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| 075641346X
| 9780756413460
| 3.18
| 65
| Sep 04, 2018
| Sep 18, 2018
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** As I’ve said before and will say again, one reason I love the library is for book discovery. I had zero idea what I was in for with
**spoiler alert** As I’ve said before and will say again, one reason I love the library is for book discovery. I had zero idea what I was in for with Worldshaper. In this case, I saw book 2 on the New Books shelf, and fortuitously book 1 was also present in that very same library branch. So I borrowed both on a wing and a prayer, and here we are. Perfectly serviceable portal fantasy for some holiday reading from Edward Willett! Heads up that I put a spoiler flag on here for the allergic, but I’m not really going to spoil much of the plot. The whole next paragraph is paraphrased from the back cover. Later in the review I’m going to talk about the resolution of the book in very general terms. But you have been warned. Shawna Keys is having a perfectly fine life in the world she didn’t know she created until one day everything comes crashing down. This guy named the Adversary shows up and tries to kill her, and this other guy named Karl, who doesn’t seem particularly trustworthy beyond not trying to kill her, pulls the whole “come with me if you want to live” routine on Shawna. As a result, she spends an entire novel running from the Adversary while getting a crash course in her ability—Shaping. Shawna and Karl need to escape her world and find their way to the heart of the Labyrinth of Worlds so that she can help her patron, Ygrair, stand against the Adversary. If she doesn’t, all of the Shaped worlds are in jeopardy. So, you know, no pressure. So many things to like about this book. First, Shawna is a great protagonist. She’s smart and sarcastic, but not in the “I’m trying really hard to be sarcastic because sarcasm is cool” kind of way that seems to be a trend these days. A lot of her sarcasm is actually channelled anger and fear; she lashes out at Karl because she is tired, hungry, and, oh yeah, people are trying to kill her. Willett ensures that her reactions are always justifiable given the circumstances, and if at times she behaves somewhat irrationally, I think that makes a lot of sense given the pressure she’s under. I love how Shawna questions Karl constantly and doesn’t fully trust him. When someone shows up claiming to want to help you avoid getting killed, you don’t instantly become best friends. Similarly, I appreciate that Willett doesn’t develop any obvious sexual/romantic tension between the two of them. Second thing I like about the book is how Willett handles exposition. Karl provides minor infodumps here and there when the breaks in the running permit it, and the perspective jumps to him or the Adversary help us fill in some of the blanks. There’s still a lot we don’t know about worldshaping, and I’m fine with that. (Oh, I should probably mention right now that this is one of those fantasy books that is actually science fiction in disguise. If that is a pet peeve of yours, just take it off the list. Otherwise, carry on!) Also, the off-brand references to things like HiPhone and a lunar colony stick out at first and seem strange until you make the connection that this is evidence Shawna is in a different world that merely shadows the First World (which is supposed to be Earth, I think, though you never know). So that was a retrospective “nicely done” from me. Finally, Willett doesn’t shy away from the moral questions raised by Shawna creating sentient beings ex nihilo and having the power to Shape them to her will. Although Karl repeatedly warns her that she is not a god, that doesn’t obviate her ability to rewrite people’s personalities, memories, and desires—to remove their volition and replace it with her own. Shawna is rightly freaked out when she discovers she has this power, and throughout Worldshaper she ponders the implications. What does that mean for her relationships with her parents, her too-perfect boyfriend? Despite all the good, Worldshaper never get made me love it. Mostly this has to do with the plot. I appreciate that Willett goes into so much detail regarding Shawna and Karl’s flight west. He certainly succeeds in creating an atmosphere of tension and raising the stakes as they work first to destroy one Portal and then try to find the location where they can open another. He avoids the temptation to make Shawna too powerful yet allows her to exercise her power just enough to keep things interesting. Nevertheless, none of this really changes the underlying truth: this is a fugitive story, a chase story, and so the overall story arc of fighting the Adversary is never resolved. So, Worldshaper is definitely not a standalone novel. It ends on a mighty cliffhanger, and I’m glad I have book 2 waiting for me on the shelf. The antagonist, the Adversary, is also as generic and bland as his moniker implies. Yes, we get a little bit of a backstory for him. Yes, it makes sense. But that’s all—and it’s all very impersonal. The best villains have a very personal stake in this, and we have yet to really see that from him. It’s often said a story is only as good as its villain, and while that’s reductive and not always true, I think it’s true for this story. Worldshaper’s mediocre villain is a good synecdoche for its mediocre story in general (in contrast to its interesting worldbuilding and protagonists, as noted above). I read Worldshaper in an evening and morning/afternoon (I kept having to take breaks to shovel snow). So it’s an enjoyable, fast-paced read—it just never quite creates that “wow” factor I want in my fantasy novels. But you never know … the series might Shape me to believe differently after I read the sequel. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 30, 2019
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Dec 30, 2019
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Dec 30, 2019
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Paperback
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| 1250196248
| 9781250196248
| 4.30
| 1,869
| Sep 10, 2019
| Sep 10, 2019
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it was amazing
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Huge note: Since writing this review, I’ve actually come out as transgender! So, uh, enjoy all the parts here where I laughably reaffirm my cis-ness!
Huge note: Since writing this review, I’ve actually come out as transgender! So, uh, enjoy all the parts here where I laughably reaffirm my cis-ness! I will revise this review at some point. (Note to future Kara: actually do that.) I received this book as a gift from a friend who shares my interest in feminism. She found For the Love of Men: A New Vision for Mindful Masculinity somewhat revelatory. Like me, she had already begun thinking about masculinity (we had both watched The Mask You Live In). But she said that Liz Plank presented ideas in a way that helped her better understand this experience that is, as a cis woman, very different from her own. Obviously I’m approaching the book from a slightly different angle but with no less expectation or excitement. One of my current goals is to get better at leveraging my privilege when it comes to being a feminist and challenging patriarchy. As a cis man, I shouldn’t centre myself in discussions of misogyny and women’s oppression. So I’m exploring how I can learn more about the flip side—masculinity—and then how I can talk to other men about masculinity, how I can evangelize feminism to them, if you will, and so make the world better in that way. Much of what Plank explores I’ve seen discussed elsewhere, of course. Yet she explains it so well. She covers a wide variety of issues that relate to masculinity and gender roles: how we’re supposed to behave, friendships, the types of work we should do, the pressure to be the “provider” in the relationship, etc. The friendship part was very important to me, and although I don’t date, the romantic/dating parts of the book were interesting too. Plank writes with a sense of playfulness and humour while also understanding that this is a serious topic with serious consequences—for example, she discusses the high rates of depression and suicide among men and how the stigma around mental health, combined with increased rates of loneliness in older, single men, contributes to this epidemic. She supports her writing with anecdotal interludes where individual men share their stories. She has also done a fair amount of research. For the Love of Men is a balanced meal of polemical, educational, and personal. Early in the book Plank articulates how masculinity differs from femininity, in that the former must constantly be performed while the later is embodied: “masculinity is much more rigid and requires constant self-regulation…. Masculinity is procured through ritualized and often-public social behaviors.” This resonated for me. “Becoming a man” is a procedural rather than biological rite of passage, and if you don’t perform masculinity constantly in the right ways (being a “real man”) then you can have your “man card” taken away. Or at least, that’s what the patriarchy wants you to believe. The fact that performing masculinity often involves misogynist statements and actions is but one reason why redefining masculinity will benefit women, just as lifting women up from oppression will benefit men. Like most men, I’d call my personal relationship with masculinity complex. I do not feel particularly “macho” in the sense of being overtly masculine. I never saw the benefit of engaging in the competitions among my male peers that establish dominance or credibility, and perhaps that is one of the reasons I ended up spending most of my time with women. Plank notes: While women tend to build activities around their friends, men approach friendship in a more transactional way, building friendships around activities…. While women prioritize smaller groups or one-on-one interactions with their friends, men tend to engage in larger all-male groups, which obviously makes intimate bonding less likely. I recently had a discussion with my two closest friends, both women, about this idea of our relationships being biased in favour of a particular gender. Just as I seem to befriend primarily women, one of them explained that she has preferred to befriend men. At times our language flirted with gender essentialist notions—notions internalized as a result of our upbringing and the messages in our society . So reading this part of For the Love of Men was extremely helpful for me, because it helped me reframe what I’ve experienced. As an introvert who is more comfortable examining his internal life than existing in larger groups, the predilection for masculine bonding to occur within those larger groups explains why I often avoided it. It isn’t that I “naturally” gravitate towards women as my friends—it’s just that I tend to prefer the types of social situations where interactions with women predominate. (The other participant in the conversation made a great additional point: I am often in environments with more women than men. Growing up working at the art gallery, all of my close coworkers were women. In my current job, most of my colleagues are women. So this does skew one’s exposure and therefore opportunities to create friendships, I suppose.) Being asexual, even before I understood that I was, has also informed my complicated relationship with being masculine. As Plank points out, masculinity encourages certain atmosphere of violence and competition (for women) in terms of the vocabulary, from “banging” to “scoring.” When so much of masculinity is heteronormative, how do I fill in the gap created by feeling no sexual attraction to anyone, of any gender? Regrettably she never mentions asexuality, but Plank explores how queer men experience masculinity in a variety of ways. Masculinity/heteronormativity is what influenced me, in high school, to make some half-hearted stabs at asking girls out. (Didn’t take.) I’m privileged in that it’s way more acceptable for me to be a bachelor than for women to be spinsters. Yet not being married doesn’t equate to not being expected to engage in sexual competition or to signal my sexual prowess. And so it is that Plank’s thesis, her calls for mindful masculinity, appeals to me. I wish she foregrounded this far more than she does. It’s so important, this need for us to explore and redefine masculinity to fit men of all types. As I’ve drifted away from what is stereotypically expected of me as a masculine person, it has caused me to question a lot. I do not experience gender dysphoria, but sometimes I experience an overall body dysphoria—I am not particularly enthralled with embodiment as a state—and often I’ve wished for the ability to experience the world as different genders. Yet gender expression is different from gender identity, and despite my ambivalence towards having a body in general, I’ve never felt comfortable taking on a label like genderqueer, genderfluid, or agender. I am not exceedingly masculine, yet I feel like a man. I know I’m a man, and even when I choose to wear nail polish that doesn’t make me any less male, just as when a woman chooses to wear pants and have short hair she isn’t any less female. I do feel constrained by gender roles and expectations, as Plank articulates in a way that echoes Laurie Penny’s discussion of the straitjacket of gender in Unspeakable Things . If there’s one takeaway from this book, I would hope that it’s mindful masculinity should be descriptive of good men, not prescriptive. That is to say, if I am a man, then what I do is masculine by definition—it’s my masculinity as consequence of my maleness. Otherwise, if we define masculinity as the external metric, then when measuring ourselves against it we will inevitably fall short. Let’s focus on being good, and on doing good, and use that to define our masculinity. People who still subscribe to gender essentialism will not like For the Love of Men. You’ll notice a preponderance of the reviews on Goodreads panning this book comes from people whose views are essentialist or biologically determinist in nature. Plank challenges these ideas consistently and ardently throughout this book, but this is not the place to start if those are your hang-ups (try Delusions of Gender , not that I expect facts to change your mind). It’s also worth noting that she has Done The Research, both in terms of referring to scholarly studies and interviewing men from a variety of cultures. She examines the intersections of masculinity with sexuality, with race, with class, with colonialism. In some cases she only scratches the surface, but that’s ok—this should not be the zenith of one’s masculinity reading but rather a base camp from which to scale the next peak. It might seem discordant to read a book about masculinity by a woman. After all, I said at the beginning of my review that, as a man, I’m trying not to take up space writing about feminism. Yet Plank’s role as author here is appropriate. Plank has to confront her own internalized notions of masculinity. In doing so, she unpacks how women are socialized to police masculinity just as we all police feminine behaviour. This makes For the Love of Men an extremely valuable book for women as well as men, as the friend who gave this to me discovered. And at no point did I feel like Plank overstepped, like she made some sweeping generalization about all men or all types of masculinity. She is very careful to acknowledge the plethora of perspectives and experiences. For the Love of Men is a very solid book. It is diligently crafted, each chapter meticulous in its sources, it structure, and its substance. You can read it all at once, as I did, or come back to individual chapters from time to time to examine the specific facets of masculinity they discuss. In any event, this is a book that will make you think about the gender roles in our society. It will give you the tools to challenge your internalized ideas about gender, and to think about how gender influences our society at large. Most importantly, it is compassionate. Anyone who thinks this is a book attacking men, as some reviews claim, is very deliberately Missing the Point. For the Love of Men is true to its title: this is a book about saving men—and by extension, the rest of us—from the tyranny of toxic masculinity and delivering them into the arms of a more compassionate, more mindful masculinity. If we can do that, the world will be better for everyone. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Dec 24, 2019
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Dec 27, 2019
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Dec 24, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 1096166151
| 9781096166153
| 3.75
| 154
| Apr 15, 2019
| Apr 28, 2019
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liked it
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I backed this on Kickstarter, but of course, then it sat on my shelf for a bit. Recently Gwen Benaway has been a prominent voice against Toronto Publi
I backed this on Kickstarter, but of course, then it sat on my shelf for a bit. Recently Gwen Benaway has been a prominent voice against Toronto Public Library allowing Meghan Murphy to host a talk at one of their branches. In following that news, I decided this was a good time to get to Maiden, Mother, Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes. I really wish I could gush about this book and say I loved it, because it’s so important to support trans voices and get more #ownvoices stories with trans rep out there. Alas, I did not love this book. It’s not bad, but the stories and the writing in it are largely not my style. Also, it could have used another copyediting pass. Some of the stories had typos and duplicated lines. Benaway’s opening story, “Mountain God” and Kylie Ariel Bemis’ “Dreamborn” were probably my favourite stories in this collection. The former is a take on sword-and-sorcery style fiction but with a more romantic twist, and despite being a very short story, it features a lot of character development and worldbuilding. I’d read a whole novel set in that world. The latter is an interesting take on “the humans are the invading aliens” trope, highlighting the plight of Indigenous peoples by casting invading humans as the Other, and I appreciated the emotional arc of this story. The other stories are, to Benaway’s credit as editor and curator of this collection, quite varied in style and substance. There are vampires, witches, healers, dwarves … there are transdimensional beings as well as transgender beings, and the level of imagination and creativity on display is high quality. The ways in which trans women are represented, voiced, depicted, are diverse. In these respects, this is a great collection, and I don’t want my lukewarm praise to dissuade you from this book should you think it’s more your speed. Short stories are hard sells for me at the best of time, short story collections from different authors even more so. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Nov 05, 2019
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Nov 13, 2019
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Nov 05, 2019
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0553212583
| 9780553212587
| 3.86
| 1,381,311
| Dec 1847
| Oct 2003
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** I previously read Wuthering Heights over 10 years ago, and I might not ever have revisited it until my pal Julie roped me into a re-
**spoiler alert** I previously read Wuthering Heights over 10 years ago, and I might not ever have revisited it until my pal Julie roped me into a re-read. You can read her review here. Our reactions are quite different, although I think we share many observations about the nature of the story and its legacy. First, as always, a quick plot summary: the year is 1801 and a dandy gentleman named Mr. Lockwood shows up to assume tenancy of Thrushcross Grange, a smaller property near Wuthering Heights. Lockwood’s initial meeting with Heathcliff, the enigmatic owner of both properties, doesn’t go well. Neither do his subsequent meetings! Heathcliff and the other denizens of the Heights, Cathy and Hareton and the grizzled servant Joseph, are cold, unwelcoming, and somewhat off. Lockwood, being the nosy gadabout that he is, presses his housekeeper to spill the tea. Mrs. Ellen Dean does just that, and the majority of the narrative is told in her voice while she traces the intertwined histories of the Grange and Heights and two generations of two families, the Lintons and Earnshaws. Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff (it’s a mononym) had a bit of a thing, but this is not a story of starcrossed lovers. It’s a story of intergenerational trauma, a story of terrible people being terrible to each other as well as other, slightly-less terrible people, the terrible-ness percolating down like the world’s worst drip coffee until it results in DEATH. Lockwood remains cheery and unaffected throughout. One thing my review of the previous decade didn’t adequately convey is the sheer lunacy of this book’s events. Lockwood bumbles into Wuthering Heights like the world’s most awkward guest. He literally shows up during one subsequent visit by trudging through a snowstorm to the house, necessitating his stay overnight (which no one seems super excited about). This is one of the difficulties of reading a book like Wuthering Heights. Beyond language and social conventions, sometimes the environments are difficult for us to understand as modern readers. I live in a house in a city; the idea of leaving my house and being stranded at my neighbour’s house because of a snowstorm is a bit difficult for me to grasp. (This is not a criticism of the book—you’ll know when I get to those—it’s an observation of some of the challenges of reading Regency fiction set in rural England.) It just goes off the rails from there. There is a lot of domestic violence and child abuse in this book—it’s basically an advertisement for children’s aid services. In this way, Emily Brontë explores the major motif of nature vs nurture. So many characters refer to Heathcliff as an inherently dark, rogueish or evil person. Yet Brontë demonstrates that Heathcliff and Hareton’s attitudes are heavily influenced by their mistreatment at the hands of Hindley (uh, what’s with the H names, anyway?). Hindley is an incompetent and spiteful paterfamilias who alienates Heathcliff as well as his sister, Catherine while simultaneously gambling himself so far into debt that he creates the opportunity for Heathcliff to assume control of the estate. Is Heathcliff a villain? Sure. But he is an opportunistic villain in the sense that his actions are always a result of seizing opportunities that present themselves. He seldom goes out of his way to plan anything beyond his reaction to the latest slight. Catherine Earnshaw, on the other hand, is a piece of work. She isn’t just attracted to the bad boys; she is a bad boy. One might imagine Emily pours into her all the darkest desires she herself experiences growing up in Haworth. Yet as with Heathcliff, Catherine is a product of her environment. If she is petty, if she is vindictive, if she is unwise, it’s only because those who had charge of her education and upbringing failed to instill better values. To an extent, Mrs. Dean recognizes this as she unravels her narrative, and laments the inefficacy of her own interventions while housekeeping for Catherine and Edgar at the Grange. Catherine’s decision to invite Heathcliff back into her life, despite the conflict between him and Edgar, and flaunt Heathcliff’s presence so cruelly, reverberates throughout the novel and influences Heathcliff’s meddling to bring about the marriage between Isabella and his own son. Although not a very long book, at times Wuthering Heights feels repetitive, and that’s one reason I didn’t enjoy my re-read as much as I wanted to. Lots of dead mothers in this—and death in general. Emily tends to kill off characters who aren’t needed anymore. I was tempted to read this as an inexperienced author’s beginner attempts at plotting. More charitably, though, I’d read this as Emily attempting to create cyclical patterns within her story. The repeated deaths of the mothers, for example, lead to a kind of scene-and-reprise structure that help the reader draw parallels between what happened in each generation that Mrs. Dean recounts. It’s actually a more sophisticated structure than a cursory glance might credit. (That doesn’t mean I like it any better, though.) Julie’s review discusses the miscategorization of Wuthering Heights as a grand romance. She comments, “It’s melodramatic like an outright telenovela at times, including people being kidnapped and trying to stab each other with knives.” I love this statement! And I agree that we have historically done this novel a disservice. More generally, I’d assert we do a terrible job these days of really explaining what “Gothic” fiction actually is, what it entails, and examples of it in popular literature of the day. We also don’t talk enough about Wuthering Heights as a feminist work of fiction. The Gothic elements here are inextricably entwined with the lives of the female characters and the constraints in their choices. Each time one of the women gets married, she’s packed off to live at the opposite household and inevitably doesn’t enjoy her new situation. This is some interesting commentary from an author who never married and died fairly young. Emily makes it clear that she isn’t impressed by the repressive options available to women of her station in the 1800s. My most favourite elements of this book, the parts that made me think the most, are the parts where I consider how Emily depicts the plight of her female characters at the hands of the patriarchy. Heathcliff, Hindley, and Hareton are all textbook examples of toxic masculinity, and Brontë is so good at demonstrating how even drive-by toxic masculinity has the worst fallout for the women of a family. Where I diverge from my esteemed buddy reader and many critics is simply in my enjoyment of Emily’s writing, storytelling, and characterization. Wuthering Heights is a good novel. But there’s a lot more that could be done or told here. Characters just kind of … go away … when not needed anymore. Heathcliff disappears and comes back, and we don’t really know what happened to him beyond Mrs. Dean’s speculation. I can’t help but compare this approach to storytelling styles of Eliot and Hardy and find Emily wanting—is that unfair of me? Maybe. But that’s just my taste for Victoriana: I want these thicc books that telescope into their characters’ lives (that being said, Bleak House excepted, I admit to not being too keen on Dickens). Brontë doesn’t deliver the depth I crave, which is not to say that I think she’s incapable of it. Alas, we didn’t get any other works from her, so who’s to know to what other heights she could have risen? Wuthering Heights is all we have, and it might be all right, but that’s about as far as I go with this book. That’s why I write these reviews. An astute reader will notice I’ve rated this book 3 stars this time, rather than the original 5. That reflects my enjoyment of the book this time around. But stars can’t convey the depth of what I really experienced—the nuances of the things I liked, didn’t like, and what makes the novel worthwhile (regardless of enjoyment) as a piece of literature. That’s what reviews are for, and Wuthering Heights demonstrates the importance of thinking holistically about what we read. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Oct 30, 2019
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Nov 09, 2019
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Oct 30, 2019
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 1984829955
| 9781984829955
| 4.00
| 3,934
| Oct 29, 2019
| Oct 29, 2019
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really liked it
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**spoiler alert** Um, wow. Full Disclosure caught me by surprise. I was doing a library run, and after hearing this book hyped on Twitter I checked on
**spoiler alert** Um, wow. Full Disclosure caught me by surprise. I was doing a library run, and after hearing this book hyped on Twitter I checked on a lark to see if my library had a copy—not expecting one, because it was so freshly published. Yet my library did have a copy, and I borrowed it, and I read it, and this book is quality. I was expecting to like the book, but honestly, I loved it. Camryn Garrett is brave and bold in her characterization and plot, and while not all of her narrative decisions pay off, the overall result is an interesting and emotionally complex novel that leaves me so satisfied yet simultaneously wanting more. Also, my friends: ace rep!! More on that in a bit. Simone Garcia-Hampton is a high school student whose two dads are fiercely protective of her—because she is HIV positive. This makes a lot of stuff, like figuring out how to become sexually active, more complicated! Simone has finally found some friends at her new school—she left her old one because word spread and she was bullied and stigmatized—and now there’s a love interest, Miles, on the horizon. But then anonymous notes show up threatening to expose Simone’s secret if she doesn’t stop pursuing Miles. Life is complicated enough for any high school student, let alone someone in Simone’s position. I love the narration and Simone’s voice. I love how quickly Garrett slides us into different facets of Simone’s life, from the routine medical appointments to her conversations with her parents and her friends. Garrett wastes no time establishing each character with distinctive personality traits. Simone’s Dad is a somewhat reserved doctor who maybe takes things a bit too seriously; her Pops, on the other hand, seems more laid back and easygoing, but he has that kind of subtle seriousness to him characteristic of most positively-portrayed English teachers in YA novels. Simone’s best friend Claudia is sardonic and says what’s on her mind; her other best friend Lydia, while also opinionated, tends to avoid confrontation. And we learn quite a bit about these characters, as well as some of the others in this book—there are few stock or shallow characters in Full Disclosure. I have to say I was surprised, in a heartwarming way, when I learned Claudia is asexual (actual, on-page rep). She’s an ace lesbian, actually; she has a girlfriend but isn’t sexually attracted to her. This is not Claudia’s book, of course, but since I’m also asexual I want to spend some time discussing this representation (although, obviously, I’m not a lesbian and can’t speak to that part of the characterization). I like how Garrett portrays Claudia as sex-positive while not particularly interested in sex herself. At one point, she mentions going down on her girlfriend because her girlfriend appreciates it, but Claudia herself doesn’t want the act reciprocated. In this way, despite Claudia being a side character, Garrett still manages to portray that asexuality is, like any other orientation, a complex identity. Being asexual doesn’t preclude having a girlfriend or even having sex, should one choose those things. Although I’m aromantic and also have no desire to have a partner, I do see a little bit of myself in Claudia. We are both very sex-positive people despite not wanting to have sex ourselves: Claudia is relentlessly cheerful and positive about Simone expressing herself sexually (“I’d have sex with you, if I were into it. You’re awesome!” is the first hint we have towards Claudia’s asexuality before the word is actually used a few chapters later). She suggests the three of them use fake IDs to get into a sex store to buy vibrators. She is there for the immense amount of dirty talk that happens in this novel (oh, yeah, trigger warning for that by the way). Like Claudia, I am not personally DTF, but I am down to talk to my friends about sex, to cheerlead them if they need it, to offer them what support I can, because I want them to be happy. And also, I find it fascinating in an incredulous sort of way (I still have a hard time believing anyone actually wants or likes to have sex). There’s also a great moment when Simone is lamenting the complexity of navigating her sexual attraction to Miles, and she remarks, “I wish I were ace,” to which Claudia seriously replies, “Girl, it has its own problems…. You don’t know how many talks Emma and I have about it.” I appreciate that Garrett acknowledges this struggle in a passing way, that she has Claudia push back on a thoughtless comment from Simone, and then they move on. Claudia and Lydia are great characters too because they are realistic best friends for Simone. They handle her revelation that she is HIV positive quite well, yet also with about as much awkwardness as one might expect—she definitely feels a little uncomfortable with how they phrase their questions, and that’s understandable. Similarly, when they confront Simone about how she has been blowing them and the GSA meetings off to hang with Miles, there is so much tension in the air. Claudia and Simone both act unfairly towards each other in the heat of the moment—and I do so appreciate when the author is not afraid to create actual conflict between best friends. Friendship isn’t about always getting along no matter what: friendship is about screwing up because we care about each other, and then having the strength to get over ourselves and apologize when we’re in the wrong. Garrett writes strong friendships. Claudia is ace and Lydia is bi. Simone isn’t sure what she is: she is questioning for most of the novel, kind of settling on bi as an accurate description so far of her experiences, although she isn’t sure that her one experience with a girl at her previous school “counts.” For this reason, she has trepidation about identifying as queer within the gay-straight alliance, and because she’s hiding this from her friends for much of the book, that contributes to some of the tension. Honestly the whole romance between Simone and Miles didn’t do much for me, so I won’t spend much time critiquing it. Miles himself is one of the less interesting characters, in my opinion. He seems like a super nice guy, and Simone (and all the readers of this book who are attracted to guys) deserves a super nice guy. I love that he embraces Simone’s revelation about being HIV positive and becomes a fierce ally for her. Full Disclosure is full of surprises and twists, but they are seldom the surprises or twists that you see coming—for example, I wasn’t expecting her support group to become such big characters as they do, yet here we are. The whole blackmail plot? I did guess the identity of the blackmailer fairly early in the book (it’s always the nicest, most extraneous character). And I was disappointed for the reason behind it … or maybe it was more the resolution? Honestly, if I’m going to be critical of Full Disclosure it’s that the last act of the book feels rushed and strives to hit a lot of perfunctory notes as it barrels from climax to denouement much like the musicals it references here. I like the ending; I like that it’s a happy ending yet also a very ambiguous one in many ways (we don’t really get to learn what happens with Simone and Miles). Yet I’m a little dissatisfied by how quickly we get there. Ms. Klein is a good example of that—there’s a moment where it seems like she’s going to reveal some genuine humanity and extend a comforting hand to Simone in a time of need. And then, nope, she’s just a garbage person still. Which, fair: some people are like that. But then Mr. Palumbo pops out of nowhere to berate Ms. Klein for her behaviour, and it’s all a little too convenient. Full Disclosure is a book where good deeds are rewarded and the bad guys are clearly identified and punished, and while I am all in favour of happy endings for queer people … I also don’t want my narratives wrapped up in a neat and tidy bow. There needs to be a little bit of ambiguity, and it’s not always present in this book. There’s a few other things I could get into if I wanted to—I haven’t even really touched on race, on the fact that Simone is a dark-skinned Black woman from a mixed household, and how this lens affects her experience as a queer/questioning HIV-positive teenager. It’s complex. Garrett does a great job exploring the intersectionality here, and perhaps what I love the most about this book is that it demonstrates how enjoyable YA can become when we remove the unspoken normalization of white people. There aren’t that many prominent white characters in this book, and honestly, I think that’s a good thing. I also like that, although racism is obviously present and accounted for in Simone’s experiences herein, it’s often quite subtle. It’s often what the narrative doesn’t say that matters more. As a white man, of course, I’m sure there’s a lot that went over my head as a result of my privileged experience—but if I try to read between the lines, I can just about glimpse interactions that I suspect will have younger, Black readers nodding their heads in agreement. In the end, Full Disclosure’s plot leaves a little to be desired. Then again, this is Garrett’s first published novel. I’m not here to say it’s “amazing considering she’s only 19”—Full Disclosure would be amazing regardless of its author’s age. This is a book that tackles important issues, including one I’ve never read about—I couldn’t tell you the last YA novel I read about an HIV positive protagonist—and it attempts to do so with an eye towards inclusive, multi-dimensional representation of various identities, and characters who can make mistakes and forgive each other. All of this makes for a very satisfying experience and a highly recommended read. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Nov 10, 2019
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Nov 11, 2019
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Oct 27, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0765342812
| 9780765342812
| 4.00
| 8,998
| 1996
| Jan 20, 2003
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it was ok
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It’s time to finish off my re-read of the first trilogy of The Wayfarer Redemption with Starman, the conclusion of Axis’ battle against Gorgrael to fu
It’s time to finish off my re-read of the first trilogy of The Wayfarer Redemption with Starman, the conclusion of Axis’ battle against Gorgrael to fulfil a Prophecy and recreate the land of Tencendor. I seem to have stumbled into a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts situation here: I want to give this book two stars, but the series as a whole has actually been much more enjoyable than the individual books ever were. Spoilers for this book and the previous two books, because I want to dig into this whole trilogy. So Axis and Azhure get to be gods … yay? Although gods in this universe are not quite omnipotent beings, but rather just extremely magical, and “Lesser” creatures like WolfStar can hold their own against individual gods at times … yeah, the rules of this universe are frustrating sometimes. This series is a good example of falling in love with one’s own worldbuilding. Whereas the previous two books privileged plot, Starman stops pretending with that bullshit and just surrenders to the temptation to drown us with exposition. Almost every scene offers up an excuse to have a metaphysical conversation about the nature of the universe, the various gods, etc. Now, the geeky part of me loves the ideas that Sara Douglass provides us. The idea that the Star Gods, Artor, etc., all showed up through the Star Gate or otherwise, and that they are perhaps just Sufficiently Advanced Aliens (this can be inferred but isn’t outright stated) is so cool to me. The problem is that if all you have are cool ideas, without much in the way of interesting plot, then this might as well be a RPG universe instead of, you know, a story. Moreover, some of the exposition goes a little too far. In previous books, WolfStar/the Dark Man were intriguing antagonists because his motivations were so murky. Was he on the side of Axis or Gorgrael? Or Prophecy? (His identity as the Prophet is pretty easy to deduce if you pay attention, although given the monotonous length of these books, I don’t fault anyone whose attention lapses.) Starman clears that up fairly easily. WolfStar declares his intentions repeatedly and clearly for anyone who wants to know … and that caused my interest in him as a character to drop to zero. I don’t really care to sympathize with him on the basis of being a slave to the Prophecy he himself developed. Similarly, Douglass seems to be in a rush to cast each main character into a crucible so that they can achieve their Final Form as soon as possible. Axis, Azhure, Faraday, etc., all experience major changes and powerups in terms of their abilities and understanding of their place in the world. Yet none of them, with the exception perhaps of the woobie Faraday, really earn this. It’s just dropped on them because it’s part of the story. Whereas Axis spends most of the first two books earning the loyalty of his men through his courage and honour, in this book he’s fairly useless and even petulant. It’s all the fault of the damnable Prophecy, honestly! Take the whole Rainbow Scepter thing. Multiple people tell Axis he has to show up on Fire-Night to get the scepter from the Avar. Everyone seems to know about this scepter and the role it plays in Axis defeating Gorgrael. What was once a cryptic Prophecy now seems crystalline, and in this way the story transforms from one of epic fantasy into a middle-of-the-road fantasy RPG full of NPCs who direct you in your quest. “Get Rainbow Scepter.” “Go to the Ice Fortress.” “Kill Gorgrael.” This applies to characters other than Axis. It started with Timozel in book one; he switches sides mostly because of WolfStar’s mental assault than because of any true decision to betray Axis and Faraday. But we’ve got situations like Azhure showing up in Smyrton to help Faraday not through any decision of her own but because another, otherwise pointless character tells her that’s her role in the matter. It’s not that it’s predictable, because Douglass doesn’t even try to maintain anything approaching suspense. It’s linear, straightforward, and entirely telegraphed ahead of time. I’m not sure if this is because Starman is worried that the readers just aren’t smart enough to get it, or if it’s just the way in which Douglass is captivated by the Prophecy she has woven throughout this trilogy. In any event, the result is a serious lack of suspense for almost the entire book. Nothing seems to be in jeopardy, even when traumatic events (like the abduction of Caelum) happen with maximum melodrama. Speaking of which—the whole thing where Azhure unilaterally mind-wipes her own kid because he plotted to sell-out his older brother to Gorgrael? That’s fucked up. I mean, DragonStar’s behaviour is fucked up, but he’s still ultimately a vulnerable child, whereas Azhure is a fully-grown woman and Icarii Enchantress. One of the main themes of this series seems to be that powerful people make for terrible parents. Despite all these criticisms, I still enjoyed reading these books, even if perhaps my opinion of the series isn’t very high. Douglass has a stunning fantastical imagination, and she is great at creating unique and complex characters. Her stewardship of those characters through three books, however, leaves much to be desired. If Starman succeeds, it is in spite of its use of what are now considered cliché fantasy tropes, not because of those tropes. I’m not even sure I would go so far as to say it succeeds. The series is a feverish dream of so many cool elements tied together by a plot that doesn’t quite work and characters who are either too powerful, too prideful, or too underutilized (sometimes a combination of all three) to really be interesting or sympathetic. But wait … my journey will continue with the sequel trilogy! Because I am a glutton for punishment and also I bought those three books cheaply when I bought these three, so … onwards! My reviews of The Wayfarer Redemption: ← Enchanter [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Oct 25, 2019
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Oct 28, 2019
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Oct 25, 2019
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 1474949525
| 9781474949521
| 4.12
| 5,077
| Oct 03, 2019
| Oct 03, 2019
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really liked it
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Every time I start another Holly Bourne book, I’m scared. I think, “Is this the time? Is this the book where Bourne lets me down, and I have to be dis
Every time I start another Holly Bourne book, I’m scared. I think, “Is this the time? Is this the book where Bourne lets me down, and I have to be disappointed??” And the answer is always no, as it is with The Places I’ve Cried in Public. I read this mostly in private, but otherwise there would have been some public tears, let me tell you. Trigger warnings in this book for discussion and depictions of emotional and sexual abuse by a boyfriend. Amelie has recently moved from Sheffield to the south of England and is starting her A Levels. She and her boyfriend have made a pact to break up but not fall in love, so they can pick up where they left off two years later at the University of Manchester. But then Amelie meets Reese, and everything is intense and wonderful—until it isn’t. It’s not a new story, but Bourne tells it with her usual complexity and gut-punching honesty. She also employs an interesting framing structure: each chapter is a different place Amelie has cried, usually as a result of her relationship with Reese and the fallout from their breakup. She talks to Reese in the second person at the beginning and end of each chapter, with the middle of the chapter a flashback set in the past and depicting a specific event from their time together, leading up of course to the public tears. Look, if you’re coming to this book for suspense or surprise, you will not find it. The plot is utterly predictable, even without Amelie’s very overt foreshadowing mentioning red flags and the end of friendships, etc. That’s the point: Bourne is preparing us for the emotional journey ahead by giving us the framework of the narrative journey. This isn’t about trying to figure out what will happen, how it will end, etc. It’s a story about Amelie coming to terms with this huge thing that happened to her. Like, Reese is a ding dong from the moment we meet him, and it just gets worse. I texted my friend Rebecca (in whose hands I press each Bourne book as she finishes the previous one I lent her) as Reese crossed more and more lines, like when he “surprises” Amelie with his “romantic” gesture at her first big show. Ugh. I’ve never had a romantic relationship with someone and I still know that’s not on. In fact, Reese is so much bad news wrapped up in a single macho wanker package that one might criticize Bourne for going overboard here. Is he a caricature of a manipulative and emotionally abusive manboy teenchild? Maybe. I’ll leave that to each reader to decide for themselves—I will say that if anything could be improved here, it’s probably the character of Reese himself, definitely. He could use a bit more dimension, a little bit more time on the page to breathe and be himself rather than being the Bad Guy of Amelie’s memories (this is, of course, one of the limitations of first person). Yet Reese’s black-and-white characterization is almost certainly deliberate. Bourne does not want to brook debate here. This is not about “maybe.” Reese crosses lines that should not be crossed, and we can speculate and discuss about why that’s the case (toxic masculinity), but Bourne has other books about that. This is about Amelie’s experience. I see some people likening it to Tori’s relationship with Tom in How Do You Like Me Now? , and I agree with the comparison—to an extent. But this isn’t merely a YA version of Tori/Tom. This is about a manipulative and abusive boy and the way being in a relationship with him feels like a drug you can’t give up, even if you’re starting to wonder at what it’s doing to you. I’d say a slightly more accurate comparison to an adult novel on this subject would be the stellar Almost Love by Louise O’Neill. The trademark heartbreaking Holly Bourne moment I’ve come to expect near the climax of every book happens here too, of course, when Amelie visits her old friends in Sheffield and Everything Goes Horribly Wrong. One reason I read these books so fast is simply because I need to get through them as fast as possible, like ripping off a band-aid, because these are emotionally draining books. And yes, Amelie certainly makes mistakes—she is, like all of us, flawed on top of being young and inexperienced in these things, and I appreciate that we get lots of facets of her character. She screws up bad with Alfie; she gets her former best friend upset … it’s a whole thing. There are a few other details that really make this book stand out. First, Hannah. Hannah rocks. That’s all I’m going to say. I just really like how Bourne deploys this characters. Second, the parents are great, as usual. This is something I don’t want to go unremarked about Bourne’s novels—so many YA novels neglect parents, or use them as casual antagonists. And sure, not everyone has great parents (or even a pair of parents), and those stories are valid. But I love that Bourne often portrays protagonists whose parents are as loving and supportive as they know how to be and yet the protagonist still struggles. Third, therapy. Amelie goes to a therapist, who asks her the right questions, the tough questions, and Bourne depicts these scenes with realism and compassion. Love seeing therapy depicted constructively in YA literature. There are similar scenes of compassion between Amelie and her parents (see above) as well as a teacher. At one point, the therapist remarks that what happened between Amelie and Reese wasn’t her fault, wasn’t fair, but that now she has to live with it being a part of her for the rest of her life. It’s so poignant, so painfully true … ugh. Maybe I’m just a sucker for all the feels, but I felt them with this book, my friends. The Places I’ve Cried in Public is very much an issue book. As are all of Bourne’s novels. But it is first and foremost an impeccably plotted, emotionally-tuned piece of storycraft, and as with all of her previous stories, it’s another example of the thought and compassion Bourne puts into these books. These are stories that I wish I could have read when I was younger—not necessarily to avoid making mistakes, because honestly I’ve been very lucky in my life … but these are books that help young people understand why the mistakes we make are not always of our own making, and how we can pick ourselves up afterwards. And I don’t know what it is … I don’t know if it’s some eldritch magic or just a lot of sweat and tears, but Bourne has got it. She knows how to build these stories, how to breathe life into these characters and their experiences. I need these stories. Teenagers need these stories. Everyone deserves to be told that the way other people treat them is not their fault. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 24, 2019
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Oct 25, 2019
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Oct 24, 2019
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Paperback
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| B07VFVRS3K
| 4.27
| 1,240
| Oct 15, 2019
| Oct 15, 2019
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really liked it
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**spoiler alert** Time travel stories are tricky. The best ones give me a headache but not too much of a headache. I guess it’s the literary equivalen
**spoiler alert** Time travel stories are tricky. The best ones give me a headache but not too much of a headache. I guess it’s the literary equivalent of the adrenaline rush one gets from momentarily being upside down on a roller coaster (which is definitely not for me): I want my brain to hurt as I contemplate 4-, 11-, or 22-dimensional spacetime … but I don’t want to get so confused that I feel the author could basically just do anything. (This is why Doctor Who is often such a crapshoot depending on who is writing for it.) Fortunately, with The Quantum Garden, Derek Künsken returns with all of the magic from
The Quantum Magician
—and honestly, I think he outdoes himself this time! I received a copy of this for free from NetGalley and Solaris. Belisarius Arjona has succeeded in pulling off his biggest con yet. The results, however, are a little more dramatic than he might have wanted. He has precipitated a war between two large powers. He stole a pair of time gates. And as the book opens, he watches a warship from one of those powers exact retribution on him by destroying the home of his subspecies, Homo quantus. Now, if I were in his position, I would probably not deal with that loss very well. Belisarius has a … different idea. He has some wormholes that let him travel in time, so naturally … he just travels back in time two weeks and develops a gambit to save his people. It’s not quite that simple, of course, because it will also end up involving travelling forty years into the past, accidentally wiping out an entire species, shattering someone’s entire perception of themselves and their wife … need I go on? I’d forgotten how much humour these books have. I dove back into this universe and immediately started enjoying it, although to be honest, it wasn’t until Stills showed up that I truly started laughing out loud: “Yup. And I need a pilot.” I’d forgotten how Stills’ unapologetic vulgarity is an excellent chaser to the quantum mechanical technobabble from some of the other characters. The diversity of Künsken’s characterization remains top notch. Moreover, this particular exchange tickled me because it perfectly lampshades the absurd scope of some of Bel’s adventures without being too cutesy about it. It’s like how the main characters of Stargate SG-1 eventually start joking, around seasons 7 and 8, about how many times they’ve saved the planet: they’ve earned the ability to do that, both in the show and the show itself. The Quantum Garden is much the same. Some books will make a comment like this, and it will annoy me, because the book has done nothing to earn such grandiose comments. Künsken definitely has, with both the first book and now its sequel. Interestingly, as some of you may know, heists are my kryptonite as far as stories go … yet I actually preferred this book, which is less of a heist than the first one. It’s more straight-up espionage. But I think Künsken took everything that I liked about the first book and amplified it here, while having a tighter cast of characters and a less convoluted plot (and that is saying something, considering that we’re involving some knotty time travel here!). The time travel logic, while definitely timey-wimey, makes sense if you unpack it. I can see the thoughtfulness on display, the way Künsken was careful to set everything up to avoid paradoxes while still maintaining a sense of suspense. That’s not easy to do. Related to the time travel would be the Hortus quantus Bel encounters in the past, and their very unique mode of existence/propagation. Künsken demonstrates even more creativity than we encountered in the first book (which is saying something)—I love when authors push the boundaries of what we can conceive, when it comes to alien beings, and this species is quite something! It’s so easy for people to dismiss quantum mechanics as “weird,” simply because it is unintuitive owing to our three-dimensional bias. Yet if you push past that initial weirdness, you can explore and play with so many cool concepts and ideas. This is why I love reading posthuman SF like The Quantum Garden. Most of the main characters experience some good growth. In particular, I like how Cassandra has more opportunities to shine and come into her own. She has more responsibilities, and it galvanizes her into being a more decisive actor. She holds her own with Stills as they battle the Scarecrow, and it’s a sight to see! As far as the Scarecrow goes, this is a small area in which The Quantum Garden disappoints. We learn a lot more about his origins, which is fine, but as an antagonist goes he’s fairly unimpressive in this book. I’m hoping that changes in the next one. The story is exciting and entertaining all the way through: I literally only put this down to go to work after I started reading it on Tuesday morning, and I stayed up way too late trying to finish it that evening. It’s not for e everyone, but if this subgenre is what you enjoy, you are in for a treat. Künsken builds on what came before while setting up the tantalizing possibility of more stories, more adventures, more bright ideas. This is one of my top reads of 2019 for sure. My reviews of The Quantum Evolution: ← The Quantum Magician [image] ...more |
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none
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1
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Oct 22, 2019
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Oct 24, 2019
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Oct 22, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| B07Y8N638R
| 3.44
| 27
| Sep 22, 2019
| Sep 22, 2019
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it was ok
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Why does AI always end up being the bad guy? Because we love to explore evil in the form of the Other. Also, it usually turns out that the bad guy was
Why does AI always end up being the bad guy? Because we love to explore evil in the form of the Other. Also, it usually turns out that the bad guy was us, the creators of the AI, all along! Anastasia Slabucho’s Waterdown retreads these ideas but within the context of the climate change crisis we currently face. She posits that someone might have the right combination of drive, ingenuity, and wherewithal to create an AI that can take over running our society, if only we’d just listen. But would such a life really be living? That’s what this novel attempts to explore. Geo Spears created Fusion, the superintelligent AI that now runs the world. In this brave new world, humans are either Permanents or Temporals. Permanents, like Geo herself, have uninhibited memory and intelligence, yet they live socially isolated lives. Their purpose is to work every day on the administrative tasks Fusion assigns them, and in particular, they scrub history of all the nasty little records that might upset someone. Temporals, on the other hand, are the labourer caste. They can have the full range of human experience, but their cognitive landscapes are governed by a brain device that limits their long-term memory storage and mediates their perception of the world. When Geo discovers that she is dying, she wakes up to the problematic nature of Fusion’s dominance over humanity. She has to gain the trust of a group of rebels and help them take down Fusion before it’s too late. I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley. The Kindle version doesn’t let you override the font choices. This is merely irksome to me, but for people who have accessibility issues that require them to use certain fonts, I can imagine it would be upsetting and potentially prevent them from reading the book. As far as the story goes, Waterdown has its entertaining moments, yet it never quite comes together into the unified and coherent dystopian thriller it seems to want to be. Slabucho does her best to avoid needless exposition. I applaud this, in theory, yet in practice I was left wanting … more. We only get minimal hints of what society is like before and after the waterdown. The flashbacks remind me of low-budget sci-fi TV series from the early 2000s that would try to signal you’re in the future because everyone is wearing weird fashions and hairstyles—how has society actually changed by that point? Similarly, in the present, we get the barest of hints about the dichotomous lifestyles of the Temporals and Permanents, but it’s never explored very clearly. I also have a hard time enjoying Geo as the protagonist. I get that she’s supposed to be an unlikable character, at least at first. Her face turn seems so abrupt, though—one moment she’s cruising along, enjoying life as much as one can as a Permanent, and then the next moment she has a terminal diagnosis and she starts fomenting rebellion. OK, I’m exaggerating. Nevertheless, whatever shock to the system Geo receives, she seems really willing to turn on her creation. And the others trust her pretty quickly at that. Even the crisis with Scott dissolves into a non-issue without much in the way of confrontation. That’s probably the least satisfying part of the novel: the conflicts feel either forced or toothless. Take Hel’s bizarre dislike of Geo. It’s never explained nor justified; she is essentially a plot device to explain some loose ends and give Geo some of the final motivation she needs to take down Fusion. Scott receives time as a viewpoint character, yet he never really seems to have to make much in the way of decisions or contribute to the plot beyond, again, being there. Finally, Waterdown runs into the same issue that similar stories with AI antagonists often face: faceless AIs are boring. There’s a reason why the I, Robot movie with Will Smith involves a lot of explosions and why the Terminator movies relegate Skynet to a backseat role. Yes, intellectually, the idea of an AI suborning humanity is certainly scary. But in practice, an AI villain lacks the chutzpah of a good, scenery-chewing bad guy. The confrontations between Geo and Fusion are so underwhelming, even when Slabucho characterizes Fusion as “gloating.” Fusion isn’t evil; it’s just following its programming. It’s a storm more than a villain—yet we attempt to sandwich it into the villain role, instead of treating it like a natural disaster, and it just isn’t menacing enough, at least how it’s portrayed, to fit that role. I can’t fault Slabucho for the concepts within Waterdown. Those are definitely intriguing. And while AIs run amok have been done to death, this particular remixing of the concept is new. So it’s a really cool science fiction idea. But ideas alone do not make for great stories. The characters and the conflict have to surf the ideas along the ocean of story, and that doesn’t happen here. Lots of potential here, but it’s still very rough, still very much in need of polish and plot workshopping. And having done that, it would be possible to go even deeper into these interesting ideas, resulting in a novel that truly expands the mind as much as the waterdown diminishes it. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 18, 2019
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Oct 21, 2019
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Oct 18, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 0316436941
| 9780316436946
| 4.01
| 308
| Oct 15, 2019
| Oct 15, 2019
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really liked it
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It isn’t often that a book wins me over like The Throne of the Five Winds did! I usually know my general sentiment towards a book within the first fif
It isn’t often that a book wins me over like The Throne of the Five Winds did! I usually know my general sentiment towards a book within the first fifty pages or so. My mood will change for better or worse as the story unfolds, and a 2-star book might make it to 3 or vice versa, and once in a while, a 4- or 5-star book plummets to 1 star because of an unforgivable sin. When I began this book, which I received as an eARC from Orbit and NetGalley, I was not feeling it. Moreover, I really dislike it when someone tries to sell me a series by saying “for fans of Game of Thrones.” Because, like it or not, Game of Thrones is mainstream now. It’s like saying “for fans of Harry Potter” or “for fans of Marvel movies”—that’s not a useful category any more. And I honestly don’t think this book is very much like Game of Thrones, for many reasons, but hey, that’s not what this review is about. Lady Komor Yala (house name, first name) has been sent from her home country of Khir to Zhaon. She accompanies her princess, Mahara, who is a bride and tribute to the Crown Prince of Zhaon following Khir’s rout at the battle of the Three Rivers. Yala and Mahara are alone in Zhaon, with no other Khir around them, forced to adapt to a strange culture. There are 6 princes of Zhaon, from 3 different women—two queens and a concubine. A second concubine of the emperor has adopted a son, General Zakkar Kai, who is unpopular with some because of his humble origins. Yala and Mahara barely have time to catch their breath before the latter is wedded and the assassination attempts begin. People are going to tell you this book is long. Boy is it ever—but I don’t see that as a particular stumbling block, and I don’t think that’s even what those commenters are really picking up on. Sure, it’s long, and we could discuss how the story might be streamlined. But perhaps what we’re actually noticing is that almost all of the scenes in this book are two-handers, or perhaps three-handers in a pinch. There are certainly some larger crowd scenes, often action scenes. Yet so much of this book comprises private conversations between two characters, often involving intrigue veiled behind courtesy. That’s why this book feels longer than it is: everything is embedded within subtext, and so it takes twice as long to say. There is a lot of dialogue but also a lot of stillness, and S.C. Emmett’s description tends towards the poetic, with many quotations from writers in this world and comparisons of people’s movements to calligraphy. Emmett also tends towards the “hard no” side for exposition and is even so hardcore as to put “untranslatable” terms into the book with footnotes explaining their meaning in English. So that adds to the initial learning curve. Frankly, I don’t blame anyone for noping out within the first twenty or fifty pages. It’s not easy to get into this book. But if you persevere, you might decide it’s worth it. The Throne of the Five Winds has so many tropes of fantasy/historical fiction: palace intrigue, succession crises in the making, subtle love triangles, capricious queens and princes, a dying emperor, and assassins lurking behind every arras. Despite this surfeit of tropes, though, the book never feels that clichéd. The cornucopia of characters allows Emmett to wend and wind the plot through this world with a narrative deftness that keeps us on our toes. There are downsides, of course. Another reason I couldn’t get into the book at first is that I didn’t feel invested in any of the initial protagonists. Why did I care about Yala being sent away from her home country? Who is this Kai dude, and why should I care about him and this emperor? Which of these princes am I supposed to care about? Similarly, the antagonists are two-dimensional. We’re supposed to like most of the protagonists and dislike most of the antagonists. Even Takshin, who is a fairly obvious antihero, is supposed to be the “lovable rogue,” in contrast to the Second Prince, Kurin, who is portrayed as an inveterate schemer. Emmett tries to give Queen Gamwone some depth by making it seem like her gambits are merely a way of ensuring the survival of herself and her sons in the limited ways she can as a woman in this world … yet the narrative voice of the book is so biased towards portraying her as a rude, vindictive, and petty woman that this little attempt at balancing the scales is insufficient, to say the least. And as far as the Khir nobility goes … we get, what, 4 scenes with them? In other words, The Throne of the Five Winds has all the intrigue I love in a political fantasy novel. Nevertheless, it is still quite messy in some ways, and its characterization is shiny yet not always substantial. Emmet’s writing is beautiful in most cases, particularly as we watch Yala grow in her appreciation of her new home. I recommended this book to a coworker who enjoys reading sprawling court epics. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Oct 14, 2019
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Oct 18, 2019
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Oct 14, 2019
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Paperback
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| 9781946501141
| 3.82
| 71
| unknown
| Sep 24, 2019
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did not like it
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I received this book from Tiny Fox Press and NetGalley in exchange for a review. Apocalypse How? is a messy trainwreck, and if that’s your style, you’l I received this book from Tiny Fox Press and NetGalley in exchange for a review. Apocalypse How? is a messy trainwreck, and if that’s your style, you’ll probably enjoy it. For the rest of us … let’s just say that I kind of knew how I felt about this book less than 50 pages in, and maybe I should have stopped there. This is basically “Indiana Jones in space” but make Indiana a young woman named Dakota Adams and instead of being an erstwhile archaeology professor she’s a struggling archaeology streamer. Pile on a few more Hitchhiker’s, Doctor Who, and other cult references—I’m sure there’s plenty I missed—then add a frenetic, non-stop rush from one nonsensical set piece to the next, and you’ve got the formula for this book. Galen Surlak-Ramsey pays tribute to numerous cult classic and pop cultural properties of the past, and I’m sure it comes from a place of love. But the overall effect is a bit too cutesy, a bit too rompish, a bit too put on for my tastes. Allusion is a tricky literary beast. Like most seasonings, a little bit goes a long way. The protagonist’s name, or another name here or there, might have been fine by themselves. But the constant little references makes it seem like the book is showing off. I don’t feel like an insider being rewarded for getting the in-jokes; I feel like I’m being forced to sit through 300 pages of the author showing us how clever he is for working them into the story. It distracts and detracts from the author’s own original ideas—and let’s be clear here: Apocalypse How? does have a cool plot to it. Oh, right, yeah, sorry, you probably want one of my one-paragraph plot summaries! Here we go. Dakota Adams is Space Indiana Jones. She gallivants around the galaxy for the glory, the gold, and the 6 people who watch her livestream. She has a furry partner (in the Wookie sense, not the lifestyle sense) named Tolby, and he keeps the ship running so Dakota can keep running from whatever nasty alien creature is chasing her at the time. Dakota’s dream is to find tech from the elusive, perhaps mythical Progenitors, who are exactly what they sound like. When she finally does, the story really gets started, because now an interstellar mob boss is after her, except she suddenly acquires the ability to hop through space-time at the expense of her memories. Soon we’re in a non-linear race to escape a multidimensional spacetime museum that is going to be/will have been/has been destroyed (ugh, time travel tenses). As mentioned above, I have zero issues with the plot itself. I don’t mind authors leaning on the idea of nigh-omnipotent extinct advanced species who scatter their tech around the universe like candy. The idea that Dakota is on the run from a criminal with enterprise-level resources, and that she’s then in a race against time (literally) to escape before this museum gets destroyed? Makes total sense. I’m in. Let’s do it. Alas, Surlak-Ramsey’s writing style just leaves me so unsatisfied. First, we almost never get a break. I really like the “scene and sequel” approach to storytelling, but what we get with Apocalypse How? is mostly scene and precious little sequel. The sequels we do find tend to be repetitive and circular (Dakota’s fragmentary memory and time travelling doesn’t help this). Instead, Dakota is typically barrelling from one crisis directly into the next. (I’d comment that this sounds like an Indiana Jones movie, but actually I’ve never watched one. I know, fie!) The consequence is my second complaint: there is so little character development here it’s like trying to watch paint dry if paint could jump through time. Dakota starts the book as an overconfident, smartass adventure-seeker. She ends the book the same way. Once in a while there are moments where it looks like she’s reflecting and maybe growing and learning some humility. But nope. It bothers me when books’ protagonists start out as badasses without having demonstrated why they’ve earned it. Dakota keeps screwing up, time and again, and it’s really only the time travel power she has that lets her get out of numerous bad decisions. Ironically it might be Tolby, her sidekick, who experiences the most character development of anyone. The rest of the characters, from Pizmo to the Curator to Mister Cyber Squid, are literally one-dimensional stock and archetypes. Nothing wrong with those, of course. But if all your characters are paper-thin, the light source at the top of the literary skybox shines through way too easily, and suddenly it’s all just shadows on the cave wall, you dig? We briefly interact with Dakota’s brother, and she mentions her parents a couple of times, yet we never actually learn where they’re at or what her relationship with them is really like. In other words, Apocalypse How? is a novel of brilliantly squandered opportunities. I think this is pretty common when authors try to be humorous at the expense of digging deeper. Douglas Adams, from whom Surlak-Ramsey borrows a surname and a lot of references, understood deeply that the absurd is a tool for holding back the despair that we get when we stare into the abyss, the emptiness on the edge of human consciousness. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series begins with the destruction of the Earth, and each book becomes progressively darker, despite its patina of humour, because Adams is ultimately writing about the cold, capricious nature of life. Every time Arthur Dent tries to do something proactive, the universe smacks him down; the most well-adjusted characters, like Zaphod or the character who might be God, are the ones who go with the flow and accept that life is inherently nonsensical. Moving further afield, consider another favourite TV show of mine, Farscape. This is a show about a human stranded far, far from home without much hope of ever returning there, and he falls in with a group of fugitives. The show is unforgivably funny yet also incredibly sad and bittersweet as well—again, because the writers understand that the humour goes hand-in-hand with the darkness that it must stave off. Despite its title and the intense, life-threatening situation in which Dakota finds herself, Apocalypse How? never stops mugging for the reader long enough to establish that essential contrast to make the humour work for me. There is a competent adventure story here, but I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it as much as I wanted. Your mileage might vary, but if you’ve been reading my reviews long enough to get a sense of my humour and what works/doesn’t work for me, you can judge whether you’ll be in my camp or not. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Oct 10, 2019
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Oct 13, 2019
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Oct 10, 2019
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Paperback
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| 1925138542
| 9781925138542
| 4.12
| 76
| Feb 19, 2015
| Feb 19, 2015
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it was ok
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I don’t remember how Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism came on my radar. Someone somewhere must have mentioned it; it looks like I bough
I don’t remember how Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism came on my radar. Someone somewhere must have mentioned it; it looks like I bought it from Book Depository four years ago. Anyway, I finally got around to reading it last summer. I was hoping to dig deeper into some of the essays, but honestly things like breaking my elbow took up most of my time, and now I just don’t have the inclination or the heart, really. I do like to try books that I suspect I’m going to disagree with—and to be fair, Freedom Fallacy has some tantalizing critiques of neoliberalism I do agree with. Let’s talk about the wizard behind the curtain: if I drank, I would have made a game where I took a drink every time someone mentions Catharine MacKinnon. Two pages in to the introduction and the editors have already cited her, and nearly every essay in this collection references her at least once, if not extensively. It’s official: every contributor loves MacKinnon! (Andrea Dworkin also gets an epigraph and lots of love too.) Look, I’m not going to claim a huge familiarity with MacKinnon’s writing, and other people have written far better rebuttals of MacKinnon’s work. So rather than get into that, let me broadly summarize the approach these essays take to critiquing “liberal feminism.” The thesis that runs throughout these essays concerns the debilitating nature of liberal feminism, aka third-wave feminism, popular feminism, or choice feminism. The editors and contributors contend, with focus on various topics and tactics, that liberal feminism is a neoliberalist corruption, an individualist betrayal of “true” feminist ideologies, which are collectivist. Its popularity has been driven by media and corporate attempts to co-opt feminism as a branding strategy, to position it as “women’s choice” instead of “women’s liberation.” Kiraly and Tyler say in their introduction: What unites our contributors in this book is not a single perspective — there is a range of different feminist positions included — but rather, a unified belief that liberation cannot be found at a purely individual level, nor can it be forged from adapting to, or simply accepting, existing conditions of oppression. On the one hand, I don’t actively disagree with the denotative meaning of this statement. Indeed, this is perhaps what intrigued me by this book—at the time, I was probably looking for academic writing that would sharpen my understanding of the systemic nature of women’s oppression, and I was concerned by the notion that we should frame all feminist thought as a matter of “choice,” given the amount of internalized misogyny that society saddles us with. Yet Kiraly and Tyler clearly mean to imply much more than that. If you go on to read the later chapters, of course, you see that the connotation of this statement means women who embrace makeup and high heels and sex appeal and call it feminist are not, actually, feminist. They’re liberal feminists. Beyoncé is mistaken when she shakes her booty in front of a huge sign that says “feminist.” No, dear reader: the ones doing the real work are these poor, radical feminists who toil in the obscurity of academia because their feminism isn’t fun enough for the mainstream, apparently. Radical feminism is the term that many of these essays use as the counterpart to liberal feminism. It’s like second-wave feminism, but many of the contributors don’t want to use that term. Really, though, this book reads like second-wave feminism tweaked for the social media age. The frustrating thing (from my perspective) about Freedom Fallacy is that, on some level, there is a cogent and necessary critique of neoliberalism happening here. Many of the essays make valid points about the way capitalism can co-opt feminist ideas. When I teach about gender stereotypes in media to my English classes, and I show them the “Dove Real Beauty” campaign ads, I use the videos to help them visualize the ways in which media manipulates appearances, yes. But I also ask my students to consider why Dove (owned by Unilever, which also sells Tag and Axe) would launch this campaign. So, yes, I do think that these authors are on to something when they point out that it’s not enough for us to call ourselves feminist, treat individual women equally, make sure women can have jobs and whatnot. Definitely there is more work, deeper work to be done. I agree with the radical feminist proposition that the oppression of women is structural, that no amount of “leaning in” on the part of women will ever be enough to truly achieve equity. Nevertheless, I can’t get behind many, if any at all, of the propositions within these pages. They’re anti–sex work and gender essentialist (I don’t know how many are straight-up TERFs except that Meghan Murphy, the only name I recognize, is included in this collection, which is a huge red flag). And I’m guessing, just from the way they write at least, that most of these contributors are white women. Some of them definitely aren’t, and I’m not trying to whitewash the book—but my point is that attempts at intersectionality here are tepid at best. This is one of the features of second-wave feminism that I most strongly dislike, this idea that no matter who you are, if you are a woman, another woman is the only/best person to understand your experience. Beyond that, there is just such a bitterness to these essays. These are academic lamentations at how astray we’ve gone, hand-wringing over the ways in which feminism has been co-opted by neoliberalism. I agree with a lot of the critiques of neoliberalism here—but the ways in which they’re applied to feminist ideas is overly-broad, overly prescriptive. I don’t like academic ruminations on what “is” or “is not” feminism. Feminism is like porn: I know it when I see it. And rather than fight you on whether yours and mine line up point-for-point like there’s supposed to be some kind of master feminist checklist, I’d rather judge your feminism based on your actions. You can tell me you think trans women are women all you like, but do you actually include them in your spaces? Are you really open to the fluidity of gender, or do you want to be just as prescriptive as patriarchy—just in a different way? Take your prescriptiveness to another door please. But, if you really do need some kind of litmus, I hereby propose “the Lizzo test.” I’ve been listening to a lot of Lizzo lately. I think Cuz I Love You is brilliant. Almost every single track is my jam in some way, and I’m a white asexual Freedom Fallacy identifies a real problem in our modern society (neoliberalist co-option of anti-oppressive moments). Yet I have no interest in its solutions. Because, at the end of the day, I don’t think the feminisms described herein have any place for feminists like Lizzo, or the indescribably brilliant Janelle Monáe. Their definitions don’t stretch that far, aren’t inclusive enough, are not beautiful enough to recognize that feminism has to be more than a stark and academically-defined struggle against oppression. It has to be lived, taught, shared—in this case, sung. It has to be built from the ground-up by the people who are, indeed, struggling. Academic essays can describe but should not prescribe. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jul 23, 2019
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Jul 30, 2019
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Sep 26, 2019
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1524852317
| 9781524852313
| 3.72
| 10,807
| Mar 05, 2019
| Mar 05, 2019
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really liked it
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Here we are, book three of Amanda Lovelace’s Women Are Some Kind of Magic series. Last year I read
The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One
and remarked
Here we are, book three of Amanda Lovelace’s Women Are Some Kind of Magic series. Last year I read
The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One
and remarked that it was much more focused than the first book. In her afterword to this book, Lovelace reflects that The Mermaid’s Voice Returns in This One has also shifted focus: now it’s about rebuilding, about healing and moving on from trauma, while also coming to terms with the fact that the trauma will always be a part of herself. This reflection is an accurate encapsulation of the book. As the title implies, this collection is all about celebrating having a voice again. Tons of trigger warnings for this book, of course—they’re listed in the book, fortunately. You don’t need to read the first two collections, though I highly recommend them. Perhaps one of the worst things abusers can do (beyond, obviously physically and emotionally abusing someone) is steal someone’s voice, even after the period of active abuse has ended. The victim doesn’t feel capable of sharing their story—or they’re required to share their story over and over, for example during a criminal case, to the point where it might feel like they’ve become just the story. The story becomes the life, rather than just part of a much larger, richer life. One of the key takeaways from The Mermaid's Voice Returns in This One is that Lovelace isn’t just sharing her story, as she did in The Princess Saves Herself in This One : she is actively celebrating the fact that she is now the one making the story, not other people. I say this, mind you, as someone who hasn’t experienced abuse or trauma like this. Despite my well-documented ambivalence about poetry, however, I think this is one situation where poems are one of the best mediums for communicating these types of experiences. They allow for a freedom of form that the conventions of prose don’t (and I am much harsher towards writers who abuse the conventions of prose than I am to people who experiment with poetry, go figure). Lovelace definitely has a style when it comes to her poems. And that style seems eminently suited to the emotions and substance of her stories. I love how she uses whitespace and the placement of words on the page to emphasize key terms, to draw attention to alternative readings of certain lines. Repetition is also important, both within poems and across poems. A collection of poetry like this is almost like an album of music: each poem tells its own story and can be read on its own. Read this way, some poems are better than others. Some are stand out singles, while others are a little confusing until you experience them as part of the whole collection, which itself is telling a larger, grander narrative. The choice of mermaid, as with princess and witch prior to that, is an intriguing and deliberate symbol with a variety of meanings for Lovelace and the reader. The sheer complexity of emotion here is another big hallmark of Lovelace’s style. Some of the poems are a little melancholy or bittersweet. Some are soaring, optimistic. Some are in between. For all the talk of mermaids launching themselves into space, there is a healthy dose of realism in this pages. Lovelace’s voices acknowledge that they aren’t going to be out of the woods forever, that there is no way to firmly close this chapter of their story such that it never returns. This part of their life will be with them forever, and this is just a way of dealing with that. Also unique to this volume is the inclusion of other poets. I wasn’t expecting that going in, and it’s … okay, I guess? I’m indifferent. At the end of the day, I continue not really to seek out books of poetry to read. But Lovelace definitely remains one poet whose books work well for me. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Sep 25, 2019
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Sep 25, 2019
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Sep 25, 2019
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ebook
| ||||||||||||||
| 1459822501
| 9781459822504
| 3.78
| 114
| unknown
| Oct 01, 2019
|
it was ok
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Sometimes the best I can summon up for a book is “competent.” That’s where I’m at with The Justice Project by Michael Betcherman. This young adult/new
Sometimes the best I can summon up for a book is “competent.” That’s where I’m at with The Justice Project by Michael Betcherman. This young adult/new adult book is an interesting mix of thriller/mystery, but the tone and pacing and characterization leaves me a little confused about who the audience is and which themes Betcherman wants to emphasize. Matt is finishing up high school, but his dreams of playing college football are over. Instead of leading his team to another championship he’s relegated to the sidelines because of a career-ending leg injury that has left him with a permanent limp. Nervous about how people in his hometown will look at him now, Matt considers relocating to Florida, where his mother lives. When that is no longer an option, Matt takes a summer internship with the Justice Project, which is this book’s version of the real life Innocence Project. He and his fellow intern, a peer named Sonja, take it upon themselves to investigate someone they believe is innocent even though the Justice Project can’t officially take his case. What they discover will shock Matt’s sleepy, football-obsessed town to the core…. Trigger warnings in this book for use of ableist slurs. What confuses me about The Justice Project is largely the tone. Matt and Sonja are supposed to be 18, so this book seems poised on the upper end of the YA spectrum—almost NA. Yet the tone of the novel, at least until near the end, feels more Hardy Boys than anything else—in other words, on the younger side of YA. Matt and Sonja read more like two teenaged sleuths than young adult investigators. For most of the book, there isn’t much of an element of danger or risk for any of the characters. This changes abruptly in the final act, which introduces a fair amount of existential risk. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed The Justice Project, and there’s a lot of good I can say for it. First, it’s obviously an issue book, and Betcherman’s handling of the issue of innocent people on death row, while perhaps not subtle, is thorough. He adequately represents different perspectives on the death penalty without creating straw men. Even Matt starts off as pro–death penalty. That brings me to my second point of praise: Matt’s character development is decent. He starts off resentful of his injury, missing his girlfriend, etc. As the story goes on we see him starting to heal, start to look for another relationship, and basically grow as a person. He’s still not perfect by any means, but he at least changes. In particular, I enjoyed his friendship with Sonja and the way that Betcherman avoids any romance there. It was nice to have a strictly platonic male/female team-up in this kind of situation. Going back to critiques, however, I’ll add that while Matt’s character development is great, most of the other characters are very flat. Betcherman focuses almost exclusively on the main plot, and it feels like the subplots are squeezed out by the end. Matt starts dating someone new, but she has … what, 5 lines? We see her two r three times and he texts her a couple of times, but otherwise all their scenes happen off the page. We don’t see much substance to them. Similarly, Matt takes a new job as the assistant coach of his old high school team … but most of that happens off page too. Finally, I’m ambivalent about the portrayal of Matt’s disability. On the one hand, Betcherman captures the resentment and depression that can accompany these kinds of injuries. I think Matt’s behaviour, the way he sees himself, etc., are all very realistic. On the other hand, the treatment of his disability is fairly one-note. Everyone either doesn’t really mention it/is cool with it, or they give him weird looks. For a book that makes this kind of injury a major part of the protagonist, I would have loved to see a much more nuanced handling of the matter. Where are all the other disabled characters, for one? If this book is supposed to be aimed at a younger audience, then I guess I see why it’s on the shorter side. It feels like it should be aimed at someone older, though, in which case it could stand to be longer and have a much deeper story structure. The Justice Project is intriguing and full of potential. It is, as I began this review with, a competent book—but it really could have been much more. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Sep 18, 2019
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Sep 19, 2019
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Sep 20, 2019
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0765341964
| 9780765341969
| 4.00
| 11,622
| 1996
| Apr 15, 2002
|
liked it
|
Back for round 2 of my review of this classic ’90s fantasy series. In my review of
The Wayfarer Redemption
I was cheeky but also tried to be serio
Back for round 2 of my review of this classic ’90s fantasy series. In my review of
The Wayfarer Redemption
I was cheeky but also tried to be serious. I didn’t want to be too hard on Sara Douglass, because after all, the clichés in these books weren’t quite clichés when she was writing. At the same time, it’s hard to call these books great. They‘re good, for a certain entertainment value of good. In this sequel, Axis has embraced his heritage as an Icarii Enchanter and plans to reunite Tencendor under his leadership. To do this, he must deal with his half-brother, Borneheld, while also defending the territory and people under his protection from Gorgrael. Oh, and he’s still learning magic. And he’s in love with two women! Fun times. If anything, Enchanter made me think more about Douglass’ goals with this series and how she constructs it. Maybe it’s because I spent a lot of Sunday morning reading this while listening to the classical radio station, but Enchanter really strikes me as embodying the most operatic qualities of high fantasy. This is a tragedy in its purest literary form. The stakes are high; the sets are big; the characters are larger than life. That allows me as the reader to give Douglass more leeway with this whole prophecy thing. Yes, Axis is unlikable and a dick, but he’s still a sympathetic character because he’s the protagonist of this tragedy: he might save his peoples from the Big Bad, but he himself isn’t going to get a personally happy ending in the process. The same can be said for Faraday and Azhure and perhaps a handful of supporting characters—the closer you are to the centre of this story, to the prophecy, the less likely you are to come out of it with anything resembling happiness. Similarly, there are no “real” people in this story. We speak to precious few people who are not within the inner circles of the plot. We speak to very few people who might be considered your average everyperson—it’s like all the extras in this story are far in the background. Because the opera doesn’t care about those people; it only wants to give page time to the people whose actions are sustaining the plot (prophecy). This constraint can make for a very one-sided, very contrived story. Why do these stories appeal to us if they are so over the top? Of course no one like Axis or Faraday exists in real life. Few people are the same combination of powerful yet petty as Borneheld (although, you know, I can think of a few leaders and billionaires who come close). Nevertheless, writers turn time and again to these stock characters and their stories because they do appeal to us. I think when you remove human agency from parts of the equation, it’s like controlling for a variable: the writer themselves then has a little more freedom to dig into another part of the human condition. By wrapping Axis & co. so tightly in prophecy as to practically smother them, Douglass can explore the edge cases of fighting for survival against incredible odds. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if this story were being told by people in fancy costumes singing on a stage, I’d be more sympathetic to it. It’s made for that grand scale. With novels I usually yearn for something that has a little more humanity to the characters, but it’s hard to fault Enchanter for being consistent with the form it’s emulating. I’d be a lot harsher if I thought Douglass were actually trying to make her characters more real, but that’s not what I see here. I’m starting to see now why this particular series from this time period might hold up in the sense of being a good example of the craft. I’m still not sure that it holds up as a series that I, personally, am enjoying reading. My reviews of The Wayfarer Redemption: ← The Wayfarer Redemption (aka Battleaxe) | Starman → [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Sep 10, 2019
|
Sep 17, 2019
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Sep 10, 2019
|
Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0575090634
| 9780575090637
| 3.79
| 3,131
| Jan 10, 2019
| Jan 10, 2019
|
liked it
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I love fierce sister duos. You know, the kind where the two sisters have complementary skills and get on each other’s nerves yet always have the other
I love fierce sister duos. You know, the kind where the two sisters have complementary skills and get on each other’s nerves yet always have the other’s back? That kind. Yeah, Shadow Captain isn’t quite that kind of story. Adrana and (Ara)fura Ness have managed to dispatch the fearsome space pirate Bosa Sennen, taking her ship in the process. These young women are way out of their league, however, and now that they are in charge of the Revenger, as they’re calling their prize, everyone else is going to think they’re the pirates. Adrana, our narrator this time around, is still trying to recover from her torture at Bosa’s hands. Meanwhile, she is worried about what Fura had to do to rescue her, and the long-term effect that’s going to have on Fura’s mental health. The sisters try to put up a united front for everyone else, but as far as they’re concerned, they’re on shaky ground. Although a part of me yearns for that good ol’ sister duo ferocity, I will admit to enjoying the conflict Alastair Reynolds creates through the Ness sisters. With each of them on edge, for slightly different reasons, nothing ever quite feels right in this book. Moments of possible redemption turn on a dime into disappointment and bitterness—not through deliberate, over-the-top betrayal, per se, but more through the slow attrition of mistrust. This is a book about how small cracks in relationships and grow into wedges and fractures that threaten to shatter at the slightest pressure. Expanding this to the wider cast: no one here is really a friend. Some are friendly, like Prozor. Others are cagey, like Strambli. Whatever the case, the book reminds me of the crews of Serenity in Firefly or Moya in Farscape: joined together more out of common cause, or having no place else to go, than any real like of each other. Reynolds reminds us that this can work just as well when it comes to having characters work together towards a common goal. Shadow Captain feels slow to me, because the majority of the book is spent approaching and then tiptoeing around Strizzardly Wheel. I kept waiting for the “plot” to happen, by which I mean further developments in the sisters’ involvement with the overarching conspiracies afoot—the quoins, the mysteries of the Occupations, the aliens, etc. I never expected those matters to truly take over the foreground, but I kept waiting for more to happen than “we need to visit this station and oh look we’re running afoul of the criminal overlord of the week oh no.” I felt like most of this novel turned into one big sidequest in a space version of Bioshock. I continue to dig that overarching story. I’m really intrigued to see where Reynolds goes with all this (I have some ideas, but of course there’s still so much left up in the air right now). That’s his hope, of course: tease the reader with just enough to keep them reading into the next book, even if the rest of the story wasn’t as satisfying. I just hope that the next book presents a more dynamic plot, in which the Ness sisters have a little more agency than “get into trouble at Strizzardly.” I guess I come for the mystery and stay for the sister relationship. There are points in the book, when Adrana asks Paladin to keep something between them, when Adrana makes decisions or uncovers certain facts that Fura might have been obscuring … points when I was reading this, sipping a cup of tea, in my nice, hot bath, and it felt like Reynolds was really capturing the importance of that family dynamic. As sardonically critical as I am of the story here, this protagonist duo is probably one of the best I’ve seen in a while, purely on the ground of the depth of feeling beneath the tension in their relationship. It’s not something that can or even should be resolved easily, and I’m really happy that Shadow Captain goes in the direction of widening the gulf instead of closing it easily. My overall impression of this series may hinge on the next book (if it is indeed the concluding volume) and where it takes us…. My reviews of the Revenger series: ← Revenger [image] ...more |
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Sep 07, 2019
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Sep 09, 2019
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Sep 09, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 1534445420
| 9781534445420
| 4.29
| 8,110
| Sep 24, 2019
| Sep 24, 2019
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liked it
| SLAY in the story is a MMORPG where players duel using in-game cards that derive their names and powers from elements of various Black cultures. Kiera SLAY in the story is a MMORPG where players duel using in-game cards that derive their names and powers from elements of various Black cultures. Kiera Johnson is 17 years old and should be worrying more about whether or not she’s getting into her first choice college. But she’s also the secret creator and developer for SLAY. She wanted a gaming world that embraced players’ Blackness rather than punishing it. She wanted a space where Black people could express themselves in “unapologetically Black” ways. Except now SLAY has made international news thanks to a grisly murder associated with the game, and it seems like everyone is baying for the blood of SLAY’s mysterious creator, Emerald/Kiera. In many ways, this basic premise is nothing new, and many a good story has started from a secret that must be kept at all costs. I like that Kiera is actually good at keeping her secret—so often in these stories, it seems like the protagonist tells an ever-increasing number of close friends, swearing them to secrecy, until there’s basically a small village who know her identity. For most of the book, Kiera’s identity is totally unknown, even to SLAY’s sole other employee, Cicada, who lives somewhere in Europe. There are layers to Kiera’s concerns about being outed as well. Beyond the obvious negative attention from media and players that it might bring, Kiera reflects on how her family and friends will variously react to the revelation. Related to this is one of my favourite things about SLAY: its diverse portrayals of Black women and Black feminism. If one of Morris’ goals is to help move beyond the stereotypes of Black women so often seen on screen and page, she succeeds. Kiera, her sister Steph, and her mother are all feminists but in different ways. Kiera sees SLAY as a vehicle for empowerment and exploration of Black identity, yet she fears that Steph, whose feminism is at a stage where everything is about terminology and figuring out the “right” way to express ideas, would condemn SLAY. Their mother wants the best for their daughters and therefore is wary of things like AAVE and how they act and dress: she wants them to be successful Black women, but her idea of success is different from theirs. The dynamic among these women reminds me of Lynn, Jennifer, and Anissa in Black Lightning: three related women, all of whom are strong and smart and feminist, yet who regularly disagree about what they should do or how they should read a situation. I love these portrayals. Orbiting these characters are several white ones, particularly Harper and Wyatt, who act as foils for Morris’ explication of the exhausting experience of being minority Black in a school. I liked that Harper acquires some depth over the course of the book; she goes from being Kiera’s best friend who happens to ask awkward white girl questions to someone who takes the time to learn and finally educate herself instead of asking Kiera to do it for her. Then, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Cicada, Kiera’s partner in the game. We learn a little more about Cicade throughout the course of the book and even get a few chapters that follow her POV, which was as surprising as it was lovely. She’s a little older than Kiera, and the racism that she experiences is different as a result of her location and how she navigates the world. Morris’ choice to present Cicada’s POV and the POV of a few other Black people whose lives intersect with SLAY is interesting, although it seems under-utilized. I was never quite sure when the next non-Kiera chapter would show up, and aside from Cicada we never return to those characters. Finally, let’s talk a little about Kiera’s relationship with her boyfriend, Malcolm. I’m pretty ambivalent about this one’s characterization. On one hand, Morris tries to lay the groundwork throughout the book: his ever-so-slightly controlling tendencies, his overbearing attitude, his hyper-masculine demeanour, and of course, the way that Kiera makes excuses to us about how one day he will open his eyes and actually see the light of feminism. Mmhmm. The signs of an abusive, or at least proto-abusive, relationship are already there, plain to see. Nevertheless, in some ways Malcolm is more of a caricature. We’re told that he’s like this because of his choices of reading material, that it has somehow radicalized him. Um … okay? But you don’t choose these things in a vacuum. Who has Malcolm been talking to who got him into these texts, and who has curated his journey? Moreover, for a guy who supposedly eschews video games because of their detrimental effects on Black people’s chances to succeed in the world, he seems awfully good at video games and hacking in general. And then there’s the eleventh hour heel turn reveal, which I don’t want to spoil, but the fallout from that feels rushed. Indeed, the whole denouement of SLAY is rushed. I stayed up late on a weeknight to finish reading this book, because I hit a point where I realized I could not put it down. That’s a big deal. Now, I’m not saying Morris disappointed me—I do like the ending, and I think the climax itself is so skilfully executed that I genuinely doubted the outcome for a few pages—but there’s an awfully big build up beyond that, as the other shoe drops, only for the echo from that shoe to dissipate too quickly. I want to distinguish between my disappointment over the ending’s pacing (which I felt) versus disappointment over the happy ending (which I did not feel). I suspect that many people are going to read SLAY and think it unrealistic. How can a single 17-year-old girl code a whole VR game from scratch in her bedroom? How can she afford to maintain the game and its servers, and keep her identity secret, for so long? How can SLAY be both an underground phenomenon and this huge game at the same time? How is it that Kiera is just so lucky, towards the end, regarding the various things that go her way? Honestly I don’t have answers and I don’t really care. I’ll suspend my disbelief regarding the complexities of video game programming and the number of coincidences that line up for Kiera, because I see what Morris is getting at with this book. As she makes abundantly clear in her author’s note, her target audience is not white dudes like me: it’s young Black women who are going through life questioning their Blackness and figuring out their identity. She’s writing for them, which is laudable. Sometimes, you just need a win. SLAY provides that without providing false hope; it is anti-racist but does not pretend that racism is not a huge factor in Black peoples’ lives. As far as a plotting and characterization go, it’s not a great novel all the time, no. That’s why I’m not giving it 5 stars. Yet even with its flaws, as a story SLAY still manages to entertain, to educate (in my experience), and hopefully (for Black people) to empower, although that last one isn’t my verdict to render. At the end of the day, though, if we can have half a million books about teenage white boys being Chosen Ones, we can have a handful of books about teenage Black girls being uber-developers. I know which trope I’d rather read more of. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Sep 05, 2019
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Sep 06, 2019
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Sep 05, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0465094503
| 9780465094509
| 3.85
| 183
| May 21, 2019
| May 21, 2019
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liked it
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As previously discussed in my review of
The Hatred of Poetry
, I struggle with reading poetry. So I was tantalized by the title of this book. The p
As previously discussed in my review of
The Hatred of Poetry
, I struggle with reading poetry. So I was tantalized by the title of this book. The previous book was a gift from a fellow teacher friend whose feelings about poetry are a bit less ambivalent than mine. When I learned about Don’t Read Poetry, I thought it would be a good reciprocal gift to her. Stephanie Burt’s thesis is basically that we should avoid seeing poems as part of a monolithic form we call “poetry,” because it’s reductive and far too slippery a concept to really grasp. Rather, she wants us to read poems themselves, and she takes us on a tour of various lenses for reading and understanding a poem. Her point is basically that we seldom mean that we hate all poems when we talk about hating poetry—there are some poems that mean a lot to us, even we don’t read poetry in general. And I definitely agree with that. The six lenses, corresponding to the six chapters of the book, are feelings, characters, forms, difficulty, wisdom, and community. Burt isn’t saying that every poem falls into one of these categories. Instead she suggests that we can use apply these lenses as and when we want to, although certain poems lend themselves better to different lenses. The surface meaning of each approach is fairly obvious, and I won’t provide a more detailed summary. What’s most valuable about this way of laying it out is that Burt can give us examples of specific poems and really isolate what about that poem is worth paying attention to. Indeed, the sheer number of poets and poems mentioned or featured in Don’t Read Poetry is at times overwhelming! Sometimes I wonder if my mild aphantasia contributes to my ambivalence about poetry. I have a lot of trouble visualizing when I read. I can’t picture characters or places in my head; I don’t see action as a cinematic experience like others apparently do. I just read the words and absorb the information as a narrative. Perhaps, then, this explains why poems—which are often vehicles for complex imagery—don’t often work for me. I can recognize and understand the figurative language, but it doesn’t always make that connection in my mind required to really tap into those feelings or that subtext. That being said, one of my personal realizations from reading this book is that there’s definitely more to my reticence than that. Burt discusses, for example, how different forms have come in and out of fashion cyclically over the years, plus new ones that get invented by innovators. And I thought about how maybe my emphasis on afferent reading is another reason I don’t feel connected to poems. Even when I’m reading a novel for entertainment, I’m reading the words so I can get to the story, which I construct in my brain. Style is usually secondary for me, and while I love it when I can luxuriate in someone’s writing, the story is always what I need first. So maybe that’s why poems often stymie me—I’m trying to look for meaning when first I should look at the poem itself as a thing, as a piece of art (some poems at least). This is probably why visual art does very little for me too…. I love that Burt consistently demonstrates why it’s so silly to define poetry in a restrictive way. Although she definitely has her own personal preferences when it comes to poems, she makes it clear that she considers pretty much anything that wants to be called a poem a poem. I appreciate this inclusiveness; it’s an attitude I wish were replicated in more English classes, which often seem to quash the spark of verse love from the souls of students in the same way that the words “Pythagorean theorem” quash the math love. Burt features some of the more familiar “canonical” poets throughout Western history. But she branches out into non-Western writers, and far more contemporary writers, and that makes this book so much more valuable. One question I have after reading this, then, would be how do we really critique poetry? At one point Burt mentions that people who don’t like a poem probably just don’t understand it, that the poem probably “just isn’t for them.” I understand and am sympathetic to this point, to a point. Yet I also think it’s valid to ask how we critique poetry, how we criticize it seriously, how we break it down and determine if a poem that is trying to be serious is in fact facile, or vice versa. None of this is really within the scope of Don’t Read Poetry, but it seems to be related. This book did not suddenly make me love poetry or even want to read more poems. But it definitely gave me a lot to think about. And Burt’s steady, methodical investigation into the mechanics and meaning of poems is competent and compelling, although sometimes dry a little too much for me to take in—this took me a long time to read, from my point of view. Nevertheless, I’d say I’m definitely the target audience: someone who fancies himself knowledgeable, especially in a literary sense, yet who feels like he’s missing out when it comes to understanding poems. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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Sep 05, 2019
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Oct 05, 2019
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Sep 05, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 037575718X
| 9780375757181
| 3.86
| 34,572
| 1878
| Feb 13, 2001
|
really liked it
|
I'm not sure if I reviewed the wrong edition last time, or if I bought another copy of The Return of the Native a while back having forgotten I read i
I'm not sure if I reviewed the wrong edition last time, or if I bought another copy of The Return of the Native a while back having forgotten I read it 3 years ago (my bookshelves are still in the disarray of nonexistence for now, so I'm not sure I know where all my Hardys are). Anyway, I’ll direct you to my review from 2016. It’s remarkable how similar my reactions were during this second reading. I immediately noticed Hardy’s obsessive descriptions of the heath. I once again thought the plot took too long to get going. I’m actually very proud of the first review—it took a book I didn’t really “get” and helped me like it better for the thinking about it. Even though this isn’t one of my favourite Hardy novels, it was still nice to spend some time back in Wessex. I was having a downer weekend, and I enjoy reading Hardy when I’m blue, because no matter how bad off I am, his characters have got it worse. ...more |
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1
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Aug 31, 2019
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Sep 05, 2019
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Aug 31, 2019
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Paperback
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| 148752269X
| 9781487522698
| 4.40
| 10
| 2019
| May 31, 2019
|
really liked it
|
I live in Thunder Bay, the place of the eponymous sleeping giant, Nanabozho, and a location steeped in anti-Indigenous racism and an ongoing legacy of
I live in Thunder Bay, the place of the eponymous sleeping giant, Nanabozho, and a location steeped in anti-Indigenous racism and an ongoing legacy of colonial oppression. So, despite being a white settler and thus the privileged party here, I do have to deal with these issues—and like other settler Canadians, I’ve got a tremendous responsibility here. I picked up The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation because I was intrigued by David B. MacDonald’s promise to engage with the legacy of residential schools from the perspective of legalist interpretations of genocide. Sure enough, the book remains focused and on-topic, encouraging the reader to think critically about our concept of the Canadian state and Canada’s identity. The Sleeping Giant Awakens benefits from being hot off the presses from my perspective as a reader in August 2019. It went to print recently enough to mention the resignation of Jody Wilson-Raybould over the SNC Lavalin affair, for example. So it is incredibly up to date in its discussion of all of these issues, which is important, because while it’s true that successive governments have continued the legacy of colonialist, paternalist attitudes towards Indigenous peoples, it’s worth examining the most recent such examples. Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party came to power making big promises regarding a nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations and … that has not come to fruition. Not even close. But that’s how the cycle goes: governments make positive, encouraging noises, then walk back those promises, because at the end of the day the rest of Canada is happy enough to ignore these issues. MacDonald does not mince words here, which I respect. He is highly critical of the Government of Canada (past and present), particularly in its highly selective and creative enshrining of the United Nations Genocide Convention into the Criminal Code of Canada. Similarly, he wastes no time excusing or apologizing for the government’s tendency to fight in court, with taxpayer dollars, things like human rights tribunal rulings. MacDonald is pretty careful in how he approaches these issues and his tone, however. He’s upfront about his background as a racialized settler Canadian and how that means that much of this isn’t his story to tell. Instead of communicating his feelings about these issues, he quotes people who are much closer to this: Survivors, their family members, TRC commissioners, etc. MacDonald argues that while we settlers are not disinterested parties, we are the parties who should do the learning. He also engages directly with several other writers, often critiquing their positions. For example, he criticizes J.R. Miller for rejecting the label of genocide in his book on residential schools, which I read back when it came out. As someone not embedded in this academic field of study a lot of this intertextuality goes above my head; I’m not part of this fray. It’s very interesting, though, to see different thinkers engage with one another in this way. I don’t really know enough about this subject to analyze whether MacDonald’s critiques are valid. I guess what I’m trying to get out of this book, and others like it, is a much more nuanced understanding of what’s going on right now in our society. That is to say, I’m past the basics. I understand what residential schools were. I accept that they are part of a much larger colonial framework of assimilation and, yes, genocide. But if we take all of these as givens, where do we go from there? The Sleeping Giant Awakens is interesting because it grounds a lot of this thinking in very concrete, very specific legal documents and precedents. Nevertheless, don’t let that scare you away: the book remains accessible to us laypeople. At the end of the day, whatever position you personally take on the definition of genocide and its applicability here, I’d say this book is worth reading for the level of detail alone. Yes, this book is about genocide and residential schools. It’s about identifying how we can achieve “conciliation” (as opposed to reconciliation, and yes, I feel like we’re now playing buzzword musical chairs, but whatever)—but I think it goes deeper than that. Ultimately, The Sleeping Giant Awakens challenges the complacent cultural narrative we have of Canada as a “good” country for some vague, white-bread definition of good. This is what you see when the Prime Minister pats himself on the back for his latest announcement. When our textbooks laud our international peace-keeping efforts but don’t mention our arms deals to places like Saudi Arabia. When we pretend we don’t have a history of colonialism despite the ongoing oppression of Indigenous peoples here. It’s not enough to be “woke” in the sense of knowing what the issues are. If you acknowledge these issues are real, that this oppression is really causing harm, then it follows that you should be considering what actions must be taken to change things. We can disagree on what those actions should be, but if we aren’t considering action at all … we’re still asleep. So for those reasons, The Sleeping Giant Awakens was pretty good. Honestly, I’m not sure it’s going to be as informative or eye-opening for people who are only starting their learning when it comes to residential schools. MacDonald intentionally avoids going too deep into the details of the system. He hits the highlights, talks about Duncan Campbell Scott, etc. But if this is your starting point, you might be disappointed by his focus more on the aftermath and the behind-the-scenes view of the TRC’s decision to use the phrase “cultural genocide.” This book does not stand alone as an all-encompassing examination of residential schools (nor do I think for a moment it intends to). If, however, like me you’re looking to get deeper and to challenge your thinking some more, you’d do well to read this. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 24, 2019
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Aug 30, 2019
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Aug 24, 2019
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0765342286
| 9780765342287
| 3.91
| 13,346
| Aug 1992
| Feb 18, 2002
|
it was ok
|
I’ve had Jumper on my computer for a while now and never got around to reading it, not sure why. Sometimes with books like that, I feel extra trepidat
I’ve had Jumper on my computer for a while now and never got around to reading it, not sure why. Sometimes with books like that, I feel extra trepidation going into it. Why haven’t I read it yet? Is it because I can sense it’s bad? What if I don’t like this book?? I’m on vacation; I want my reading to be good!! Fortunately, although by no means a home run—by dint of Gould’s somewhat blah narration—Jumper managed to captivate me and keep me reading right until the end, and I’m almost tempted to pick up the sequel now. Trigger warnings in this book for scenes of child abuse and domestic violence, child sexual abuse, terrorist attacks (particularly hijackings), alcoholism, and discussions about parental abandonment/neglect. David Rice first discovers he can teleport while being beaten, again, by his alcoholic and abusive father. David quickly becomes more adept at jumping, as he calls it, and runs away from home, ending up in New York City at seventeen with no diploma, no ID, and no money. So he robs a bank! Set up with riches, David quickly discovers life isn’t that simple. He falls in love, but being an autodidact with a lot of money isn’t enough. It doesn’t fill the hole left in his heart, the one asking him to search for his mother, who left him and his dad when he was younger. And then, of course, government agents get involved…. I do have to give Gould credit: teleportation is a fun superpower to have, but it would be so easy to screw it up as a plot device. Instead, Gould gets creative and fairly practical with the ways in which David exploits his ability. There are sensible limitations on it, but Gould also considers how the ability would shape David’s understanding of how he should navigate the world. For example, at one point David starts constructing a little hideaway house in a remote part of the Texas desert. For a long time, he doesn’t bother building a bathroom (and thus figuring out all the attendant plumbing requirements); when he needs to go, he just jumps somewhere else with a bathroom. It makes sense. Similarly, Gould writes combat/fighting that David engages in with an eye for how teleportation would help (or hinder) the experience. I also really liked how Gould doesn’t shy away from David’s mental health considering his abuse and abandonment issues. More than once, Millie suggests that David should see a therapist—this is a good idea. And it’s clear from their interactions, as well as a lot of David’s other dialogue, that he is aware of his issues. He wonders if he has an inclination towards alcoholism like his father. He realizes when he isn’t “being rational” about something. Although running away and living independent forces him to grow up and act more adult than his years might credit, deep down he is, in many ways, a scared kid. My major critique, though, is about David’s narrative voice. It’s just so flat. I spent the first half of the book wondering if Gould was intentionally trying to make David come off as psychopathic, because it almost felt like he was faking his feelings. He’s so cold and logical, the way he describes all his decisions. Eventually he exhibits a lot more emotion—but even that’s portrayed in a flat way that makes it feel hyperbolic or somewhat disturbed. And it took me a while to decide whether that was intentional or not. I’ve landed on the side of it being fairly unintentional, of it being Gould’s style and skill (or lack thereof) in establishing a narrative voice. It’s a shame, of course, because the entirety of the novel gets filtered through David’s head, and so I can understand why someone might toss this book just because of this issue. I also don’t know why David and Millie are together beyond reasons of plot. What, exactly, do they have in common? David tells us he loves her and is basically obsessed with her (Millie is much better at boundaries). But after that initial meet-cute at the musical, we don’t actually observe them sharing many common interests. Millie is a university student and David is a somewhat younger high school dropout who, yes, has educated himself fairly decently, but still … what exactly does his do with his free time, other than read and practise his jumping? Gould is great at describing how David overcomes the practical challenges of living on his own and how jumping factors into this. He is not so good at describing David’s emotional journey, despite this being such a core motif in the book. Gould aims for a powerful theme—something along the lines of how having more power doesn’t necessarily let us get what we want, because sometimes the things we really want, like the return of a loved one, are unattainable no matter how much power you have. Yet the execution feels bumpy and inconsistent. Jumper is a book where the concept is so fascinating you almost wish you could distill that and only that, but no, you have to wrap it up in a plot and characters so you can have a story. And the story itself is only so-so, hampered by a writing style that just does very little for me. Lest that sound too harsh, consider that I still enjoyed reading this over two days while on vacation in Montreal, when I could very easily have abandoned it to something else on my Kindle. So there’s that. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 18, 2019
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Aug 19, 2019
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Aug 19, 2019
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Paperback
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| 1590623827
| 9781590623824
| 4.15
| 4,037
| Aug 1989
| 2009
|
liked it
|
Labyrinth is a short Miles Vorkosigan adventure that starts as a simple covert pick-up and ends with a new recruit for Miles’ Dendarii mercenaries, no
Labyrinth is a short Miles Vorkosigan adventure that starts as a simple covert pick-up and ends with a new recruit for Miles’ Dendarii mercenaries, not to mention some romance for one of the side characters. There’s a lot to like about this novella: it’s paced quite well for its length, and although very science-fictional, it’s definitely more special-ops thriller than anything else. Labyrinth shows why Miles is the hero of this series. He’s capable of seeing the potential in others, and of questioning his prejudices and pre-conceptions, in a way that some others aren’t—particularly those more traditional nobles on Barrayar. When Miles meets Taura, he’s taken aback by the revelation that there is more intelligence to her than meets the eye. He was set up to expect a ravening beast of a soldier and instead meets a sensitive young woman. It’s these kinds of twists that make Bujold a force to be reckoned with in this genre. She uses science fiction so effectively to help us explore the liminal spaces of humanity, whether it’s one’s genital configuration and gender identity; one’s limbs, bone structure, etc.; or one’s overall genetic profile and destiny as a short-lived soldier science experiment. There’s very little, beyond the obvious technology, to this story that would be out of place in a contemporary thriller. The plot is simple and straightforward despite the twists and turns that Bujold loves to serve up. Pick-up and leave turns into smash-and-grab turns into ransom-and-escape, and it’s fun watching plans fall apart, backup plans fall apart, etc. Miles is one of those protagonists always poised on the brink of being a Mary Sue, given how everything seems to go his way, but there’s always those little setbacks—usually as a result of his own hubris—that keep the game interesting. That is, we know Miles will emerge victorious eventually, but he’s probably going to be in mortal peril quite a few times before it’s all over. Another fun, brief journey back into the Vorkosigan universe. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 19, 2019
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Aug 19, 2019
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Aug 19, 2019
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ebook
| ||||||||||||||
| 1474933610
| 9781474933612
| 4.02
| 3,079
| 2018
| Aug 09, 2018
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really liked it
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Welcome one and all to another instalment of Fanboying About Holly Bourne. I read Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes? mostly on a flight to Montreal t
Welcome one and all to another instalment of Fanboying About Holly Bourne. I read Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes? mostly on a flight to Montreal to visit my friend Rebecca, on whom I foist all the Holly Bourne books after I read them, finishing the book at her place while I waited for her to come home from work. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the spartan description on the back—but having read quite a lot of Bourne’s books by now, I knew I could expect something good. I knew I could expect some smiles and tears and maybe a little laughter, and Bourne delivers all of these things. Trigger warnings for this book include discussions of suicide/suicide ideation, sexual abuse, OCD related to smells, and anxiety, as well as depictions of bipolar disorder and hypomania, and scenes of psychiatric treatment and therapy in and out of hospital settings. Olive has just finished Year 11, and she’s going through rather a lot, mental-health-wise. She can’t stand the noise around her, and sometimes it seems like everything is just too much. We quickly learn, though, that Olive also doesn’t want to know what mental health professionals have diagnosed her with—she doesn’t want to be labelled. So she agrees to go to a pilot program for a new youth treatment camp. There, she will participate in completely optional classes and therapy sessions. Will a summer away help Olive feel more normal? What even is normal, and is that even what we should want? These are big questions for anyone to wrestle with. What I love about Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes?, as I love about all of Bourne’s writing, is its deep and abiding honesty. This book neither sugarcoats nor exaggerates mental illness, its effects, its consequences. Near the beginning of the book, as Olive navigates another episode of a fragile mental state and finally emerges from it, she contemplates how horrible she feels she was to her parents. Some of that is, of course, blaming herself for something that isn’t her fault—but I like that Bourne takes the time to explore the nuances, the edges and vertices of the facets of the mental health journey. It can be simultaneously true that it’s not your fault, and that you don’t need to apologize, yet also that you were being somewhat horrible to the people who care for you. And that can be awkward and uncomfortable. I also really enjoyed Olive’s parents here. I love that Bourne portrays them as very supportive, well-meaning people who do almost everything they can for their daughter. In doing so, she demonstrates that sometimes even being loved very much by the people around us doesn’t preclude mental health issues. I do think Olive’s dad sending her that tell-all email was a bit of a dick move on his part, and I wish the book had dealt with that more thoroughly—we never really see the results of that, never really get to hear Olive and her dad talk about it in detail. Nevertheless, overall I like the dynamic she has with her parents. They are clearly trying to help her, even if they don’t always get it right, and sometimes it’s enough and sometimes it isn’t. Similarly, with Olive’s peers at the therapy camp, Bourne reminds us that everyone experiences mental illness—and reacts to it—in different ways, and that those reactions can spill over and be negative towards others who share mental health issues. The initial conflict between Olive and Hannah, for example, captures how people can be very sensitive about how you bring up or discuss their mental health. Bourne artfully demonstrates that mental illness isn’t an excuse for acting like an asshole, yet at the same time, it’s also important for us to try to understand why others might lash out or be extra-sensitive about a topic. The fact that Olive isn’t 100% in the right all the time is very clearly on display throughout this book. Other characters, both her peers and the adults around her, constantly question her in healthy ways. Sometimes it’s difficult to parse, because everything is from Olive’s point of view, but I read her treatment by mental health professionals not so much as overbearing as well-meaning but perhaps not as helpful as they could be. That is to say, I didn’t interpret this as Bourne trying to depict a “bad” experience with psychiatry and therapy so much as showing that psychiatrists and therapists are only human, and they won’t always say or do the right things for every patient. The last half of this book is like a slow tumble downhill for Olive. Even as she hatches her brilliant and fun “Kindness is Contagious” campaign, thanks to Bourne’s writing, you almost feel your stomach twisting into knots as you watch Olive become more and more frantic, euphoric, and less focused on her own journey. This idea, this mission, becomes everything to her, to the point of ignoring everyone else’s expressions of concern. It must not be easy to pull this off, to show a character’s gradual decline from their point of view in a way that is both realistic and also still coherent enough for a reader to follow. Bourne manages it, though, right until the classic Holly Bourne climax when the character hits rock bottom and needs a hard reset. Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes? reminds me a lot of Am I Normal Yet? . Bourne is a master at talking about mental health for sure. I love how compassionate, how tender this book is in so many ways. I do wish that we had learned more about Olive’s life before coming to this camp—we only barely meet her best friend, Ally, and only hear superficially about stresses she experienced in the past school year. I understand the focus is on her experience at camp, yet I don’t really feel like I got to know Olive as well as I could. Still, as far as mental health in YA goes, it’s hard to beat Bourne, and this book just further demonstrates why. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 16, 2019
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Aug 16, 2019
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Aug 16, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0373212534
| 9780373212538
| 3.64
| 1,364
| Jun 05, 2018
| Jun 05, 2018
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** Arrrgh, I hate writing reviews like this because I never know what tone to take. It would be so much simpler if I just hated or just
**spoiler alert** Arrrgh, I hate writing reviews like this because I never know what tone to take. It would be so much simpler if I just hated or just loved Fat Girl on a Plane, but the complicated truth is that I really liked this book and I think it’s really problematic. I loved it for the fashion but not so much the fat rep, which is never a phrase I thought I would utter. In Cookie Vonn, Kelly deVos gives us a very endearing protagonist in the sense that I appreciate the passion evident in her voice. She actually made me, a guy who just wears T-shirts and shorts, care a bit about the elegance and intricacy of designer clothes. For that reason, I really enjoyed the story. The author’s note at the beginning of the book definitely had me hesitating. It is very defensive: “This is not a Cinderella weight loss story.” Except that the book is being told across two timelines, one labelled “FAT” and the other labelled “Skinny,” and major plot points revolve around Cookie embracing a Weight Watcher clone called NutriNation and her blog being sponsored by the spin-off NutriMin Water. And even if the end of the book involves a small epiphany wherein Cookie realizes she can quit NutriNation and “become a giver of zero fucks” and eat whatever the hell she wants … the whole book is still about Cookie’s weight loss journey. So I went into the book with trepidation, because even if Cookie ends up in a good place, the framing of her story seems problematic nevertheless. It is, at the very least, reductive and overly simplistic in how it conceptualizes fatness and its relationship with weight loss. I can only imagine that this book would be hella triggering, but I don’t really think I’m qualified to say what those triggers would be. Cookie’s characterization really captured me, and I’ll talk more about that towards the end of the review. But the rest of the characterization fell flat. Most of the characters seem to pop up when and as they are needed, and it isn’t so much that they are stereotypes as they are remarkably one-note. Gareth never shows any glimmer of self-awareness in terms of the creepy, predatory nature of his relationship with Cookie. Same with Mom, who literally only exists to be a terrible parent to Cookie. Grandma seems to exist to tell Cookie that she should just “take the high road,” which is weird, because in my mind grandmas are always the ones who are going to help you plot revenge when you’re wronged. And Keenes is a walking cliché to whom deVos attempts to give depth in the same way Wiley Coyote sticks a black oval on the side of a cliff like a fake tunnel. Tommy … now Tommy is an interesting character. He is supposedly Cookie’s best friend, although to be honest we don’t see much of that in this book. Aside from the emergency $600 loan (which—she did she ever pay him back?), Tommy and Cookie seem to be rocky almost from page one. And while I in no way condone Tommy’s actions—he’s pretty much a terrible person—it’s not like Cookie treated him very well at any point either, and she never really seems to own up to this. Not for a single moment does she stop and think about asking him why he feels like he should be dating Keenes. Here’s the thing: I really did like Cookie’s conflict with Tommy and Keenes because, buried within a bunch of the problematic fat-shaming and acemisic/aromisic stuff, there is a nice kernel here. I do like it when a story sets us up for a romance between two characters and then averts the typical reconciliation. I’m not a fan of Grandma’s one-note “take the high road” moralizing, but I did like her advice to Cookie that sometimes you shouldn’t get involved in another person’s romantic decisions. Sometimes you need to accept that someone is making choices you wouldn’t make. Likewise, Father Tim’s line about how you can love people and still realize you shouldn’t have them around you is pretty poignant. See, this is what gets me about Fat Girl on a Plane: there’s a lot here I could unpack and criticize, yet there are a few parts that are a sublime, and overall, I liked the book. A lot of this has to do with Cookie herself, and the rest of it has to do with deVos’ portrayal of fashion. I am somewhat stereotypical in the sense that as a fairly nerdy male, I’ve largely eschewed much awareness or understanding of fashion. This is something I’m open to changing, albeit in a somewhat passive way, which is why every so often I’m happy to dive into a book about fashion and try to take it seriously. Now, this book doesn’t actually show us much of the fashion “world” per se; I’m sure there are much better books that accomplish that. What deVos does show me, however, is the perspective of how someone would get so involved in this aspect of the fashion world—designing the clothes. Cookie basically lives and breathes clothes design, and it’s really fascinating to me. As someone who knits yet who has no love for sewing or really anything that involves measuring too carefully, I’m far too lazy to do anything truly productive craft-wise. So I have a lot of admiration for people—even fictional ones—who can sit at a sewing machine and table for hours at a time and produce perfectly tailored garments. If nothing else, this book has helped me better understand why some people obsess so much over the fit of a garment, over seams and darts and all that jazz. Why some people spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on clothing. Cookie’s descriptions, both of the clothes themselves and also the process and passion that goes into designing and manufacturing them, have enriched my perspective on fashion. So that’s something. There’s also some commentary on fast fashion and the portrayal of the fashion design world as driven by reaction/sales that I found interesting. We often get caught up in the “diva” side of fashion, with popular media telling stories of fashion designers like they are gods. But Gareth isn’t a god so much as a victim of his own success (and a bit of a predator). There’s probably a lot we could unpack about the toxic relationship between Gareth and Cookie. On one hand, I really liked that deVos downplays how Cookie starts having sex with him—not because I condone it, but because I think too many YA/NA novels treat their protagonist’s start of sexual activity like it’s The Biggest Deal Ever. I mean, it can be. But it doesn’t have to be, so it’s nice to have that variety. Furthermore, from my limited perspective, I like that Cookie is fairly self-aware of what’s happening, even if she doesn’t push back initially. Cookie isn’t naive enough to believe all the hype, yet deVos does a good job showing how easy it is for Cookie to get caught up in the hype hurricane around her. Before I wrap up, a few other critiques I couldn’t fit elsewhere into the review. First, no queer people?? In a book about fashion?? (I know, I know, now who’s stereotyping—but still.) Second, there’s something about the way technology is/isn’t used in this story that doesn’t quite work for me. For a contemporary story about a 19-year-old, there’s this … absence of tech. Cookie is so technophobic she needs to bribe a computer nerd to set up a WordPress blog for her. This isn’t the 1990s when computer class and dial-up modems were a thing; I would expect even the least nerdy teenager to be able to create a blog, even if they have to Google it first. Finally, I wish we’d seen some pushback (or at least addressed) about the fact that while Cookie was once “plus size” she is now a thinner person running a blog aimed at a plus-sized audience, and that seems disingenuous. Fat Girl on a Plane is fierce and frustrating because I want it to be only fabulous so I can just praise it unstintingly, but it’s not. It’s a laser-focused book about fashion and fatness, yet it is also oh-so-flawed. So why do I like it? Probably for the same reason we like Marvel movies despite them not always being the most socially responsible fare: the formula hits the right buttons in our brains. Problematic elements aside, this is a well-constructed story with a fascinating protagonist and a satisfying pay-off at the end of the narrative. DeVos knows how to write a good novel, and I enjoyed lying on my deck over two afternoons reading this. I’m uncomfortable because I don’t know how much of my enjoyment of this book is me still needing to unlearn and challenge my privileged understanding of this world versus how much is just me … liking the book. I kind of feel similar to how I felt about Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe , only in reverse—in that case, I didn’t like the book as much as I thought I should given its reception. I’ve read many other reviews—positive and negative—of this book trying to see if these would help me unpack my discomfort. If anything, Fat Girl on a Plane really demonstrates that checking privilege isn’t the same as negating it. My experience informs my views of all stories, and sometimes that makes those views unreliable. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 13, 2019
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Aug 14, 2019
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Aug 15, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0553293362
| 9780553293364
| 4.25
| 149,346
| 1953
| Jun 2004
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liked it
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Okay, so instead of five years passing between re-read books, I’ve only let a year elapse. That’s not too bad on the Ben Scale of Book Series Completi
Okay, so instead of five years passing between re-read books, I’ve only let a year elapse. That’s not too bad on the Ben Scale of Book Series Completion! My reception of Second Foundation is much more positive than my review of Foundation and Empire, in which I skewered Isaac Asimov’s writing style. Honestly, I found this book to be far more readable and even enjoyable at points! As with the previous book, this one is essentially two novellas. The first takes place five years after “The Mule” from Foundation and Empire. The Mule has consolidated his hold on the volume of space he wrested from the Foundation’s control, but he has delayed any further expansion. Instead he’s searching for the mysterious, shadowy Second Foundation. When the story starts, he is about to dispatch his two Top Men™ on one more expedition to locate the Second Foundation, who the Mule believes to be mentally manipulating his own manipulated men (try saying that 5 times fast) but weak in physical defences. What follows is a bit of a romp in which Asimov is extremely parsimonious with characters. Seriously, you could be forgiven for thinking he has some kind of novelist character budget going on here, because it’s almost as if Pritcher and Channis are alone on that big ol’ ship of theirs. The novel is basically a three-hander play acted out between Pritcher, Channis, and the Mule, with a few supporting characters in the form of subordinates and the Speaker characters from the Second Foundation (which, shockingly, does exist). Both novellas share in common the theme that the Second Foundation survives through subterfuge regarding its location. They don’t just exist in a secret location; they actively obfuscate and misdirect anyone searching for them. Asimov quite enjoys playing around with what “at the other end of the galaxy” could mean in various literal and metaphorical senses. But there is a bigger issue here, one which is addressed more explicitly and satisfactorily in the second novella. Basically, the Second Foundation’s leaders have clued into the fact that as long as people are aware of a Second Foundation, Seldon’s grand Plan is in serious jeopardy, Mule or no Mule. The Second Foundation is both bogeyman and guardian angel: “oh, no worries, the Second Foundation will step in and save us!” This faith distorts the actions of people on a grand enough scale to make the Plan’s probabilities and calculations useless. So the events of Second Foundation are part of an attempt by the eponymous organization to remove itself from the equation, so to speak. Of course, this all feeds into the overall series theme in which Asimov questions whether or not we could ever really control the fate of our species to such an extensive degree. I think it’s interesting that science fiction has examined this from so many angles. Foundation imagines a true beneficent conspiracy to manipulate humanity on the species level. Others take a more anarchic approach, imagining it virtually impossible that humanity won’t fragment off into clades and groups and sub-species. It seems like this latter perspective has gained in popularity since Asimov was writing in the middle of the twentieth century. Certainly, the future our species—regardless of whether it involves a galaxy-spanning stagnant empire—seems far less clear-cut than Foundation proposes. The best way to appreciate these books, I think, is to bring some New Historicism into the mix and look at the context in which they were written. The first couple of books make a big deal of atomic weapons, which were so new on the scene at the time Asimov was writing. Now we turn to an emphasis on the human mind, then (and only slightly less so now) a great mystery. Asimov really tries to capture the wonder involved in being able to record brain waves and use them to get a glimpse literally into how people might be thinking. In this respect, Second Foundation is definitely a great work of science fiction for the sheer level of imagination and questioning it introduces. Characters? Plot? Story? Eh. As with my previous reviews, these rereads are definitely not endearing me any more to Asimov as a writer. Though he includes a precocious 14-year-old girl as a protagonist this time out. So … yay? Anyway, Second Foundation allayed the minor dread I felt when I went into it, having re-read my review of Foundation and Empire. It’s a good pair of novellas and was a delightful way to spend an afternoon on my deck. My reviews of the Foundation series: ← Foundation and Empire | Foundation's Edge → [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 11, 2019
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Aug 12, 2019
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Aug 12, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0380978938
| 9780380978939
| 4.03
| 26,782
| 2003
| Jul 22, 2003
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liked it
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Longtime readers of my reviews will recall I have a tumultuous relationship with Dan Simmons’ books. I didn’t like
The Terror
or
Drood
, but I
Longtime readers of my reviews will recall I have a tumultuous relationship with Dan Simmons’ books. I didn’t like
The Terror
or
Drood
, but I warmed up to Simmons through his epic Hyperion Cantos. In my review for the final book of that cycle,
The Rise of Endymion
, I commented, “Even if you don’t like the series, it is hard to dispute the scope and style of it.” Simmons lives up to this judgment with Ilium, which does for the Iliad what Hyperion did for Keats and Romantic poetry (although I’d argue it goes further than that). I doubt I’ll ever refer to Simmons as one of my favourite authors, or even as one of my favourite SF authors. Yet I have no doubt he is actually a great SF author, one of the greats of our age, even if he isn’t one of my favourites. Let’s dive into Ilium and see why. Summarizing Ilium is not an easy task, but I’ll do my best. It’s a couple of thousand years into the future. Humanity experienced a posthumanist singularity, including an event vaguely alluded to as “the rubicon,” and mastered nanotechnology and quantum tunnelling/quantum teleportation. Now, beings claiming to be the Greek gods inhabit a terraformed Mars and have recreated the Iliad in the flesh. They’ve also recreated Thomas Hockenberry, a twenty-first–century scholar of the Iliad, essentially to provide commentary on them? But Hockenberry gets pushed into a situation where he has to go off-book, and things soon prove … revolutionary. Meanwhile, some moravecs (self-evolving AI robots descended from robots sent out by humans) from the moons of Jupiter have arrived on Mars to investigate all this untoward quantum activity. Meanwhile meanwhile, on Earth, some slightly-not-baseline humans are living a peaceful yet empty existence devoid of culture or true learning/introspection, until of course, someone jolts them out of it. The result? By the end of the book, all hell has broken loose of course! Look, the actual plot of this book is unimportant. Seriously, the plot is one of the least interesting parts of the book, and I’m going to mostly ignore it. I want to talk about what Simmons is doing with regards to the intersection of classical literature and science fiction and why it’s so goddamned brilliant, and then I will slam him for some dirty male gazey bits. Read on! For the record, I did read the Iliad (Fagles), but didn’t review it because it was … a difficult book. It’s really not a great book for reading silently to oneself in translation. It is meant to be declaimed, in ancient Greek, but that is not a skill I have. Although debates over its historicity and the extent to which it is an oral tradition abound, one thing is clear: the Iliad is, like so many epic poems from antiquity, a complex work that has been altered by each of the cultures who have translated it, studied it, and reinterpreted it through their own biased lenses. Also note that you don’t need to have read the Iliad to follow Ilium. Ilium is, fundamentally, a story about literacy. Every relationship, every plot development, every conflict, is a facet of Simmons examining the meaning of literacy in various human societies, the role of literacy and storytelling, and the ways in which our technology might influence those two things. I have often criticized the posthumanist stories I’ve read of late because of the tendency for the technology to be so advanced it’s basically magic. Simmons lampshades this and employs posthumanist SF to good effect by just leaning into the whole magic angle. Yes, at face value, the idea of recreating the Iliad in “real life” is absurd and impossible—but if you arrange the tech tree of our evolution just so, it becomes just incredibly improbable (and as the book explores, probability is a key underlying element of the story—not that that’s important, as I said). The Greek gods of this story are incredibly powerful, yes—but they are also illiterate. In a society where technology has progressed to the point that you can alter your form at will, communicate information through nanotechnology … what good is writing anymore? Savi makes a remark at one point about the pre-literate meeting the post-literate when Odysseus meets Harman and Daeman, and it’s a very telling statement. Odysseus and the other Greeks represent humanity prior to the dominance of the written word. Simmons presents them as emphasizing action and embodiment over contemplation. Contrast this with Mahnmut and Orphu, whose human-like intellectual existences within their very non-humanoid bodies revolve around contemplation of Shakespeare and Proust, respectively. There is an irony that the only literate beings in this story are an anachronistic professor and robots from Jupiter’s moons! However, the moravecs have more in common with Harman et al than you might think—both have a dearth of lived experiences when it comes to the struggles of the human condition that we consider de rigeur. The moravecs, by dint of their access to the sum total of human literature, are more aware of the human condition. But as Mahnmut discovers throughout this story, he has led a very sheltered life and has not paid attention to much beyond his myopic niche interests. Everything in Ilium is wrapped in literary texts—not subtext but actually part of the text. The antagonists, from the Greek gods to Prospero and Caliban and the mysterious Setebos, are all allusions to famous literary characters. Beyond that though, the textual references—the passages of Shakespeare dissected, the interrogation of characters like Falstaff—create the impression of a conversation between these authors and the characters of Ilium. Even Hockenberry marvels at his own role as a kind of ersatz intervener in a drama that was conceived by Homer and is now being re-staged by the enigmatic Zeus: he goes from observer to participant, driving events further away from the text of the Iliad. This makes him uncomfortable not just for the personal risk he accrues as a result but for the fact that it shifts his understanding of the people around him from characters in a farcical recreation of a tragedy to living, breathing humans whose autonomy and agency he must respect rather than ignore or co-opt. This is reinforced numerous times when he underestimates the guile or commitment of the Greeks and Trojans, particularly Helen. As Mahnmut and Orphu debate the meanings of life explored by their literary crushes and Savi opens the eyes of her new friends to the ideas they never knew they were missing, Simmons invites us all to consider the different options with regards to literacy. Those of you who are able to read this, like me, take our literacy for granted to an extent—I don’t mean to imply that none of you struggled for this. Some of you might have had to struggle to learn to read, or struggled to get access to education in the first place. But we take it for granted that our species, our societies, are literate. Literacy is a technology, not a biological certainty. As Simmons demonstrates here, literacy is one way to add depth to a culture—but it is not the only way, and it introduces its own complications and dead-ends as well. Whether or not our own technology takes us as far as the posthumans of Ilium get, it behoves us to consider how that technology alters our relationship with literacy. It’s already happening right now. As a teacher, I often ponder how my students (some of whom, because I teach adults in high school, are older than me) look at reading and writing differently because they have cell phones and the Internet. As a millennial, I grew up online. I am, in some ways, more comfortable reading and writing than I am speaking. My younger students, while even more attached to their devices than I am, are not necessarily more literate as a result—because the way we negotiate the digital spaces we’ve created has changed. While that sounds curmudgeonly, it’s more observation than complaint or criticism. It can’t really be either of those until we have a deeper, wider conversation about what’s happening—we need to stop saying “kids can’t read” or “kids don’t read” and instead check our assumptions about why we expect kids to read the same way we read. After all, we didn’t always read the way we do now. Of course, the complex conversation happening within Ilium would be improved if it didn’t centre 2 dead white guys and a dead Greek poet to whom we attribute the Iliad. Simmons’ emphasis on the Western tradition of literature is an unfortunate limitation that ignores the rich history of both literate and oral traditions in countless other cultures around the world. On top of that, I wish I could praise this book wholeheartedly, but I almost put it down only a couple of pages in, when Simmons has Daeman meditate all about the hot nude body of the woman he’s trying to seduce. Ew. And then there’s Hockenberry. It should have been redemptive, this flabby middle-aged white guy from our time running around the Age of Heroes and basically being unremarkable … but as much as I admire Simmons for undermining Hockenberry’s brief hero moments via the machinations of Helen, Andromache, and to a lesser extent Hector and Achilles … I can’t get behind Hockenberry’s utter male gaze and objectification of the goddesses and women he meets. The whole scene where he just goes and poses as Paris so he can have sex with Helen? Hello rapey and gratuitous and ew. So … yeah. Ilium as a work of literature has vast chasms of thought-provoking ideas as deep as Olympus Mons is tall. I was enchanted by the way Simmons teases out the various contradictions around literacy. Simmons is a huge literary nerd and a talented SF author, and I love that combination. But I can’t praise that this book without calling out the intensely uncomfortable male gazey moments that are, unfortunately, all-too-common in books written by otherwise intelligent white guys. Seriously, do better. Is this book for you? I don’t know! It’s big and convoluted and sprawling but oddly satisfying if you decide you want to put up with the lengthy digressions, the problematic stuff I noted, and the frustrating tendency to digress at length (as mentioned) but never actually reveal the really interesting stuff (what are the voynix? Who is Setebos?). I guess that’s what sequels are for. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 09, 2019
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Dec 11, 2019
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Aug 11, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 1984817205
| 9781984817204
| 3.86
| 1,564
| Mar 05, 2019
| Mar 05, 2019
|
it was ok
|
I grabbed this book off my library’s new books shelf, and I’m glad I did. I’m happy to live in an era where we can have a blurb on the cover of a book
I grabbed this book off my library’s new books shelf, and I’m glad I did. I’m happy to live in an era where we can have a blurb on the cover of a book that says, “#MeToo and #Resistance through the lens of epic fantasy.” Count me in! The Women’s War posits a world where men control the direction of women’s lives and a woman’s worth is largely determined by the children she has or could bear—wait, sorry, that’s our world. In this fantasy world it’s … oh, is it the same? Oh snap. Except in this case, there’s magic, and at the start of the book a conspiracy of three women aim to smash the patriarchy by working a reproductive rights spell: that’s right, women (well, people with uteruses, I’m guessing, but this book doesn’t seem to acknowledge that trans or even queer people in general are a thing) will only conceive if they truly want to conceive—and that doesn’t mean under duress. Also, there’s a bunch of ancillary effects that change how some women can do magic, etc. Glass teases the actual spell for the first few chapters and keeps us guessing, which definitely helps you get into the book. I will confess to being underwhelmed by the actual “Curse” as it becomes so named. My first reaction was, “I feel like this could really easily backfire,” i.e., women could now be punished for failing to conceive. I worried that this was a surface solution to a much deeper issue. Fortunately, Glass anticipates this objection, and indeed, the Curse doesn’t magically improve life for women—it turns out it will take a lot more to smash the patriarchy than that. If anything, The Women’s War is all about how small, ongoing acts of resistance matter just as much, if not more, than grand, dramatic gestures. The three women who kick off the Curse give their lives, which is huge—but they don’t have to live in the world they create. Alys, Shelvon, Ellin, etc., are the ones who have to live with the consequences and continue fighting, day in and day out. That takes more strength. There’s also an interesting magic system in this book. It’s an interesting mixture of alchemy and a kind of third-eye that lets the caster locate and manipulate “elements” to combine them into different spells and potions. I really like that Glass doesn’t infodump too much about this system; we get a good understanding of its basics and its limitations without a lot of unnecessary exposition. I wish the same could be said for the political intrigue … sigh. This is the part of the book that really didn’t interest me, and it’s such a significant part! The political structures of the countries in this book are extremely simplistic and undifferentiated. There are “kingdoms” and “principalities,” and every country apparently has the exact same cabinet/council structure—lord chamberlain, lord commander, lord high treasurer, etc. Glass attempts to introduce some cultural diversity in terms of the dress, manners, and expectations of the various kingdoms. But it’s all a little too cookie-cutter for a book that spends so much time talking about dynastic matchmaking, trade agreements, and land disputes. Moreover, the religious dynamic is almost entirely absent. There is some generic mention of holy text known as a Devotional, but beyond that, it’s extremely unclear how many religions there are, what their power structures are like, and how much influence they wield over various governments. Glass’ storytelling style also isn’t the most appealing to me. There was a time when I would have drooled to see a 560-page fantasy novel and yearned for more and more of them. Yet the more of them I read, the more I realize that they seldom need to be that long. We don’t need pages and pages of scenery-chewing by the bad guys lamenting that these nasty women are making them do terrible things. We don’t need pages and pages of scenery-chewing by the good guys lamenting that these bad guys are making them become revolutionaries. Paradoxically, however, I’d say that this means The Women’s War would be extremely familiar to those of us who grew up, as I did, on classic fantasy along the lines of Eddings and Modesitt. Every so often I have a nostalgia-fuelled craving for such fantasy, and you know what? This book would scratch that itch for sure. It’s just the right amount of over-the-top-taking-itself-too-seriously fantasy that would fit right in with what 14-year-old me would have loved. I’m sure some people are going to pan The Women’s War for being too progressive and attempting to cash in on what they might call the “SJW hype,” although I suspect most of those people wouldn’t even bother reading this book. On the other hand, it’s possible to criticize The Women’s War for not going far enough. I don’t really know if it’s that revolutionary in terms of the story it’s telling, to be honest, and maybe that’s part of the reason I liked but did not love this book. No queer people, unclear whether there are really any people of colour involved, no women outside of the nobility as far as I can tell … and, once again, we have a fantasy novel that replicates the patriarchal structure of our world. Granted, Glass only does this to challenge it extremely explicitly. Yet I appreciate that so many people are trying to shift the conversation within fantasy towards imagining worlds that aren’t oppressive in the way ours is, and playing with the types of conflicts that might exist in those worlds. Now, I’m not going to criticize The Women’s War for not being something it isn’t trying to be. For that very reason, however, I also can’t sing its praises at the top of my lungs. This book is trying to be a feminist fantasy novel full of resistance and rebellion. It only kind of succeeds. I always appreciate it when stories swing big, of course, and that gives this book a lot of credibility with me. I just wish either the themes had gone further or the storytelling had been more to my personal tastes—I think if either of those elements were a bit different, I’d be all over this. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Aug 09, 2019
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Aug 11, 2019
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Aug 10, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0735235562
| 9780735235564
| 4.23
| 590
| May 14, 2019
| May 14, 2019
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really liked it
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I love reading science fiction, and you might expect me to open this review with an encomium of how science fiction helps us imagine a way into a bett
I love reading science fiction, and you might expect me to open this review with an encomium of how science fiction helps us imagine a way into a better future. But no. One of the reasons I love science fiction is for how it asks us to truly confront our assumptions about the way things are, and whether that’s inevitable. So many science fiction stories involving artificial intelligence place that intelligence into humanoid or human-like android bodies. Yet other stories imagine AI as something truly posthuman, something so incredibly different from us in perception and ability as to be truly alien, no matter its origin. There’s a powerful moment in the last season of Battlestar Galactica when Number One, one of the human-form Cylons, rails against the unfairness that has saddled him with the biological limitations of human eyesight, human senses, human language: “I want to see gamma rays, hear X-rays, smell dark matter!” His passionate performance conveys a truly tragic sense that he feels trapped, that the embodiment that to the struggling remnants of humanity seemed like the ultimate upgrade for the formerly “toaster” Cylons is in fact a sick joke for him. It all comes down to perception, and to how we see the world. In The Reality Bubble, science communicator extraordinaire Ziya Tong challenges our own understanding of how we see the world. She asks us to really dig deep into our perception of physical reality and how it affects our conception of reality, our mental map of the world. Understand that I’m not exaggerating here when I say that pretty much every chapter, if not every page, of this book is a revelation in some way. I mean, I consider myself a fairly well-educated human, and it’s true that I was familiar, in broad terms, with much of what Tong discusses herein. Yet every chapter goes deeper into these topics. As the subtitle of the book promises, this entire work focuses on the idea of the blind spots that we intentionally or unintentionally suffer throughout our lifetimes—and beyond. It is remarkably coherent and well-organized for something that is unequivocally polemical in its condemnation of capitalism’s overreach. In Part One, Tong discusses what she calls “biological blind spots.” Basically, these are things we can’t see because of inherent limitations in our biology. These include the world of microorganisms, as well as the parts of the colour spectrum that are invisible to us. By establishing how what we don’t see shapes our world as much as what we do see, Tong lays the groundwork for the thesis that runs throughout the book here, namely that we should be mindful of how our perceptions of the physical world bias our internal, mental map of the world. It’s in this section that I learned 20 percent of our oxygen comes not from trees or even algae but from a humble cyanobacterium called Prochlorococcas. In Part Two, Tong moves on to “societal blind spots.” As you might guess, these are constructs of human society that we nonetheless fail to see—often through a certain level of willful blindness on our part. She discusses the way meat industry, power generation, oil and other resource extraction, and the trash/recycling industry. She ties these together through an emphasis on the scale of these procedures. The culmination of a globalized economy post–World War II, combined with the technological fervour of the ebullient 1950s in the West, basically set the stage for the mass consumer culture that demanded these industries by built as they are. In the final part, which is nearly half the entire book, Tong discusses “civilizational blind spots.” With chapters titled the likes of “Time Lords” and “Space Invaders,” you’d be forgiven for expecting flights of speculative fancy. Yet Tong remains grounded for the entire book. Those chapters are more about the arbitrary ways in which we have scientifically constructed and divided up divisions of time and space, respectively, and how colonialism and globalization have propagated these notions around the world. The final chapter, “Revolution,” summarizes Tong’s arguments and pleads for us to radically rethink how we approach the world. I’m a huge fan of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything for the simple reason that it really captures the interconnectedness of our universe. As I sit here on my deck writing this review, I’m breathing oxygen produced by plants and indeed cyanobacteria, lounging in a chair mostly made from plastic and artificial fibres manufactured somewhere in … oh, likely China, and transported around the world through an intricate supply chain a century or more in the making. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Bryson’s style while reading The Reality Bubble, because Tong has done exactly the same thing. This is a book designed to make you think. Hard. It’s designed to make you question. It doesn’t offer a lot in the way of answers; Tong isn’t trying to sell you on some miracle plan that’s going to fix the whole planet. Rather, she just wants us to cast off the complacency that often settles on us as a consequence of living in such a fast-paced, on-demand society wherein the wheels and gears of the machines that drive us are often hidden from view. Tong wants us to pull back the curtain and look at the wizard and ask some critical questions about his supply-chain infrastructure. And that’s probably a very good idea. I often give my English students a project I call the Lifecycle of a Product. It’s pretty obvious what it entails: pick an everyday product you use, research its manufacturing lifecycle from raw materials to where/how it gets disposed, and then present your findings as a media text. Beforehand, we discuss globalization and what that means for our society. Because I feel like it’s my job as a teacher not just to teach my students how to use PowerPoint but to actually equip them to ask the hard questions in life. I want them to think, and I want them to wonder, and I want them to want to know where their cup of coffee comes from and what that actually costs us beyond the couple of dollars they might not even physically exchange for the drink. I want them to remember that our reality is a curious combination of physical stimulus and social construction, and sometimes it’s so hard to divine which is which, or to decide what to do about it. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jul 26, 2019
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Aug 07, 2019
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Jul 26, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0316491349
| 9780316491341
| 4.30
| 10,653
| Nov 27, 2018
| Nov 27, 2018
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really liked it
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It seems like every time I review a short story anthology I always start with a disclaimer about how short stories, and by extension, their anthologie
It seems like every time I review a short story anthology I always start with a disclaimer about how short stories, and by extension, their anthologies, are not really “for me.” In this case I need to say it because How Long ’Til Black Future Month? is one of those rare exceptions where I … I actually liked pretty much every story in here. Not equally, of course. But there were only one or two stories that left me scratching me head and shrugging and saying, “Eh, I didn’t get the one.” The rest were … wow. I’m doubly surprised, because my foray into N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was less successful. It put me off reading her much-acclaimed Broken Earth books for a long time (I’m still on the fence). To be clear, it’s not a question of her writing skill but just my particular tastes. What this short story collection does that her novel did not do for me is throw so many amazing ideas in my face. Some short story anthologies have the obvious superstars along with one or two duds and then a handful of mediocre material that’s all right but not really anything special. That’s not the case here. Every short story in this collection is a revelation of storytelling. The one thing in the back of my mind reading this was, “Damn, this is like Ursula K. Le Guin–level good.” Jemisin deserves a long and celebrated career in speculative fiction and grandmaster status, because she has got it. It’s really difficult to single out any stories for praise. Firstly, because there are a lot of them—you get your money’s worth for this collection, or in my case, my library certainly did. Secondly, because they do blur together, in the best way. Emergent AI consciousnesses downloading into meatspace from a futuristic descendant of the Internet. Singing to cities as they become sentient. Cooks challenged to create impossible meals. Dragons adapting to a new life. Epistolary evidence of a parasitical threat to humankind from contact with another alien species. The personification of Death wandering a post-apocalyptic Earth. The list goes on. Jemisin’s imagination crystallizes here with breathtaking results. And yes, the stories are full of Black and brown characters and queer characters but regardless of the representation they are also just so good I didn’t want this collection to end and I also kind of did because it was hurting me that they were so good. The last story, “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters,” shouldn’t have worked for me. I didn’t like it at first. But the oddball friendship between Tookie and the lizard just … it’s just good, okay? This whole book is good. How Long ’Til Black Future Month? has reignited hope that maybe I’ll enjoy some of Jemisin’s other novels. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll only ever enjoy her short stories, ironically, since we share in common a hesitation to embrace the form. That’s okay too. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jul 17, 2019
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Jul 21, 2019
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Jul 17, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0142407321
| 9780142407325
| 4.02
| 492,820
| Oct 22, 1999
| Apr 20, 2006
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** Reading this book was a surreal experience in a few ways. I read a lot of contemporary YA, so I’m used to feeling a lot older than t
**spoiler alert** Reading this book was a surreal experience in a few ways. I read a lot of contemporary YA, so I’m used to feeling a lot older than the characters. Speak was originally published in 1999, when I was ten years old. So I was younger than Melinda when this book first came out, and the high school setting actually predates my own high school experience. Yet I’m older than her now, when I read it. Time is weird, y’all. Trigger warnings include discussion of rape and at least one scene with some racism. Speak is Melinda’s first-person journey through depression and self-loathing after she was raped at a party the summer before Grade 9. We don’t learn this right away, of course, although anyone who is paying attention will connect the dots fairly soon. Melinda’s initial coping strategy after this trauma is to withdraw and stop talking any more than is absolutely necessary. Abandoned by her former friends because they think she called the cops to the party for no reason, Melinda walks the halls of Merryweather High alone. She pretends to like it that way, but secretly she feels broken. As the story goes on and the school year progresses, Melinda struggles to figure out what she should feel, how she should act, while her parents and other authority figures try to figure out why she has changed. My edition is set in block format, an interesting departure from what is conventional. It matches the style of the book, though, which while not epistolary certainly feels confessional. Most of the adults in this story are not named. They’re given epithets: Mr. Neck, Hairwoman, Principal Principal, etc. Even her parents are stubbornly Mom and Dad. Melissa’s narrative voice is descriptive and eloquent yet also very succinct in how she relates events. We move swiftly from scene to scene, never wanting to linger too long. At first I wasn’t a huge fan of this style. By the end of the book, I’d adapted to it, and even if it isn’t my favourite, it kind of works for how Anderson tells the story. I’ve read several YA books that deal with the consequences of rape or attempted rape now. Speak has the distinction of being one of the earliest, chronologically speaking, in terms of both writing and setting. There’s no texting here, no social media—the backchannel is the toilet stall door of the girls’ bathroom. In many ways, it’s these absences, these differences from what we’re used to now, that jumped out at me the most while reading. It felt very anachronistic, because other than these small cultural and technological differences, this story definitely feels like it could have been set now. Melinda is also quite young. Not only is she unsure of how to express what happened to others, she struggles even to wrap her own head around it. Anderson has Melinda call her rapist “IT” and often uses imagery like “bunny rabbit” to describe Melinda’s dynamic with him as predator–prey. Unlike someone in Grade 11 or 12, at Grade 8 going into Grade 9, Melinda has so little experience with dating, flirting, drinking, and sex, and this adds another layer of complexity to processing her trauma. When Anderson finally has us describe the scene, it’s disjointed and occasionally difficult to follow, as one might expect from reliving a traumatic memory. Yet there’s also a nervousness to the passages. As if Melinda is worried we won’t believe her, because she doesn’t know how to explain what was happening to her. I do wish there were more resolution here. I wish we got to see the aftermath of Melinda finding her voice and speaking up. Obviously Anderson chose to end the story where she did because she wants us to focus on Melinda’s journey to that point. I respect that even if I’m left wanting a lot more. Similarly, I find myself yearning for a little more than the somewhat stereotypical tropes deployed for the parents and authority figures. While there is an appealing kind of universality to the experience Anderson carves out in this story, it also left me feeling a bit bored. Okay, so Mom and Dad aren’t the most affectionate and attentive parents ever. Why? Could we go a bit more into that? I’m reminded a bit of Sana’s relationships with her parents in It’s Not Like It’s a Secret and how Sugiura helps us understand the full extent of those dynamics. So really … Speak has elements of power to it, and I understand why so many people have enjoyed it and praised it. This is a book about the struggle to find one’s voice following an intense trauma. Despite being 20 years old now, it is as relevant, sadly, to our rape culture today as it was when it was written: none of this would have happened if we lived in a society that educated boys to treat women with respect and privileged consent over all else. In these regards, Speak feels like it belongs in that classics category. It has staying power. Yet like many classics, that doesn’t automatically make it perfect. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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none
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1
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Jul 14, 2019
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Jul 14, 2019
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Jul 14, 2019
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Paperback
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 3.18
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liked it
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Dec 30, 2019
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Dec 30, 2019
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| 4.30
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it was amazing
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Dec 27, 2019
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Dec 24, 2019
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| 3.75
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liked it
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Nov 13, 2019
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Nov 05, 2019
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| 3.86
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liked it
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Nov 09, 2019
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Oct 30, 2019
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|
| 4.00
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really liked it
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Nov 11, 2019
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Oct 27, 2019
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|
| 4.00
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it was ok
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Oct 28, 2019
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Oct 25, 2019
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| 4.12
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really liked it
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Oct 25, 2019
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Oct 24, 2019
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| 4.27
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really liked it
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Oct 24, 2019
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Oct 22, 2019
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| 3.44
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it was ok
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Oct 21, 2019
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Oct 18, 2019
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| 4.01
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really liked it
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Oct 18, 2019
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Oct 14, 2019
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| 3.82
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did not like it
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Oct 13, 2019
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Oct 10, 2019
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| 4.12
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it was ok
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Jul 30, 2019
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Sep 26, 2019
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| 3.72
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really liked it
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Sep 25, 2019
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Sep 25, 2019
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| 3.78
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it was ok
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Sep 19, 2019
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Sep 20, 2019
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| 4.00
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liked it
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Sep 17, 2019
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Sep 10, 2019
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| 3.79
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liked it
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Sep 09, 2019
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Sep 09, 2019
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| 4.29
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liked it
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Sep 06, 2019
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Sep 05, 2019
| |||||
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| 3.85
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liked it
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Oct 05, 2019
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Sep 05, 2019
| |||||
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| 3.86
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really liked it
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Sep 05, 2019
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Aug 31, 2019
| |||||
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| 4.40
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really liked it
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Aug 30, 2019
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Aug 24, 2019
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| 3.91
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it was ok
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Aug 19, 2019
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Aug 19, 2019
| |||||
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| 4.15
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liked it
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Aug 19, 2019
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Aug 19, 2019
| |||||
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| 4.02
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really liked it
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Aug 16, 2019
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Aug 16, 2019
| |||||
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| 3.64
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liked it
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Aug 14, 2019
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Aug 15, 2019
| |||||
|
| 4.25
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liked it
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Aug 12, 2019
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Aug 12, 2019
| |||||
|
| 4.03
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liked it
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Dec 11, 2019
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Aug 11, 2019
| |||||
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| 3.86
|
it was ok
|
Aug 11, 2019
|
Aug 10, 2019
| |||||
|
| 4.23
|
really liked it
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Aug 07, 2019
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Jul 26, 2019
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| 4.30
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really liked it
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Jul 21, 2019
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Jul 17, 2019
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| 4.02
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liked it
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Jul 14, 2019
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Jul 14, 2019
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