I immediately got on with this. Maybe it’s because I’m a “geriatric” millennial (probably exactly the ‘sweet spot’ age for this book, tbh), but this language just made sense to me. More than making sense, I often found the prose work to be a rare cadence and diction that creates a reading flow state.

It is also perfect form for the story it’s telling. We follow an Extremely Online woman who became famous for a one-time innocuous tweet, but then became so incredibly enmeshed in the culture that the Portal—which is used as a shorthand for interacting with anything social media—becomes as real as real life. If not more real. Hyper real. And her husband, not online at all, inadvertently acts as a grounding mechanism she may not know she needs.

By having to explain what is funny or rage inducing or otherwise ranks as the ‘news’ of the day, she’s forced to contextualize it outside of the online space.

In the later half of the book it shifts it’s insightful exploration further straddling the online and the real, when the woman becomes pregnant, and her perspective necessarily shifts.

No One Is Talking About This was surprisingly affecting for me. I found it witty and biting and even hilarious sometimes. Especially the many in-jokes of the Internet that simply do not translate when you try to explain them IRL. It’s a book written by someone who is actually on social media; a rare thing, somehow, for a book on the subject.

It tackles large emotions and topics with ease, and it does all this in a way I could so relate to that I didn’t really find the transition from first half to the later jarring. I saw most reviews feeling like it was completely different. Almost two separate books. Perhaps it depends heavily upon your own relationship to the Portal? I felt everything followed logically to the text. Even inevitably, perhaps. Our parasocial, simultaneously sweet and sour relationships with all things Online chronicles many a milkshake duck; both in the past and oncoming, in our (near) future.

I have way too many books to consume these days. A thousand page book needs to really justify the time I’m going to put into it, and this just wasn’t doing anything I was interested in, though I did like the prose and thought it had good flow, overall. I don’t think it had gotten to introduce a theme, not much had happened after 3 hours of listening time, and it feels like another chonker fantasy book that, with maybe no exceptions I’ve yet to experience?, continue to feel self indulgent to the point of being masturbatory.

I just have way too many books to read. It’s becoming clear that epic fantasy probably just isn’t to my taste.

Excellent on all fronts, if a bit long in the middle. Engaging prose, well crafted story that tackles difficult subject matter while not undermining survivors. Multiple POVs are used to render the situation and characters more vividly. I think this would have been a 5 star read for me, if it were not for the pacing and some stilted dialogue here and there that pushed me out of the fiction. Better than I expected though, hence the 4 stars.

This book follows 5 residential school survivors from upbringing to adulthood. It’s really effective at illustrating the complex way trauma integrates into an identity and manifests differently for each individual. Behaviours stigmatized by society can have underlying causes that people dismiss. Even more so when it comes to indigenous people, who have been dehumanized by our culture.

That means the people who need the most compassion and empathy, and those that have been harmed immeasurably, and continue to be harmed, are isolated and do not have access to help. The narrative does a great job of backtracing issues to the schools. And that was not long ago and only the latest attempts of the governmental assault on indigenous peoples.

Even more pertinent with the residential school mass graves being uncovered up here in Canada. Yet racism and systemic issues continue to be present and, in some cases, even exacerbated when it comes to these issues. The school system to this day is terrible and ineffective. Reserves aren’t getting support. The program in place to distribute funds and service reserves has been found to be incompetent and harmful.

Every year there is an additional voice being added to the stories of residential schools, missing and murdered indigenous women, and systemic issues indigenous people face. But the government does nothing, as usual, no matter the government. I hope the graves being uncovered are enough of a catalyst to have more people pick up books like this and overhaul indigenous programs and some form of restitution. No doubt only more travesties will be unearthed and more people like those in this story will have to try to navigate their lives with unnecessary and cruel pain inflicted upon them for no other reason than their heritage.

This feels very cinematic. I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t optioned already. It has American propogandic qualities but also is more nuanced than a typically commercial fiction popcorn thriller as well. At least, for the first half, anyways. It goes into a bit of a tail spin (ha) as it reveals the motivations of the antagonists.

But it doesn’t really interrogate or examine them as much as I’d like, because as always with this kind of fiction, the antagonist(s) devolve into something simplistic in order to allow the reader to easily vilify them.

It does a great job of starting the tension and characterizing somewhat subverted characters. But again, it ends up more-or-less in the same place as others in the genre. It gestures at political motivations, but not enough to offend anyone or say anything substantive.

It is, however, fun. Frenetic. A page turner. A low-key read with decent narration. Perfect for my Sunday chore day. I think it’s safe to say it is what it says it is on the tin. Nothing wrong with that.

This revolves around a woman named Nadia who works for Trauma Team. It’s framed as her giving a psychiatric debrief in order to be cleared for duty after a exfiltration goes awry. It shifts from the interview into flashbacks as Nadia embarks on a new assignment that similarly goes bad.

Initially, this is compelling. I didn’t mind the art, I liked trying to humanize trauma team because they’re a corporation that forces lack of agency onto individuals by dictating who gets necessary care. Of course, only those who can afford it get it. But it also, seemingly, doesn’t care if those with memberships kill members of the trauma team. And that’s when this story starts to fall apart.

Diegetically, the story actually doesn’t make sense according to the world as established in the video games, which I have played and beaten. And within that world, I’ve never seen gangs attack trauma team and when they do, they are literally just mowed down because trauma team has access to corporate tech that is far and away better than what the gangs have. Now, granted, in higher levels, I think a player character could take on trauma team, if they approached it smartly. But also, they could obliterate an entire gang very easily. Also meds in game don’t look like they do in the comic, and combat stimulants are more effective.

Within the world of the comic, divorced from the game, the story fails to follow through on what is interesting about the comic. It tries to show how autonomy is removed when serving a corporate entity. And the only outcome for those who choose to dissent end in death; but that this choice is poetic or noble because a traditional sense of Justice is being served. It’s actually just revenge though, in my opinion, given what we learn of the target to be exfiltrated when Nadia returns to duty.

It constantly seems at odds, adding worldbuilding that is not present in the game; sometimes actually contradictory. It seems hard to believe that a person who pays for their plan and then is known to harm the trauma team would be something the corporation would disregard. If anything, it would heavily police those that pay and qualify with treatment, cancelling service. Why would they sacrifice equipment and Human Resources if they don’t have to? They’d just keep the money and jettison the person, free of liability, no?

So who is this story for?

Why is it attached to the game world? Perhaps if it wasn’t connected directly to the game, some of it would have worked? Nadia’s story, ultimately, lacks follow through, though. So I’m not sure how much would have resonated with me regardless. Just being another story where there’s no ostensibly viable option and so death is preferable is trite in cyberpunk. We should be attempting to explore much more interesting questions.

I love books that play around with structure and conventional narratives, so I was fairly confident going in I would like this quite a bit. It jumps around in time and place, occupying different family members in a complicated and fraught family. Slowly giving more context to events eluded to or talked about as it progresses.

It explores some heavy themes and feels deeply rooted in interrogating our notions of selfhood as it pertains to our history, and it does so quite effectively, in my opinion. It certainly feels less accessible to the average reader, but it’s a trade off that works. The more you stick with it, the more, literally, everything makes sense. Making the first bits of the novel the most difficult to situate the reader is a bold approach. Some people will be turned off. For me, it was just the right amount of challenge. I like it when a book assumes you’re alright working for your meal. It’s certainly a tightrope act doing so, but it is also tried and true satisfaction, given how many canonized books take this approach.

This manages to be pretty deeply affecting despite hopping about, also a hard task. I recently tried to read Cloud Cuckoo Land and it felt so rootless I just didn’t care about anything that was happening. Chapters here vary in length, but never outstay their welcome while still preparing you for a transitory journey (after the onboarding of the structure initially, of course).

I think, had the voice resonated with me a little more this might have been a five star read. It does everything I’m looking for in a book. I tend to be more interested in structural elements, typically. But the X factor every time seems to just be an elusive quality where the prose hook you or not. I kept reading and enjoyed doing so. But neither can I say I was engrossed. But if this is a debut, what an achievement already. The refinement of prose should come along with the next book; I hope there will be a next! All the really difficult craft work is already so compelling. I definitely recommend it.

I really dug a few aspects of this book. Primarily, the demonstration of cyclical history and the endurance of a belief system in a post-apocalyptical setting was particularly noticeable and satisfying. Some stand out characterization conjoined with some a couple philosophical discussions were already great.

That said, you can tell this is an older book, because these ideas have been integrated into the cultural consciousness, and to mention show up in sci-fi works not infrequently. The setting didn’t feel very grounded as well. My attention fluctuated quite a bit because the prose just didn’t click with me. I tend to like specificity and scene setting. Talking heads in undefined space only engage me so much.

In the end, the structure was just a lot more interesting to me than the granular plot beats. But it was still enjoyable.

This is very much to my taste (ha). But it is. The structure is simple yet interesting. It’s not difficult to follow but builds nicely, even as it digresses into memory or non linear time, it feels exactly as that is what the story needs.

Characters are incredibly vivid on the page. It is grounded. It has specificity. It taps into culture in a respectful and compelling way. It manages to explore trauma and pain and memory through multiple perspectives. All different and all valid. It uses food in a way that Crying in H Mart was similarly attempting, but didn’t quite land for me.

The feeling of cooking and the act of doing so is not as myopic as H Mart and is communicated in such a way as to make it instantly relatable because it is tethered to memory or an emotion being explored, but most profoundly, an externalized method of communication; making it a medium like words on a page. I feel like some people did get that from H Mart and I missed out, so in a way this text might also be a bit cathartic for me. I get it now, yay.

It also manages to expose the underbelly of family dynamics that feel very adult and unlike so many stories around domestic abuse, in all its forms, it manages to depict the hidden surface as humane and complex and less so a seedy underbelly in which evil and blame is easy assigned.

While I feel like almost everything in this should be relatable. But perhaps an additional, more emotional layer was there for me because I am a twin. And my brother and I have also been apart for many years until recently. It’s a relationship dynamic that defies words usually. Especially with how twins are shown in fiction. Usually, some sort of cosmic connection or some other weird, fetishized notions about it occur. I felt like this was again, quite respectful and less sensationalized while also making clear that it is not a typical sibling dynamic either.

I hope it making it to Canada Reads allowed it to find the audience it deserves. I hadn’t heard of it until then, so I am grateful. But not all that surprised, either! Canada Reads has an extraordinary aptitude for picking diverse selections, and almost act as taste makers, for me. If it’s on the list, at this point, I will probably read it. And probably, I will enjoy it immensely. I also found Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club this way, and I think that that may be one of my all time favourite books. Period. Only fitting that this book now joins its ranks.