Mini-reviews, to catch up on other news next week
I got off-track with the blog entries I wanted to make, but I've started my Nebula reading, so I thought I'd toss out some mini-reviews now, and catch up with the other stuff next week.
SHORT STORIES
"Clockwork Fairies" by Cat Rambo - Told from the perspective of a man who is engaged to a mixed race inventor who invents steampunk-type machines. The man conflicts with the radical politics espoused by his fiancee's wealthy father who champions women's rights and atheism. He also puts himself in conflict with his fiancee's ambition. The reader is left watching a man who is not as smart as he thinks he is, whose goals the reader hopes will be defeated. Cat's prose is sharp and rich with nice Victorian detail, the setting is fun, the plot is workable, but I wanted something more from the piece. It felt a little bit too pat, too closed in on the edges, with no room to explore boundaries or deeply know the characters.
"Not Waving, Drowning" by Cat Rambo - A woman's husband wants to join the psycorp, in which he will be able to read thoughts. No marriage has survived the combination of one telepath with one null, and despite their efforts, their relationship dissolves. There's a lot of emotion in this one, a very strongly conveyed mood that creates visceral involvement. The setting is weirdly unexpanded, perhaps with surreal intent, but it didn't quite work for me for some reason I can't identify--I guess maybe there was a sense of genericness stamped on many of the pieces of the setting, as if they could be in a now-future, a near-future, or a never-future, without ever really committing. Despite the affecting emotion of the piece, I felt oddly distant from it--the characters seemed, to me, to be ideas and emotions but not quite people, lacking in some of the particulars that would have made them and their relationship fully realized and specific.
I enjoyed both of these, and would recommend reading them, but neither snared me the way Cat's best (imo, obviously) work does.
NOVELLA
Mammoths of the Great Plains by Eleanor Arnason - A young girl goes to visit her Lakota grandmother and hear the story of her family's role in resurrecting the great plains mammoths. Although this piece is basically told by a grandmother, in dialogue, while the narrator watches, and although it features some of my pet peeves about stories structured that way (the narrator's revelations tend toward small, her internal life is not particularly important to the story, passages are interrupted to track the light through the room and thus remind us about the story's setting), none of this registered on me-as-a-reader. The story could have been dry and boring, but was actually very interesting. My first pet peeve was that I didn't understand why the story was about mammoths rather than about some of the other plains megafauna. Not that mammoths aren't cool, but it seemed like adding a showy element for the purposes of being showy when something real would have done as well. As the science fictional intent of the piece became clear, I stopped worrying about that. I enjoyed the family history, the dreams and interactions with spirits representing mammoths and bison, the tensions between whiteness and Lakotaness, the science. But the story had a bit more of the sense of a memoir, to me, than of fiction--I suppose that's admirable in that it mimicked the sense of a real family history, but it also failed to satisfy as fiction. I was engaged, but not particularly satisfied. In particular, the ending seemed arbitrary, and I was actually surprised that it stopped.
I think I would have liked to see a secondary plotline centering on the experiences of the narrator, and what she does with the family history. But maybe I'm asking the wrong thing from this piece.
NOVELS
TOADS AND DIAMONDS by Heather Tomlinson - The toads and diamonds fairy tale retold in a fictional pre-modern India, at the site of a culture clash between Islam and Hinduism. I love the tenderness with which the characters are handled, with none of the "first daughter good, second daughter bad" crap from the original story. The relationships between the two daughters and their mother are really nicely done, and a pleasure to see, as was the way that both female main characters were allowed to be flawed and different from each other, but still worth rewarding. The interpretations of the gifts--the titular toads and diamonds--was intelligent and surprising. Lush descriptions maeit possible to enjoy the book on a sensual level, from architecture, to embroidered dresses, to plagues and farmwork. Unfortunately, the plot is not as well-considered. The stakes for one sister are sky-high, while for the other sister, they're whisper-low. Rather than reinforcing something about contrasts, this lopsidedness just serves to make the reading experience strange and careening. The male romantic leads are nicely portrayed, as are some of the female secondary characters, but the villain is one dimensional. So are some of the morals, and sometimes the female main characters, when they get too sweet. Though the book is flawed, it's worth reading if you're interested in a unique and well-considered reconsideration of the fairy tale, and also for the settings and descriptions.
SHIPBREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi - For some reason, I never really connected to WIND-UP GIRL. I understood it as a well-crafted work, but I beheld it from a distance I couldn't cross. SHIPBREAKER, on the other hand, was immediately visceral, with characters and problems intense enough that I alarmed my husband and all my cats by gasping at one of the early reveals. SHIPBREAKER follows the story of Nails, a boy living in subsistence (or lower-than-subsistence) level poverty by working at a ship salvage yard where his small, flexible body allows him to do dangerous work. When he and a friend find a possible way off of the beach and out of poverty, they must defend their opportunity from the tough men who work the heavy salvage crew, ill-intentioned corporations, and Nails' abusive father. Bacigalupi's world is desperate, convincing, and immersive, inhabited by smartly rendered characters, many of whom aren't likable, but all of whom are relatable, in a way that I did not find the characters from Wind-Up Girl. The latter half of the story moves away from the intense world-building to embark on a more traditional chase-and-adventure story. I liked the first part better, but they were equally well done. I wondered about some of the threads that weren't developed as well as they might have been--particularly the arc of the gen-modded dogman, Tool, who departs the novel while leaving behind a number of open questions--but it was a great, satisfying read, and a really well-done book.
HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE by Charles Yu - For the past year, I've envisioned myself marking Jemisin's masterful HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS as the year's best novel. Without taking away anything from Jemisin's beautiful, epic work--at this late date, I've been seduced by a science fictional universe. I think it'll take a lot to unseat How to Live Safely from its top position; this strange, metafictional novel about a time traveler lost in the present indefinite is smart, funny, profound, moving, innovative and relatable. Yu poses a fictional universe in which physics is not quite installed, in which the inhabitants are all sad and lacking in self-esteem, in which time travel is fueled by regret. The fictional Yu in this universe is accompanied by a depressed AI, Tammy, and a non-existent dog, who help him navigate the time loop in which he finds himself trapped, and also help him in his ultimate goal of finding where his father has gone. I saw Kincaid's review of this book before I read the book itself, and so I tried to avoid reading the whole review, but I caught one sentence--(paraphrased) this is a book that can be read satisfyingly as a metaphor or an adventure. It felt like both to me. A surreal adventure, and an extended metaphor, both about isolation, disappointment, and the dissolution of family.
HORNS by Joe Hill - A man (Ig) suspected of murdering his long-time girlfriend and first love wakes up one morning to discover that he's grown horns. These horns allow him to manipulate people by getting them to reveal their secrets and persuading them toward sin. On the other hand, the horns kind of suck--people reveal their secrets whether or not Ig wants them to, and they all want his opinions on just how much they ought to sin. The main plot line, tracing Ig's attempts to reconcile himself to his horns and, in the meantime, discover and punish the real murderer--is entertaining. Portions of the novel told from alternate perspectives were mostly also entertaining, and appropriate (as Ig's horns give him a limited mind-reading ability that gives him access to these perspectives at the appropriate points in the book). The characters are somewhat cliched in places, but also smartly developed in others, leading me to believe that the text embodies a tension where it wasn't quite sure how to pose itself in terms of comedy versus realism. Ig's character struck me as often inconsistent, particularly in early chapters. The portrayal of the villain, Lee, was rather clever in certain respects--it felt like a convincing, occasionally chilling, progression of lack of empathy and misogyny. While there were a number of structural problems in the novel, I felt the primary difficulty lay in the lack of reconciliation between its disparate elements--the backstory, the farcical comedy, the social commentary comedy, the nostalgic reminiscence, the mythology, the clever reparte, the interweaving points of view, the magic and the mundane... in particular, the story got lost in what felt like the world's most interminable chapter about a dare and a cherry bomb. I admit I'm not the greatest fan of Rockwell-esque boyhood escapade chapters, but this one was about thrice as long as it needed to be, and a real disappointment on the heels of the cleverer material before it. I enjoyed this read, and I'm glad I read the book, but it didn't quite work for me on the next level up from that.
SHORT STORIES
"Clockwork Fairies" by Cat Rambo - Told from the perspective of a man who is engaged to a mixed race inventor who invents steampunk-type machines. The man conflicts with the radical politics espoused by his fiancee's wealthy father who champions women's rights and atheism. He also puts himself in conflict with his fiancee's ambition. The reader is left watching a man who is not as smart as he thinks he is, whose goals the reader hopes will be defeated. Cat's prose is sharp and rich with nice Victorian detail, the setting is fun, the plot is workable, but I wanted something more from the piece. It felt a little bit too pat, too closed in on the edges, with no room to explore boundaries or deeply know the characters.
"Not Waving, Drowning" by Cat Rambo - A woman's husband wants to join the psycorp, in which he will be able to read thoughts. No marriage has survived the combination of one telepath with one null, and despite their efforts, their relationship dissolves. There's a lot of emotion in this one, a very strongly conveyed mood that creates visceral involvement. The setting is weirdly unexpanded, perhaps with surreal intent, but it didn't quite work for me for some reason I can't identify--I guess maybe there was a sense of genericness stamped on many of the pieces of the setting, as if they could be in a now-future, a near-future, or a never-future, without ever really committing. Despite the affecting emotion of the piece, I felt oddly distant from it--the characters seemed, to me, to be ideas and emotions but not quite people, lacking in some of the particulars that would have made them and their relationship fully realized and specific.
I enjoyed both of these, and would recommend reading them, but neither snared me the way Cat's best (imo, obviously) work does.
NOVELLA
Mammoths of the Great Plains by Eleanor Arnason - A young girl goes to visit her Lakota grandmother and hear the story of her family's role in resurrecting the great plains mammoths. Although this piece is basically told by a grandmother, in dialogue, while the narrator watches, and although it features some of my pet peeves about stories structured that way (the narrator's revelations tend toward small, her internal life is not particularly important to the story, passages are interrupted to track the light through the room and thus remind us about the story's setting), none of this registered on me-as-a-reader. The story could have been dry and boring, but was actually very interesting. My first pet peeve was that I didn't understand why the story was about mammoths rather than about some of the other plains megafauna. Not that mammoths aren't cool, but it seemed like adding a showy element for the purposes of being showy when something real would have done as well. As the science fictional intent of the piece became clear, I stopped worrying about that. I enjoyed the family history, the dreams and interactions with spirits representing mammoths and bison, the tensions between whiteness and Lakotaness, the science. But the story had a bit more of the sense of a memoir, to me, than of fiction--I suppose that's admirable in that it mimicked the sense of a real family history, but it also failed to satisfy as fiction. I was engaged, but not particularly satisfied. In particular, the ending seemed arbitrary, and I was actually surprised that it stopped.
I think I would have liked to see a secondary plotline centering on the experiences of the narrator, and what she does with the family history. But maybe I'm asking the wrong thing from this piece.
NOVELS
TOADS AND DIAMONDS by Heather Tomlinson - The toads and diamonds fairy tale retold in a fictional pre-modern India, at the site of a culture clash between Islam and Hinduism. I love the tenderness with which the characters are handled, with none of the "first daughter good, second daughter bad" crap from the original story. The relationships between the two daughters and their mother are really nicely done, and a pleasure to see, as was the way that both female main characters were allowed to be flawed and different from each other, but still worth rewarding. The interpretations of the gifts--the titular toads and diamonds--was intelligent and surprising. Lush descriptions maeit possible to enjoy the book on a sensual level, from architecture, to embroidered dresses, to plagues and farmwork. Unfortunately, the plot is not as well-considered. The stakes for one sister are sky-high, while for the other sister, they're whisper-low. Rather than reinforcing something about contrasts, this lopsidedness just serves to make the reading experience strange and careening. The male romantic leads are nicely portrayed, as are some of the female secondary characters, but the villain is one dimensional. So are some of the morals, and sometimes the female main characters, when they get too sweet. Though the book is flawed, it's worth reading if you're interested in a unique and well-considered reconsideration of the fairy tale, and also for the settings and descriptions.
SHIPBREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi - For some reason, I never really connected to WIND-UP GIRL. I understood it as a well-crafted work, but I beheld it from a distance I couldn't cross. SHIPBREAKER, on the other hand, was immediately visceral, with characters and problems intense enough that I alarmed my husband and all my cats by gasping at one of the early reveals. SHIPBREAKER follows the story of Nails, a boy living in subsistence (or lower-than-subsistence) level poverty by working at a ship salvage yard where his small, flexible body allows him to do dangerous work. When he and a friend find a possible way off of the beach and out of poverty, they must defend their opportunity from the tough men who work the heavy salvage crew, ill-intentioned corporations, and Nails' abusive father. Bacigalupi's world is desperate, convincing, and immersive, inhabited by smartly rendered characters, many of whom aren't likable, but all of whom are relatable, in a way that I did not find the characters from Wind-Up Girl. The latter half of the story moves away from the intense world-building to embark on a more traditional chase-and-adventure story. I liked the first part better, but they were equally well done. I wondered about some of the threads that weren't developed as well as they might have been--particularly the arc of the gen-modded dogman, Tool, who departs the novel while leaving behind a number of open questions--but it was a great, satisfying read, and a really well-done book.
HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE by Charles Yu - For the past year, I've envisioned myself marking Jemisin's masterful HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS as the year's best novel. Without taking away anything from Jemisin's beautiful, epic work--at this late date, I've been seduced by a science fictional universe. I think it'll take a lot to unseat How to Live Safely from its top position; this strange, metafictional novel about a time traveler lost in the present indefinite is smart, funny, profound, moving, innovative and relatable. Yu poses a fictional universe in which physics is not quite installed, in which the inhabitants are all sad and lacking in self-esteem, in which time travel is fueled by regret. The fictional Yu in this universe is accompanied by a depressed AI, Tammy, and a non-existent dog, who help him navigate the time loop in which he finds himself trapped, and also help him in his ultimate goal of finding where his father has gone. I saw Kincaid's review of this book before I read the book itself, and so I tried to avoid reading the whole review, but I caught one sentence--(paraphrased) this is a book that can be read satisfyingly as a metaphor or an adventure. It felt like both to me. A surreal adventure, and an extended metaphor, both about isolation, disappointment, and the dissolution of family.
HORNS by Joe Hill - A man (Ig) suspected of murdering his long-time girlfriend and first love wakes up one morning to discover that he's grown horns. These horns allow him to manipulate people by getting them to reveal their secrets and persuading them toward sin. On the other hand, the horns kind of suck--people reveal their secrets whether or not Ig wants them to, and they all want his opinions on just how much they ought to sin. The main plot line, tracing Ig's attempts to reconcile himself to his horns and, in the meantime, discover and punish the real murderer--is entertaining. Portions of the novel told from alternate perspectives were mostly also entertaining, and appropriate (as Ig's horns give him a limited mind-reading ability that gives him access to these perspectives at the appropriate points in the book). The characters are somewhat cliched in places, but also smartly developed in others, leading me to believe that the text embodies a tension where it wasn't quite sure how to pose itself in terms of comedy versus realism. Ig's character struck me as often inconsistent, particularly in early chapters. The portrayal of the villain, Lee, was rather clever in certain respects--it felt like a convincing, occasionally chilling, progression of lack of empathy and misogyny. While there were a number of structural problems in the novel, I felt the primary difficulty lay in the lack of reconciliation between its disparate elements--the backstory, the farcical comedy, the social commentary comedy, the nostalgic reminiscence, the mythology, the clever reparte, the interweaving points of view, the magic and the mundane... in particular, the story got lost in what felt like the world's most interminable chapter about a dare and a cherry bomb. I admit I'm not the greatest fan of Rockwell-esque boyhood escapade chapters, but this one was about thrice as long as it needed to be, and a real disappointment on the heels of the cleverer material before it. I enjoyed this read, and I'm glad I read the book, but it didn't quite work for me on the next level up from that.
No comments have been added yet.
