Welcome to Litsy!

I really loved this one. At first it was like any other fantasy; beckoning us to take a closer look at this train, its staff, and passengers. But don‘t look too closely at the passing landscape. It was dreamlike. The idea of being stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere, with an ever-changing landscape with unknown creatures on the prowl, sounds terrifying. But then it turns ethereal and whimsical, full of magic. The underlying theme is greed…⬇️

“We leave new life in our wake; young vines curling around ancient houses; new shoots stirring in the soil; flora and fauna not found in any of the natural histories so far written. We leave you to find ways to live alongside it, to make the choice that faces us all—whether to turn away from the changes, to fight, to flee; or whether to welcome them in.”

“Within all things, a striving to achieve a more perfect form.”

“…though the crow is a much maligned bird—a creature cannot be good or evil, not like man, who is born good and pure, who must learn evil.”

“This is why we have our rituals, she thinks. This is why they are needed—so that we can lose ourselves for a while.”

“…they take up the years of superstition, the ritual—boundaries have to be marked, after all, and what is it about a line that brings on the urge to leap over it?”

Gave myself a rest day cause it‘s been a crazy couple of weeks. Only the bare minimum for me today, and I think Luna and Sunny agree with my choices 🥰

“The human mind sees what it wants to, the Professor always says. We see faces in the bark of trees, in wallpaper patterns, because we look for ourselves in everything.”

My kind of Saturday 🥰

Finally learned how to use Libby to borrow e-books on my Kindle lol. I have a couple of books on hold but this one was available now 😁

This book has left me stumped. I don‘t quite know whether it is steampunk / fantasy / eco warning or horror and I was left vaguely dissatisfied. The writing especially the descriptions of the ‘wastelands‘ was stunning and the sense of place on the train hurtling then creating through this otherworldly was great but the characters were a little two dimensional for me and following several split rather than added to a sense of what was happening!

Halfwayr through with this one and so far it‘s very intriguing- the eerie wasteland makes me think of Vandermeer‘s Annhilation/ Southern Reach novels which I also enjoyed lots!

Put aside one book and picked up this one. So far, so good. 🤞🏻

I like books about train trips. But this one is crazy so far….
November 26, 2024

New in & next up! It sounded very intriguing- hopefully it is as good as I am expecting 🥰

#thai food is one of my favorites

#supernatural

I have not even read the first page yet, and already I want to ride on this train.

I‘m in the minority with this one. I enjoyed the beginning and getting to know the characters. Then it went a bit Life of Pi and I got slightly bored. I loved the idea of the train and the claustrophobic atmosphere. I liked Weiwei, she was a resilient little character and the ‘crows‘ were creepy. It‘s well written and described. However, I‘m not sure what to make of the ending. It was a bit anti-climatic for me. 3⭐️

A library book. I picked this one up as I thought it sounded a little different.

The TransSib but different. Between Beijing and Moscow the TransSib rail goes through a Wasteland of miracles. These miracles could harm the passengers that's why the train is impenetrable and doesn't stop. But this time the mix of First and Third Class passengers is different, and the train is said to no longer be safe. Secrets unravel on the 23 day journey that might change the passengers' lives for ever if they make it to Moscow at all.

Read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Katie Leung. Sold!!

I guess I'm getting the audiobook to listen to while reading.

The Orient Express meets Annihilation in this great novel about a train traveling though are area that has experienced strange and uncanny changes, and may even be changing the train and passengers who travel through it. The workers and passengers all have different motivations for being there, but one things remains the same for them all: by the time they reach their destination, they'll never be the same.

Take the magnificent train of Murder on the Orient Express, put the menacingly otherworldly landscape of Annihilation right outside the cabin windows, and you‘ll get a sense of this remarkable debut novel. I highly recommend braving a journey through the Wastelands aboard the Great Trans-Siberian Express—you‘ll discover mysterious stowaways, first class liars, a dangerous friendship with a world we have changed and which now seeks to change us…

4/5

Between Beijing and Moscow, there is a wasteland full of rapidly mutating flora and fauna that is as strange as it is terrifying. And there is a train that is the only way to safely traverse the wasteland without becoming infected by it. The story follows Weiwei, Marya, and Henry as they uncover the secrets of the train and wasteland.

I thought it was a wonderful book about how we can both change and be changed by the world around us.

📖 ebook: Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas
📗 non-fiction: The Fifth Trimester by Lauren Smith Brody
🎧 audiobook: The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain