuire’s imagination and creativity enviable, but here it fell flat for me. Maybe it’s because I never went through a horse phase as a kid — I think the closest I came was watching The Saddle Club on TV and maybe reading a few of the books — but McGuire’s worldbuilding was thin here. Regan spends most of her time hidden away by her centaur family, which is full of characters that are likable, but that causes the world to feel small. There’s a bit of worldbuilding at the end but it’s rushed, as is the third act of the novel. Regan doesn’t get to explore the Hooflands, so it doesn’t feel lived in. 

I do however like that there was representation of intersex people in this novel. This is still one of my favorite series and I’ll read whatever McGuire writes for it. Across the Green Grass Fields just isn’t my favorite of the series, unfortunately.