One more year crawls across the finish line, and the month's twelve reads have been archived to the main Brightdreamer Books site so it’s time for yet another Reading Year in Review.
January kicked off with an exciting space adventure, The Exiled Fleet, second in the Divide series by J. S. Dewes, and wrapped with another fun (if very different) book, Jessica Townsend’s middle-grade fantasy Nevermoor. In between was a variety of mostly interesting titles, from the utterly unique Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki) to the “weird West” Wake of Vultures (Lila Bowen). For nonfiction, I delved into an intriguing, if sadly already dated in its optimism, look at how humans might survive mass catastrophe in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by Annalee Newitz.
February began with one of the older titles I’ve reviewed, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, which posited a utopian future beyond the selfish greed of capitalism. I also got around to John Bellairs’s whimsical wizardry in The Face in the Frost, and checked out Lois Duncan’s Killing Mr. Griffin from my local library’s Frequently Banned Book list. There were a few disappointments, though. In particular, Shelby Van Pelt’s popular novel Remarkably Bright Creatures left me underwhelmed despite all the hype around it. I also expected more from A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, and Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore failed to live up to all the buzz I recalled. Alix E. Harrow returned to her Fractured Fables world with the dark, thought-provoking A Mirror Mended. The month wrapped up with Sunyi Dean’s The Book Eaters, which created an intriguing subspecies of vampiric humans who consume books like blood, but which ultimately didn't quite deliver the story I'd hoped for.
March’s highlights included Neil Gaiman’s homage to Rudyard Kipling in The Graveyard Book, Nghi Vo’s return to the world of Singing Hills in the novella Into the Riverlands, and the nonfiction story of the search for a lost Mayan city in Douglas Preston’s The Lost City of the Monkey God. I also enjoyed the hard science fiction of Saturn Run, by John Sanford and Ctien, and the classic space horror novella Nightflyers by George R. R. Martin. David James Warren’s time traveling mystery story, Cast the First Stone, left me cold, unfortunately, as did the X-Files-like conspiracy thriller The Darkest Time of Night by Jeremy Finley.
In honor of April showers (that would theoretically bring May flowers), April’s first book was the middle-grade story of an aspiring meteorologist and stormchaser in Ginger Zee’s Chasing Helicity. The month as a whole proved to be a mixed bag, however. While I enjoyed the updated paleontology of Dinosaurs Rediscovered by Michal J. Benton and the return to the space adventures of "finder" Fergus Ferguson in The Scavenger Door by Suzanne Palmer, I found Alex Jennings's fantastical tribute to the spirit of New Orleans, The Ballad of Perilous Graves, too surreal for its own good despite a great premise and interesting ideas. Charlie Jane Anders impressed with the essay collection Never Say You Can’t Survive, a call to keep fighting on and creating despite the very dark turns the world as a whole seems to be taking. Though technically a prequel, Michael J. Sullivan’s Age of Myth had a nice, old-school fantasy feel to it that I hope to get back to one of these days (Libby and my local library’s audiobook selection willing).
May started with a whirlwind tour of obscure American cryptids in J. W. Ocker’s The United States of Cryptids and ended with the middle-grade fantasy chiller The Thickety by J. A. White. I also finally got around to reading H. P. Lovecraft’s classic tale At the Mountains of Madness, part of his cosmic horror milieu that has remained influential to this day (but which I don’t one hundred percent click with, for all that I could appreciate the imagery and ideas). I quite enjoyed my first James Riley title, the middle grade fantasy adventure Story Thieves, as well as Meg Long’s young adult science fiction tale Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves. Monica L. Smith described the history and possible future of humanity’s greatest innovation in Cities. Two more frequently banned books made it into the list, with Marion Dane Bauer’s On My Honor and Walder Dean Myers’s Monster.
June turned out to be my most prolific reading month of the year, though not without its low spots. It kicked off with Lev Grossman’s cynical take on portal fantasies and magical schools in The Magicians, which had promise but ultimately left me disliking the characters and world too much to enjoy. Another popular author that sadly disappointed in this outing was Mary Robinette Kowal in her retro-future light sleuthing tale The Spare Man, leaning into a Nick and Nora Charles banter dynamic that just failed to click with the setting or with me as a reader. Surprise enjoyments were the teen spy thriller The Athena Protocol by Shamim Sarif and Dale Lucas’s mashup of police procedural and fantasy in First Watch. I also visited a few classics, such as Michael Moorcock’s iconic Elric of Melnibone and H. A. DeRosso’s noir Western 0.44. An impulse buy at the used bookstore proved just as light and entertaining as promised, Simon R. Green’s Blue Moon Rising, while Ben Guterson’s middle-grade tale a magic-tinged mountain resort, Winterhouse, intrigued. My month’s nonfiction title was a collection of odd historical and prehistorical trivia in Adrienne Mayor’s Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws.
I kicked off July with Peter Bognanni’s love letter to movies in the young adult tale This Book Is Not Yet Rated, which had a lot more heart and interest than I anticipated, and wrapped the month by finally getting around to Larry McMurtry’s classic Western epic Lonesome Dove. In between were several solid reads/listens, with high points being Stephen King’s The Body, Seanan McGuire’s Lost in the Moment and Found, Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, James S. A. Corey’s standalone short How It Unfolds, and A. Deborah Baker’s return to the Up-and-Under in Into the Windwracked Wilds. The much-lauded dragon academy/romance tale Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros mostly lived up to its hype, though I found myself let down by Edward Ashton’s Mickey7. Clive Finlayson explored a fascinating world of Neanderthals and how our understanding of them has been rewritten in recent years in The Smart Neanderthal.
In August, I explored racial injustices and their deep roots with Dr. Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, took a look at futures that failed to manifest in Daniel H. Wilson’s Where’s My Jetpack?, explored a “lost world” and forgotten tale of survival and sensationalism in Mitchel Zuckoff’s Lost in Shangri-La, and toured the human skeleton through the lens of forensic anthropology in Sue Black’s Written in Bone. For fiction, I had my usual random mix of tales with my usual random reactions. Neil Gaiman’s modern classic American Gods and Josiah Bancroft’s surreal take on a Tower of Babylon that never fell in Senlin Ascends impressed, as did Stephen King’s dark classic Pet Sematary. S. A. Patrick’s wonderful middle-grade fantasy A Darkening of Dragons entertained me enough to almost immediately seek out its sequel, A Vanishing of Griffins, both of which leave me eagerly anticipating the next installment in the Songs of Magic series. On the other end of the spectrum, Elizabeth Peters’s Crocodile on the Sandbank, first in a long-running popular series of historical fiction mysteries set among English archaeologists in Egypt, showed its age even as it delivered a serviceable story, as did Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions.
September opened with another classic, this one holding up rather better, in Graham Greene’s The Third Man, a book written to help the author flesh out the screenplay for the classic noir movie. Another classic, Lois Lowry’s dystopian The Giver, aged a little less well but still had solid emotional impact. I revisited the zombie apocalpse of Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series with Rise, the collection of short stories and novellas filling out events before and after the main trilogy, and ventured into the dens of 1970’s vampires living under New York City with Christopher Buelhman’s dark tale The Lesser Dead. Elise Hurst’s collection of imaginative ink drawings acted as spurs for the imagination in The Storyteller’s Handbook, while Mark Manson offered life advice in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. Despite my skepticism over Sherlock Holmes pastiches, I found the Western take on it offered in Steve Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range unexpectedly amusing.
I opened October with a father’s tall tale of a milk run gone sour in Neil Gaiman’s Fortunately, the Milk, and ended it with Arik Kershenbaum’s speculation on how alien life might evolve in The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy. Between, I continued the Books of Babel series with Josiah Bancroft’s Arm of the Sphinx, revisited Stephen King with the novella The Mist, and ventured into another middle grade classic with Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons. Moniquill Blackgoose offered an utterly unique alternate history of conquering Vikings, conquered Native Americans, and dragons in To Shape a Dragon’s Breath. The light sci-fi/military comedy Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja brought some smiles, more than the light graphic novel fantasy Three Little Wishes by Paul Cornell. John Geiger explored an unusual phenomenon in The Third Man Factor, where humans in high stress situations can sense or even see a person who is not there. And Buelman’s vampires returned (though technically this story came first) in The Suicide Motor Club.
In November, Natalie Lloyd’s middle-grade fantasy of flying horses, Over the Moon, didn’t rise quite as high as it promised. Similarly, the Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves prequel, The Road to Neverwinter, felt a little too much like a road already traveled (and traveled better) in the movie. H. Beam Piper’s classic science fiction tale, Little Fuzzy, showed its age despite some interesting ideas. The bonds of sisterhood, stressed by unusual circumstances, were explored in Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer and Cat Clarke’s The Lost and the Found, and a father reflects on the legacy he gifted his son (and whether that legacy contributed to his disappearance) in Roman Dial’s The Adventurer’s Son. Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman lightened the reading mood up a bit, while Susan Hood related a harrowing tale of wartime survival in Lifeboat 12 and K. L. Going’s Fat Kid Rules the World explored the painful inner world of a borderline-suicidal teen rediscovering a reason to live through punk rock. Mallory O’Meara shed light on a long-forgotten trailblazer and horror movie icon, the woman who designed the classic Creature from the Black Lagoon costume (and was subsequently erased by Bud Westmore and studio executives), in the biographical Lady from the Black Lagoon.
December kicked off with an alternate-history gumshoe searching 1940’s Chicago for an occult serial killer in C. L. Polk’s excellent Even Though I Knew the End. There were a few disappointments, such as Lish McBride’s Hold Me Closer, Necromancer and a space opera reboot of King Arthur, Cori McCarthy and A. R. Capetta’s Once and Future, but also one of the best reads of the year in Alix E. Harrow’s alternate-history fantasy The Once and Future Witches. I tried the classic children’s fantasy The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, but preferred the genre classic Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre. Peter Godfrey-Smith’s explorations of the evolution of intelligence, particularly in octopuses, in Other Minds made for some interesting food for thought. I finished off the year with the third installment of Josiah Bancroft’s Books of Babel series, The Hod King.
The year also ended with my internet service provider’s modem/router developing an interesting glitch, in that I could no longer see my own website in any browser, on any device using our ISP for internet access. (I could, however, still see my site through other networks, and confirmed that it was still up and available to the world at large. I can also update files. I just can't view the results unless I take my phone off the home wifi and use the 4G/5G network - and even that can be spotty.) Having done every online remedy I could find, from cache clearances to disabling various things to unplugging/replugging and resetting anything that could be reset, I’m officially out of ideas save a factory reset - a drastic option that may break more than it fixes - or getting a new modem/router from the ISP. Rectifying this problem, with all associated headaches (because we have never had one device from this outfit just plug in and work without at least one round of tech support having to visit the actual house), will probably eat the start of next year, or whenever I can get the go-ahead to tackle the problem. (Me not being able to view my own website on our internet service is a "me" problem, while messing up the network for the household is an "everyone" problem.) If I didn’t already suspect 2024 will be aggravating beyond words, this would be one of those signs…
In any event, apparently this was my most productive reading year since I started keeping my blog, due in very large part to workplace boredom and the Libby app's audiobook capabilities. In the coming year, I hope to whittle down my at-home TBR (To Be Read) pile, and dig into sequels and series I've started and keep meaning to follow through on. We shall see how that goes (see also: high likelihood that 2024 will be aggravating beyond words)...
Sunday, December 31, 2023
Friday, December 29, 2023
The Hod King (Josiah Bancroft)
The Hod King
The Books of Babel series, Book 3
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's hard to believe that, a year ago, Thomas Senlin was an unremarkable, mild-mannered schoolteacher from a small coastal town, on his way to a honeymoon holiday with his new young wife Marya at the legendary Tower of Babel. Back then, he thought he understood the world and the people in it. Back then, he thought he was just setting out on a simple vacation before settling down to the modest life of a married man. Back then, he knew nothing at all...
Now an agent of the enigmatic figure known as the Sphinx, who crafts bizarre mechanical marvels and weaves inscrutable plots from high in the tower, Senlin at last reaches the affluent ringdom of Pelphia. His long-lost wife, Marya, has been married to a local duke, and she herself is the toast of the town, known as the Mermaid in the local gossip papers for her enchanting singing voice. It's hard to conceive that she'd want to go back to life as a simple schoolmaster's wife after a year in the lap of luxury, or that she'd embrace a man who has turned to thievery, deception, violence, and piracy, his once-rigid moral code now distinctly distorted by what he's had to do to survive. He even has developed confusing, unwelcome feelings for a companion, Edith. Still, he has pursued Marya for too long to quit now, and he feels he must at least make the attempt to reconnect and get an answer once and for all.
As Thomas conducts his undercover mission, his companions have their own mission for the Sphinx: aboard the State of the Art, the most advanced airship ever to fly, newly-promoted Captain Edith, wild girl Voleta, steadfast bodyguard Iren, and two new companions - the uptight stag-headed valet Byron and the resurrected monstrous assassin the Red Hand - are to serve as the Sphinx's emissaries, scouring the ringdoms for the missing paintings that contain the last secret of the legendary Tower architect, the Brick Layer: the code that will unlock the final purpose of the grand tower. But it may already be too late; word is spreading on the streets and in the hidden slave passages of the coming of the "Hod King" - a promise of rebellion at the least, and possibly the destruction of the Tower of Babel itself.
REVIEW: The third installment retains much of the same tone and pacing as the rest of the series, just as the Tower of Babel and its inhabitants retain a sheen of surrealism. Thomas Senlin has been much tried and tested and changed by his experiences and his failures; he does not even pretend to himself anymore that he's the same man he was before coming to the tower, the same man who married Marya, nor can he pretend that she'll be the same woman he knew. Still, he needs closure, if nothing else, and thus determines to track her down and ask her if she would prefer life as his wife or the one she has found on the arm of of the Pelphian duke. The ringdom of Pelphia itself, grown rich on its cloth and fashion industry, is stuffed to the gills with pretension and self-importance, in a way even the baths on the third ringdom could only dream of; the university has long been abandoned and converted into a coliseum where hods fight for the amusement (and gambling opportunities) of the wealthy, while the newspapers are full of gossip and empty of anything resembling actual news. Marya has become a society darling, her (rather fictionlized) story the subject of a popular musical play - one that Senlin, against his better judgement, can't help but see, and which makes him further question his own role in her life and future. Even as he plots to find a way to get close to her without alerting his many powerful enemies, he also keeps an eye peeled on the Sphinx's behalf for trouble, particularly that fomented by Luc Marat's zealot followers, who seem to be stepping up their campaign to destabilize the Tower and incite a slave uprising... or possibly something even worse. If Thomas thought the Tower had run out of trials and lessons for him, he is quickly disabused of the notion.
Meanwhile, Edith - still processing her own mixed feelings about Thomas Senlin - has her own mission to pursue, along with Voleta and Iren. The girl, under Byron's strict (and often flustered) tutelage, must infiltrate high Pelthian society, even as Edith acts as the Sphinx's ambassador to negotiate the return of the Brick Layer's painting, the one that forms part of the puzzle the Sphinx is so desperate to solve. Even given her inherent immaturity, Voleta could be remarkably obtuse and incapable at times, though she finally starts to grow up a bit as she sees more consequences of her actions. Aging bodyguard Iren continues her slow, halting personal evolution from stoic enforcer to someone more human, someone less detatched from her own emotions and other people, driven in no small part by her devotion to Voleta. And Edith, still unsure of her own feelings toward Senlin, does her best to play the ambassador, though even she finds herself bedazzled by Pelphia's glamour and the few friendly-seeming faces in the crowd. Byron the stag-man gets some development, too, in his first journey beyond the sanctuary of the Sphinx's ringdom, while the resurrected Red Hand offers some unexpected wrinkles. As in previous volumes, chapters start with snippets and excerpts from in-world sources that add color and, often, foreshadowing.
The tale starts off fairly fast, picking up about where the previous one left off, and keeps moving and ratcheting up the stakes and complications until the end, setting up what promises to be a cataclysmic final volume. I'm looking forward to finishing off this series.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Senlin Ascends (Josiah Bancroft) - My Review
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett) - My Review
A Master of Djinn (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
The Books of Babel series, Book 3
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: It's hard to believe that, a year ago, Thomas Senlin was an unremarkable, mild-mannered schoolteacher from a small coastal town, on his way to a honeymoon holiday with his new young wife Marya at the legendary Tower of Babel. Back then, he thought he understood the world and the people in it. Back then, he thought he was just setting out on a simple vacation before settling down to the modest life of a married man. Back then, he knew nothing at all...
Now an agent of the enigmatic figure known as the Sphinx, who crafts bizarre mechanical marvels and weaves inscrutable plots from high in the tower, Senlin at last reaches the affluent ringdom of Pelphia. His long-lost wife, Marya, has been married to a local duke, and she herself is the toast of the town, known as the Mermaid in the local gossip papers for her enchanting singing voice. It's hard to conceive that she'd want to go back to life as a simple schoolmaster's wife after a year in the lap of luxury, or that she'd embrace a man who has turned to thievery, deception, violence, and piracy, his once-rigid moral code now distinctly distorted by what he's had to do to survive. He even has developed confusing, unwelcome feelings for a companion, Edith. Still, he has pursued Marya for too long to quit now, and he feels he must at least make the attempt to reconnect and get an answer once and for all.
As Thomas conducts his undercover mission, his companions have their own mission for the Sphinx: aboard the State of the Art, the most advanced airship ever to fly, newly-promoted Captain Edith, wild girl Voleta, steadfast bodyguard Iren, and two new companions - the uptight stag-headed valet Byron and the resurrected monstrous assassin the Red Hand - are to serve as the Sphinx's emissaries, scouring the ringdoms for the missing paintings that contain the last secret of the legendary Tower architect, the Brick Layer: the code that will unlock the final purpose of the grand tower. But it may already be too late; word is spreading on the streets and in the hidden slave passages of the coming of the "Hod King" - a promise of rebellion at the least, and possibly the destruction of the Tower of Babel itself.
REVIEW: The third installment retains much of the same tone and pacing as the rest of the series, just as the Tower of Babel and its inhabitants retain a sheen of surrealism. Thomas Senlin has been much tried and tested and changed by his experiences and his failures; he does not even pretend to himself anymore that he's the same man he was before coming to the tower, the same man who married Marya, nor can he pretend that she'll be the same woman he knew. Still, he needs closure, if nothing else, and thus determines to track her down and ask her if she would prefer life as his wife or the one she has found on the arm of of the Pelphian duke. The ringdom of Pelphia itself, grown rich on its cloth and fashion industry, is stuffed to the gills with pretension and self-importance, in a way even the baths on the third ringdom could only dream of; the university has long been abandoned and converted into a coliseum where hods fight for the amusement (and gambling opportunities) of the wealthy, while the newspapers are full of gossip and empty of anything resembling actual news. Marya has become a society darling, her (rather fictionlized) story the subject of a popular musical play - one that Senlin, against his better judgement, can't help but see, and which makes him further question his own role in her life and future. Even as he plots to find a way to get close to her without alerting his many powerful enemies, he also keeps an eye peeled on the Sphinx's behalf for trouble, particularly that fomented by Luc Marat's zealot followers, who seem to be stepping up their campaign to destabilize the Tower and incite a slave uprising... or possibly something even worse. If Thomas thought the Tower had run out of trials and lessons for him, he is quickly disabused of the notion.
Meanwhile, Edith - still processing her own mixed feelings about Thomas Senlin - has her own mission to pursue, along with Voleta and Iren. The girl, under Byron's strict (and often flustered) tutelage, must infiltrate high Pelthian society, even as Edith acts as the Sphinx's ambassador to negotiate the return of the Brick Layer's painting, the one that forms part of the puzzle the Sphinx is so desperate to solve. Even given her inherent immaturity, Voleta could be remarkably obtuse and incapable at times, though she finally starts to grow up a bit as she sees more consequences of her actions. Aging bodyguard Iren continues her slow, halting personal evolution from stoic enforcer to someone more human, someone less detatched from her own emotions and other people, driven in no small part by her devotion to Voleta. And Edith, still unsure of her own feelings toward Senlin, does her best to play the ambassador, though even she finds herself bedazzled by Pelphia's glamour and the few friendly-seeming faces in the crowd. Byron the stag-man gets some development, too, in his first journey beyond the sanctuary of the Sphinx's ringdom, while the resurrected Red Hand offers some unexpected wrinkles. As in previous volumes, chapters start with snippets and excerpts from in-world sources that add color and, often, foreshadowing.
The tale starts off fairly fast, picking up about where the previous one left off, and keeps moving and ratcheting up the stakes and complications until the end, setting up what promises to be a cataclysmic final volume. I'm looking forward to finishing off this series.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Senlin Ascends (Josiah Bancroft) - My Review
City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett) - My Review
A Master of Djinn (P. Djeli Clark) - My Review
Wednesday, December 27, 2023
The Silver Metal Lover (Tanith Lee)
The Silver Metal Lover
The S.I.L.V.E.R. series, Book 1
Tanith Lee
Tantor
Fiction, Romance/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Jane has lived her sixteen years under the shadows of her mother Demeta and her privilege. The world often overwhelms and confuses her, so she welcomes others who tell her what and how to think and shape her life for her, even if she never seems to be anyone's priority and isn't even sure she likes the circle of friends she runs with, many of whom are petty, selfish, and cruel in that way of the idle rich. Jane never stops to ask what she wants for herself... until she sees the silver man on the theater steps - no, not a man, but a new line of robot by preeminent manufacturer Electronic Metals. Unlike the clunky, more functional variety she's used to, many of which are little more than a box with a screen, Silver walks and talks like a human, and can even play instruments and sing, as well as perform any other task a human master might desire to make them happy. From the first time she sets eyes on Silver, Jane finds herself beset by feelings so strange and so big she doesn't even know what they are. Is it fear? Is it hate? Or - God and the heavens help her - is it love? And is she merely projecting when she sees similar emotions in his fox-bright mechanical eyes looking back at her?
She doesn't dare tell anyone what she feels, or thinks she feels. But she cannot shake the notion that, despite everything she knows about robots, there's something more to this one. Even if she is right, though, this is a love seemingly doomed before it starts. Because Silver, when all is said and done, is just property, a prototype exhibition piece far beyond even her generous allowance... and in a world where so little is left to humans alone, so few jobs for the seething masses beneath the ivory towers of the wealthy that haven't already been replaced, a robot that displays true creativity and perhaps even a soul - that is essentially indistinguishable from a person - may well be one step too far.
REVIEW: First published in 1981, the futuristic Gilded Age of the The Silver Metal Lover feels strangely fresh and relevant in a time when "artificial intelligence" has damaged so many creative careers (though, unlike the robots in this book, AI has nothing like self-awareness or independent creativity); for all that the masses rallying against yet another threat to the meager livelihoods and niches left to living humans sometimes seem like fearful peasants, one can understand just why they're so desperate and feel so unheard by the wealthy and the tech firms that keep pushing more and more of them over the brink into inescapable poverty. Lee also envisions a future that is casually accepting of nonbinary individuals, though even in a society this tolerant, expressing amorous feelings for what most regard as a jumped-up appliance counts as a step over the line of propriety.
Early on, Jane comes across as sheltered and spoiled, immature and weak-willed, and that is exactly what she is. Raised by a mother who didn't really want an independent daughter with a mind of her own but some sort of living doll or status symbol - Demeta constantly undermines her independence and confidence, and treats motherhood as a task that can be done more efficiently without all that pesky sentiment or exhausting listening, even relying on prepared color and body type charts to arrange the "proper" hair style and nutrient levels to produce Jane's optimal look - and surrounded by "friends" who largely seem incapable of caring for other people, not even themselves in some cases, the deck is stacked against Jane in any way except wealth. She literally has grown up in a castle in the sky, a lofty skyscraper among the clouds over the city, and has a habit of feeling the pains and emotions of those around her, possibly because she has never really been allowed to have any feelings or even opinions of her own. When she sees the robot Silver, she doesn't even recognize the emotion she's struck with, reacting like a small child whose feelings are too big to process: she lashes out verbally and runs away, physically ill. Slowly, clumsily, she begins to parse those big feelings, and in the process begins to grow up and think on her own. It's not easy or simple for her, though, when she has had virtually no healthy, mature role models in her life. And even when she does name the thing she's feeling, how can she possibly hope that those feelings can be reciprocated by a machine? Silver, for his part, tells her this more than once... but he is kind and patient, and it eventually becomes apparent that, yes, there is something a little more to him than his makers envisioned (hardly a spoiler - I mean, can you really read the Description and not think that'll be a plot point?). He does some growing and changing and self-discovery, too, so the relationship eventually becomes less lopsided than it starts. Jane sacrifices a lot in the name of love... though much of what she gives up, she soon realizes had no true worth to her at all, as she starts seeing her life and her world with new eyes. The life she rebuilds on her own has the feel of a waking dream, something so beautiful and perfect that it cannot seem destined to last.
My feelings on the book wavered throughout. At first, the immature heroine was a little offputting, as were her companions, the friends and distant mother, who kept her so childish she couldn't even recognize her first brush with love. Once it dug into the complicated relationship between Jane and Silver, though, the story strengthened. Neither Jane nor Silver forget that he is technically a piece of hardware, yet both are somewhat aware from the start that their bond is atypical, and both are changed significantly. Both also are clear-eyed enough to see just why people, especially the ever-increasing numbers of the poor, view tech like Silver as a very real threat, though the truest danger to their bond comes from elsewhere. Some bits at the end finally knocked a half-star back off the rating, as it ventures into metaphysical territory and also starts seeming stretched out. Other than that, though, it held up much better than many of its contemporaries.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Becky Chambers) - My Review
The Ship Who Sang (Anne McCaffrey) - My Review
All Systems Red (Martha Wells) - My Review
The S.I.L.V.E.R. series, Book 1
Tanith Lee
Tantor
Fiction, Romance/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Jane has lived her sixteen years under the shadows of her mother Demeta and her privilege. The world often overwhelms and confuses her, so she welcomes others who tell her what and how to think and shape her life for her, even if she never seems to be anyone's priority and isn't even sure she likes the circle of friends she runs with, many of whom are petty, selfish, and cruel in that way of the idle rich. Jane never stops to ask what she wants for herself... until she sees the silver man on the theater steps - no, not a man, but a new line of robot by preeminent manufacturer Electronic Metals. Unlike the clunky, more functional variety she's used to, many of which are little more than a box with a screen, Silver walks and talks like a human, and can even play instruments and sing, as well as perform any other task a human master might desire to make them happy. From the first time she sets eyes on Silver, Jane finds herself beset by feelings so strange and so big she doesn't even know what they are. Is it fear? Is it hate? Or - God and the heavens help her - is it love? And is she merely projecting when she sees similar emotions in his fox-bright mechanical eyes looking back at her?
She doesn't dare tell anyone what she feels, or thinks she feels. But she cannot shake the notion that, despite everything she knows about robots, there's something more to this one. Even if she is right, though, this is a love seemingly doomed before it starts. Because Silver, when all is said and done, is just property, a prototype exhibition piece far beyond even her generous allowance... and in a world where so little is left to humans alone, so few jobs for the seething masses beneath the ivory towers of the wealthy that haven't already been replaced, a robot that displays true creativity and perhaps even a soul - that is essentially indistinguishable from a person - may well be one step too far.
REVIEW: First published in 1981, the futuristic Gilded Age of the The Silver Metal Lover feels strangely fresh and relevant in a time when "artificial intelligence" has damaged so many creative careers (though, unlike the robots in this book, AI has nothing like self-awareness or independent creativity); for all that the masses rallying against yet another threat to the meager livelihoods and niches left to living humans sometimes seem like fearful peasants, one can understand just why they're so desperate and feel so unheard by the wealthy and the tech firms that keep pushing more and more of them over the brink into inescapable poverty. Lee also envisions a future that is casually accepting of nonbinary individuals, though even in a society this tolerant, expressing amorous feelings for what most regard as a jumped-up appliance counts as a step over the line of propriety.
Early on, Jane comes across as sheltered and spoiled, immature and weak-willed, and that is exactly what she is. Raised by a mother who didn't really want an independent daughter with a mind of her own but some sort of living doll or status symbol - Demeta constantly undermines her independence and confidence, and treats motherhood as a task that can be done more efficiently without all that pesky sentiment or exhausting listening, even relying on prepared color and body type charts to arrange the "proper" hair style and nutrient levels to produce Jane's optimal look - and surrounded by "friends" who largely seem incapable of caring for other people, not even themselves in some cases, the deck is stacked against Jane in any way except wealth. She literally has grown up in a castle in the sky, a lofty skyscraper among the clouds over the city, and has a habit of feeling the pains and emotions of those around her, possibly because she has never really been allowed to have any feelings or even opinions of her own. When she sees the robot Silver, she doesn't even recognize the emotion she's struck with, reacting like a small child whose feelings are too big to process: she lashes out verbally and runs away, physically ill. Slowly, clumsily, she begins to parse those big feelings, and in the process begins to grow up and think on her own. It's not easy or simple for her, though, when she has had virtually no healthy, mature role models in her life. And even when she does name the thing she's feeling, how can she possibly hope that those feelings can be reciprocated by a machine? Silver, for his part, tells her this more than once... but he is kind and patient, and it eventually becomes apparent that, yes, there is something a little more to him than his makers envisioned (hardly a spoiler - I mean, can you really read the Description and not think that'll be a plot point?). He does some growing and changing and self-discovery, too, so the relationship eventually becomes less lopsided than it starts. Jane sacrifices a lot in the name of love... though much of what she gives up, she soon realizes had no true worth to her at all, as she starts seeing her life and her world with new eyes. The life she rebuilds on her own has the feel of a waking dream, something so beautiful and perfect that it cannot seem destined to last.
My feelings on the book wavered throughout. At first, the immature heroine was a little offputting, as were her companions, the friends and distant mother, who kept her so childish she couldn't even recognize her first brush with love. Once it dug into the complicated relationship between Jane and Silver, though, the story strengthened. Neither Jane nor Silver forget that he is technically a piece of hardware, yet both are somewhat aware from the start that their bond is atypical, and both are changed significantly. Both also are clear-eyed enough to see just why people, especially the ever-increasing numbers of the poor, view tech like Silver as a very real threat, though the truest danger to their bond comes from elsewhere. Some bits at the end finally knocked a half-star back off the rating, as it ventures into metaphysical territory and also starts seeming stretched out. Other than that, though, it held up much better than many of its contemporaries.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Becky Chambers) - My Review
The Ship Who Sang (Anne McCaffrey) - My Review
All Systems Red (Martha Wells) - My Review
Saturday, December 23, 2023
You Need More Money (Matt Manero)
You Need More Money: Wake Up and Solve Your Financial Problems Once and For All
Matt Manero
Portfolio
Nonfiction, Finance
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: What does it mean to be wealthy, or even financially healthy? For most, it means having a few months' cushion in the bank and a decently reliable income stream. This is better than many people have in today's America, and should be good enough to see one through. Right?
Wrong.
It only takes one unforeseen incident to topple the "good enough" wagon - and unforeseen incidents are almost a given unless you're living in a bubble. It doesn't help that everything's getting more expensive; the retirement savings that worked for the previous generation are unlikely to last more than a few years for today's workforce. Even if you think you're doing okay, stashing a little aside here and there for the future, odds are very good it's not nearly enough. So what, in today's world of rising costs and stagnant wages, is one supposed to do about it? The first step is to wake up and see the problem while there's still an outside chance of course correction. Successful entrepeneur and finance speaker Matt Manero offers a wake-up call to those who think "good enough" is good at all, with questions to ask oneself and a roadmap for taking control of your financial life.
REVIEW: I live under no delusions that I'm anything but poor. This "wake up call" is not one I need; it's the "what to do about it" that proves elusive. Once again, however, the "what to do about it" in this book applies mostly to people who are already higher on the social and financial rung than I am, and at the very least are in (or have access to) white-collar sectors; there really isn't a ton here that's useful to warehouse workers, especially ones who lack anything like a marketable "super power" to capitalize on, unless "taking things out of totes" can be transformed into a six-figure income. (I did have to chuckle at the idea of checking what similar jobs to mine pay via sites like Glassdoor to negotiate for higher pay, as I listened to this audiobook at work... I'm the level of employee that the people on Glassdoor eliminate en masse at a stroke of a pen to earn themselves a bonus for saving the company money.)
That said, Manero does offer some decent advice. He also does not expect every reader to run out and start their own business, as some finance gurus seem to insist; he acknowledges that not everyone is cut out for that, that there are benefits to not being the boss, and he offers suggestions for getting the most out of being employed, such as how to improve one's visibility and effectively bargain for raises or seek greener pastures elsewhere. In other areas, though, he's very vague. Research risks on investments, he says... but where? And how does one separate the wheat from the chaff on investment advice and advisors, especially when one's a newbie? "Become interesting" to help with networking and finding new areas to explore, he says... right after insisting that the first thing one should do is eliminate any and all nonessential spending, and anything like a hobby ought to be monetized to justify time and energy spent on it (because all effort not spent on "stacking and racking" money before hitting the big goal is wasted), and any time not spent actively working should be spent considering where and how to obtain even more revenue streams (save his five-to-ten minutes of mental downtime he allows himself daily). So... when exactly is one supposed to be able to pursue the interesting-for-the-sake-of-interest things, and with what money (because even a walk in the park requires, at the least, bus fare to the park)? Though this is a relatively recent title, there are already signs of it aging; he mentions Twitter as a great place to network, especially because it's free - blissfully unaware of who would purchase it and what they would do to it, and how they would sell the appearance of credibility with a meaningless checkmark. He also mentions how skills like writing would always be lucrative in some form, completely unaware of what so-called "artificial intelligence" would do to creative industries and jobs like journalism, advertising, and article writing (built pretty much entirely on stolen material, no less). Other places made me raise an eyebrow, such as when he extols Cuba's history as one of the wealthiest nations in the world thanks to sugar, and expresses hope that they will rise again, completely disregarding the fact that that wealth was built entirely on the backs of literal slave labor (though I suppose that might strike an entrepeneur as an ideal situation, a workforce that required no pesky payroll department - and if they can't leverage their super powers to be running the place in five years or taking themselves to another plantation for better opportunities, I guess it's their own fault?). I also caught a whiff of victim blaming in his no-excuses attitude about wealth acquisition, how it's entirely a person's own fault if they're crushed by the system and/or haven't racked up north of seven figures by retirement age, even while acknowledging that the old ladders out of poverty, such the middle class, are disintegrating. When those ladders are gone, are the poor just supposed to fly, and sucks to be them if gravity exists? Why is this disintegration and stratification and exponentially increasing inequity treated as some nebulous natural phenomenon like plate tectonics or the weather, beyond comprehension or control, when it's a system ultimately created by humans, driven by humans, and co-opted by humans? When fewer people intentionally hoard more power and money, raising prices on those who can least afford it while boasting/gloating of record gains, while actively erasing means to acquire even the crumbs left behind, how are those hoarders utterly blameless for the consequences of their actions and the deprived entirely at fault? Just pull yourself up by the bootstraps, he declares - ignoring how that phrase was originally meant to show the impossibility of the task, especially when someone else has bought up all the boots. Heck, the notion that one can just learn whatever one needs to thrive for free via the internet presupposes one actually has sufficient access to the internet... and also presupposes that sites like YouTube will remain free to access in the future and aren't paywalled off. (Even libraries, one place a person used to be able to count on for services one couldn't afford if one was, y'know, not wealthy, are under threat.)
In any event, there is plenty of solid, if not entirely unfamiliar, advice to be found in this book, overlooking the parts that feel tone-deaf. Figuring out specific goals, paying closer attention to where money is going, being smarter about where to save and invest, being alert to opportunities and aware of one's worth, all are things worth considering. And there are things one can do to manage one's finances better in many circumstances (if not all). Ultimately, though, it's yet another book that I just can't see having much practical application to my situation.
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Manage Your Money When You Don't Have Any (Eric Wecks) - My Review
Making a Living Without a Job (Barbara J. Winter) - My Review
Matt Manero
Portfolio
Nonfiction, Finance
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: What does it mean to be wealthy, or even financially healthy? For most, it means having a few months' cushion in the bank and a decently reliable income stream. This is better than many people have in today's America, and should be good enough to see one through. Right?
Wrong.
It only takes one unforeseen incident to topple the "good enough" wagon - and unforeseen incidents are almost a given unless you're living in a bubble. It doesn't help that everything's getting more expensive; the retirement savings that worked for the previous generation are unlikely to last more than a few years for today's workforce. Even if you think you're doing okay, stashing a little aside here and there for the future, odds are very good it's not nearly enough. So what, in today's world of rising costs and stagnant wages, is one supposed to do about it? The first step is to wake up and see the problem while there's still an outside chance of course correction. Successful entrepeneur and finance speaker Matt Manero offers a wake-up call to those who think "good enough" is good at all, with questions to ask oneself and a roadmap for taking control of your financial life.
REVIEW: I live under no delusions that I'm anything but poor. This "wake up call" is not one I need; it's the "what to do about it" that proves elusive. Once again, however, the "what to do about it" in this book applies mostly to people who are already higher on the social and financial rung than I am, and at the very least are in (or have access to) white-collar sectors; there really isn't a ton here that's useful to warehouse workers, especially ones who lack anything like a marketable "super power" to capitalize on, unless "taking things out of totes" can be transformed into a six-figure income. (I did have to chuckle at the idea of checking what similar jobs to mine pay via sites like Glassdoor to negotiate for higher pay, as I listened to this audiobook at work... I'm the level of employee that the people on Glassdoor eliminate en masse at a stroke of a pen to earn themselves a bonus for saving the company money.)
That said, Manero does offer some decent advice. He also does not expect every reader to run out and start their own business, as some finance gurus seem to insist; he acknowledges that not everyone is cut out for that, that there are benefits to not being the boss, and he offers suggestions for getting the most out of being employed, such as how to improve one's visibility and effectively bargain for raises or seek greener pastures elsewhere. In other areas, though, he's very vague. Research risks on investments, he says... but where? And how does one separate the wheat from the chaff on investment advice and advisors, especially when one's a newbie? "Become interesting" to help with networking and finding new areas to explore, he says... right after insisting that the first thing one should do is eliminate any and all nonessential spending, and anything like a hobby ought to be monetized to justify time and energy spent on it (because all effort not spent on "stacking and racking" money before hitting the big goal is wasted), and any time not spent actively working should be spent considering where and how to obtain even more revenue streams (save his five-to-ten minutes of mental downtime he allows himself daily). So... when exactly is one supposed to be able to pursue the interesting-for-the-sake-of-interest things, and with what money (because even a walk in the park requires, at the least, bus fare to the park)? Though this is a relatively recent title, there are already signs of it aging; he mentions Twitter as a great place to network, especially because it's free - blissfully unaware of who would purchase it and what they would do to it, and how they would sell the appearance of credibility with a meaningless checkmark. He also mentions how skills like writing would always be lucrative in some form, completely unaware of what so-called "artificial intelligence" would do to creative industries and jobs like journalism, advertising, and article writing (built pretty much entirely on stolen material, no less). Other places made me raise an eyebrow, such as when he extols Cuba's history as one of the wealthiest nations in the world thanks to sugar, and expresses hope that they will rise again, completely disregarding the fact that that wealth was built entirely on the backs of literal slave labor (though I suppose that might strike an entrepeneur as an ideal situation, a workforce that required no pesky payroll department - and if they can't leverage their super powers to be running the place in five years or taking themselves to another plantation for better opportunities, I guess it's their own fault?). I also caught a whiff of victim blaming in his no-excuses attitude about wealth acquisition, how it's entirely a person's own fault if they're crushed by the system and/or haven't racked up north of seven figures by retirement age, even while acknowledging that the old ladders out of poverty, such the middle class, are disintegrating. When those ladders are gone, are the poor just supposed to fly, and sucks to be them if gravity exists? Why is this disintegration and stratification and exponentially increasing inequity treated as some nebulous natural phenomenon like plate tectonics or the weather, beyond comprehension or control, when it's a system ultimately created by humans, driven by humans, and co-opted by humans? When fewer people intentionally hoard more power and money, raising prices on those who can least afford it while boasting/gloating of record gains, while actively erasing means to acquire even the crumbs left behind, how are those hoarders utterly blameless for the consequences of their actions and the deprived entirely at fault? Just pull yourself up by the bootstraps, he declares - ignoring how that phrase was originally meant to show the impossibility of the task, especially when someone else has bought up all the boots. Heck, the notion that one can just learn whatever one needs to thrive for free via the internet presupposes one actually has sufficient access to the internet... and also presupposes that sites like YouTube will remain free to access in the future and aren't paywalled off. (Even libraries, one place a person used to be able to count on for services one couldn't afford if one was, y'know, not wealthy, are under threat.)
In any event, there is plenty of solid, if not entirely unfamiliar, advice to be found in this book, overlooking the parts that feel tone-deaf. Figuring out specific goals, paying closer attention to where money is going, being smarter about where to save and invest, being alert to opportunities and aware of one's worth, all are things worth considering. And there are things one can do to manage one's finances better in many circumstances (if not all). Ultimately, though, it's yet another book that I just can't see having much practical application to my situation.
You Might Also Enjoy:
How to Manage Your Money When You Don't Have Any (Eric Wecks) - My Review
Making a Living Without a Job (Barbara J. Winter) - My Review
Thursday, December 21, 2023
The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead)
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead
Anchor
Fiction, Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Cora was just a young girl on a Georgia cotton plantation when her mother Mabel disappeared into the night. Despite the dogs and the bounties and even the famed, feared slave catcher Arnold Ridgefield pursuing her, she vanished as if into thin air. Thus Cora was left to fend for herself against the overseer, the owners, and the other slaves. But it wasn't until the new-bought Caesar plots his escape and asks her to join him that Cora even begins to consider flight herself. Caesar has a contact with the Underground Railroad, the secret network of subterranean stations that whisk runaway slaves about the country... but while the Railroad can promise an escape, nobody in the whole of America can promise her freedom - especially after their flight leaves one white boy dead and none other than Ridgefield hot on their trail.
REVIEW: For a country whose founding documents declare that all men are created equal, America has done a terrible job of living up to that ideal even before said documents were written down. Indeed, much of the country seems to delight in creating new ways to dehumanize and disenfranchise the "Other", even when it harms themselves. In The Underground Railroad, Whitehead drags those failures of justice and equality and basic humanity out of the shadows where so many want to sweep them (when they aren't actively reveling in them; if recent events have taught us nothing else, it's that the same mindsets of the slavery era are alive and well even in the twenty-first century, and in a depressingly significant percentage of the population).
From the day her mother disappears, Cora struggles to survive in a world that does its level best to grind her down and bury her, caught in a system whose every aspect works to divide, degrade, dehumanize, and dismiss anyone who is not white enough, not wealthy enough, not inherently cold and cruel and greedy enough. There is little to no solidarity among those enslaved, even by the same sadistic masters; the system sees to that, too, as does a basic human tendency to tribalism and establishing pecking orders even in the meanest of circumstances (a tendency that is exploited to further weaken the enslaved, and which also fragments those who would see the barbaric practice abolished). Cora becomes an outsider, in no small part because of Mabel's abandonment, and it's her own burning hatred at the woman for leaving her behind that makes her initially refuse to even consider Caesar's offer. (That, and of course the grisly examples that the plantation owners make of those who flee.) It's almost to her own surprise that she finds that she can indeed be pushed to the point where even those astronomically high stakes (and astronomically low odds of success) aren't enough to keep her in the slave quarters... but, almost from the start, things start to go wrong, and keep going wrong. On the Railroad - here imagined, with a touch of surrealism, as a real underground network of rail lines and engines, with an ever-changing network of stations and managers - Cora finds herself in different states... but they all have their own traps and dangers, and all exact heavy tolls for survival. Meanwhile, Ridgefield refuses to give up the hunt, aided by a brutish assistant and by an enigmatic young former slave boy, Homer, who has a peculiar devotion to the single-minded hunter despite technically being free. In her journey, she encounters all manner of allies and enemies and more than one person who turns out to be a little of both. Some chapters delve into the backstories of these side characters, revealing just how far beyond the plantation and chains the effects of slavery spread, how pretty much every life and mind has been distorted by it in some way. Even those who have never owned a slave or been a slave are shaped by it, not just because so much of the country's history and economy hinged on chattel slavery but because society itself warps around it: even in the most idyllic of settings, the fear and uneasiness are never far beneath the surface (or beneath the layers of self-justification). Is true, lasting freedom ever possible in a country whose very foundations stand on the bones of slaves and every edifice bends to accommodate it in its many forms and mindsets? Even if it isn't, Cora cannot stop moving forward save by lying down to die, and for all the setbacks and tragedies she encounters, all the hope turned to so much smoke, she is not ready to do that yet.
This is, necessarily, a harrowing story of dehumanization, cruelty, dashed hopes, crushed futures, and even the lies one tells oneself to justify actions (or lack thereof), or rationalize harm as being for the greater good (or the will of a God whose grace conveniently aligns with one's own circumstances and desires). What light and beauty there is often glimmers cold and distant as the stars in the night sky, something seen and pursued that can never really be reached, especially not in a human lifespan. The ending feels a little unsettled and ambiguous, which I understand was probably the point but which still made me feel mildly let down.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Wild Seed (Octavia E. Butler) - My Review
The Conductors (Nicole Glover) - My Review
The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead) - My Review
Colson Whitehead
Anchor
Fiction, Historical Fiction
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Cora was just a young girl on a Georgia cotton plantation when her mother Mabel disappeared into the night. Despite the dogs and the bounties and even the famed, feared slave catcher Arnold Ridgefield pursuing her, she vanished as if into thin air. Thus Cora was left to fend for herself against the overseer, the owners, and the other slaves. But it wasn't until the new-bought Caesar plots his escape and asks her to join him that Cora even begins to consider flight herself. Caesar has a contact with the Underground Railroad, the secret network of subterranean stations that whisk runaway slaves about the country... but while the Railroad can promise an escape, nobody in the whole of America can promise her freedom - especially after their flight leaves one white boy dead and none other than Ridgefield hot on their trail.
REVIEW: For a country whose founding documents declare that all men are created equal, America has done a terrible job of living up to that ideal even before said documents were written down. Indeed, much of the country seems to delight in creating new ways to dehumanize and disenfranchise the "Other", even when it harms themselves. In The Underground Railroad, Whitehead drags those failures of justice and equality and basic humanity out of the shadows where so many want to sweep them (when they aren't actively reveling in them; if recent events have taught us nothing else, it's that the same mindsets of the slavery era are alive and well even in the twenty-first century, and in a depressingly significant percentage of the population).
From the day her mother disappears, Cora struggles to survive in a world that does its level best to grind her down and bury her, caught in a system whose every aspect works to divide, degrade, dehumanize, and dismiss anyone who is not white enough, not wealthy enough, not inherently cold and cruel and greedy enough. There is little to no solidarity among those enslaved, even by the same sadistic masters; the system sees to that, too, as does a basic human tendency to tribalism and establishing pecking orders even in the meanest of circumstances (a tendency that is exploited to further weaken the enslaved, and which also fragments those who would see the barbaric practice abolished). Cora becomes an outsider, in no small part because of Mabel's abandonment, and it's her own burning hatred at the woman for leaving her behind that makes her initially refuse to even consider Caesar's offer. (That, and of course the grisly examples that the plantation owners make of those who flee.) It's almost to her own surprise that she finds that she can indeed be pushed to the point where even those astronomically high stakes (and astronomically low odds of success) aren't enough to keep her in the slave quarters... but, almost from the start, things start to go wrong, and keep going wrong. On the Railroad - here imagined, with a touch of surrealism, as a real underground network of rail lines and engines, with an ever-changing network of stations and managers - Cora finds herself in different states... but they all have their own traps and dangers, and all exact heavy tolls for survival. Meanwhile, Ridgefield refuses to give up the hunt, aided by a brutish assistant and by an enigmatic young former slave boy, Homer, who has a peculiar devotion to the single-minded hunter despite technically being free. In her journey, she encounters all manner of allies and enemies and more than one person who turns out to be a little of both. Some chapters delve into the backstories of these side characters, revealing just how far beyond the plantation and chains the effects of slavery spread, how pretty much every life and mind has been distorted by it in some way. Even those who have never owned a slave or been a slave are shaped by it, not just because so much of the country's history and economy hinged on chattel slavery but because society itself warps around it: even in the most idyllic of settings, the fear and uneasiness are never far beneath the surface (or beneath the layers of self-justification). Is true, lasting freedom ever possible in a country whose very foundations stand on the bones of slaves and every edifice bends to accommodate it in its many forms and mindsets? Even if it isn't, Cora cannot stop moving forward save by lying down to die, and for all the setbacks and tragedies she encounters, all the hope turned to so much smoke, she is not ready to do that yet.
This is, necessarily, a harrowing story of dehumanization, cruelty, dashed hopes, crushed futures, and even the lies one tells oneself to justify actions (or lack thereof), or rationalize harm as being for the greater good (or the will of a God whose grace conveniently aligns with one's own circumstances and desires). What light and beauty there is often glimmers cold and distant as the stars in the night sky, something seen and pursued that can never really be reached, especially not in a human lifespan. The ending feels a little unsettled and ambiguous, which I understand was probably the point but which still made me feel mildly let down.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Wild Seed (Octavia E. Butler) - My Review
The Conductors (Nicole Glover) - My Review
The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead) - My Review
Friday, December 15, 2023
Other Minds (Peter Godfrey-Smith)
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Peter Godfrey-Smith
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Nonfiction, Animals/Philosophy/Science
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: For a long time, many humans - especially in the "Western" world - considered ourselves the sole thinking, self-aware animals on Earth. But that kind of thinking, even assuming it was true, never answered questions about how we came to possess the brains we have, able to process information and ideas as we can. More recently, research has shown us we are not as alone as we think we are; other animals have been shown to demonstrate behaviors and brain patterns we once reserved exclusively for ourselves, with increasing evidence that they possess some sort of "inner lives" too... but what might that look like? How and why, indeed, did minds like this evolve? Searching for answers, philosopher and scientist Peter Godfrey-Smith turns to animals with remarkable intelligence, animals that diverged from our own ancestors long before even the Cambrian "explosion" of life, animals that some have called the closest we humans may ever get to encountering a truly alien mind: the octopus.
REVIEW: This is an interesting exploration of the evolutionary roots of brains and consciousness, a process that has led to two very different "solutions" in humans and cephalopods. To understand philosophical questions of awareness and what being a nonhuman is like, one must understand something about how humans and nonhumans came to be, the biological and environmental and social pressures that drove what was once a presumably content free-floating cell to transform over countless generations into the remarkably complex life forms with remarkably complex behaviors that we're familiar with today. Through fossil records, gene sequencing, experiments, and more, some truly mind-boggling answers have come to light, particularly in recent years - answers that, in true scientific fashion, lead to even more questions. It is difficult enough to put ourselves into the mind of another mammal, or even a bird, but the cephalopods are further removed from us on an evolutionary scale even than insects, and the intelligence they've developed may be that much further beyond our imagination, suited to entirely different bodies and lifestyles than anything remotely familiar to us. It makes for some interesting thought experiments, if nothing else.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (Frans de Waal) - My Review
The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy (Arik Kershenbaum) - My Review
Your Inner Fish (Neil Shubin) - My Review
Peter Godfrey-Smith
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Nonfiction, Animals/Philosophy/Science
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: For a long time, many humans - especially in the "Western" world - considered ourselves the sole thinking, self-aware animals on Earth. But that kind of thinking, even assuming it was true, never answered questions about how we came to possess the brains we have, able to process information and ideas as we can. More recently, research has shown us we are not as alone as we think we are; other animals have been shown to demonstrate behaviors and brain patterns we once reserved exclusively for ourselves, with increasing evidence that they possess some sort of "inner lives" too... but what might that look like? How and why, indeed, did minds like this evolve? Searching for answers, philosopher and scientist Peter Godfrey-Smith turns to animals with remarkable intelligence, animals that diverged from our own ancestors long before even the Cambrian "explosion" of life, animals that some have called the closest we humans may ever get to encountering a truly alien mind: the octopus.
REVIEW: This is an interesting exploration of the evolutionary roots of brains and consciousness, a process that has led to two very different "solutions" in humans and cephalopods. To understand philosophical questions of awareness and what being a nonhuman is like, one must understand something about how humans and nonhumans came to be, the biological and environmental and social pressures that drove what was once a presumably content free-floating cell to transform over countless generations into the remarkably complex life forms with remarkably complex behaviors that we're familiar with today. Through fossil records, gene sequencing, experiments, and more, some truly mind-boggling answers have come to light, particularly in recent years - answers that, in true scientific fashion, lead to even more questions. It is difficult enough to put ourselves into the mind of another mammal, or even a bird, but the cephalopods are further removed from us on an evolutionary scale even than insects, and the intelligence they've developed may be that much further beyond our imagination, suited to entirely different bodies and lifestyles than anything remotely familiar to us. It makes for some interesting thought experiments, if nothing else.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (Frans de Waal) - My Review
The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy (Arik Kershenbaum) - My Review
Your Inner Fish (Neil Shubin) - My Review
Once and Future (Cori McCarthy and A. R. Capetta)
Once and Future
The Once and Future series, Book 1
Cori McCarthy and A. R. Capetta
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Ari Helix never meant to start an intergalactic revolution against the all-powerful Mercer corporation. All she was trying to do was escape with her adopted brother Kay after they were caught stealing aboard the flagship/mall Heritage, crash-landing on the "retired" planet Old Earth. Then there was the graveyard, and the ancient oak with the sword stuck clean through it - a sword that comes free in her grasp, whose blade bears the name Excalibur. The next thing Ari knows, a strange teenager in old-fashioned eyeglasses pops up, claiming to be a wizard named Merlin and telling her she's the 42nd incarnation of none other than King Arthur himself. It all sounds like utter nonsense, until she sees Merlin's magic with her own eyes and feels the odd, instinctive pull in her soul.
Whenever Arthur returns, it is to claim a throne, overthrow a great evil, and unite humanity in peace. At least, that's how it's supposed to go. But, every time Merlin has lived through the cycle, something always goes terribly wrong. Not only does Morgana le Fay still haunt Merlin, if in noncorporeal (but still dangerous) form, but there always seems to be a Guinevere to break Arthur's heart, a Lancelot to betray him... and a dream of Camelot that dies in blood and grief, never to be realized. Even in a setting as vastly removed from ancient England as intergalactic space, the pieces seem to be aligning again for yet another tragedy that Merlin seems powerless to stop - unless Ari is finally the incarnation to succeed. But Merlin is far from the powerful old wizard he used to be, and no Arthur has ever faced an enemy as vast and manipulative as the Mercer corporation...
REVIEW: I knew, going into it, that this was going to be a riff on the ever-popular King Arthur cycle. And this does have many of the familiar pieces and players, if sometimes in unexpected roles. There is even a Queen Gwen, ruler of a breakaway world that doubles as a medieval-themed tourist trap (and who already broke Ari's heart once years ago). What I did not expect was that this book would feel so flimsy and derivative, with a setting that never feels very thoroughly thought out and characters that often feel more like caricatures or fanfic efforts by a passionate but not-quite-polished writer.
Ari and Kay start out as fugitives from Mercer "justice"; the corporation doesn't just have a monopoly on all trade and manufacturing (and food and water shipments), it also openly owns most every planetary and interplanetary governing body, justice system, and pretty much everything else that isn't nailed down - and if it is nailed down, they're prepared with metaphoric crowbars. Kay's mothers, now both incarcerated, were rebels with one of the many underground resistance efforts (who never seem to amount to more than a mild nuisance to Mercer's shadowy leader, known only as the Administrator), while Ari is an illegal refugee from a planet that was completely isolated by Mercer forces for being outspoken critics of the corporatocracy that essentially enslaves humanity. On fleeing to Old Earth, they pierce the hologram surrounding the "sanctuary" world (which is supposed to be a dedicated reserve, out of bounds of even corporate overlords) and discover the dark truth beneath: instead of a planet left to rewild itself, it's yet another thing being sucked to a husk by Mercer greed, autonomous robots stripping soil and harvesting half-dead trees and even chewing up abandoned cities and graveyards. It's here, of course, that Ari has a date with destiny in the form of an ancient weapon and legend, both of which are still culturally relevant for some reason; there seems to be a pop-culture following still for the vaguely medieval age (that doesn't really represent any actual historic age, mixing up Dark Ages with much later full plate armor and various other anachronisms that have been around so long most people don't bother questioning them) of common retellings of Arthurian tales, though whether or not this is because the Arthurian incarnations and periodic returns of actual wizardry in the form of Merlin (who, as in many versions of the tale, ages backwards) are real in this universe is never really explained. Indeed, a lot about this setting is never really explained, a strange mishmash of modern pop culture and dystopian future and Earthcentric terms in a post-Earth deep space. (There's not even a real attempt to explain or deal with this universe's faster-than-light travel, which must be a thing if we're talking about a civilization spanning multiple star systems, let alone three galaxies.) Merlin's magic elicits some minor skepticism, followed by a few oohs and ahhs, then basically shrugs all around... yet there's apparently no other magic in the entire stretch of civilized space, not even "sufficiently advanced tech"-magic. It all feels very thin and inconsistent, and the fact that I even noticed this thinness and inconsistency should say something about how much I was buying the whole storyline.
As for the characters, Ari wavers weirdly between an angry, scared, lost fugitive teen and a competent leader (out of nowhere - seriously, where would she have learned to lead at all, given the life she's led up to now? The reader is told that she's a great leader, but her "loyal" friends shatter like cheap glassware given half a chance...). Her first act, after fleeing Mercer "associates" who consider her a criminal by merely existing outside her quarantined world and finding Excalibur, is to go to a very public night club, stick the sword conspicuously in the middle of the dance floor, and party hardy. Later, they go out of their way to break Ari and Kay's moms out of a prison world... moms who sound like they'd be great assets when fomenting rebellion, but who are brushed off almost as soon as they're found (only to reappear later on in disappointingly minor roles, given all the buildup the reader had about how wonderful and competent and strong the two were). Merlin, meanwhile, is not the imposing, brooding mystic he used to be in the legends, now beset by teenage hormones to go with his teenage body (and the teen-level angst from millennia of failures). He has a decent enough arc as he reflects upon past mistakes, his failures to guide previous incarnations of Arthur to their glorious destiny... though there's one twist in his history that really made me cringe for potentially spoiler reasons (but which further deepened my feeling throughout that this was less an attempt to tell a solid standalone take on King Arthur in a space opera setting and more an excuse to play around with gender-bent shipping of canon characters... not that there's anything at all wrong with that, except when it happens at the cost of developing the actual story.) Guinevere takes on the form of a teenaged queen of the aforementioned planet that's basically a nonstop Ren Faire, and though she seems pretty competent and calculating as a monarch (and frankly has more of what it takes to rule than Ari), one really starts to wonder what happened to all the adults in this universe, as outside of the incarcerated moms, the Administrator, and the odd extra, there seems to be nobody over the physical age of nineteen anywhere in three galaxies. I've read many other Young Adult titles dominated by teen characters where I did not feel compelled to question this, which means that my suspension of disbelief was having some serious issues staying airborn. And that was long before the cliffhanger ending that adds yet another out-of-nowhere plot device/twist...
All of this is not to say that there's nothing at all I enjoyed about it. For one thing, it moves fairly well, and character interactions - for all that characterizations sometimes felt inconsistent - could be snappy and fun, not to mention emotional. Some of the ideas behind the story had a lot of potential. The sum of the parts, however, just does not add up to a greater whole. I've read other books that integrated magic, myth, and space to much better effect... just as I've read other updates of King Arthur that hit far more solidly than this. (Peter David's Knight Life kept springing to mind.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Crownchasers (Rebecca Coffindaffer) - My Review
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse (K. Eason) - My Review
The Once and Future King (T. H. White) - My Review
The Once and Future series, Book 1
Cori McCarthy and A. R. Capetta
Little, Brown Books
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Ari Helix never meant to start an intergalactic revolution against the all-powerful Mercer corporation. All she was trying to do was escape with her adopted brother Kay after they were caught stealing aboard the flagship/mall Heritage, crash-landing on the "retired" planet Old Earth. Then there was the graveyard, and the ancient oak with the sword stuck clean through it - a sword that comes free in her grasp, whose blade bears the name Excalibur. The next thing Ari knows, a strange teenager in old-fashioned eyeglasses pops up, claiming to be a wizard named Merlin and telling her she's the 42nd incarnation of none other than King Arthur himself. It all sounds like utter nonsense, until she sees Merlin's magic with her own eyes and feels the odd, instinctive pull in her soul.
Whenever Arthur returns, it is to claim a throne, overthrow a great evil, and unite humanity in peace. At least, that's how it's supposed to go. But, every time Merlin has lived through the cycle, something always goes terribly wrong. Not only does Morgana le Fay still haunt Merlin, if in noncorporeal (but still dangerous) form, but there always seems to be a Guinevere to break Arthur's heart, a Lancelot to betray him... and a dream of Camelot that dies in blood and grief, never to be realized. Even in a setting as vastly removed from ancient England as intergalactic space, the pieces seem to be aligning again for yet another tragedy that Merlin seems powerless to stop - unless Ari is finally the incarnation to succeed. But Merlin is far from the powerful old wizard he used to be, and no Arthur has ever faced an enemy as vast and manipulative as the Mercer corporation...
REVIEW: I knew, going into it, that this was going to be a riff on the ever-popular King Arthur cycle. And this does have many of the familiar pieces and players, if sometimes in unexpected roles. There is even a Queen Gwen, ruler of a breakaway world that doubles as a medieval-themed tourist trap (and who already broke Ari's heart once years ago). What I did not expect was that this book would feel so flimsy and derivative, with a setting that never feels very thoroughly thought out and characters that often feel more like caricatures or fanfic efforts by a passionate but not-quite-polished writer.
Ari and Kay start out as fugitives from Mercer "justice"; the corporation doesn't just have a monopoly on all trade and manufacturing (and food and water shipments), it also openly owns most every planetary and interplanetary governing body, justice system, and pretty much everything else that isn't nailed down - and if it is nailed down, they're prepared with metaphoric crowbars. Kay's mothers, now both incarcerated, were rebels with one of the many underground resistance efforts (who never seem to amount to more than a mild nuisance to Mercer's shadowy leader, known only as the Administrator), while Ari is an illegal refugee from a planet that was completely isolated by Mercer forces for being outspoken critics of the corporatocracy that essentially enslaves humanity. On fleeing to Old Earth, they pierce the hologram surrounding the "sanctuary" world (which is supposed to be a dedicated reserve, out of bounds of even corporate overlords) and discover the dark truth beneath: instead of a planet left to rewild itself, it's yet another thing being sucked to a husk by Mercer greed, autonomous robots stripping soil and harvesting half-dead trees and even chewing up abandoned cities and graveyards. It's here, of course, that Ari has a date with destiny in the form of an ancient weapon and legend, both of which are still culturally relevant for some reason; there seems to be a pop-culture following still for the vaguely medieval age (that doesn't really represent any actual historic age, mixing up Dark Ages with much later full plate armor and various other anachronisms that have been around so long most people don't bother questioning them) of common retellings of Arthurian tales, though whether or not this is because the Arthurian incarnations and periodic returns of actual wizardry in the form of Merlin (who, as in many versions of the tale, ages backwards) are real in this universe is never really explained. Indeed, a lot about this setting is never really explained, a strange mishmash of modern pop culture and dystopian future and Earthcentric terms in a post-Earth deep space. (There's not even a real attempt to explain or deal with this universe's faster-than-light travel, which must be a thing if we're talking about a civilization spanning multiple star systems, let alone three galaxies.) Merlin's magic elicits some minor skepticism, followed by a few oohs and ahhs, then basically shrugs all around... yet there's apparently no other magic in the entire stretch of civilized space, not even "sufficiently advanced tech"-magic. It all feels very thin and inconsistent, and the fact that I even noticed this thinness and inconsistency should say something about how much I was buying the whole storyline.
As for the characters, Ari wavers weirdly between an angry, scared, lost fugitive teen and a competent leader (out of nowhere - seriously, where would she have learned to lead at all, given the life she's led up to now? The reader is told that she's a great leader, but her "loyal" friends shatter like cheap glassware given half a chance...). Her first act, after fleeing Mercer "associates" who consider her a criminal by merely existing outside her quarantined world and finding Excalibur, is to go to a very public night club, stick the sword conspicuously in the middle of the dance floor, and party hardy. Later, they go out of their way to break Ari and Kay's moms out of a prison world... moms who sound like they'd be great assets when fomenting rebellion, but who are brushed off almost as soon as they're found (only to reappear later on in disappointingly minor roles, given all the buildup the reader had about how wonderful and competent and strong the two were). Merlin, meanwhile, is not the imposing, brooding mystic he used to be in the legends, now beset by teenage hormones to go with his teenage body (and the teen-level angst from millennia of failures). He has a decent enough arc as he reflects upon past mistakes, his failures to guide previous incarnations of Arthur to their glorious destiny... though there's one twist in his history that really made me cringe for potentially spoiler reasons (but which further deepened my feeling throughout that this was less an attempt to tell a solid standalone take on King Arthur in a space opera setting and more an excuse to play around with gender-bent shipping of canon characters... not that there's anything at all wrong with that, except when it happens at the cost of developing the actual story.) Guinevere takes on the form of a teenaged queen of the aforementioned planet that's basically a nonstop Ren Faire, and though she seems pretty competent and calculating as a monarch (and frankly has more of what it takes to rule than Ari), one really starts to wonder what happened to all the adults in this universe, as outside of the incarcerated moms, the Administrator, and the odd extra, there seems to be nobody over the physical age of nineteen anywhere in three galaxies. I've read many other Young Adult titles dominated by teen characters where I did not feel compelled to question this, which means that my suspension of disbelief was having some serious issues staying airborn. And that was long before the cliffhanger ending that adds yet another out-of-nowhere plot device/twist...
All of this is not to say that there's nothing at all I enjoyed about it. For one thing, it moves fairly well, and character interactions - for all that characterizations sometimes felt inconsistent - could be snappy and fun, not to mention emotional. Some of the ideas behind the story had a lot of potential. The sum of the parts, however, just does not add up to a greater whole. I've read other books that integrated magic, myth, and space to much better effect... just as I've read other updates of King Arthur that hit far more solidly than this. (Peter David's Knight Life kept springing to mind.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Crownchasers (Rebecca Coffindaffer) - My Review
How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse (K. Eason) - My Review
The Once and Future King (T. H. White) - My Review
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Here and Now and Then (Mike Chen)
Here and Now and Then
Mike Chen
MIRA
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Time agent Kin Stewart thought the mission to the late 1990's would be routine, stopping yet another mercenary from meddling with causality for the financial gain of their employers in the twenty-second century. But everything goes wrong when his implanted device is damaged, leaving him without a way back home. Stranded and alone, Kin waits for rescue, the symptoms of his stranding slowly robbing him of his memories and health... until he stops waiting and starts building a modest life for himself.
Eighteen years later, Kin is a self-taught chef who works in internet security, happily married with a bright young teenage daughter, and who has almost convinced himself his memories of time travel are some manner of traumatic delusion or persistent dream - until the stranger appears in his back yard. The retrieval team has found him at last, and doesn't even give him 24 hours before whisking him back to his original time and a life he barely remembers... a life that includes friends and a fiancee, Penny, but not the wife Heather and daughter Miranda, whom he loves. Research tells him the fates of those he left behind - and tells him that his daughter Miranda in the twenty-first century needs him desperately, more than anyone on this side of the timestream. But her very existence is an anomaly, meaning a time agent could be sent to terminate her at any moment if she shows any signs of being a threat to their own temporal continuity. Worse, after his prolonged stay in the past, Kin's body has been pushed nearly beyond the breaking point, and any attempt to return to the past to warn her of the danger she's in may kill him... even assuming she believes the man who, from her point of view, vanished from her life without even saying goodbye. But what kind of father wouldn't risk everything - his career, his home, his very life - to save his daughter?
REVIEW: There's something to be said for a book that doesn't overthink or overanalyze itself, especially when it comes to the brain-breaking potential paradoxes of time travel. Here and Now and Then may feature a displaced time agent, but it's more about Kin's life facing upheaval and his loved ones in two centuries facing threats, in part simply because of him being who and what he is, than it is about the intricacies of time.
The reader meets Kin Stewart just as he loses his ticket back home and faces the consequences of being stranded in the past. Not only does time travel do a number on one's brain and body, but agents are trained to avoid interference and interaction as much as possible. Even standing in line for a cup of coffee may cause someone to be a minute late for an important meeting, causing a knock-on effect that could have a major impact on the timeline. Getting a job and marrying a local are clear steps over the line, let alone fathering a daughter, which happens when Kin still has enough memories of his time agent life to technically know better, for all that he considers himself a castaway with no hope of rescue. The arrival of a retrieval agent shatters the modest yet happy life he's built, not to mention the lives of his wife and teen daughter (neither of whom, of course, know anything about time travel) - made worse when Kin is drug away and back to his original timeline and finds himself facing the woman he was supposed to marry... a woman who knows nothing about time travel either (the agency operating under the strictest of secrecy), and doesn't understand how he's changed so much in only a few days (from her end of the timestream). Penny's introduction sets her up to be second fiddle in Kin's life, a distinctly less forceful and established personality than Heather or Miranda, and she stays that way for a little too long; it's as if the life-prolonging drugs of the future that see many people reach their second century (and allow them to put off childbearing until past their fifties) also prolongs their adolescent and young adult insecurities, as Penny comes across almost childlike at times, unable to decide on a future or stand up to her overbearing parents. One wonders what Kin saw in her, when his past wife Heather was so clearly well established in herself and her life. Even Kin seems to be having second thoughts, as he struggles to rediscover the love he must have felt for her, not helped by how he clings to a wife and daughter he was never supposed to have. Eventually, though, Penny comes around and grows up a little, round about the time the threat to Miranda's life in the past goes from a possibility to a certainty as the time agency targets her as a point of significant timeline deviation. As Kin breaks every time agent rule in the book to save Miranda from erasure, risking himself in the process, the women in his life are finally allowed to stand on their own and exhibit some agency and backbone... some of which was there all along, but overshadowed by Kin's role as Father and Protector, which unbalanced their interactions. Meanwhile, his one friend in the future tries to talk him out of breaking any more rules, even for the sake of love, before being forced to acknowledge that fatherhood bonds and obligations of the heart trump even the time agent rule book. (There's a definite Theme here about parenthood being the main worthwhile goal of any adult life, that those in the future are selfish and/or depriving themselves in some vital way by delaying or abstaining from the miracle of children.) The climax is more about Kin confronting the choices he's made and the lives he's affected and (albeit unintentionally) damaged than it is about facing down his employers or confronting rival agents, much as the story itself was more about Kin's struggle to reconcile two very different lifetimes.
I admit to wavering a bit on the rating. As I mentioned, sometimes it felt like the women were reduced to being about little more than their relationships with Kin (and weren't their own people beyond that), and Penny could've been a little less immature when the reader met her, more of a viable contender for Kin's heart. The agency itself felt a bit vague, and the rules and drawbacks of time travel could be a bit plot convenient. Kin's emotional journey, though, was reasonably interesting, and - like I said at the start - there is something to be said for a book that doesn't overanalyze itself, so I wound up giving it the full fourth star.
You Might Also Enjoy:
15 Minutes (Jill Cooper) - My Review
Recursion (Blake Crouch) - My Review
11/22/63 (Stephen King) - My Review
Mike Chen
MIRA
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Time agent Kin Stewart thought the mission to the late 1990's would be routine, stopping yet another mercenary from meddling with causality for the financial gain of their employers in the twenty-second century. But everything goes wrong when his implanted device is damaged, leaving him without a way back home. Stranded and alone, Kin waits for rescue, the symptoms of his stranding slowly robbing him of his memories and health... until he stops waiting and starts building a modest life for himself.
Eighteen years later, Kin is a self-taught chef who works in internet security, happily married with a bright young teenage daughter, and who has almost convinced himself his memories of time travel are some manner of traumatic delusion or persistent dream - until the stranger appears in his back yard. The retrieval team has found him at last, and doesn't even give him 24 hours before whisking him back to his original time and a life he barely remembers... a life that includes friends and a fiancee, Penny, but not the wife Heather and daughter Miranda, whom he loves. Research tells him the fates of those he left behind - and tells him that his daughter Miranda in the twenty-first century needs him desperately, more than anyone on this side of the timestream. But her very existence is an anomaly, meaning a time agent could be sent to terminate her at any moment if she shows any signs of being a threat to their own temporal continuity. Worse, after his prolonged stay in the past, Kin's body has been pushed nearly beyond the breaking point, and any attempt to return to the past to warn her of the danger she's in may kill him... even assuming she believes the man who, from her point of view, vanished from her life without even saying goodbye. But what kind of father wouldn't risk everything - his career, his home, his very life - to save his daughter?
REVIEW: There's something to be said for a book that doesn't overthink or overanalyze itself, especially when it comes to the brain-breaking potential paradoxes of time travel. Here and Now and Then may feature a displaced time agent, but it's more about Kin's life facing upheaval and his loved ones in two centuries facing threats, in part simply because of him being who and what he is, than it is about the intricacies of time.
The reader meets Kin Stewart just as he loses his ticket back home and faces the consequences of being stranded in the past. Not only does time travel do a number on one's brain and body, but agents are trained to avoid interference and interaction as much as possible. Even standing in line for a cup of coffee may cause someone to be a minute late for an important meeting, causing a knock-on effect that could have a major impact on the timeline. Getting a job and marrying a local are clear steps over the line, let alone fathering a daughter, which happens when Kin still has enough memories of his time agent life to technically know better, for all that he considers himself a castaway with no hope of rescue. The arrival of a retrieval agent shatters the modest yet happy life he's built, not to mention the lives of his wife and teen daughter (neither of whom, of course, know anything about time travel) - made worse when Kin is drug away and back to his original timeline and finds himself facing the woman he was supposed to marry... a woman who knows nothing about time travel either (the agency operating under the strictest of secrecy), and doesn't understand how he's changed so much in only a few days (from her end of the timestream). Penny's introduction sets her up to be second fiddle in Kin's life, a distinctly less forceful and established personality than Heather or Miranda, and she stays that way for a little too long; it's as if the life-prolonging drugs of the future that see many people reach their second century (and allow them to put off childbearing until past their fifties) also prolongs their adolescent and young adult insecurities, as Penny comes across almost childlike at times, unable to decide on a future or stand up to her overbearing parents. One wonders what Kin saw in her, when his past wife Heather was so clearly well established in herself and her life. Even Kin seems to be having second thoughts, as he struggles to rediscover the love he must have felt for her, not helped by how he clings to a wife and daughter he was never supposed to have. Eventually, though, Penny comes around and grows up a little, round about the time the threat to Miranda's life in the past goes from a possibility to a certainty as the time agency targets her as a point of significant timeline deviation. As Kin breaks every time agent rule in the book to save Miranda from erasure, risking himself in the process, the women in his life are finally allowed to stand on their own and exhibit some agency and backbone... some of which was there all along, but overshadowed by Kin's role as Father and Protector, which unbalanced their interactions. Meanwhile, his one friend in the future tries to talk him out of breaking any more rules, even for the sake of love, before being forced to acknowledge that fatherhood bonds and obligations of the heart trump even the time agent rule book. (There's a definite Theme here about parenthood being the main worthwhile goal of any adult life, that those in the future are selfish and/or depriving themselves in some vital way by delaying or abstaining from the miracle of children.) The climax is more about Kin confronting the choices he's made and the lives he's affected and (albeit unintentionally) damaged than it is about facing down his employers or confronting rival agents, much as the story itself was more about Kin's struggle to reconcile two very different lifetimes.
I admit to wavering a bit on the rating. As I mentioned, sometimes it felt like the women were reduced to being about little more than their relationships with Kin (and weren't their own people beyond that), and Penny could've been a little less immature when the reader met her, more of a viable contender for Kin's heart. The agency itself felt a bit vague, and the rules and drawbacks of time travel could be a bit plot convenient. Kin's emotional journey, though, was reasonably interesting, and - like I said at the start - there is something to be said for a book that doesn't overanalyze itself, so I wound up giving it the full fourth star.
You Might Also Enjoy:
15 Minutes (Jill Cooper) - My Review
Recursion (Blake Crouch) - My Review
11/22/63 (Stephen King) - My Review
Sunday, December 10, 2023
The Once and Future Witches (Alix E. Harrow)
The Once and Future Witches
Alix E. Harrow
Redhook
Fiction, Fantasy
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: In ages past, women were witches, keepers of those special words and ways and will that could heal or harm, mend or break, charm or curse. But when women have power, always there are men who fear and hate them for it. And so the men came, with their iron and their torches, burning the words and erasing the ways and breaking the wills, until even the great bastion Avalon was nothing but ash and ruin, conquered by Saint George. But always, when something is shattered, some fragments remain, secrets hidden in nursery rhymes and childhood games and details of needlework and other places men never think to work, passed between mother and daughter who nevertheless remain fearful always of iron and torch as they whisper. Though goodly folk remain ever-vigilant, they believe the war against wicked witchery to be all but over, with women well and truly in their place under men's boot heels. But nothing is lost that cannot again be found, and not all are content with mere whispers in shadows...
In 1893 New Salem, as suffragists agitate to grant women voting rights (and others, naturally, rail against granting them even that much power), the three estranged Eastwood sisters are about to change the course of witchcraft and history. Agnes Amaranth left rural Crow County years ago and scrapes by as a mill worker, enduring horrendous conditions and deprivations. Beatrice Belladonna, left broken and bent by years in an institution, toils quietly in a library and tries her best to avoid notice. James Juniper, half-feral youngest of the three, has come seeking her kin after they abandoned her to their monstrous father. Though they may not yet realize it, the three are bound by more than blood, but by threads of power and of fate. For the Eastwood women all carry with them words and ways taught them by their late grandmother, and the moment of their reunion is marked by an impossible vision: the Tower of Avalon, long thought lost, returning for a handful of heartbeats right in the middle of New Salem. The sisters are going to need all the magic they can gather, and all the allies they can find, to survive what's ahead: not just the possible return of witchcraft to the world, but the return of the witches' oldest and most brutal of enemies.
REVIEW: It's a sad truth that history repeats itself, which is why The Once and Future Witches, set in an alternate history and with magic as a clear metaphor for empowerment (not just of women, but also of lower classes and other cultures and races), is both timeless and timely in its often-brutal depiction of the downtrodden struggling to rise, the powerful stomping them down, and the general public - which often, erroneously, thinks of itself as outside of the struggle (or simply decides it's better to go along to get along) - all too easily harnessed by tethers of fear and manufactured outrage to enable monsters and excuse atrocities, even at the cost of their own freedoms and futures.
From the beginning, the reader is introduced to three very different Eastwood sisters living very different lives. They have been divided by bitter resentments and misunderstandings, divides further exacerbated by a world that actively encourages division among peers and would-be allies; a divided and squabbling underclass is a powerless underclass. Indeed, the divisions that keep people from coming together against mutual enemies are a strong undercurrent to the whole story. Even the suffragists fight among themselves over policy and goals. They all have been taught to hate and distrust each other, and even themselves, in ways they may not even recognize but which preemptively sabotage many of their efforts at rising up, or even simply surviving, in a society that makes no bones about wanting them and all their kind shackled or dead (or both). Some even cling all the harder to the people who hate and hurt them the most, as if serving the beast will keep it from biting as hard (or simply being brainwashed into believing the bites are what they are owed). The main characters are not magically immune to this conditioning, either. Even headstrong James Juniper has been twisted and (literally) crippled by the world, her own anger and thirst for vengeance becoming as much a liability as a strength. It takes everyone leaning on each other, compensating for the blind spots, weaknesses, and scars of their companions, for any lasting change to be possible... and even when it's possible, there is no clear or guaranteed path to success.
Their chief enemy, a politician named Gideon Hill who is building a cult following and populist movement founded on fear of/hatred of witches and women (and minorities, and workers who dare believe they deserve some manner of rights), is far more dangerous than even his inflammatory rhetoric indicates. It's going to take more than mere magic to defeat him and bring about a better future, but building bridges between historically estranged groups is perilous work in and of itself, especially when the knowledge they're sharing is so risky: the magic systems here are as simple as they are mysterious and diverse, snippets of verse or song or dance with ingredients scrounged from everyday items or herbals and all driven by depth of need and force of emotion. This, too, the sharing of diverse and hoarded spellcraft between women (and even between the women and downtrodden men, whose magic has long been considered separate from the "wicked" workings of girls), is not so easy a process as some stories would have one believe. There are many believable setbacks, a few betrayals and failures of courage, and times when it seems like a lost cause altogether. Still, giving up is not an option, and when faced with certain Hell if one quits and even a slim chance of success for persevering, the choice is clear, if never easy.
Starting fairly fast, the book moves relentlessly forward, if not always at a breakneck pace; there is breathing room as it fleshes out the characters, their relationships, and their worlds, interspersed with nursery tales and folklore that often holds hints and clues if one knows how to look at them. Each chapter starts with snippets of spells, foreshadowing the theme of the coming passage and further filling out the magic system and the alternate world. While there is plenty of darkness, though, there are moments of joy and wonder and even levity. The whole builds to a climax that is just as explosive and harrowing as the tale and characters deserve, one not without sacrifices and does not pull its punches or put a glossy, artificial golden sheen on things.
It has been some time since I've awarded a five-star rating, but this one earned it handily. The Once and Future Witches is a book that manages to be both brutally honest and yet hopeful. In fiction, at least, hope for a better future is possible...
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To Shape a Dragon's Breath (Moniquill Blackgoose) - My Review
The Only Harmless Great Thing (Brooke Bolander) - My Review
The City We Became (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Alix E. Harrow
Redhook
Fiction, Fantasy
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: In ages past, women were witches, keepers of those special words and ways and will that could heal or harm, mend or break, charm or curse. But when women have power, always there are men who fear and hate them for it. And so the men came, with their iron and their torches, burning the words and erasing the ways and breaking the wills, until even the great bastion Avalon was nothing but ash and ruin, conquered by Saint George. But always, when something is shattered, some fragments remain, secrets hidden in nursery rhymes and childhood games and details of needlework and other places men never think to work, passed between mother and daughter who nevertheless remain fearful always of iron and torch as they whisper. Though goodly folk remain ever-vigilant, they believe the war against wicked witchery to be all but over, with women well and truly in their place under men's boot heels. But nothing is lost that cannot again be found, and not all are content with mere whispers in shadows...
In 1893 New Salem, as suffragists agitate to grant women voting rights (and others, naturally, rail against granting them even that much power), the three estranged Eastwood sisters are about to change the course of witchcraft and history. Agnes Amaranth left rural Crow County years ago and scrapes by as a mill worker, enduring horrendous conditions and deprivations. Beatrice Belladonna, left broken and bent by years in an institution, toils quietly in a library and tries her best to avoid notice. James Juniper, half-feral youngest of the three, has come seeking her kin after they abandoned her to their monstrous father. Though they may not yet realize it, the three are bound by more than blood, but by threads of power and of fate. For the Eastwood women all carry with them words and ways taught them by their late grandmother, and the moment of their reunion is marked by an impossible vision: the Tower of Avalon, long thought lost, returning for a handful of heartbeats right in the middle of New Salem. The sisters are going to need all the magic they can gather, and all the allies they can find, to survive what's ahead: not just the possible return of witchcraft to the world, but the return of the witches' oldest and most brutal of enemies.
REVIEW: It's a sad truth that history repeats itself, which is why The Once and Future Witches, set in an alternate history and with magic as a clear metaphor for empowerment (not just of women, but also of lower classes and other cultures and races), is both timeless and timely in its often-brutal depiction of the downtrodden struggling to rise, the powerful stomping them down, and the general public - which often, erroneously, thinks of itself as outside of the struggle (or simply decides it's better to go along to get along) - all too easily harnessed by tethers of fear and manufactured outrage to enable monsters and excuse atrocities, even at the cost of their own freedoms and futures.
From the beginning, the reader is introduced to three very different Eastwood sisters living very different lives. They have been divided by bitter resentments and misunderstandings, divides further exacerbated by a world that actively encourages division among peers and would-be allies; a divided and squabbling underclass is a powerless underclass. Indeed, the divisions that keep people from coming together against mutual enemies are a strong undercurrent to the whole story. Even the suffragists fight among themselves over policy and goals. They all have been taught to hate and distrust each other, and even themselves, in ways they may not even recognize but which preemptively sabotage many of their efforts at rising up, or even simply surviving, in a society that makes no bones about wanting them and all their kind shackled or dead (or both). Some even cling all the harder to the people who hate and hurt them the most, as if serving the beast will keep it from biting as hard (or simply being brainwashed into believing the bites are what they are owed). The main characters are not magically immune to this conditioning, either. Even headstrong James Juniper has been twisted and (literally) crippled by the world, her own anger and thirst for vengeance becoming as much a liability as a strength. It takes everyone leaning on each other, compensating for the blind spots, weaknesses, and scars of their companions, for any lasting change to be possible... and even when it's possible, there is no clear or guaranteed path to success.
Their chief enemy, a politician named Gideon Hill who is building a cult following and populist movement founded on fear of/hatred of witches and women (and minorities, and workers who dare believe they deserve some manner of rights), is far more dangerous than even his inflammatory rhetoric indicates. It's going to take more than mere magic to defeat him and bring about a better future, but building bridges between historically estranged groups is perilous work in and of itself, especially when the knowledge they're sharing is so risky: the magic systems here are as simple as they are mysterious and diverse, snippets of verse or song or dance with ingredients scrounged from everyday items or herbals and all driven by depth of need and force of emotion. This, too, the sharing of diverse and hoarded spellcraft between women (and even between the women and downtrodden men, whose magic has long been considered separate from the "wicked" workings of girls), is not so easy a process as some stories would have one believe. There are many believable setbacks, a few betrayals and failures of courage, and times when it seems like a lost cause altogether. Still, giving up is not an option, and when faced with certain Hell if one quits and even a slim chance of success for persevering, the choice is clear, if never easy.
Starting fairly fast, the book moves relentlessly forward, if not always at a breakneck pace; there is breathing room as it fleshes out the characters, their relationships, and their worlds, interspersed with nursery tales and folklore that often holds hints and clues if one knows how to look at them. Each chapter starts with snippets of spells, foreshadowing the theme of the coming passage and further filling out the magic system and the alternate world. While there is plenty of darkness, though, there are moments of joy and wonder and even levity. The whole builds to a climax that is just as explosive and harrowing as the tale and characters deserve, one not without sacrifices and does not pull its punches or put a glossy, artificial golden sheen on things.
It has been some time since I've awarded a five-star rating, but this one earned it handily. The Once and Future Witches is a book that manages to be both brutally honest and yet hopeful. In fiction, at least, hope for a better future is possible...
You Might Also Enjoy:
To Shape a Dragon's Breath (Moniquill Blackgoose) - My Review
The Only Harmless Great Thing (Brooke Bolander) - My Review
The City We Became (N. K. Jemisin) - My Review
Friday, December 8, 2023
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer (Lish McBride)
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer
The Necromancer series, Book 1
Lish McBride
Square Fish
Fiction, YA? Fantasy/Humor
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Ever since he dropped out of college, Sam has been adrift in life, scraping by at a dead-end fast food job on Seattle while waiting for... something. What, he doesn't know, but he's always felt like he was lost, and doesn't have a clue as to where or what he's supposed to be, even as he drifts toward an age where he really ought to have some idea. Sometimes, though, destiny doesn't wait patiently to be found. It marches into the lobby of a fast food restaurant and literally grabs you.
Sam doesn't know what the strange, if impeccably dressed, man is raving about (well, aside from the fact that he and his friends broke the tail light of his illegally-parked Mercedes while playing "potato hockey" during break time at work), but all of a sudden Sam is the target of increasingly violent attacks - from the hulk of a man who stops a speeding car with nothing but a bare fist to the arrival of a box containing the severed head of best friend Brooke.
But it's not until Brooke's head begins to talk that Sam and his buddies Ramon and Frank realize that there's something far, far stranger going on than one fanatic avenging a car.
Sam has gotten on the bad side of Douglas, the most powerful necromancer in the region and leader of the local council of hidden magicians and magical beings, encompassing everything from witches to vampires to werewolves and more. Worse, Douglas seems to have the ridiculous idea that Sam himself is also a necromancer, and therefore a potential threat. But that's impossible, right? Someone would've told him by now, wouldn't they? Whether or not he believes it, Sam has one week to answer Douglas's ultimatum/threat, or everyone he loves may end up like Brooke - or worse.
REVIEW: Pine trees and blue jays... I have lived not far from Seattle all my life. I have a passing familiarity with local flora and fauna. Which is how I know that the green hills around Seattle are green with Douglas firs (and Western red cedar, and other evergreens that are not, by and large, pines), and the blue birds with the distinctive black and crested heads at feeders are resident Steller's jays; pines take over east of the Cascades (you can roll down the windows going over Snoqualmie Pass, and when you smell pine you know you're in Eastern Washington), and blue jays - which are more blue and white, not blue and black - are only occasional visitors this far west. What, you may ask, does this have to do with a book about a bumbling necromancer-in-training trying to simultaneously discover his heritage and save the lives of everyone he loves? Well, when that book repeatedly refers to both pine trees and blue jays as common parts of the landscape, and never once to Douglas firs or Steller's jays, while insisting that it's set in Seattle and narrated by a Seattle native, that little error becomes quite glaring. It makes it that much harder to suspend disbelief. It makes me that much more likely to look for other holes and errors, and generally not really believe that the story knows what it's about. If nothing else, it makes me think that the main character and others are, frankly, morons if they have lived so much of their lives in Seattle and still cannot tell a Douglas fir from a pine, nor a Steller's jay from a blue jay. It does not, in short, set me up to like a story.
In truth, I cannot blame that error entirely for the rating. Sam and his friends (and enemies) earn it well enough on their own. Not a one exhibits much in the way of brains; even the bad guys are flat, obvious, and don't seem to have thought through their plans. They all have a talent for doing the least intelligent thing at the least intelligent time for the least explicable reasons, and need repeated blows from two-by-fours to figure anything at all out... and even then the lesson may not stick. Women are invariably reduced to things needing rescuing, or mere enablers of Sam and the boys; Brooke, introduced as a strong and gutsy girl, is basically fridged (save her chattering head, who doesn't do much except be a chattering head), while Sam's mother is both overprotective and incapable of basic logic (she hid the fact that she was a witch - hardly a spoiler - from Sam's father, then declares that she didn't want to live her life lying to a man she ostensibly loved... after marrying him and getting pregnant with his child and not having said a word, and already having multiple hints that the guy didn't want anything to do with magic - Petunia in the Harry Potter series at least knew what she was doing when she married the most mundane and magic-averse Muggle in existence, so what's Sam's mother's excuse?). There's also a werewolf woman whom we first meet naked in a cage, captive of Douglas. We're told she's a formidable character, but she's basically there to be a victim and otherwise be secondary to Sam (in more ways than I can get into without spoilers, but suffice it to say that introducing a character in a situation like that... yeah, things go like you'd probably expect at some point, because why else would you have a naked, helpless woman lounging around in a cage when the good guy becomes a captive, too? Is it really a spoiler if the whole thing glaringly signals its own outcome?).
In its favor, the story doesn't generally drag. Even when the characters sit around dithering and not acting to further the plot, they're actively dithering. Several elements are introduced that get minimal follow-through on, possibly to sow seeds for the sequel. At some point, Sam runs out of excuses to be useless and stupid and everyone gets around to playing out the climax, followed by a wrap-up that mostly exists to set hooks for the sequel.
I have, of course, read worse, and there was potential in the setup. I just could not connect with a single character, could not care about the situations or their choices, and, try as I might, I just could not excuse storytelling so lazy it could not take the time (five minutes max in any given search engine, or just talking to someone who lives here) to research what kind of birds and trees are found in Western Washington near Seattle, because it sure isn't pine trees and blue jays...
You Might Also Enjoy:
Witches of Lychford (Paul Cornell) - My Review
You Slay Me (Katie MacAlister) - My Review
Strange Practice (Vivian Shaw) - My Review
Thursday, December 7, 2023
Dreamsnake (Vonda N. McIntyre)
Dreamsnake
Vonda N. McIntyre
Blackstone Audio
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Healer Snake travels the land, visiting villages and nomadic tribes of desert and mountain, bringing the gifts of her training as well as those offered by her three special serpents: the albino cobra Mist, the coppery rattlesnake Sand, and the green dreamsnake Grass. Mist and Sand have been genetically engineered to produce curatives and even vaccines in their venom glands, but Grass is a special species, a serpent from another world whose bite brings peace and pleasant dreams - mostly used to ease the final hours of the terminally ill. Snake's decision to push into territories not often visited by healers comes at an unexpected cost: while healing one nomadic herder boy, she tragically misreads the local customs and the deeply-ingrained fear of the local deadly sand vipers, and his family ends up killing Grass. This is a blow not just to Snake but to the healers as a whole: nobody has ever gotten dreamsnakes to breed in captivity on Earth, and the one city where offworlders trade has shut their doors in the faces of healers for decades, choking off the supply. Without dreamsnakes, a healer cannot effectively practice their arts, so their numbers are dwindling with the supply of surviving serpents. But while on her way back to the healers' station to explain the loss (and, likely as not, be exiled for her failure), a chance encounter offers a thread of hope for redemption. Thus begins Snake's long, dangerous journey across the lands to find a new dreamsnake.
REVIEW: This classic novel, first published in 1978 (though the short story it was based on was published in 1973, famously the result of a "two random words" prompt challenge at a writing conference), won multiple awards and remains quite readable and interesting today, with a great concept in its bio-engineered medicinal snakes.
Set on an Earth made nearly unrecognizable several generations after nuclear war almost ended humanity, it doesn't overlabor the setting or backstory, letting the tale unfold with intriguing hints about the civilization that rebuilt itself upon radioactive ashes from parts old and new, familiar and alien: while some have reverted to tribal existence, the healers practice gene splicing and other advanced tech (though they have to grind their own microscope lenses and such without a global manufacturing infrastructure), and pretty much everyone, even in the most remote places, practices some form of bio-control over their own reproductive processes. Only in the city of Center does anything like what we would recognize as modern urban culture remain ubiquitous, and they've become strange and secretive and increasingly paranoid about outside contact. Still, this is not a world that's mired in doom and despair and superstition, but one where people strive to rise to the challenge of creating a new and better future, if in a piecemeal fashion. One of the things this world has mostly cast off is old gender baggage; relationships are more likely to be multi-person partnerships than male-dominated pairings, nonbinary inclinations are no longer taboo, and no roles seem to be closed or open exclusively to boys or girls. Snake's journey is one that other authors might have given to a male lead, or would've made the fact that she's a woman into a major plot point (where she faces opposition and friction just because of her gender). Even today it sometimes seem like there has to be a justification for a female lead, whereas here Snake's sexuality and gender are just part of who she is. Along the way, she picks up an unlikely companion, as well as an unknown stalker who proves pivotal in the last leg of the book. She also, unbeknownst to her, picks up a love interest who decides to follow her into the unknown, a young man from the desert tribe where Grass was killed, who has his own, if lesser, adventure tracking down the wandering healer.
The plot moves pretty well, if hardly at a breakneck pace, weaving in some pretty interesting worldbuilding with the action. Some parts toward the end feel mildly forced and the conclusion struck me as a little rushed or off-kilter for reasons I'm not sure I can put my finger on, though on the whole things wrap up reasonably well.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves (Meg Long) - My Review
The Merciful Crow (Margaret Owen) - My Review
Elder Race (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Vonda N. McIntyre
Blackstone Audio
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Healer Snake travels the land, visiting villages and nomadic tribes of desert and mountain, bringing the gifts of her training as well as those offered by her three special serpents: the albino cobra Mist, the coppery rattlesnake Sand, and the green dreamsnake Grass. Mist and Sand have been genetically engineered to produce curatives and even vaccines in their venom glands, but Grass is a special species, a serpent from another world whose bite brings peace and pleasant dreams - mostly used to ease the final hours of the terminally ill. Snake's decision to push into territories not often visited by healers comes at an unexpected cost: while healing one nomadic herder boy, she tragically misreads the local customs and the deeply-ingrained fear of the local deadly sand vipers, and his family ends up killing Grass. This is a blow not just to Snake but to the healers as a whole: nobody has ever gotten dreamsnakes to breed in captivity on Earth, and the one city where offworlders trade has shut their doors in the faces of healers for decades, choking off the supply. Without dreamsnakes, a healer cannot effectively practice their arts, so their numbers are dwindling with the supply of surviving serpents. But while on her way back to the healers' station to explain the loss (and, likely as not, be exiled for her failure), a chance encounter offers a thread of hope for redemption. Thus begins Snake's long, dangerous journey across the lands to find a new dreamsnake.
REVIEW: This classic novel, first published in 1978 (though the short story it was based on was published in 1973, famously the result of a "two random words" prompt challenge at a writing conference), won multiple awards and remains quite readable and interesting today, with a great concept in its bio-engineered medicinal snakes.
Set on an Earth made nearly unrecognizable several generations after nuclear war almost ended humanity, it doesn't overlabor the setting or backstory, letting the tale unfold with intriguing hints about the civilization that rebuilt itself upon radioactive ashes from parts old and new, familiar and alien: while some have reverted to tribal existence, the healers practice gene splicing and other advanced tech (though they have to grind their own microscope lenses and such without a global manufacturing infrastructure), and pretty much everyone, even in the most remote places, practices some form of bio-control over their own reproductive processes. Only in the city of Center does anything like what we would recognize as modern urban culture remain ubiquitous, and they've become strange and secretive and increasingly paranoid about outside contact. Still, this is not a world that's mired in doom and despair and superstition, but one where people strive to rise to the challenge of creating a new and better future, if in a piecemeal fashion. One of the things this world has mostly cast off is old gender baggage; relationships are more likely to be multi-person partnerships than male-dominated pairings, nonbinary inclinations are no longer taboo, and no roles seem to be closed or open exclusively to boys or girls. Snake's journey is one that other authors might have given to a male lead, or would've made the fact that she's a woman into a major plot point (where she faces opposition and friction just because of her gender). Even today it sometimes seem like there has to be a justification for a female lead, whereas here Snake's sexuality and gender are just part of who she is. Along the way, she picks up an unlikely companion, as well as an unknown stalker who proves pivotal in the last leg of the book. She also, unbeknownst to her, picks up a love interest who decides to follow her into the unknown, a young man from the desert tribe where Grass was killed, who has his own, if lesser, adventure tracking down the wandering healer.
The plot moves pretty well, if hardly at a breakneck pace, weaving in some pretty interesting worldbuilding with the action. Some parts toward the end feel mildly forced and the conclusion struck me as a little rushed or off-kilter for reasons I'm not sure I can put my finger on, though on the whole things wrap up reasonably well.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves (Meg Long) - My Review
The Merciful Crow (Margaret Owen) - My Review
Elder Race (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Wednesday, December 6, 2023
The Princess and the Goblin (George MacDonald)
The Princess and the Goblin
George MacDonald
Tantor
Fiction, CH Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Eight-year-old Princess Irene, as pure and good as she is beautiful, lives a sheltered life in the royal house while her father travels about the kingdom. She is so sheltered she doesn't even know about the goblins who live underneath the mountains of the kingdom: hateful beings who may once have been men but have been twisted and turned ugly by generations of exile away from the sun, whose sole purpose and joy is tormenting surface-dwellers. It is only after she stays out too late one evening that she even glimpses a goblin - an encounter where a miner boy, Curdie, saves them by reciting songs and verses (for everyone knows goblins despise both, being unable to sing or rhyme, possibly owing to their lack of souls). But her first encounter is not to be her last, as the king and queen of the monsters have concocted a diabolical plot to exact ultimate revenge against the kingdom and the men they have despised for so very long.
REVIEW: First published in 1872, this classic tale has been cited as a significant source of inspiration by authors from J. R. R. Tolkien to C. S. Lewis, while MacDonald himself was influential to many more; apparently he was mentor to Lewis Carroll and encouraged him to publish Alice in Wonderland. When read (or listened to) in 2023, The Princess and the Goblin still holds some charm and has some memorable imagery, but unfortunately it can't help showing its age, particularly if one happens to be a secular reader.
In the way of so many fairy tales, the story takes place in an idealized "once upon a time" kingdom of happy, uncomplicated people, living happy, uncomplicated lives, where the commoners are content to serve and toil under a just and noble king and where enemies are clearly defined not only by their physical differences but by their utter embrace of an inherent, soulless evil and an entire culture built around harassing their "betters" from the dark and deep places to which they were long ago banished. (One can't help seeing certain racial/cultural implications, here, especially as the tale unfolds and religious subtexts become more and more glaringly obvious.) Into this world is born Irene, a girl who has anything a child could possibly want and then some, looked after by a nursemaid who perpetually misreads situations, fumbles in her duties, overreacts, cowers before the rank and general perfection of her charge, and otherwise reminds the reader that those of lower classes are inherently inferior even to eight-year-old nobility, who are by blood and blessing closer to heavenly influences; indeed, the lesser classes are to be pitied for their inability to bask in divine glory like the princess. It's while exploring the royal house that Irene first stumbles across the hidden high tower room and her "great-great grandmother" namesake, who from the start is at the very least ghostly and later is quite clearly some manner of godly incarnation, offering comfort and healing and guidance and ritual cleansings (but which others, of lesser blood and therefore less inherent divine favor, often refuse to believe - indeed, to ask for actual proof of anything is tantamount to blasphemy). There's certainly a direct line of literary influence between the elder Irene and C. S. Lewis's lion Aslan, though at least Aslan got off his tufted tail now and again to go out and directly do something in the greater world, while Grandmother Irene mostly sits about serenely in her tower, even as her influence leads Princess Irene into risky situations (that the girl nevertheless rises to, making her a decently competent heroine given her literary circumstances). Meanwhile, miner boy Curdie stumbles across the goblin plot whilst working deep in the mountains, and risks life and limb to investigate deep in the stony bowels of the enemy stronghold. It takes the two of them (and, of course, not a little bit of Grandmother's enigmatic advice and tweaks to the strings of fate) to figure out the danger... but will anyone believe either child, when one is just a lowly miner and the other an innocent young princess whose foolish nursemaid has already spread tales about to discredit her as prone to flights of fancy (having disbelieved the girl's encounter with Grandmother)?
As I mentioned earlier, MacDonald presents some decent, memorable imagery, if imagery sometimes oversaturated with Symbolism and Messages about theological concepts like redemption and enlightenment and other things that this atheist-leaning agnostic only recognizes in the vaguest of terms. The goblins are nasty enemies, reveling in their cruelty, and their mutated animals, even described only in the vaguest of terms (being too twisted for the storyteller to put adequately into words), likely have fueled countless nightmares. Countering this is the ethereal, grandmotherly presence of the elder Irene, who may or may not be an embodiment of Princess Irene's real great-great grandmother (the more the story goes on, the less she seems like she's even the spirit of a mortal woman and the more she seems like either a saint or a goddess), who also has some interesting imagery woven around her presence. The characters may not be particularly deep, but they have an interesting adventure and are not beyond the odd failure (even with divine protection). Ultimately, though, the aforementioned oversaturation of Symbolism (and the unpleasant, creeping suspicion that the goblins were meant to be stand-ins for "anyone not sufficiently white or Christian for holy redemption, who is therefore automatically a despicable agent of evil") cost it in the ratings. I also can't say I was impressed with the quality of the audiobook I listened to; the sound was weirdly inconsistent from chapter to chapter (likely from different recording sessions, but I've never encountered one where the "cuts" had such glaringly different volumes or audio quality; I swear some of the chapters sounded like the microphone was underwater, they were so muddied and muted, while others were painfully strident).
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Best of Lewis Carroll (Lewis Carroll) - My Review
The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis) - My Review
The Castle in the Attic (Elizabeth Winthrop) - My Review
George MacDonald
Tantor
Fiction, CH Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Eight-year-old Princess Irene, as pure and good as she is beautiful, lives a sheltered life in the royal house while her father travels about the kingdom. She is so sheltered she doesn't even know about the goblins who live underneath the mountains of the kingdom: hateful beings who may once have been men but have been twisted and turned ugly by generations of exile away from the sun, whose sole purpose and joy is tormenting surface-dwellers. It is only after she stays out too late one evening that she even glimpses a goblin - an encounter where a miner boy, Curdie, saves them by reciting songs and verses (for everyone knows goblins despise both, being unable to sing or rhyme, possibly owing to their lack of souls). But her first encounter is not to be her last, as the king and queen of the monsters have concocted a diabolical plot to exact ultimate revenge against the kingdom and the men they have despised for so very long.
REVIEW: First published in 1872, this classic tale has been cited as a significant source of inspiration by authors from J. R. R. Tolkien to C. S. Lewis, while MacDonald himself was influential to many more; apparently he was mentor to Lewis Carroll and encouraged him to publish Alice in Wonderland. When read (or listened to) in 2023, The Princess and the Goblin still holds some charm and has some memorable imagery, but unfortunately it can't help showing its age, particularly if one happens to be a secular reader.
In the way of so many fairy tales, the story takes place in an idealized "once upon a time" kingdom of happy, uncomplicated people, living happy, uncomplicated lives, where the commoners are content to serve and toil under a just and noble king and where enemies are clearly defined not only by their physical differences but by their utter embrace of an inherent, soulless evil and an entire culture built around harassing their "betters" from the dark and deep places to which they were long ago banished. (One can't help seeing certain racial/cultural implications, here, especially as the tale unfolds and religious subtexts become more and more glaringly obvious.) Into this world is born Irene, a girl who has anything a child could possibly want and then some, looked after by a nursemaid who perpetually misreads situations, fumbles in her duties, overreacts, cowers before the rank and general perfection of her charge, and otherwise reminds the reader that those of lower classes are inherently inferior even to eight-year-old nobility, who are by blood and blessing closer to heavenly influences; indeed, the lesser classes are to be pitied for their inability to bask in divine glory like the princess. It's while exploring the royal house that Irene first stumbles across the hidden high tower room and her "great-great grandmother" namesake, who from the start is at the very least ghostly and later is quite clearly some manner of godly incarnation, offering comfort and healing and guidance and ritual cleansings (but which others, of lesser blood and therefore less inherent divine favor, often refuse to believe - indeed, to ask for actual proof of anything is tantamount to blasphemy). There's certainly a direct line of literary influence between the elder Irene and C. S. Lewis's lion Aslan, though at least Aslan got off his tufted tail now and again to go out and directly do something in the greater world, while Grandmother Irene mostly sits about serenely in her tower, even as her influence leads Princess Irene into risky situations (that the girl nevertheless rises to, making her a decently competent heroine given her literary circumstances). Meanwhile, miner boy Curdie stumbles across the goblin plot whilst working deep in the mountains, and risks life and limb to investigate deep in the stony bowels of the enemy stronghold. It takes the two of them (and, of course, not a little bit of Grandmother's enigmatic advice and tweaks to the strings of fate) to figure out the danger... but will anyone believe either child, when one is just a lowly miner and the other an innocent young princess whose foolish nursemaid has already spread tales about to discredit her as prone to flights of fancy (having disbelieved the girl's encounter with Grandmother)?
As I mentioned earlier, MacDonald presents some decent, memorable imagery, if imagery sometimes oversaturated with Symbolism and Messages about theological concepts like redemption and enlightenment and other things that this atheist-leaning agnostic only recognizes in the vaguest of terms. The goblins are nasty enemies, reveling in their cruelty, and their mutated animals, even described only in the vaguest of terms (being too twisted for the storyteller to put adequately into words), likely have fueled countless nightmares. Countering this is the ethereal, grandmotherly presence of the elder Irene, who may or may not be an embodiment of Princess Irene's real great-great grandmother (the more the story goes on, the less she seems like she's even the spirit of a mortal woman and the more she seems like either a saint or a goddess), who also has some interesting imagery woven around her presence. The characters may not be particularly deep, but they have an interesting adventure and are not beyond the odd failure (even with divine protection). Ultimately, though, the aforementioned oversaturation of Symbolism (and the unpleasant, creeping suspicion that the goblins were meant to be stand-ins for "anyone not sufficiently white or Christian for holy redemption, who is therefore automatically a despicable agent of evil") cost it in the ratings. I also can't say I was impressed with the quality of the audiobook I listened to; the sound was weirdly inconsistent from chapter to chapter (likely from different recording sessions, but I've never encountered one where the "cuts" had such glaringly different volumes or audio quality; I swear some of the chapters sounded like the microphone was underwater, they were so muddied and muted, while others were painfully strident).
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Best of Lewis Carroll (Lewis Carroll) - My Review
The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis) - My Review
The Castle in the Attic (Elizabeth Winthrop) - My Review
Friday, December 1, 2023
Even Though I Knew the End (C. L. Polk)
Even Though I Knew the End
C. L. Polk
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Ten years ago, in 1931, Helen Brandt was a promising young mystic training alongside her brother Ted, following the family tradition in Chicago's guild of high magicians... until she threw it all away by making a deal with the Devil. Kicked out of the Order and branded a warlock, she turned to private investigating, studying her own brand of unorthodox magic and spells... which is how she wound up in the alley one night, casting an augury at a crime scene of the notorious so-called "White City Vampire". Dealing with serial killers, especially ones with overtones of black magic, is above her pay grade, but Helen figures she can manage this one last spell without getting sucked into a full investigation, one that's sure to clash with the Order. It's not like she has that kind of time, anyway: as with all who barter in souls, she only had ten years to enjoy the fruits before she is claimed by Hell for all eternity, and she only has a few days left. She's only bothering with this one last job because it'll allow her to leave that much more of a parting gift to her girlfriend Edith, who knows nothing of damnation or bargains at crossroads. But despite her best intentions and very limited lifespan, Helen finds herself pulled into the most dangerous case she's ever worked, with stakes higher than she could ever have imagined.
REVIEW: This award-winning novella brilliantly melds elements of occult magic with noir detective tropes in an alternate-history Chicago still recovering from the Great Depression, with a side-angle of a technically illegal sapphic romance. While many might pine and moan and lament at the end, Helen intends to go out as she's lived, staring adversity straight in the eye, not wallowing in self-pity. Her only regrets are that she remains estranged from her brother Ted, now a respected Initiate in the Chicago high magicians, and that she'll be leaving behind her lover Edith, an ethereal vision of a woman who nonetheless is more than just an idealized caricature, and who becomes much more a part of the White City Vampire investigation than Helen ever intended. The two make a solid partnership, just as Helen makes a solid noir-era gumshoe, full of determination and wit (with, of course, a twist of magic). As Helen finds herself drug deeper into the mystery, she finds another partner of sorts who introduces her to aspects of magical Chicago that even she hardly suspected existed, the sort of places mortals should fear to tread if they know what's good for them... but once you've bargained your soul away and are already bound for Hell, that's not much reason to stop, especially not when the investigation takes an unexpectedly personal turn. The world around Helen comes to life in the many details, from the classic camera she uses to the underground club for lesbians to the "hospital" where the mentally ill - and those whom 1940's society has deemed "broken" and in need of abusive therapy to cure their "unnatural" habits, such as women who like other women - are sent and only rarely return, and the characters feel like natural inhabitants of their world and times. The investigation winds up to a dramatic climax, and a conclusion that leaves the door cracked open for potential sequels (which I'd probably read if it kept the same character chemistry as this installment). It all makes for an enjoyable, emotional tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Diviners (Libba Bray) - My Review
Witchmark (C. L. Polk) - My Review
Girl Waits With Gun (Amy Stewart) - My Review
C. L. Polk
Tordotcom
Fiction, Fantasy/Mystery
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Ten years ago, in 1931, Helen Brandt was a promising young mystic training alongside her brother Ted, following the family tradition in Chicago's guild of high magicians... until she threw it all away by making a deal with the Devil. Kicked out of the Order and branded a warlock, she turned to private investigating, studying her own brand of unorthodox magic and spells... which is how she wound up in the alley one night, casting an augury at a crime scene of the notorious so-called "White City Vampire". Dealing with serial killers, especially ones with overtones of black magic, is above her pay grade, but Helen figures she can manage this one last spell without getting sucked into a full investigation, one that's sure to clash with the Order. It's not like she has that kind of time, anyway: as with all who barter in souls, she only had ten years to enjoy the fruits before she is claimed by Hell for all eternity, and she only has a few days left. She's only bothering with this one last job because it'll allow her to leave that much more of a parting gift to her girlfriend Edith, who knows nothing of damnation or bargains at crossroads. But despite her best intentions and very limited lifespan, Helen finds herself pulled into the most dangerous case she's ever worked, with stakes higher than she could ever have imagined.
REVIEW: This award-winning novella brilliantly melds elements of occult magic with noir detective tropes in an alternate-history Chicago still recovering from the Great Depression, with a side-angle of a technically illegal sapphic romance. While many might pine and moan and lament at the end, Helen intends to go out as she's lived, staring adversity straight in the eye, not wallowing in self-pity. Her only regrets are that she remains estranged from her brother Ted, now a respected Initiate in the Chicago high magicians, and that she'll be leaving behind her lover Edith, an ethereal vision of a woman who nonetheless is more than just an idealized caricature, and who becomes much more a part of the White City Vampire investigation than Helen ever intended. The two make a solid partnership, just as Helen makes a solid noir-era gumshoe, full of determination and wit (with, of course, a twist of magic). As Helen finds herself drug deeper into the mystery, she finds another partner of sorts who introduces her to aspects of magical Chicago that even she hardly suspected existed, the sort of places mortals should fear to tread if they know what's good for them... but once you've bargained your soul away and are already bound for Hell, that's not much reason to stop, especially not when the investigation takes an unexpectedly personal turn. The world around Helen comes to life in the many details, from the classic camera she uses to the underground club for lesbians to the "hospital" where the mentally ill - and those whom 1940's society has deemed "broken" and in need of abusive therapy to cure their "unnatural" habits, such as women who like other women - are sent and only rarely return, and the characters feel like natural inhabitants of their world and times. The investigation winds up to a dramatic climax, and a conclusion that leaves the door cracked open for potential sequels (which I'd probably read if it kept the same character chemistry as this installment). It all makes for an enjoyable, emotional tale.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Diviners (Libba Bray) - My Review
Witchmark (C. L. Polk) - My Review
Girl Waits With Gun (Amy Stewart) - My Review
Thursday, November 30, 2023
The Lost and the Found (Cat Clarke)
The Lost and the Found
Cat Clarke
Crown Books
Fiction, YA Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Faith Long was just four years old when Laurel, her adopted older sister, was taken from their front yard in broad daylight. Since then, everything about her life has been warped around that absence. Her mother threw herself into the investigation, ensuring that the police and public didn't forget Laurel's face so long as she was missing. Her father, equally devastated, eventually had to leave, moving in with a boyfriend who becomes like a second father to Faith. As for Faith herself, she knows she'll never be anything but Laurel's sister, the pale imitation, the consolation prize who will never live up to the memory of the missing girl.
Thirteen years later, a miracle happens: a young woman turns up at the family's old house, clutching a battered teddy bear just like the one Lauren disappeared with... a young woman who claims to be Laurel Long.
She's reticent to discuss what happened, or where she's been, or how she managed to escape after so long. She's clearly been traumatized, and nobody (except maybe their mother) expects her to be the same sweet little girl she was when she vanished. But even Faith is surprised to find how many mixed emotions are dredged up when she lays eyes on the nineteen-year-old Laurel for the first time, and how much more chaotic her already-unstable life becomes... and that's before she begins to wonder about some of Laurel's behaviors and newly-acquired quirks. As much as the girl's disappearance threw the family into disarray, her return may destroy what little they salvaged.
REVIEW: The disappearance of a child has to be one of the greatest traumas a family can experience, especially when they are never found. Those left behind are left with questions that fester like open wounds, not helped by a media and society always hungry for salacious details and wild speculation. The Lost and the Found shows how even what should be a moment of closure and happiness can instead lead to more trauma, especially when new questions are raised.
Faith Long is a shy seventeen-year-old who only recently managed to make a few friends and even find a boyfriend; her entire life, she's learned to doubt that anyone could be interested in her as a person and not simply as Laurel's sister. Her mother never stopped her campaign to find Laurel, even at the cost of her marriage (and more than one accusation that she was milking the disappearance for the money and attention, accusations that may oversimplify her motives but aren't entirely without merit), and sometimes doesn't even seem to see Faith. Her father, at least, is a steadying presence, no less involved or loving despite living elsewhere, though it's his French boyfriend Michel who becomes the real rock Faith can lean on in hard times. Faith is slowly, tentatively looking forward to college and adulthood and leaving the toxic family nest, becoming her own person at last... at least, until Laurel turns up again.
If Laurel the absent sister was an inescapable shadow over Faith's life, Laurel the returned is a veritable black hole, sucking everyone into her presence. She has been through indescribable Hell - the book never gets graphic but makes more than enough allusions and hints - and Faith knows she needs to be understanding and patient, but can't help feeling that her life has been upended yet again, and yet again nobody seems to notice how she's being trampled underfoot and forgotten... not helped by how their mother immediately latches onto the returned Laurel, elevating her to saintly status and even arranging fresh press conferences and media outings touting the "happy ending" to their long years of suffering. Faith struggles to relearn what it means to be a sister and to not lose what little life and independence she managed to attain from before, even as she tries to reconnect with someone who sometimes seems so familiar, and other times seems like a total stranger. Along the way are hints that there are important things Laurel isn't telling anyone, hints that could destroy the fragile new normal Faith and her family are trying to build.
A couple subplots felt like they didn't quite go anywhere by the end, a few hints that were never followed up. For the most part, this is a solid thriller about the struggles of a shattered family to come to grips with the unthinkable twice over (both the abduction and the return), and the struggle of one teen girl to reconcile the oddly ambivalent feelings and conflicting instincts raised by the "miracle" that was supposed to fix everything.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Like Never and Always (Ann Aguirre) - My Review
Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
In An Instant (Suzanne Redfearn) - My Review
Cat Clarke
Crown Books
Fiction, YA Thriller
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Faith Long was just four years old when Laurel, her adopted older sister, was taken from their front yard in broad daylight. Since then, everything about her life has been warped around that absence. Her mother threw herself into the investigation, ensuring that the police and public didn't forget Laurel's face so long as she was missing. Her father, equally devastated, eventually had to leave, moving in with a boyfriend who becomes like a second father to Faith. As for Faith herself, she knows she'll never be anything but Laurel's sister, the pale imitation, the consolation prize who will never live up to the memory of the missing girl.
Thirteen years later, a miracle happens: a young woman turns up at the family's old house, clutching a battered teddy bear just like the one Lauren disappeared with... a young woman who claims to be Laurel Long.
She's reticent to discuss what happened, or where she's been, or how she managed to escape after so long. She's clearly been traumatized, and nobody (except maybe their mother) expects her to be the same sweet little girl she was when she vanished. But even Faith is surprised to find how many mixed emotions are dredged up when she lays eyes on the nineteen-year-old Laurel for the first time, and how much more chaotic her already-unstable life becomes... and that's before she begins to wonder about some of Laurel's behaviors and newly-acquired quirks. As much as the girl's disappearance threw the family into disarray, her return may destroy what little they salvaged.
REVIEW: The disappearance of a child has to be one of the greatest traumas a family can experience, especially when they are never found. Those left behind are left with questions that fester like open wounds, not helped by a media and society always hungry for salacious details and wild speculation. The Lost and the Found shows how even what should be a moment of closure and happiness can instead lead to more trauma, especially when new questions are raised.
Faith Long is a shy seventeen-year-old who only recently managed to make a few friends and even find a boyfriend; her entire life, she's learned to doubt that anyone could be interested in her as a person and not simply as Laurel's sister. Her mother never stopped her campaign to find Laurel, even at the cost of her marriage (and more than one accusation that she was milking the disappearance for the money and attention, accusations that may oversimplify her motives but aren't entirely without merit), and sometimes doesn't even seem to see Faith. Her father, at least, is a steadying presence, no less involved or loving despite living elsewhere, though it's his French boyfriend Michel who becomes the real rock Faith can lean on in hard times. Faith is slowly, tentatively looking forward to college and adulthood and leaving the toxic family nest, becoming her own person at last... at least, until Laurel turns up again.
If Laurel the absent sister was an inescapable shadow over Faith's life, Laurel the returned is a veritable black hole, sucking everyone into her presence. She has been through indescribable Hell - the book never gets graphic but makes more than enough allusions and hints - and Faith knows she needs to be understanding and patient, but can't help feeling that her life has been upended yet again, and yet again nobody seems to notice how she's being trampled underfoot and forgotten... not helped by how their mother immediately latches onto the returned Laurel, elevating her to saintly status and even arranging fresh press conferences and media outings touting the "happy ending" to their long years of suffering. Faith struggles to relearn what it means to be a sister and to not lose what little life and independence she managed to attain from before, even as she tries to reconnect with someone who sometimes seems so familiar, and other times seems like a total stranger. Along the way are hints that there are important things Laurel isn't telling anyone, hints that could destroy the fragile new normal Faith and her family are trying to build.
A couple subplots felt like they didn't quite go anywhere by the end, a few hints that were never followed up. For the most part, this is a solid thriller about the struggles of a shattered family to come to grips with the unthinkable twice over (both the abduction and the return), and the struggle of one teen girl to reconcile the oddly ambivalent feelings and conflicting instincts raised by the "miracle" that was supposed to fix everything.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Like Never and Always (Ann Aguirre) - My Review
Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Seanan McGuire) - My Review
In An Instant (Suzanne Redfearn) - My Review
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwaite)
My Sister, The Serial Killer: A Novel
Oyinkan Braithewaite
Anchor
Fiction, Humor/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: From childhood, Korede and her sister Ayoola have been opposites. Korede is tall, homely, disciplined, and obsessed with order and cleanliness, while Ayoola is the messy, flighty, petite beauty of the family, the one their mother coddles and has the highest of hopes for (insofar as landing a wealthy and influential husband). But Ayoola does have a few little quirks that have kept her single, that her mother doesn't know about... such as her habit of stabbing boyfriends to death. Three to date, as Korede knows too well. After all, she'd hardly be a supportive sister if she didn't help Ayoola clean up her little messes (and keep their mother in the dark). It's a tedious, lonely life, but family must come first, always and forever.
Until Ayoola turns up at Korede's job and steals the heart of the doctor Korede has secretly pined for for years.
Now Korede is torn. She can't warn him without exposing Ayoola's secret - and her own. She can't just stand by and let him sleepwalk into a knife, either. Has Ayoola finally crossed an uncrossable line, or are the bonds of sisterhood still thicker than yet another boyfriend's blood?
REVIEW: With a certain deadpan humor and some wrenching emotion, My Sister, the Serial Killer explores the fallout of family abuse, the consequences of generations of cultural denigration of women to mere object status (even in their own eyes), the unfair weight society puts on physical appearance as predictor of personal virtue, and the complicated and contradictory bonds of sibling rivalry and sibling loyalty.
From the start, where Korede is helping clean up yet another crime scene with jaded exasperation, the twisted nature of the girls' relationship is front and center in the tale, which focuses on Korede as she wrestles with the monstrous, bloody-tusked elephant in the middle of their Nigerian home. As the story unfolds, flashbacks to previous boyfriends/"incidents" and their abusive, shady father show the roots of the dysfunctional mess. It's not just that Ayoola is basically a psychopath, who has to be reminded to show some appearance of empathy when her boyfriend goes "missing", nor is it just that Korede has been pressured all her life to enable her more beautiful (and therefore more desirable and liked) sister; it's that becoming a killer and a killer's accomplice was almost a sane and rational response to extremely oppressive and abusive situations, compared to how other women in the story end up handling their own stomped-down lives and the men who too often do the stomping (as much out of active malice as out of casual ignorance). Korede's few attempts to speak out are usually met with derision and disbelief, with listeners suspecting her of jealousy over her prettier sister's success with boys and social media. The one man Korede does have feelings for, and has spent years earning the respect of in the workplace, is a goner the moment he lays eyes on Ayoola. Meanwhile, the girls' mother obliviously criticizes Korede for not being more supportive of Ayoola, and the family of Ayoola's last boyfriend start pushing the police (who are generally more interested in coercing bribe money from the populace than actually investigating crimes) for answers... all of which tests just how far Korede is willing to go for the sake of a sister who inherently cannot feel gratitude for the effort, or the willfully ignorant mother who will never see her as anything other than an ugly failure.
I thought the ending felt a bit flat after the buildup, and sometimes it leaned a little hard into the horrific way women are treated by men (and by each other), which managed to shave a half-star off the rating. Other than that, though, it's quite memorable, if also quite dark.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Echo Wife (Sarah Gailey) - My Review
Comfort Me With Apples (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Oyinkan Braithewaite
Anchor
Fiction, Humor/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: From childhood, Korede and her sister Ayoola have been opposites. Korede is tall, homely, disciplined, and obsessed with order and cleanliness, while Ayoola is the messy, flighty, petite beauty of the family, the one their mother coddles and has the highest of hopes for (insofar as landing a wealthy and influential husband). But Ayoola does have a few little quirks that have kept her single, that her mother doesn't know about... such as her habit of stabbing boyfriends to death. Three to date, as Korede knows too well. After all, she'd hardly be a supportive sister if she didn't help Ayoola clean up her little messes (and keep their mother in the dark). It's a tedious, lonely life, but family must come first, always and forever.
Until Ayoola turns up at Korede's job and steals the heart of the doctor Korede has secretly pined for for years.
Now Korede is torn. She can't warn him without exposing Ayoola's secret - and her own. She can't just stand by and let him sleepwalk into a knife, either. Has Ayoola finally crossed an uncrossable line, or are the bonds of sisterhood still thicker than yet another boyfriend's blood?
REVIEW: With a certain deadpan humor and some wrenching emotion, My Sister, the Serial Killer explores the fallout of family abuse, the consequences of generations of cultural denigration of women to mere object status (even in their own eyes), the unfair weight society puts on physical appearance as predictor of personal virtue, and the complicated and contradictory bonds of sibling rivalry and sibling loyalty.
From the start, where Korede is helping clean up yet another crime scene with jaded exasperation, the twisted nature of the girls' relationship is front and center in the tale, which focuses on Korede as she wrestles with the monstrous, bloody-tusked elephant in the middle of their Nigerian home. As the story unfolds, flashbacks to previous boyfriends/"incidents" and their abusive, shady father show the roots of the dysfunctional mess. It's not just that Ayoola is basically a psychopath, who has to be reminded to show some appearance of empathy when her boyfriend goes "missing", nor is it just that Korede has been pressured all her life to enable her more beautiful (and therefore more desirable and liked) sister; it's that becoming a killer and a killer's accomplice was almost a sane and rational response to extremely oppressive and abusive situations, compared to how other women in the story end up handling their own stomped-down lives and the men who too often do the stomping (as much out of active malice as out of casual ignorance). Korede's few attempts to speak out are usually met with derision and disbelief, with listeners suspecting her of jealousy over her prettier sister's success with boys and social media. The one man Korede does have feelings for, and has spent years earning the respect of in the workplace, is a goner the moment he lays eyes on Ayoola. Meanwhile, the girls' mother obliviously criticizes Korede for not being more supportive of Ayoola, and the family of Ayoola's last boyfriend start pushing the police (who are generally more interested in coercing bribe money from the populace than actually investigating crimes) for answers... all of which tests just how far Korede is willing to go for the sake of a sister who inherently cannot feel gratitude for the effort, or the willfully ignorant mother who will never see her as anything other than an ugly failure.
I thought the ending felt a bit flat after the buildup, and sometimes it leaned a little hard into the horrific way women are treated by men (and by each other), which managed to shave a half-star off the rating. Other than that, though, it's quite memorable, if also quite dark.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Echo Wife (Sarah Gailey) - My Review
Comfort Me With Apples (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
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