I love Ursula’s horror. Her characters are so very her and sensible and never make plot convenient mistakes and it’s such a situated horror story of parental trauma and adult children’s fear for their parents that uses horror to answer the age old question: “why is she LIKE this”?
And it’s also a southern gothic story about what lurks under perfectly painted houses because of course it is. Of course it is.

This book took me forever to finish because every time I finished one of the novels, I had to put it down and just be for a bit. 
I love this specific era of sci-fi where other worlds are an excuse to imagine culture otherwise (and also always super interesting to see what is beyond the scope of imagination, but I digress). The questions that Le Guin asks: to whom and to what are we beholden and what and how do we know truth are woven into each of the stories without these three radically different stories being about those things precisely. 

She’s SO good. 

I read this one for research reasons, but loved it for personal ones (even if I did have the marvelous middos machine in my head when I was done).
As with all collections, the quality was a little uneven, but the narratives and experiences were a brilliant evocation of a very specific cultural experience that resonated deeply.

This book is so beautiful, what just happened?

I don't know what I was expecting, other than answers to whatever was going on in the second book that I read out of order and I'm not feeling enlightened and yet it was a fascinating meditation on hauntings and mistakes and, having read Sea of Tranquility, also on the nature of reality?

I don't even know.

Should be 3-4, but we are docking points for bad portrayals of neurodivergent characters and, let's be real, I liked it materially less because of that part and this is the storygraph, where the words are made up and the stars don't matter.

First - the book itself and the internal framing narrative of the fantastical story that offers solace to those in reality. That was good. It felt like 5 Newberry nominees worth of tragedy stuffed into 615 pages, but that was sort of the point. Story and, specifically, fantasy is the gift that lets us survive the here and now. And rearranging the end of the book to create the spiral structure of the romance where you come back and you're different and you can never go back but you can come home to go on...that's the story. That is all of the stories.

Having now dispensed with the 5/6 of the book that was really good, we have to talk about Seymour. I spent some time thinking about whether I was being overly sensitive to autistic character portrayal and decided that Nope, it's actually a dumpster fire. Three reasons.

1) Doerr links Seymour's meltdowns from sensory overload to (self) righteous anger in a way that both fundamentally misunderstands what a meltdown is like AND makes it seem as though the reason that Seymour becomes a domestic terrorist is because he's autistic. As a rule, disabled people are far more likely to becomes victims of crimes rather than perpetrators and Seymour's intersecting reasons for why he is an outcast—neurology and poverty—mean that he's much more likely to turn inward and self harm than lash out. Doerr never adequately explains why Seymour lashes out rather than in—there's a sense of empowerment needed for one to believe they have the right to hurt the world and make it conform and nothing about Seymour's life as described makes me think he has that.*
1a) What I suspect is that Doerr is offering the fantasy that the oppressor imagines the oppressed might feel - If I had to go through what I imagine you are going through, I would burn the world down. And I can see where that comes from, but it feels inauthentic to the character. Based on everything we see about Seymour, he seems much more like the type to lie down in front of a bulldozer than attempt to blow it up. And no, that one scene where he discovers that grenades exist in his shed is insufficient.

2) Doerr did a ton of research into what sensory overload feels like and even the ways that meltdowns cause someone to lash out and hurt others. And he got so much of that right that it's SO frustrating that he doesn't see the difference between the out-of-control rage that is a meltdown, which is followed almost immediately by regret and seeking comfort (ask me how I know) versus the kind of cold, building fury that he puts inside Seymour. That's a sense of entitlement, and that's not a bad thing: I think the things that Seymour thinks he is entitled to (a future for the Earth?) are reasonable and worth getting angry about. But, again, the way Doerr uses Seymour's meltdowns to suggest that Seymour is violent entirely misunderstands what's happening. And that brings me to...

3) Doerr stops writing Seymour as autistic as soon as he is environmentally red-pilled or however you would describe it. As a child, Seymour is super sensitive, elopes without thinking, and is written as an autistic boy by someone who really did their research on the sensory avoidant profile. By the time he is a teenager, almost all of that is gone, even when Seymour stops taking the medication, which, also, what the hell was up with that? Can the trope about medication dulling one's experience of the world and a sign that one is casting off restrictions just diaf already? It doesn't make any sense in context. Nothing about that section feels right with the child Seymour was, as if he's only autistic to prime us to understand why he's capable of doing what he did. To say nothing of the bad chatspeak, but at that point, I was just getting tired of all the Seymour chapters. And Doerr does give him a redemption arc that is necessary for the rest of the book to make sense, but also NOTHING about prison and autism? Like...nothing?

Anyway, Doerr could have written a much better autistic antagonist. We can be villains (who buy Twitter and run it into the ground for our ego)...but justify it within the narrative. Seymour is written as though he's the antagonist because he's autistic and when the realities of living as a autistic person become inconvenient, Doerr stops writing him that way. And that's what I can't forgive.
———
*It would be remiss not to mention that young autistic men are susceptible to the incel and alt-right movement in ways that are very similar to other disaffected white young men who don't understand why they haven't been given the world when it was promised to them. The way that said movement provides structures and answers to people who live strongly by their values (even if those values aren't, you know, good) and offers excuses to treat others as nothing can be very compelling to autistic young men who know they don't belong and want to blame the world for it. But, again, it's the kind of thing that happens when you believe you are entitled to everything and don't get it.

I made the mistake of listening to the podcast about this book before writing my review and now it’s 28 hours later and I have no idea what I think and if I have what to say that wasn’t covered by the Incomparable book club. 
I always appreciate a good time travel story and this one wraps itself up very nicely even if the point is sort of about whether there is any there there. 
It’s also singularly uninterested in the stuff you expect SF with time travel to be interested in. EStJM is always writing a literary story set in a speculative universe and while the setting allows for the story, it’s not the point of it precisely. Which is super interesting even if that’s part of what makes one wonder where it was going.

Charlotte Holmes is one of my favorite autistic characters and, in part, it's because Thomas writes her as clearly autistic but also as a fully realized person and character and it's really nice to see.
Also the mysteries are, like, completely absurd but also very fun and kind of not the point of the book anymore.

While the book is very clear about its historical and geographic inspirations, I’m annoyed at how long it took me to pick up on the Avatar: The Last Airbender homage.

I finally noticed it with the blood bending…I mean weaving.

I also loved the way that Elsbai played with familiar tropes like arranged marriage and love triangles while letting them and the story evolve.
And I thought that Nahel and Giorgina were brilliant foils and, despite their differences, their choices and anger and experiences were both given weight and compassion. 
I particularly appreciated the choice of two different narrators for the two different women. 
That cliffhanger though at the end.

KJ Charles has gotten SO GOOD.
She was always good, but her recent books have definitely been even better and I'm a sucker for chaotic good characters & people learning to trust again.
I didn't mean to inhale this in one sitting and yet, here we are.
I also deeply appreciate the way that Charles handles conflict - it's never pointless and always both furthers the plot and is a point for growth. Which is great because that's so often what I hate in romance novels.
Now I just have to wait until the next one *sigh*

I really have to read Christmas stories closer to Christmas.
This one was very cute and I appreciated the tying up of some loose ends and also the fun of watching criminals bring other criminals (but like worse criminals) to justice and I'm very fond of old carols (I blame Susan Cooper).