Deborah J. Ross's Blog, page 20

Short Book Reviews: Ideas, Not Action

  

Troublewith Lichen,by John Wyndham (Modern Library)

British writer John Wyndham is known to the science fictioncommunity best for his novel, and then the movie based on it, The Day of theTriffids. The publisher Modern Library isn’t exactly known for its modern(excuse the pun) science fictional sensibilities. So to judge this novel as contemporaryscience fiction is, I believe, a disservice to both the book and the community(and the reading community at large, as well, especially those who stillreflexively look down their noses at genre fiction). Rather, it is aquintessentially British literary novel that employs a science fictionalconcept as a vehicle for examining societal issues, especially those relatingto gender roles.

In many ways,  Trouble with Lichen violates the contemporaryexpectations of genre. Most of the book consists of conversations (“talkingheads”) rather than action. Indeed, almost every pivotal event occurs offstage,leaving the reader with the long-drawn-out, convoluted, and often ambivalent reactionsof the characters. Dramatic tension is slight compared to that in today’sscience fiction novels. To this American reader, most of the characters soundedsimilar (similarly British); they had different points of view, but they alltalked the same. (To be fair, a few of the secondary characters had strongvoices, usually unpleasant ones.) And yet, I found the book neither boring norslow-paced. Its center revolves around ideas, not action, but those ideas areprovocative.

Ienjoyed the slow evolution of reactions and visions of the potential of themcguffin (an extract of lichen that slows down aging, potentially extendinghuman lifespans to several centuries) to transform lives and greater society.My favorite point of discussion was the way a greatly enhanced life expectancywould result in accumulation of knowledge, experience, and (hopefully) wisdom.For every anticipated benefit, there would be a host of drawbacks (ever-youngpeople refusing to retire, others stuck in meaningless jobs for a hundredyears, unhappy marriages turning into eternities of hell). Wyndham himselfdoesn’t bash the reader of the head, telling us how we should think and feel;he allows his characters to explore nuance and unfolding realizations. The bookis out of date in terms of feminist sensibilities, not to mention LGBTQ+ andenvironmental/population concerns, but taken for what it is and when it waswritten, I found it surprisingly relevant. As I said, I enjoyed it andrecommend it. Just don’t expect a lot of frenetic rockets’n’rayguns action.Instead, have a cup of tea ready.

 

 

Jodi Picoult Responds to Book Banning

Jodi Picoult is one of my favorite authors. She writes mainstream fiction, but with so much passion and clarity, her work takes my breath away. She tackles complex, troubling contemporary issues with integrity and nuance. (See below for a few of my reviews of her work.)

Now a Florida high school library has pulled 20 of her books from the shelves because one parent, who admitted she had not even read Picoult's work, decided the books were "adult romance." Not an elementary school library, mind you; this is high school. And, as Picoult points out, not only does she not write "adult romance" but there is hardly a kiss in her books. ABC News reporters Gio Benitez and Kayna Whitworth interviewed her here. It's worth reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights.

BENITEZ: Why do you think your books are getting banned, especially there in Florida?

PICOULT: That is an excellent question. But unfortunately, in Martin County, Florida, and in many places in Florida, one parent can decide to pull a book from a shelf without even giving a reason for that. And the one parent who wanted to ban all 20 of my books said on her form that she had not read the book, she admitted to that. And she said that some of them were adult romance, which is really interesting because I don't write adult romance. And, in fact, half of the books she pulled do not even have a single kiss in them. But they do have topics like gun rights and women's reproductive health rights and gay rights and things that make—

BENITEZ: Because all of your books are very topical. It's like what's happening in the moment.

PICOULT: Yeah, so they're books that are to encourage kids to think for themselves. 

Here are some of my reviews. I encourage you to check out her work for yourself. Review it, talk about it, give work like this the buzz to reach everyone. 

A Spark of Light. Tackles the abortion debate and pulls no punches.  

Wish You Were Here. A heart-wrenching novel of Covid times.

Small Great Things. Racism, white privilege, and courage.

The Book of Two Ways. Ancient Egyptology, death, and choices.

Short Book Reviews: Demons Never Lie

 The Long Game, by K. J. Parker (Subterranean)

Demons never lie. They just don’t tell the entire truth,especially when it involves a plot running for thousands of years to ultimatelyseduce humankind so that Evil can reign on Earth.

The unnamed narrator is an Ecclesiastical Adept, rather fullof himself and his abilities (including the knack for sliding through examswith the least possible amount of effort other than raw talent). He’s supposedto be carefully guarding the world against the forces of Evil in the form ofdemons, but actually he has—somehow, he’s not sure exactly how—formed afriendship with one of the Enemy’s minions. The demon is no match for the Adept’spowers and all too ready to exchange a few favors here and there for the rightto continued residence in the mortal realms. So when a young, beautiful, mysteriouswoman from a land formerly thought to be mythical murders a local prior, it’sup to the Adept and his ever-helpful demon to solve the case. But nothing is asit seems when it comes to demons. They are notorious for playing the Long Game,in this case, The Very, Very, Very Long Game. They do this by telling thetruth. Just not all of it.

The best thing about this short novel is the wonderful voiceof the narrator, snappy and sarcastic and oh-so-unreliable when it comes to hisown nature and motives. And the plot twists. And the mystery. It’s justdelicious!

 

JEWELS OF DARKOVER story list!

Here's the story list for Jewels of Darkover!

Golden Eyes, by Marella SandsLittle Mouse, by Shariann LewittAvarra’s Scion, by Evey BrettFinders Keepers, by Deborah MillitelloA Cold, Bleak Day in the Hellers, by Barb CaffreyField Work, by Margaret L. Carter and Leslie Roy CarterTo Reach for the Stars, by Lillian CsernicaFire Seed, by Diana L. PaxsonNor Iron Bars A Cage, by India and Rosemary EdghillPebbles, by Rhondi SalsitzBerry-thorn, Berry-thorn, by Leslie FishRelease date May 2, 2023Preorder: https://www.amazon.com/Jewels.../dp/B0BWCJ1DB7/ref=sr_1_1...

Short Book Reviews: A Brilliant Companion to Middlegame

Seasonal Fears, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)

Seanan McGuire’s Seasonal Fears is described as a“companion volume” to her extraordinary novel, Middlegame. I dived intoit without that preface but soon realized that the “alchemical world” washauntingly familiar. I think Seasonal Fears is every bit as good.Whereas Middlegame centered on creating human beings as incarnations ofthe aspects of the Doctrine of Ethos, in Seasonal Fears, they are actualseasons, either incarnate or ascendant (consider the difference between deepwinter and first frost). The story centers around a pair oflovers-since-childhood who discover they are candidates to become the next NorthAmerican Incarnations of Summer and Winter, respectively. Their road to thecontest that will determine who will be crowned becomes a gauntlet of rivalries,assassinations, betrayals, and the seductive menace of becoming so enmeshed intheir individual seasons that they lose their humanity. The story is also oneof deep, lifelong love and willingness to sacrifice. It’s profoundly moving,gripping, whimsical, and demented. Sure to be a strong award contender. Don’tmiss it!

Short Book Reviews: Tracking Down a Husband Across Dimensions

 Spelunking Through Hell, (A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld), by Seanan McGuire (DAW)

I have enjoyed Seanan McGuire’s “Incryptid” series since I discovered it. Earlier volumes felt like related, spin-off stand-alones set in the same world with characters who were loosely related to one another. I was particularly delighted to discover that Rose Marshall, from The Girl in the Green Silk Gown, a series I loved, is a distant, although usually off-scene character. The last couple of volumes were a bit of a disappointment, but on the strength of the earlier ones, I decided to give Spelunking Through Hella try. It was richly worth it.

The crossroads—as in the place you go to make deals with the devil that never, ever turn out well for you—are sentient entities who make an appearance from time to time in McGuire’s related novels. To say they are nasty is an understatement. One of those bargains involved the magician, Thomas Price. He’s been confined to the premises of his (haunted, see Rose, above, and Mary Dunlevy, a ghost who occasionally doubles as a babysitter) house, but it’s part of the price he pays (to the crossroads, see above) for getting to be with his adored wife, Alice Healy. But when the crossroads eventually come to collect their debt, not even Mary can forestall them. Then he vanishes in the middle of the night and everyone is convinced he’s dead…except Alice, who waits only long enough to give birth to their second child and then embarks upon a five decades-long cross-dimensional search for her husband.

Along the way, she acquires friends and allies, including Ithacan satyrs, Helen and Phoebe, and Naga, the giant snake-man who is a professor of extra-dimensional studies. She also survives dimensions that are dying because their world-souls have been stripped, world inhabited by maniacal cannibals, and worse yet. Her kids won’t talk to the mom who abandoned them. Yet she refuses to give up.

This book is about her happy ending and what it cost her. It’s a brilliant, touching page-turner.

 

Love Letters from Space Telescopes

 What an age we live in!

A spectacular trio of merging galaxies in the constellation Boötes takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These three galaxies are set on a collision course and will eventually merge into a single larger galaxy, distorting one another’s spiral structure through mutual gravitational interaction in the process. An unrelated foreground galaxy appears to float serenely near this scene, and the smudged shapes of much more distant galaxies are visible in the background. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Sun. Article here.

On March 1, 2023, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew by Jupiter’s moon Io, coming within 51,500 km (32,030 miles) of the innermost and third-largest of the four Galilean moons. The stunning new images provide the best and closest view of the most volcanic moon in our Solar System since the New Horizons mission flew past Io and the Jupiter system in 2006 on its way to Pluto.

hJupiter’s moon Io, as seen by the JunoCam instrument on Juno, on March 1, 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/ processed by Kevin M. Gill.Cleary, Io still looks like a pizza. The mottled and colorful surface comes from the volcanic activity, with hundreds of vents and calderas on the surface that create a variety of features. Volcanic plumes and lava flows across the surface show up in all sorts of colors, from red and yellow to orange and black. Some of the lava “rivers” stretch for hundreds of kilometers

Rare galaxy with three black holes leads astronomers to the most massive objects in the universe.

Glimpsed only occasionally at the hearts of massive clusters of galaxies, ultramassive black holes are some of the largest and most elusive objects in the universe. These black hole behemoths have masses exceeding that of 10 billion suns, making them far more monstrous than even the supermassive black holes found at the centers of galaxies like the Milky Way, and their tremendous size has long perplexed astronomers. 

Now, researchers studying a rare galaxy merger with three supermassive black holes at its center may have finally discovered the origins of these cosmic monsters. 

Using a high-resolution cosmological simulation called ASTRID, the team modeled the evolution of the universe as it appeared about 11 billion years ago. In the simulation, the team witnessed the birth of an ultramassive black hole following the merger of the three galaxies. Each of these galaxies contained its own quasar, a supermassive black hole that feeds on gas and powers massive outbursts of radiation that can outshine all the stars in their host galaxies combined.

Short Book Reviews: Bad Snake Things Waking Up

The Thousand Eyes, by A. K. Larkwood (Tor)

This sequel to A. K. Larkwood's debut fantasy, The Unspoken Name, continues the adventures of many of the original characters, including some we thought were dead. It seems that in Larkwood’s world of “The Serpent Gates,” you cannot count on anything staying dead, whether they be people (not strictly limited to humans), gods, empires, or gigantic mystical serpents. It’s now two years after our heroes/anti-heroes—ogre Csorwe, her girlfriend, mage Shuthmili, and ne’er-do-well Tal Charossa—supposedly defeated the immortal wizard, Belthandros Sethennai. Who, of course, is not actually dead, in no small part because he’s made a bargain with a snake goddess to become her mortal, unstoppable incarnation.

Making bargains with snake goddesses never turns out well, as our friends discover when they unearth an ancient artifact, the Mantle of Divinity, from the long-extinct snake empire. And wake Bad Snake Things up.

Without giving away too much of the marvelously convoluted-but-circular plot, the Bad Snake Things include the last royal soldier of the above-mentioned extinct Snake Empire, a person of truly epic obsessive loyalty. The Mantle of Divinity does its thing, turning a mortal into a divine incarnation of the original snake goddess, who then commences to remodel all the linked dimensional worlds into a recreation of the original above-mentioned extinct Snake Empire. But Belthandros Sethennai is not only not dead, he’s been systematically destroying all the subsidiary incarnations of the One True Snake Goddess so that he can become Her. And matters go pear-shaped from there.

Like its predecessor, this is a long novel, lushly detained, and for all the horrific ways Things Go Wrong, it’s a joy to spend this much time (and these many plot reversals) with our friends. It’s not the place to start, but for everyone who, like me, fell in love with the world and its characters, it offers a rich feast of the imagination.

 

 

Auntie Deborah's Agony Column (The Best of...)

Back in 2015, I had fun playing around with an advice column for my favorite characters. I hope you'll enjoy these "Best of..." entries from that column.


Dear Auntie,

After way too many experiences dating angsty, unemployed vampires, I finally met a nice, soft-spoken, polite man. He even has a fairly normal name, Norman. He even has a job, working at a motel. Things were going very well when I realized something was a little “off.” I wonder if that’s my own projection from my past romantic relationships. How do I know what’s normal? Anyway, he’s invited me to meet his mother. What should I bring?
— Buffy
Dear Buffy,

You are wise to trust your instincts, for they have served you well through many perils. All too often, women are trained to ignore otheirgut feelings about a person or situation. We allow ourselves to be persuaded into dangerous circumstances instead of standing up for ourselves. Norman may be what he seems, but he may harbor a darker side that your intuition is warning you about.

My advice is to come prepared for anything. Never mind flowers or a bottle of wine! Bring your slayer arsenal — stakes, spears, swords, the works — and keep your wits about you. Make sure you have an exit strategy if things go sour. And whatever you do, do not get into the shower.

— Auntie Deborah

Dear Auntie Deborah,

I’ve suddenly found myself in a land of many colors, where troubles melt like lemon drops. My problem, though, is that this green-faced woman keeps sky-writing love letters to me…for everybody to see! I don’t return her affections, so what should I do?
—DorothyDear Dorothy,
You’ve clearly ended up in a slash version of your own book. My advice is to click your heels like crazy before the flying monkeys get any ideas.
—Auntie Deborah
This last entry contains references to the works of J. K. Rowling. It's behind a page break. Like the others, it is from 2015. Please take it in the playful spirit in which it was originally written.

Dear Auntie Deb,
My companions and I are on a desperate mission to save Middle Earth by throwing the One Ring into the fires of Mt. Doom. Our message to the eagles, imploring them to carry us thither, has gone unanswered. Now a misshapen, gangrel creature seems bent on blocking my every move. He insists that “Frodo Baggins must not go to Mordor!” He calls himself an elf, although he bears not the slightest semblance to them. Why have the eagles failed us and what should I do about the creature?
— Frodo

Dear Frodo,
Your creature, Dobby, is a House Elf, quite a different breed from the folk of Lothlorien and the Woodland Realm. Clearly, he suffers from Periodic Saving The Hero Disorder (PSTHD). As a result, he has acquired considerable experience in intercepting missives to helpful fowl, so it is entirely likely that the eagles never received your message. Reasoning with him will do no good, and you have no power to compel him. The only person who can do that is his master, Lucius Malfoy. As you may have suspected from Malfoy’s long, straight, white-blond hair, he is distantly related to the elves you know, although of greatly reduced circumstances, power, and nobility. My advice is to ask Legolas to have a word with Malfoy on the subject of keeping his House Elf in the proper book. Or better yet, give him a ten-gallon hat and a one-way ticket to Laramie. You could swear never, ever to go to Hogwarts, but I really think Legolas is your best bet.
— Auntie Deborah

Short Book Reviews: Witches and Pirates in Love

The League of Gentlewomen Witches, by India Holton (Berkeley)

This book ought to have been sub-titled, Witches and Pirates Pretending to Hate One Another but Really Having Way Too Much Fun. And falling in love. Rival organizations, the Wisteria Society (pirates who go to battle in flying houses) and the League of Gentlewomen Witches (who insist that witchcraft doesn’t exist and will batter you with tea and polite manners until you agree) have been at odds forever. When an immensely powerful amulet is re-discovered, it’s a race for who can get their hands on it first. For the witches, Charlotte Pettifer, titular heir to the League’s leadership. For the pirates, well…all of them but in particular Alex O’Riley, who has made a lifelong study of the art of being a dashing rogue. Blades clash, sparks fly, passions ignite, and humor abounds. Hilarity and wit embroider every page, but underneath lie more serious themes: lingering childhood trauma and its effect on self-esteem, and the healing power of honesty, acceptance, and love.

And tea.