The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Becky Chambers)

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
The Wayfarer series, Book 1
Becky Chambers
Harper Voyager
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Rosemary used to live in the lap of luxury on Mars, but now has given up everything she ever had to get away from her family and old life, joining the crew of the spacecraft Wayfarer as a clerk. It's a patched-up vessel with a crew as mismatched as its parts, from the eccentric tech Kizzy to her partner Jenks, who has fallen in love with the shipboard AI Lovelace, from Dr. Chef - one of the last members of a species slowly going extinct after a genocidal civil war - to Ohan, a Sianat Pair infected with a Whisperer virus that enables great genius at the cost of a shortened lifespan. There's also an Aandrisk pilot, Sissix, and a grouchy human algaeist Corbin managing the fuel vats. Rosemary can't help feeling overwhelmed, given that she's barely set foot off a planet before, but Captain Ashby and the crew (well, most of them, save Corbin) go out of their way to make her feel welcome.
When a new species near the galaxy's core - the Toremi, a highly isolationist and clannish species most known for fighting each other to the death over any disagreement - is granted entry into the Galactic Commons of intelligent races, establishing a new wormhole tunnel will be a critical first step to establishing trade and strong diplomatic ties: a lucrative job for any wormhole-punching vessel. Though humans are still considered lesser members of the Commons, Captain Ashby manages to land the gig for the Wayfarer. It'll be a long standard-year of travel to reach the new world, if a short jump back boring a new wormhole through subspace, and long hauls are the kind of trips to make or break a crew, especially when complicated by pirates, bureaucratic barriers, equipment malfunctions, and dark secrets ripped into the open at the worst possible times.

REVIEW: This is another book with personal significance. The novella To Be Taught, If Fortunate was the first audiobook I listened to at my current job - a job I left as of today, transferring to a new role. (There's a long, irrelevant story behind that...) My new job is less likely to allow for the copious audiobook time that I've grown used to, especially not when I'm still learning the ropes. So, to close out my long stretch of listening, I decided to bookend things with this, another Becky Chambers title. It, too, was enjoyable, if a little light on plot.
This is very much a character-driven tale, to the point where there's not too much else binding the events together save the crew's interactions with each other and a few offworlders encountered along the way. For the most part, these are interesting enough to entertain, as everyone has hidden facets and flaws that provide friction now and again, and they all undergo some growth or challenge along the way. Rosemary, a newcomer to the ship in particular and interstellar travel in general, becomes a convenient way for Chambers to explain her milieu to the reader, though Rosemary is far from helpless or useless, just somewhat naïve. And there is a general story arc involved, if a thin one, as the mixed-species crew of the Wayfarer travels to the homeworld of the newest member of the Galactic Commons... but are these Toremi really ready to join the multitude of starfaring races, when only one clan among them has accepted Galactic Commons membership and is still warring with others of its kind? During the Wayfarer's trip, the crew encounter various ways that different species (and members within species; these are not monolithic cultures) view and interact with each other, and even on their own ship there can be stumbles and misunderstandings. Some of the crewmembers seem unevenly developed, though, and don't quite get a full arc or follow-through even after some revelations and transformative moments. Corbin in particular is a flat, grumbling nobody for far too long, and Kizzy's kooky eccentricity wanders erratically between endearing and annoying. Some of their stopovers along the way also overstay their welcome and plot relevance, though this is very much a book where the journey is far more than half the point. The climax feels rushed, shoehorned in to provide drama, with inadequate buildup on a few points (that I can't get into without spoilers). The ending is reasonably satisfying, but also feels like it's partway through some larger journey... and, from what I can tell from blurbs, it looks like the rest of the series wanders away from the Wayfinder (despite the series being named after the ship), so I'm unlikely to find closure on those fronts if I read on.
Still, for all that I sometimes got a little antsy wishing the story would just get on with things already and stop lingering so long over little moments and philosophical discussions and quirky characters being quirky, I will say I remained interested and entertained for the most part as I listened to it, which was enough to keep The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet at a four-star Good rating. On another day, in another mood, I could see where I might be extra-harsh and trim it a half-star, but not today.

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Greenteeth (Molly O'Neill)

Greenteeth
Molly O'Neill
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: For one thousand years, Jenny Greenteeth has lived in the lake besides the little town of Chipping Appleby, tending the water plants and tidying the lake bed and only eating the occasional interloper. When a witch is thrown into her waters, bound with burning iron, Jenny thinks perhaps she's expected to end the mortal's life quickly... but this woman seems to have true power, and Jenny does not at all like the looks of the priestly figure who tossed the witch to her doom. She rescues Temperance and brings her to her cave beneath the waters. There, the witch tells Jenny of the wicked parson who seems to have bewitched her neighbors, convincing them to turn on her when once they were friendly. Together, Jenny and the witch hatch a plan to strike back... but find something far, far more dangerous than either anticipated within the skin of the holy man, something that could doom the whole country if left unchecked. In desperation, they seek help from Gwyn ap Nuud, king of the high fae and one-time leader of the Wild Hunt, and are charged with three seemingly impossible tasks as the price for his assistance - but if they fail, both mortals and immortals will suffer under the heel of the monstrous Erl King.

REVIEW: "Cozy" fantasy seems to be having a moment these days, and Greenteeth might roughly fall into that category as it focuses on the budding friendship between a not-quite-monstrous monster and a good witch, though in other ways it hearkens back to more traditional fantasies built around quests and elder-day magic that's fading away in an increasingly modern and human-dominated world.
The titular Jenny is a water monster, a green womanlike figure possessing great strength, nigh-immortality, the ability to breathe underwater, and multiple rows of very sharp teeth. "Jenny Greenteeth" is a traditional folklore creature of the British Isles, kin to pixies and hobgoblins, and this particular Jenny has been one so long that she no longer recalls if she had another identity or name. If she even thinks about her past at all, she assumes she was created in the same way that she herself once created a daughter from a drowned human infant. She's a solitary being, keeping her "household" beneath the lake nice and tidy with a pike as a sort-of pet, and she generally doesn't bother the nearby humans, who seem to have forgotten that they even have a lake beast... at least, so it seems, until they rudely drop a witch into her domain. Some twinge of compassion causes her to spare the woman's life, as much as a dislike of the parson who riled up the locals into a froth of anti-witch sentiment. But Jenny is not, and should never be mistaken for, human. She may have empathy and even be capable of kindness, but when need be, or when pushed, she's quite capable of putting her claws and teeth to bloody use; the traditional Jenny Greenteeth isn't known for her vegan diet, after all. Temperance the witch is initially, naturally, terrified, but her despair and anger, plus her determination to get back to her beloved husband and children and get them out of the parson's foul clutches, lead her into what starts as an uneasy truce with Jenny. When Temperance needs special ingredients for a spell as part of her attempted counterstrike against the wicked parson, Jenny calls upon Brackus, a traveling goblin merchant with a trickster streak and a bottomless bag of various goodies. It isn't long before Brackus is drawn deeper into the problem, when it becomes clear that there's a greater supernatural threat embodied in the parson that endangers the magical realm as well as the mundane - and the magical realm is already in trouble, slowly fading as the world ages. Indeed, the faerie king no longer even rides forth as he used to, content to preside over a diminishing court that was once the feared Wild Hunt; even the promise of a quarry like the legendary Erl King is insufficient to stir him from his retirement. Instead, he sets three seemingly-impossible quests out of legend before the trio seeking his aid, and even if they succeed, all he promises is advice, not active help. Still, it's better than nothing, which is what they have when facing the enemy in Chipping Appleby.
As Jenny, Temperance, and Brackus, along with some help from the faerie-touched hound Cavall (on loan from the faerie queen, Lady Creiddylad, who offers more tangible help than the king but is still constrained by his rules), set forth to fulfill the lord's requests, they travel the length and breadth of an elder England, seeing for themselves how magic and the memory of magic has faded in the centuries since Camelot stood. The three clash more than once, but adversity inevitably begets friendship, and Jenny even comes to appreciate Brackus despite his sometimes-irritating optimism.
There are a few points where the personal clashes feel a bit drawn out, as when Jenny and Temperance settle into a feud spurred by a petty misunderstanding that festers out of proportion; this primarily happens to force a plot-relevant event, and struck me as mildly manipulative on the author's part. The ties to Camelot and Arthur become more pronounced as the tale unfolds; it works for the most part, though I sometimes get tired of King Arthur as the inevitable go-to touchstone legend. For the most part, though, it's a fairly satisfying tale, evoking the spirit of questing fairy tales, even though the wrap-up feels slightly too neat and tidy. Being a standalone title helps, as it doesn't ever overstay its welcome or its premise.

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Dragonfruit (Makiia Lucier)

Dragonfruit
Makiia Lucier
Clarion Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Seadragons are the great wonder and wealth of the Nominomi Sea, and the terror of many a ship. Their scales can be fashioned into nigh-impenetrable armor. Their flesh can be rendered into pure oil that burns brighter and cleaner than anything else. A stew made from their eyes can restore lost vigor and youth. Every part of the great beasts is worth at least its weight in gold. But it's their eggs, known as dragonfruit, that are most coveted and rarest seen. Consuming a dragonfruit, the old stories say, can erase one great sorrow from your life... but to do so is to risk the anger of the sea god, who will exact a terrible price. Sometimes, though, for the truly desperate and lost and heartbroken, the risk is worth the reward.
As a girl, Hanalei was a page to the queen of the wealthy Tamarind Islands... and, like the queen, fell victim to a terrible poison that induced a comalike slumber. Three seadragon eggs were brought in the hopes that they could provide a cure. But an accident destroyed two eggs, and Hanalei's father, a loyal soldier, turned traitor and stole the last egg, whisking it and his his stricken daughter away from the Tamarinds. The cure worked, but it cost the father his life, and made them both exiles from their homeland.
Ten years later, Hanalei wanders the Nominomi Sea. She studies the dwindling population of seadragons, selling her sketches and observations to the handful of scholars who want to understand the wonders of the Nominomi, but always the hunters and the foreigners seem to get there first. But she has an advantage they do not; ever since her cure, she has been able to sense the great beasts. Though she tries to keep it secret, one dragoner captain, Bragadin of the Anemone, works it out and takes her captive as he hunts for a gravid seadragon. Passing near the Tamarinds, she takes a chance to escape, even knowing she'll probably be seen as the unwelcome daughter of a traitor. Instead, she finds an old childhood friend, Prince Samahtitamahenele (or Sam), who tells her the queen, his mother, still sleeps her poisoned sleep. When a fresh seadragon nest is found on the island, Hanalei has a chance to undo her late father's mistake and secure a dragonfruit to cure the queen - but others covet the eggs, and the Anemone is still lurking just beyond the boundary stones.

REVIEW: There's plenty to like about Dragonfruit, from its setting - refreshingly non-Eurocentric, based instead on cultures and mythologies of the Pacific Islands - to its dragons. There are also some niggling issues that almost (but not quite) cost it a half-star in the ratings.
The story doesn't drag its feet, opening with the legend of the dragonfruit and the eggs' miraculous powers and establishing its heroine Hanalei and the seadragons, as well as the threat of dragoner crews. Hanalei is a decently pro-active main character, not one prone to freezing up or sinking into useless despair and helplessness, though she isn't above mistakes. Her attempt to save the dragons lands her in the clutches of an old nemesis, Captain Bragadin of the Anemone. As a penniless orphan far from home after her father was killed and his money stolen, she wound up working in his oil processing facilities rendering dead seadragons, earning starvation wages and hands full of silvery scars from the obsidian-sharp scales, until she outgrew the job; small, nimble hands (and young, helpless children) are his preferred workforce on land, while his ship is full of the usual assortment of pirate thugs. He's almost stereotypical in his monstrous behavior, but he's clever enough to have figured out that there's a reason she seems to keep turning up whenever there are seadragons to be slain. So fixated is he on his hunt and the potential reward for a clutch of seadragon eggs that he endangers his entire ship fending off a potential rival. Hanalei manages to escape, only to be forced to confront her past, or rather the wreckage her father left behind while she was comatose from poison... and this is where the story morphs into its main form, after it seemed like it would be about Hanalei and the dragoner captain fighting over the fate of the seadragons and the eggs. (It's not much of a spoiler to say that the Anemone is not entirely out of the picture, but it is shifted to the back burner for a long stretch.)
Sam, for his part, has lived half his life under the shadow of a stricken mother. His grandmother currently wears the crown of the Tamarinds - theirs is a matrilinear culture, power passed from mother to daughter - but cannot rule indefinitely. Unless Sam's mother is cured, and soon, Sam will be expected to marry, a political arrangement to strengthen the islands' stance in a world where foreigners are increasingly intrusive, for all that the spices of the Tamarinds still give them some wealth and leverage. His heart is clearly not in it; he pines for his old childhood friend, for all that he does not think of their bond as love in the popular sense of the term. He also carries his mother's living "mark", a tattoolike animal that sometimes appears spontaneously on the skin of islanders and can become a living creature, something like a familiar, to carry out tasks and provide companionship. The fruit bat is a perpetual reminder of his ailing mother, both a comfort and a further burden. He never even got his year of travel in, an island tradition where men and women leave the Tamarinds for several months as the cross the threshold into adulthood. Unexpectedly finding Hanalei fleeing a dragoner ship right on his metaphoric doorstep is a surprise that brings up all sorts of complicated emotions, not to mention all sorts of problems. The names of her and her father are still raw wounds to many on the Tamarinds, particularly the noble houses who still bear the brunt of the man's decision to snatch away the queen's potential cure to save his own daughter; the fact that Hanalei was evidently cured, indicating that the queen, too, would've likely recovered if she'd received the egg instead, makes her return all the more painful. But bonds of family and love are deep and complicated... especially when Hanalei's return coincides with a potential new seadragon nest on the island, and thus a chance to atone for her father's selfish act. Her ability to sense the dragons themselves gives the islanders a slight advantage in tracking down the eggs, but there are many people who feel desperate for their own miracle, and thus many potential traitors... in theory.
Now we get to the parts that almost weighed the ratings down. The baddies and the shifty characters turn out to be far, far too obvious from their first appearances, to the point where it gets hard to believe that nobody in the cast even remotely suspects them. This doesn't just apply to the dragoner crew and foreigners, but to people that the characters know (theoretically) well on the island. There's also a sense of blunted corners and pulled punches that almost feels more like what one would find in a younger middle-grade novel, and some elements that are brought up and then completely dropped without followthrough or fleshing out. (Even the "romance", such as it is, is so mild that I wondered at the original target audience, if it was "aged up" for marketing reasons for a story aimed younger. Not that every teen book needs to drip with hormones, mind you, but something about just felt odd.) With that sense of bubble-wrapping comes a hint of "plot armor" where it becomes impossible to consider that any serious harm or inconvenience will ultimately hinder the main characters. (And, yes, that's not entirely uncommon, but it just seemed a little more obvious than it should've been, in the same way that one intellectually knows a movie isn't reality but it's harder to suspend disbelief when the boom mic keeps dropping into the frame. I kept seeing the boom mic here.)
Those issues aside, the story does move well, and I generally enjoyed it. It has many nice details and scenes that bring the islands and their unique magic to life. It's also a standalone, which is refreshing when so many books are series these days. I ultimately liked it enough to keep the rating afloat at four stars, though I'll admit it came close to dropping more than once.

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The Illustrated Man (Ray Bradbury)

The Illustrated Man
Ray Bradbury
William Morrow
Fiction, Collection/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: A traveler between towns chances upon a stranger covered in odd tattoos that seem almost alive. The Illustrated Man claims that the images were given to him by an old woman from the far future, and that they are more curse than blessing, for all that they fascinate the traveler. Before bedding down for the evening, the Illustrated Man warns his companion against staring too long - particularly at one blank section in his back. Yet the traveler cannot help himself. In those shifting, dancing lines of ink, he sees eighteen tales unfold: tales of the past, the present, and the future, of invaders from Mars and lost spacemen on Venus, of time traveling refugees and a children's game gone terribly wrong, and more... all inevitably leading toward the revelation in that final, forbidden image.

REVIEW: Ray Bradbury remains one of the true grandmaster wordsmiths, not just in science fiction but general storytelling. This classic collection holds up fairly well for the most part, painting vivid pictures in the mind's eye. He even foresaw the dangers of letting technology raise the next generation in "The Veldt", the tale of a family living in a "smart home" with a mechanical intelligence that does everything, even create and think, for the children. Still, several of his stories can't help but show their age in certain ideas of the future, particularly cultural assumptions about women's roles (or lack thereof) and a reliance on Christian imagery (particularly in "The Man", where an ambitious captain and his crew, out to exploit new planets, arrive at one rustic backwater to discover that another offworlder has just been and left after performing a series of miracles for the natives - a man who is never named but is clearly intended to be Jesus). One sad relic of his time was his idea that the book burners and censors would come from the halls of pure science and reason, striving to drive out "obsolete" imagination and superstition (and with it the creativity and wonder that truly makes humanity human); in our time, we can see that it's superstition that's determined to drive out science and reason as well as imagination. Bradbury's tendency toward downer endings, either slow-motion tragedies or dark final twists of fate, can also be a bit much after several such stories in a row. (My late father referred to Bradbury's works as "anti-science fiction" as he saw the genre as being more about the promise of science and the future, not the dark sides and the inevitable endings of great things, which Bradbury so often explored.) As for the Illustrated Man himself, whose stories bookend the collection, he remains an iconic figure in that gray area between sci-fi, magic realism, and horror. The stories are still worth reading, and still have plenty to say.

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The Moon and the Sun (Vonda N. McIntyre)

The Moon and the Sun
Vonda N. McIntyre
Pocket Books
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Marie-Josephe de la Croix and her brother, Yves, have come a long way from their childhood in seventeenth-century colonial Martinique. Now, Marie-Josephe is a lady-in-waiting to a prominent courtier in King Louis XIV's entourage at Versailles, while Yves - now a Jesuit priest and natural philosopher - has just returned from a momentous expedition with a living sea monster. Sea monsters, grotesque and roughly humanoid creatures, were once more numerous on the waves, and legend claims that eating their flesh confers immortality, but it must come from a fresh kill. Until the feast, the monster is to be kept in the Fountain of Apollo on the grounds of Versailles, while Yves dissects its mate for the edification of his discipline and for the pleasure of the king. As always, Marie-Josephe is to act as his assistant, sketching Yves's findings and feeding the captive beast... but something about the living creature tugs at her. When she begins to discern images and ideas from its haunting songs, she questions everything she thought she knew about the beasts, about her own life, even about the infallibility of the king and the church's teachings.

REVIEW: First off, there's a little backstory with this particular book selection. My late father, a lifelong sci-fi fan, knew Vonda McIntyre from local fandom. When Dad was beginning his slide into dementia, the last book he wanted was this title, the last novel she published before her death, but it was very difficult to locate. It took a few years, during which Dad (as is the nature of dementia) further declined, but I finally managed to secure a hardcover copy for Xmas. Even though he could no longer read much, he was very happy to receive it. Toward the end of his life, when he could only manage to follow short audiobooks, I decided that I was going to read The Moon and the Sun in his honor... but life with a person in late-stage dementia is not conducive to deep, long stretches of reading, unfortunately, so my first attempts were set aside.
Almost one year after my father passed away, I have finally finished reading the book. I consider it a personal victory, even though, as it turns out, this book is not particularly my preferred cup of cocoa.
Set in an alternate-history France where the Sun King reigns supreme over all enemies foreign and domestic, The Moon and the Sun spares few words painting the extravagance and intricacies of courtly life in Versailles, from the sprawling palatial grounds to the complicated dance of courtly manners (barely masking the vicious backstabbing) to the wildly impractical fashions and amusements of the uppermost of the upper crust. The characters are firmly rooted in their class and time, with the church's teachings dominating both their understanding of nature and the social norms and hierarchy bent entirely toward the glorification and satisfaction of the king. This is both an interesting detail and an occasional source of frustration, as the mindsets of that class and time are very rigid things that take quite a lot of battering to even begin to flex slightly - and this is a story that cannot truly begin to move until that flex occurs. McIntyre also preserves many of the naming conventions, inserting real-life figures (which I'm far too ignorant of French history to recognize, let alone appreciate), so right out of the gate I found myself bombarded with a string of names and titles and ranks and people who blurred together on the page, their relationships - so vital to the intricate balance of courtly hierarchy - an absolute jumble in my head. I eventually had to resort to switching to an audiobook version (courtesy of Libby and my local library system); it was just plain easier to pick out the important characters with a narrator as intermediary than it was to try sorting out so many similar-scanning names. (And I'm a person who loves a nice, thick epic fantasy with a large cast; it was the similarity, not the number, of players that kept tripping me up, and the lack of time and space to properly establish them in my head before five or ten more characters barged into the narrative.)
In any event, the story mostly follows Marie-Josephe, an exceptionally sheltered young woman of minor noble birth whose intellectual passions and gifts put her at odds with societal expectations. Though every bit her brother's equal (and occasional superior) in intellect and inquisitiveness, he is encouraged to pursue his studies - within the narrow scope of thinking allowed by the pope, at least - while she has been repeatedly and harshly chastised for "unwomanly" behavior to the point where she self-censures her own thoughts more often than not. While Yves was away making a name for himself as a natural philosopher and gaining the patronage of King Louis, she was shunted off to a convent where she was forced into silence and punished for her musical compositions and studying advanced mathematics (which the nuns considered a form of spellcraft, burning her notes and correspondences). Comparatively, life at Versailles, confined as it is in so many ways, is the embodiment of pure liberty. She tries to become the ideal noblewoman, and is very happy to have risen as far as lady-in-waiting to a high-ranked family (the daughter of the king's legitimate brother and his German-born princess wife), but still yearns toward the forbidden fruits of intellectual curiosity. Yves, once her partner and champion when they were children on Martinique, has grown into someone she hardly recognizes after their years apart, far more willing to stick her in the prison society has built for highborn women (or in the veil of a nun, which he considers a perfectly acceptable solution that would also keep her free of immoral temptations of the flesh, not caring how the nuns of Martinique were even worse than high society when it came to proscribing a woman's thoughts and roles); he even seems reluctant to accept her help in the study of the sea monsters, for all that they were always partners in his studies back on Martinique. It takes a long, long time for the presence of the sea monster to begin to wear through the thick shell Marie-Josephe has built around herself and recognize that she's dealing with a person, not a mere animal... which raises a dire implication: if sea monsters are not mere beasts - placed in the world by God for the use of Man, as the church teachers her - but people with souls, then King Louis would be committing a mortal sin to consume their flesh in the pursuit of his own immortality. But how is she to convince anyone, when she's the only one who seems to understand Sherzad's songs and the images they weave? Even her own brother doesn't want to believe her, as not only would doing so defy his Biblical understanding of the world, but it would threaten King Louis's patronage of his studies. The matter is further complicated with the arrival of Pope Innocent at Versailles, in a long-awaited reconciliation between Rome and France that will create a world-spanning superpower to crush Protestant and heathen dissent; the pope already is angered by the liberal attitudes of many in the king's court, where they let mere women assist in ungodly pursuits and indulge sinful ideas, and isn't at all likely to reconsider the church's previous findings that allowed that sea monsters were not actual demons but simply natural beasts.
The whole tale is rather ponderous as it slowly takes shape, and even when it moves it tends to plod and loop and backtrack as Marie-Josephe questions her own observations and conclusions and runs into a near-impenetrable wall of skepticism on all fronts, all of which meander through the sumptuously detailed days and nights of courtly life and the power struggles among the nobility over who can most please the Sun King on his gilded and bejeweled throne. Victories are often cut short and crushed into agonizing defeats, as those with the greatest power to enact change invariably prove obstinately, even violently, opposed to doing so. The ending manages to be somewhat satisfactory, though I have to wonder if McIntyre intended to write more; there is "sequel potential", as the saying goes, in how things end. With that said, I'm not sure I would have read another book if it had existed. For all that I appreciated the deep research and faithfully reproduced details of not only the physical but the mental setting, and while there were some very imaginative ideas that were ultimately explored, I ultimately didn't find the world or that characters that pleasant to be around.
As a closing note... this one was for you, Dad. You weren't a drinker (save of root beer), so pouring one out for you seems inappropriate. Consider this me lifting one up - a book - in your memory.

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The Rainfall Market (You Yeong-Gwang)

The Rainfall Market
You Yeong-Gwang, translated by Slin Jung
Ace
Fiction, YA? Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Everyone's heard rumors of the Rainfall Market. Supposedly, if you're trapped and frustrated and at rock bottom in your life with no way out or up, you can write a letter to a particular address - and sometimes, just sometimes, you will recieve a Ticket to the Rainfall Market, with instructions to arrive on the first day of the rainy season. Here, among the Dokkaebi spirits, one may trade away the pains and sorrows of life and purchase a magic Orb that will forever change your fortunes - but only one orb, and if you do not leave the market before the rainy season ends, you'll vanish forever.
Kim Serin hates her life. She hates living in a condemned building that's slated for demolition. She hates being so poor that university isn't ever going to be an option. She hates that her mother works so hard and is so busy that she barely notices her own daughter. She hates being so lonely after her sister ran away from home. She would do anything, just anything, for a chance to be someone else, to live a different life. She only half-believes the stories of the Rainfall Market, but she's desperate enough to try anything, so she writes her letter. Surprisingly, she gets a red envelope with a golden Ticket tucked inside.
She doesn't know what to expect when she goes to the tiny little village beyond the end of the train line, but what she finds is a hidden city of wonders and dangers and magic... and, unbeknownst to her, a hidden power struggle between Dokkaebi in which Serin is just a pawn - and a potential sacrifice.

REVIEW: There seems to be a string of Asian cozy fantasies coming out these days, or maybe it's just that there's a string of them somehow coming across my radar. In any event, this promised a light, cozy tale, and I was in the mood for light and cozy, what with so many, many things being dark and decidedly not cozy. (Plus I'd just finished a Stephen King novella, and I try to switch up moods.) What I found was a story with shades of Miyazaki's Spirited Away, in a whimsical fairy tale marred mostly by predictability and a Lesson that's too obvious from the start.
Though marketed at general adult audiences, The Rainfall Market feels more like young adult, or maybe even middle-grade; Serin's worries about university and the future strike me as more (young) teen, but the overall tone skews light and bubbly and even silly, with a surreal blunting of corners and softening of blows and that sense of the main character being walked through adventures and events with just enough peril to be a little challenged but not so much as to ever really be in serious danger. The descriptions make me wonder if it wasn't intended to be illustrated or animated; there's an exaggeration to things, even the human girl Serin, that made me think of anime.
In any event, Serin starts out clearly - and with some justification - unhappy with her life, trudging through school and even messing up in her martial arts training (the one thing that brings her happiness and which she thought she could do well until she messes up in front of everyone), then climbing the endless stairs to her condemned home and a mother who scarcely seems to talk to her only remaining child. The book may wallow slightly here, but establishing Serin's misery is essential to drive her to her desperate letter. Then she goes to the Rainfall Market and encounters her first Dokkaebi, and with him the start of her real adventure; just being willing to trust him is her first test on the way to the Rainfall Market, the first of many challenges she'll face.
These Korean spirits are bigger than people (usually), with disproportionate arms and legs, and they steal things like memories or worries or even the impulse to keep clean on vacation from humans, turning these emotions into magical items. They have shades of faerie about them, with their fascination with humans as playthings of a sort, their bargains and trickery and temptations, and their secret ways and rivalries that can threaten any mortal caught up in them, only they tend to be more silly than traditional fae.
Serin knows none of this, of course; she's just a desperate girl, willing to follow a strange, childlike giant figure into an impossible city just for a chance to not keep living a life that feels unbearable. She soon realizes that her misery really does seem special; she alone got a golden Ticket while most everyone got Silver, and she alone is invited by the host to a special meeting, where she's given special privileges and advantages as she seeks out a magic Orb that will fix her life. Then she's off through the city of the Rainfall Market, visiting a string of peculiar Dokkaebi shops and shopkeepers and performing good deeds and tasks that see her rewarded beyond the simple purchasing of an Orb. Each Orb offers her a glimpse into another life that seems to give her what she wants, until she sees that everything she thought would bring her happiness can also lead to misery and sorrow to rival her own. Still, she takes a little too long figuring out the Lesson the Orbs are spelling out in bright rainbow letters (this is part of what makes me wonder about the target age, as this reads so young I'd be tempted to call it a children's story, not even middle-grade), while shadows lurk behind her and some unknown plot between the Dokkaebi plays out around her adventures. Eventually, of course, the short rainy season must end, but will Serin have found a better life before it's too late to return home, or will she miss out on this unique opportunity?
You can probably guess about how things unfold; I mentioned earlier that it's somewhat predictable, playing out like a video game in which Serin has to complete simple puzzles and challenges before passing through each level, gathering Orbs and other items that, naturally, will prove useful at the endgame. But even with that said, it's generally a good-hearted story, with some solid emotions and fun imagery.

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The Library Policeman (Stephen King)

The Library Policeman
The Four Past Midnight series, Story 3
Stephen King
Simon and Schuster
Fiction, Horror
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: It was all the acrobat's fault. If the man scheduled to perform at the Junction City Rotary Club on Friday night hadn't fallen and injured his neck so bad, insurance salesman Sam Peebles never would've been recruited at the last minute to give a speech. And if he hadn't needed to write a speech, he never would've gone to the city library for books on public speaking. He hasn't liked libraries since he was a kid, and the moment he steps into the Junction City library building, he feels something wrong, off-putting, even malevolent - especially when he sees the creepy posters in the children's area, threatening children with bodily harm and promising a scary visit from the "Library Policeman" if they returned books late. Something about that poster catches in Sam's mind, which may explain why he's a little short with the old woman librarian who so kindly lends him two books from the library's "special collection".
The speech is a rousing success, and soon Sam's insurance business is booming... but he almost forgets about the books that helped him until he gets a phone call from Ardelia Lortz, the librarian. Only the books have gone missing. Stranger still, when he goes down to the library to take his lumps, the building he walks into looks nothing like the place he visited before - and there's no sign of the old woman ever having worked there at all. Yet still, Ardelia calls... and still, she threatens him with the "Library Policeman" if he fails to return the missing books.

REVIEW: A creepy premise, intriguing characters, and plenty of chills and unsettling action... this is what one usually wants from Stephen King, and what this story delivers. Sam is an ordinary man who starts with a very small and ordinary problem: writing a last-minute speech. Even the guy who ropes him into it tells him he can say pretty much anything so long as it fills half an hour, as odds are half the crowd will be drunk anyway, but Sam can't bring himself to half-bake any project. Besides, the Rotary Club is a good place to make business contacts and network, and some of the city's real movers and shakers are sure to be there; isn't it worth a little extra effort to make a good impression? Thus, when his part-time secretary Naomi tells him that his practice speech seems too dry and suggests a visit to the library to find material to help, Sam overcomes his nearly-bone-deep aversion to libraries to go... only, from the start, there's something not right about the building, or with the librarian Lortz. Even before he clashes with her over the gruesome posters in the children's area, he has an instinctive revulsion to the woman, even when she's saying and doing all the right, nice things. Still, he might have written it all off to nerves... but, of course, things escalate, even before he realizes the books have been irretrievably lost. Worse, when he mentions the name of Ardelia Lortz to anyone in Junction City, he gets a cold shoulder worthy of a blizzard. As more things go wrong and more terrifying incidents occur, Sam must not only unravel the secret of Lortz, but delve into his own past and the reason why he, of all people, has been targeted by her wrath.
There are a few times where King nearly loses the story in the weeds of backstory and details, but he keeps things interesting and the tension high. It may not be top-notch King, and not nearly as memorable as some of his other creations, but it's reasonably solid.

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The Wrong Stars (Tim Pratt)

The Wrong Stars
The Axiom series, Book 1
Tim Pratt
Angry Robot
Fiction, Adventure/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Five hundred years ago, a dying Earth sent out fleets of "goldilocks" ships: vessels with cryogenically-preserved crews, embryos, and other building blocks of colonization, flung into the stars and aimed at planets that might possibly be hospitable to human life. But then people got themselves together (more or less), the planet slowly recovering as humanity spread through the solar system... and then the Liars showed up. Vaguely cephalopodlike aliens who come in multiple body types, no two groups tell the same stories of their origins, their purpose, or even what the rest of the galaxy is like, hence humanity's popular name for them. But they are keen traders of technology, and now humans have access to "bridges" that allow passage to various systems in nearly the blink of an eye. As for the goldilocks ships, a handful succeeded, more reached their destination after centuries to find that bridge-assisted people had beat them to colonization, and many were presumed lost to the void... until now.
Callie and the crew of the White Raven thought they'd stumbled across another easy salvage when they found the derelict ship drifting near Neptune, though one whose profile they don't recognize. Beneath all the strange fins and appendages welded to the surface, they're astonished to find an ancient relic: a goldilocks ship. It must've malfunctioned and never gotten clear of the solar system, but something doesn't add up. Who - or what - made the bizarre modifications, which are both inside and outside the hull? And, with only one crewmember in cryogenic suspension, what happened to everyone else?
Elaine Oh was a xenobiologist who never expected to see her home star system again. Then she's woken by a stranger who informs her that five centuries have passed, and not only did her ship not reach the distant planet it was aiming for, it apparently never left home, relatively speaking. But... no, that's not right. Her memory is a bit scrambled from the sleep pod, but she remembers going somewhere - and something terrible happened, something she has to warn people about, if only she could remember.
When the White Raven's half-cyborg engineer Ashok discovers a strange box in the engine bay, none of them suspect the magnitude of what they've discovered... or how the fallout could destroy humanity.

REVIEW: I knew, going into this one, that it was composed of many familiar space opera/adventure parts. The ragtag salvage crew, the aliens with unknown motivations, the "magic box"/MacGuffin technology that endangers anyone who possesses it... nothing particularly innovative here. But familiar doesn't necessarily mean bad. Even the stalest genre chestnuts can be made tasty with the right seasoning and presentation. Unfortunately, The Wrong Stars never became more than the sum of its generic parts... and sometimes, sadly, felt less than that sum.
Things start with plenty of promise, as Callie and her peculiar crew discover the goldilocks ship, Elaine, and the mystery, all pretty much out of the gate... tweaked when, briefly revived from slumber, Elaine's first words are a warning about alien contact. But aliens are old news in modern-day deep space; the Liars are common faces around the solar system, though of course they arrived after the goldilocks ships left Earth. Of course, the reader can infer that there's more than that... and the crew really should, too, when Ashok discovers the strange black box that defies every scan he throws at it, and when the mere sight of it sends every Liar in the vicinity fleeing as fast as their multiple tentacle legs can carry them. The crew's persistent refusal to ignore the evidence of their eyes is an early warning sign, unfortunately. There are soon numerous others. For a starfaring future that has reached other systems generations ago, the future Pratt presents just doesn't feel... futuristic, or big, or exciting, or anything I generally feel when reading a solid space adventure. Elaine barely has any trouble adapting to a society that's advanced five centuries in her absence, excepting brief moments of disorientation meeting a few more exotic members of the crew (whose exotic nature, with the exception of Ashok's cybernetic enhancements, as often as not end up just being cosmetic, and not really impacting the plot) and people on the Neptunian space station she visits. One would think that encountering aliens and having whole new colony worlds opened up would have some sort of notable impact, something to really throw a relic from the past off her game, but no. She's almost immediately more concerned with whether or not her physical attraction to Callie is reciprocated; they're both women, but I couldn't help sensing a bit of "male gaze" behind their interactions (no prize for guessing whether the feelings are, in fact, mutual).
Beyond those issues, the story itself started feeling stale pretty early, as characters increasingly skewed toward less intelligent actions and conversations, repeating things and drawing out revelations. By the end, everyone had pretty much entered "too stupid to live" territory. I can't get into details for spoiler reasons, but I can rarely pinpoint a particular scene and interaction that dropped a book's rating below three stars like I could in this story, and it did involve characters being impossibly, ridiculously obtuse, even when the baddie was laying out their evil plans, using all the standard Evil Plan (TM) jargon, literally kicking another character like kicking a puppy... and still, still, they had to be outright told (again and again) before they believed that this person was, in fact, not particularly good maybe. (There were other elements involved, too, relating to alien tech and artifacts and what seemed to be glaring plot and logic holes, but, again, spoiler potential.) And then the wrap up just empties a box of leftover space adventure clichés on the table as if to get them over with before setting up a sequel.
It's frustrating more than anything. This could've been an enjoyable adventure, even with the familiarity. But by the end I just felt like I'd wasted my time with a crew I didn't care for in a galaxy that felt too small.

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The One and Only Bob (Katherine Applegate)

The One and Only Bob
The One and Only series, Book 2
Katherine Applegate
Harper
Fiction, CH Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Everyone calls dogs "man's best friend", but Bob the mutt knows that the feeling is far from mutual. Would a "best friend" tear him and his littermates from their mother when they were just a few weeks old? Would a "best friend" then throw the helpless puppies from the window of a moving truck, to land in a ditch (if they were lucky) and fend for themselves - leaving just one determined survivor? Even when Bob found his way to the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and the enclosure of Ivan the gorilla, he knew better than to trust people; just look at what they did to Ivan's elephant friend Stella, the baby elephant Ruby, and Ivan himself.
That was a year ago. Now, Ivan and Ruby have better lives in a local zoo and Bob lives with the girl Julia and her family. Still, much as he loves the ear scratches and the soft bed and the regular meals, he tries his best to keep his stray mutt edge, resisting all efforts at training. After all, he knows just how little a human's love really means.
When a hurricane sweeps through, Bob and his friends are thrown into chaos... and, unexpectedly, Bob hears a bark he hasn't heard since his puppy days: the voice of his sister Boss, whom he hasn't seen since they were tossed out the window of a truck. Maybe he wasn't the only one to survive, after all - but what can one little mutt hope to do in the middle of a disaster?

REVIEW: I enjoyed Applegate's fictionalization of the real-life Ivan's tale in The One and Only Ivan, but didn't think it needed a sequel. Where do you go from that ending, anyway? But Bob does, indeed, have his own story that's worth telling... and, in Applegate's typical fashion, she manages to manipulate simple prose into sucker-punches to the feelings at will.
Bob was always the hardscrabble mutt with the heart of gold, building a jaded wall around his feelings and a heart that had been broken too many times in the past. He openly scoffs at dogs who grovel to humans, even humans who treat them terribly. Clearly the species is untrustworthy. Just look at what they're doing with the planet, and why Ruby and Ivan and the other zoo animals will never be safe in the shrinking patches of wilderness left to their kind. But he can't help but feel warm toward Julia and her family; they did help rescue Ivan and his friends from their horrible days in the Big Top Mall, after all, so they're not bad, but be darned if he'll ever be one of those sad sack pooches treating humans like gods on Earth. Lately, though, he's been having bad dreams, dreams where he loses everyone - and where, somewhere in the distance, his sister Boss is also lost and alone. Then the storm hits, tearing his world apart, scattering the zoo animals (some do not make it; Applegate has never pretended death is never an option, not in any of her books), and giving Bob a painful sliver of hope when he hears a very familiar voice from the nearby animal shelter. But the waters are still rising, the winds still blowing, and the danger is far from past. Bob the streetwise mutt, who has only ever looked out for "numero uno", must decide whether he's willing to risk everything for a chance to save the ones he loves - even if those chances are slim, bordering on none.
If one wants to be overly-critical, Bob does feel a little "human" in his head, but so did Ivan, and it didn't hurt his story (or soften the emotional blows or payoffs). That's about all I can think of against it. For a children's book, Bob faces very real peril and possibility of failure, and not everyone can (or wants to) be "saved" when Mother Nature gets angry. If this is any indication of the storytelling level, then I expect I'll be reading the rest of the series at some point.

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The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

The Pillars of the Earth
The Kingsbridge series, Book 1
Ken Follett
Penguin
Fiction, Historical Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: England in the twelfth century is a land in the midst of turmoil. Ever since the infamous storm that sank the White Ship and, with it, a vast swath of royal heirs, the line of succession has been muddied - a power struggle that explodes when King Henry dies in a hunting accident in Normandy. The people need their faith more than ever: the commoners to keep their spirits alight in the grimmest times, and the nobility to legitimize their rule. But too often the men of God covet earthly power, and the men of royalty forget their spiritual obligations. When the tainted words of three powerful men lead to an innocent man's hanging, his wild golden-eyed lover casts a curse in blood at the liars' feet. Even she does not suspect just how long it will take the curse to come to fruition, and the many lives it will touch through the decades...
Tom Builder was supporting his family by building a new home for the young nobleman William Hamleigh to begin his married life. It's steady work in trying times, though he would much rather work on something bigger, something grander: a cathedral, the ultimate test of a mason's skills. Then his job is abruptly canceled when William's intended - Lady Aliena, daughter of the Earl of Shiring - calls off their wedding. With his wife, teen son, and young daughter in tow, Tom sets off in search of work, all the while harboring his secret dream, but few people are hiring builders in these times, and before long the Builder family is starving. After great tragedy and many twists of fate, Tom finds himself in Kingsbridge, a small town with a run-down monastery and a sagging old church that has seen better days. This could be his chance to make his mark and leave a legacy for generations, rebuilding the dank Kingsbridge chapel into a true monument to the glory of God, a job that could last decades and see his family well provided for... if only he can convince the new prior.
Philip came to the church as a young boy, after he watched bloodthirsty soldiers butcher his peasant parents and almost kill himself and his brother, only to be stopped by an abbot with nothing but the word of God on his lips. From that moment on, he devoted himself to his faith, becoming the leader of a small monastery in the English countryside, while his brother Francis went into a more interesting and dangerous line of work as a spy for the royal crown. When Francis asks Philip to intervene in a possible rebel plot, the faithful man becomes entangled with the scheming arch-deacon Waleran. The relationship leads to Philip's rise to the priory of Kingsbridge... but the monastery was depleted by its former leader, and the humble new prior has his work cut out for him winning over the apathetic and hostile monks and restoring its fortunes. Perhaps the worst affront to his faith is the state of the church. It should be a place of light and grandeur, drawing the faithful from miles around, not dank and dark and fallen half to ruin and neglect. When providence sends a master builder to him, it seems a sign from God Himself... but there will be many challenges ahead, not just for Philip and Tom but for Kingsbridge and the whole of England.

REVIEW: This classic hardly needs an introduction, an epic historical fiction spanning decades (and, in later volumes, centuries). I enjoy sinking into a nice, thick epic fantasy, and there would seem to be quite a bit of overlap. But for some reason, I often felt like I was being kept at arm's length, and despite several interesting moments and characters that almost intrigued me, I often struggled to pick it back up after I set it down.
Replete with details of life in medieval England, Follett does a solid job establishing the setting, as well as the incredible amount of labor that went into the construction of a Gothic cathedral, the work of decades or even generations. The people are of their time and world... but they also, unfortunately, sometimes feel flat. There is a clear split between the villains and the heroes, those who abuse their power and faith for personal gain and those who hold true to their values, and it's fairly clear who will turn out to be a traitor (to the reader, if not the people in the story). The villains are so repulsively monstrous or glaringly devious it was hard to read their sections of the story; yes, I understand, people can be terrible to other people, especially nobles flaunting their essentially unfettered power over their subjects, but at some point the rapes and dehumanizing tortures and humiliations just go over the top, making me reluctant to pick the book back up when I got to their chapters. On the other hand, some characters who are set up to be intriguing fade to nothing but background names, or are written off in time jumps between sections, making me wonder why they had been introduced to begin with. The writing style also grated on me at times; Follett tends to flat-out explain things that should've been clear from a character's words and actions, stating to the reader that "he was angry" or "she was scared", summarizing their thoughts and experiences and even repeating things unnecessarily. This contributed to a sense of bloat and meandering, though when the story moves forward, it could be exciting, and there were moments of beauty and heartbreak along the way. The final parts bookend the opening scene nicely, but it lacked some impact for me as I never really immersed myself in the story as I'd hoped to.
In the end, while I can see why many people praise this book, The Pillars of the Earth just was not for me, and I doubt I'll read more in the series.

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Blood Over Bright Haven (M. L. Wang)

Blood over Bright Haven
M. L. Wang
Del Rey
Fiction, Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Centuries ago, five great mages traveled to a desolate valley filled with thousands of heathen Kwen tribes and, as directed and prophesied by God, raised up the city of Tiran. Here, under the protection of a magical dome, they are safe from the ravages of harsh winters and the Blight sent to punish the sinners who still reject salvation... but when hunting grows scarce and their numbers dwindle, Kwen tribespeople are often forced to risk the dangerous Crossing across the ice plains to Tiran. Those who survive live as little better than slaves in the city, toiling as menial laborers or dying in the magic-fueled factories, but at least they live - so long as they can earn their keep.
Sciona is everything a good Tiranish woman shouldn't be. While their holy book encourages obedience and docility and strictly defined gender roles, she instead embraces her religion's call to seek truth above all else. Her irrepressible curiosity and brilliance (not to mention a dash of ego that won't accept failure) drives her past all barriers until she stands on the threshold of history: becoming the first female highmage since Tiran's founding. Encouraged by an unusually indulgent mentor, Archmage Bringham, she sets out to make a name for herself and forge a path for future girls who, like her, dream of a life beyond the confines of motherhood or a meek life as a teacher... but her rise brings out the worst in her new peers. Instead of being given a proper student mage assistant, her superior, Highmage Renthorn, saddles her with a semi-literate Kwen janitor who happens to be standing nearby. But while Sciona fumes, she isn't about to let the "joke" set her back - and, to her surprise, discovers in Thomil a surprisingly keen intelligence, even though everyone knows Kwen are inherently dim and barely human. Together, Sciona and Thomil may revolutionize Tiran... or what they discover together may burn the bright haven to ashes.

REVIEW: I've read nothing but great things about this book, so even though I knew almost nothing about it other than that, I decided to see if it lived up to the hype. Remarkably, Blood Over Bright Haven holds up to its lofty reputation. Set largely in a city powered by industrial-scale magic that does everything from heat tea kettles to power street lights to drive mass transit, it tackles issues that resonate strongly in the real world, examining the rising human and environmental cost of unrestrained greed and the ways people rationalize systemic evils, especially when those evils get a stamp of "divine" approval.
From Thomil's desperate dash across the thin ice of the Crossing towards Tiran, as all but one of his remaining kin are literally peeled apart by the brilliant white light of the Blight before his eyes - sparing only young Carra, his niece - the desperation of life outside the haven dome is crystal clear... as is the life refugee Kwen face when they do pass through, as the man is nearly tossed back out when the guards think he might not be able to earn his keep. To the Tiranish born within the city, however, things look quite different - not just to scholars and mages like Sciona, but to the working poor like Sciona's cousin Alba, a faithful champion as Sciona ruthlessly pursues glory beyond the glass walls of her people's expectations of women. The scholar is so single-minded in her pursuit of greatness that she often doesn't notice the people around her - not just the Kwen, who are as good as invisible to most Tiranish (as is fitting a "lesser" people who, according to the holy texts, brought the Blight on themselves by rejecting fealty to the one true God), but her own neighbors. Still, it's all worth it when she earns her white robes as a highmage... even if it means enduring Renthorn and other highmages constantly trying to cut her back down to an acceptable womanly size and shape. When she ends up with "Tommy" the janitor instead of a proper Tiranish assistant, she handles the problem the way she's always handed mockery and obstacles set in her path by condescending "colleagues": she determines to show them up by turning the tables on her tormentors and transforming what should've been a liability into an asset. But she's never paid much (or any) attention to the Kwen of Tiran, and has a lot to learn now that she's stuck with one for several hours a day. Sciona finds her prejudices and assumptions constantly challenged, first when the semi-literate floor sweeper picks up the basics of spellcrafting (which has parallels to computer programming) so rapidly, and further as she's forced to consider her world and privilege from his point of view. Her piety and her ambitions keep her blinkered for quite some time, though; when she does start to open her eyes, she becomes convinced that she must be the first person to truly "see" the problems of the city (otherwise someone would've surely done something about it by now, wouldn't they?), and therefore that she, with her superior Tiranish mind, can fix things... a "white savior" notion that backfires terribly and leads to more uncomfortable revelations for the new highmage. This isn't the only point on which she must undergo an education; the reader can guess early on the true cause of the "Blight" and the true purpose of several religious edicts related to magic, but watching Sciona figure it out is interesting enough. She tries clinging to her faith, in her God and in the system, but they both fail her at crucial times.
Thomil, for his part, has many assumptions about the Tiranish in general and mages in particular. For ten years, he's scraped a living from the scraps left to his kind on the city streets, struggling to raise Carra in a way that both honors her heritage - the two are the last survivors of their tribe - and keeps her safe, even as he knows both goals are incompatible and ultimately impossible. He knew better than to interact with Tiranish, but can't help but be pulled in by Sciona's sheer force of personality. Still, the woman is so frustratingly, devoutly Tiranish, even when her own people have kicked her in the proverbial teeth repeatedly for defying their expectations. Why can someone he recognizes as so intelligent be so completely hoodwinked about the greater ills plaguing her profession and her civilization?
As the unlikely duo confront the problems facing them, they grow closer, even when they clash. Their cultures have diametrically opposed viewpoints, giving them different tools to cope with a world as riddled with problems as the one they're stuck living in; Sciona in particular must dig deep into Tiranish holy texts and histories, re-evaluating assumptions and dogma she has unthinkingly absorbed in her ultimate pursuit of truth... but what is she to do when her God supposedly claims truth is the highest calling of His faithful but self-delusion is what she's being sold by her elders? There are no easy answers here, and no quick fixes for injustices and atrocities that have been so thoroughly baked into Tiran for generations, warping society and religion, even convincing otherwise bright minds to ignore the evidence of their own eyes and ears and consciences to perpetuate a machine that seems too big, too complex, too seemingly inevitable and unstoppable to ever be challenged. There are shades of the classic Ursula K. Le Guin short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", though the resolution Wang offers feels more cathartic.
Once in a while, the story felt just a trifle "on the nose" as it confronted the problems of systemic inequalities and fundamentalism/fanaticism's fusion with government and capitalism to create a multiheaded monster. Within this setting, Blood Over Bright Haven offers characters confronting their situations with nuance and complexity, wrestling with the eternal problem of whether intent trumps effect in the ultimate balancing of a life's scales: if a good person whose actions inadvertently lead to bad things is more worthy of eternal paradise than a bad person whose actions inadvertently do good. It's a story that is very relevant to our world today.

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