My first fantasy experience, and what sparked my love of fantasy, was The Belgariad by [a:David Eddings|8732|David Eddings|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1223870462p2/8732.jpg]. Since I've matured (that was in grade seven), I've come to realize that much of epic fantasy is, in fact, fairly formula-dry stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Most of Wizard's First Rule is predictable if you are familiar with the genre. In the first part of the book, combined with a terrible amount of dialogue exposition, this is almost unbearable. It gets better toward the end though. By that time, the exposition decreases, replaced by rather clumsy foreshadowing.

Much of the story is fairly enjoyable, if you do recognize that it is ploddingly predictable and instead focus on having fun. The main character, Richard Cypher, is an idiot. I love it when the main character is a victim of Plot Induced Stupidity; this seems to happen to Richard every second chapter in one form or another. I love this, almost as much as I love a main character who is competent. His powers as a the Seeker, this series' "Chosen One" champion, are inimical to his own psyche and even limit themselves based on his convictions. This seems to be part of Goodkind's message throughout the novel, which is that tools (i.e., magic) are neither inherently good nor bad. People use them for good or bad ends.

Once again, the gods who created this poor, forsaken universe had the sheer malevolence to create an artifact (in this case, the three boxes of Orden) that could do one of three things to the person who opened them: a) Give them power over everything in the universe b) Kill them or c) Destroy the entire universe. When will gods learn that leaving these sorts of things around is incredibly stupid?

I read up on Goodkind before I started reading this book--my coworker has been rereading them over the summer, and she convinced me to try them, even though I'm sure I had passed them up for some reason or another. The later books, apparently, are merely thinly-veiled treatises on Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Inklings of such viewpoints are present in this book. They don't interfere too much with the plot--they certainly guide Richard's actions, but overall his actions are pretty much consistent with the "save the world" mentality that seems to come over those determined to save the world. The worst manifestation of philosophical dogma comes with much of the dialogue, especially in the first part of the novel.

Goodkind claims not to be a fantasy author, that he just uses fantasy to tell tales of humanity. Well guess what? That makes you a frelling fantasy author! And most fantasy authors manage to cloak their philosophical viewpoints better--they show, not tell through lots of dialogue.

I may seem harsh toward the end of this review. Honestly, Wizard's First Rule is a good book. If you like fantasy, you would probably enjoy it. If you like fantasy that acts as a vehicle for more profound themes, then you'd probably read into this book as much as Goodkinds wants--whether you disagree with his viewpoint or not is totally up to you. It won't change the fact that this is not an excellent book--excellent books are good regardless of whether or not you agree with their philosophy.

This is a hefty and imposing volume, heavy yet also compact in dimensions and in print. Thirty-one stories make up the Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham, as selected for this immaculate Everyman’s Library edition that I scored for free from my school library. After a particularly work-heavy weekend I needed something I could sink into, something that could envelop me with lush descriptions of far-off lands and times gone by. This short story anthology seemed like it would do the trick: I knew that Maugham had been a prolific writer of short stories, and I was eager to see what the author of the fantastic Of Human Bondage could do in this medium.

Maugham tends to write close to home, and as such, often retreads familiar ground. In reading these stories in quick succession like I did, this becomes all the more apparent. Even the glowing, fanboyish introduction from Nicholas Shakespeare warns that the stories in this book often feel formulaic or repetitive. Of the 31 stories here, I’d say that over half of them are set in the British Malay peninsula (or similar southeast Asian islands under British administration), usually dealing with a governor or similar such administrator, either as the main character or as the subject of a story related by a travelling writer who acts as the narrator. Maugham’s characters invariably seem to play a great deal of bridge and walk around wearing sarongs, and all the native women wear Mother Hubbards. The remainder of the stories usually involve young writer characters observing English high society at arm’s length. The last few stories come from Maugham’s Ashenden collection about a suave, literary spy in Europe during the Great War.

Maugham’s stories tend to be what I might call character studies. They focus on a central character and an episode in their life that is particularly important or even fantastic. The stories often end abruptly, just after a flourishing twist that changes the reader’s understanding of the situation. I suspect that, had he wanted to, Maugham might have made a good living as a writer of detective fiction (though he lampoons this genre a couple of times with sly and skilful pseudo-mysteries); it’s a shame he had to suffer in the squalor of fame and fortune like he did.

With these character studies, Maugham seems interested in a few different themes. He devotes a lot of time to understanding obsession and what it is about the human spirit that makes us unable to part with things—whether they are possessions, positions, or people. Maugham’s protagonists often have an ambition or obsession that drives them, typically towards a tragic or otherwise surprising end. I wouldn’t call Maugham pessimistic, but he injects a level of cynicism into his stories that seems to imply a less-than-charitable attitude when it comes to human nature. But this is probably what makes Maugham such a great writer, and a particularly accomplished writer of short stories: he is very good at illustrating the flaws of his characters, and flaws make for the best internal, emotional conflicts, as well as the conflicts between the protagonist and others.

The stories set in the Pacific islands catered to my interest in colonial and postcolonial fiction. Maugham toured this area during the Great War and the 1920s, in the sunset years of the British Empire when its hold on its colonies was becoming more and more of a formality. The stories depict a kind of tired administrative regime. Life on the islands is full of simple pleasures: bridge games at the club, beachside reading, native mistresses, that sort of thing. Maugham’s administrators often entertain ambitions that echo the old desire to build empires—they like to build roads, in particular, as a harbinger of progress and Western capitalism.

Some of his stories deal with the relationship between the colonists and the indigenous peoples; his protagonists are often well-meaning paternalists who “treat the natives like children” and feel affection for what they regard as simpler people. His portrayals of native characters and women are often racist and sexist, but more in a way that reflects the institutional racism and sexism of the era rather than any particular personal bigotry on Maugham’s part. Though I don’t detect anything in his stories that might be directly attributable to his homosexuality, Maugham’s depiction of sexuality in general is very frank and realistic, quite at home with the attitudes towards sexual freedom and celebration that Fitzgerald chronicles in 1920s America. Several of his stories involve marital conflicts brought about or exacerbated by affairs, and in these conflicts, Maugham ascribes sexual agency to both the men and the women involved.

As with any large collection, not all of these stories are created equal. And, with a few exceptions, they are all quite long for a short story: I would struggle to read one in a single sitting, which I typically consider a good measure of a short story’s length. Not that this detracts from the quality of the stories, mind you, for Maugham uses this length to good ends. But after twenty or so of them, especially given their repetitive nature, I admit that the lustre was starting to fade.

Now that I’ve completed the collection, however, I have to admit that I enjoyed it. Of Human Bondage was my only other experience with Maugham until now, and it floored me. I didn’t have the same reaction to his short stories, but they have reawakened my desire to read more of Maugham’s work—until now, he was mostly a one-book author for me. Now that I have a better sense of his writing and his subject matter, I’m intrigued and want to sample more of his works.

This is essential reading, in whatever edition or form one finds it, for fans of Maugham. Newcomers will also find it a fine introduction, albeit one that requires patience and tolerance for repetition. It is, without a doubt, an excellent representation of Maugham’s ability as a writer of short fiction, one who uses the medium to describe and portray the shortcomings and short fuses of individuals thwarted in their desires.

If I didn’t know that Profession is an Isaac Asimov story, I would be inclined to say that it resembles very much an Isaac Asimov story. It is a textbook example of the kind of basic, fundamental social science fiction that Asimov made so popular and that had such an influence on the field at large. Asimov takes a single idea—that we could educate people by downloading the knowledge into their brain instead of devoting hours of arduous teaching to them—and builds a possible society around this idea. Then, he uses it to explore the more serious ramifications—namely, if everyone’s knowledge is programmed, who finds new knowledge?

At the beginning, Profession seems to read like a cautionary tale. Sinister hints of dystopia slip through the cracks between sentences: this is a society where you are told what your profession will be based on the suitability of your brain chemistry. Individual freedom, it seems, has been replaced by a collectivist mentality in which one’s labours are allocated to those areas in greatest need. Asimov highlights this situation through the plight of George, who really, really wants to be a Registered Computer Programmer, only to find out that he isn’t suitable for education at all.

From this point, the story follows George’s ardent refusal to accept his fate as a ward of the state. He rebels, becoming a fugitive of sorts, attempting to find a new place in the world—but ultimately failing and ending up back at his starting point. It’s then, and only then, that Asimov drops his bombshell on us: the people who aren’t suitable for education are the people who make up the education in the first place. George isn’t one of the unlucky ones; he is one of the lucky ones who is creative enough to invent new things, come up with new ideas, to learn.

It seems a little trite and moralistic from a contemporary point of view, but this was the 1950s, and of all Asimov’s wonderful talents, I wouldn’t say that subtlety is one of them.

Asimov casually throws out that this story takes place some four or five thousand years into the future. Humanity has since mastered interstellar flight, and the colonization of habitable worlds is apparently a result of our ability to flash-educate people. This has been going on for nearly twice the length of recorded civilization, yet the world that Asimov depicts here is not all that different from our own. Aside from space travel and education machines, people still read paper books and use televisions, and the money is presumably still paper as well, if George is storing it in a jar in a cupboard. I’m always disappointed when a story hits it out of the park in terms of theme only to suffer from a lack of imagination in terms of setting.

Still, science fiction is primarily a genre of ideas, and Asimov serves up a whopper here. As a teacher, Profession struck some significant chords for me. I’m very ambivalent about Western modes of education these days. There are a lot of flaws to it, yet I’m not quite willing to throw my support behind any of the alternatives suggested so far. Of course, the prospect of learning something by simply downloading the information is a tantalizing dream that recurs throughout science fiction, usually more as a plot device or as a signpost to demonstrate how advanced a civilization has become. I think that it has a place, if we ever manage to do it, particularly for rote, skills-based tasks. As Asimov points out, it wouldn’t work as well for positions that require creative thought. It also seems to lack a dimension for experience—one could learn how to pilot an airplane through such technology, but having the skills to pilot an airplane doesn’t give one the ability to make quick judgement calls. Only years of experience, and countless mistakes, provides such an ability.

Profession is, like much of Asimov’s writing, thought-provoking and well-intentioned, even if it does seem dry and trite in some ways. It takes a simple but fascinating concept and explores what that might mean for our nature as creative individuals, and it does so with a fair amount of pathos.

Read as part of The Mammoth Book of Short Science Fiction Novels.

I was struck by a feeling of déjà vu while reading Who Goes There?. In retrospect this isn’t surprising, since it is a novella whose shockwaves continue to be felt throughout science fiction. John W. Campbell, Jr. elucidates this basic horror-story concept for its first, and perhaps best, iteration. Science fiction’s ties to its speculative cousin of horror are quite clear here. The ingredients are simple: an isolated research station in Antarctica; a startling discovery of a frozen alien body; its reanimation results in it absorbing life-forms and changing its shape to emulate them perfectly. Suddenly, the protagonists don’t know who to trust: anyone could be the monster.

What strikes me as most unusual about Who Goes There? is the thread of optimism that runs through the entire story. Most modern adaptations of the monster-within-us plot emphasize the way in which this fear leads to the group of people tearing itself apart through mistrust. Yet Campbell’s characters are, if anything, rather jolly about the whole problem. They see it as merely a challenge to be confronted, an obstacle to be surmounted. To be sure, they recognize the gravity of the situation: several times, one or another of the characters mentions the possibility that they will have to sacrifice themselves rather than allow themselves to be taken over by the monster and let loose upon the world. Yet, aside from Blair’s breakdown, everyone maintains a sense of calm. It’s remarkable, bordering on incredible. But maybe this is merely Campbell’s own optimism for the human condition shining through.

Who Goes There is a work of suspense, its capacity for horror lying in our need to know what happens next. Who is the monster? Who is human? The characters devise a serum test that fails spectacularly, only to come up with a much simpler and seemingly correct test in a much shorter period of time. This quickly reveals the monsters, who begin to fight for survival but find themselves outmatched by the remaining humans. As far as writing goes, this is hopefully not Campbell at his finest: the prose is serviceable at best, with clunky descriptions and a plodding pace. When we finally approach the climax, it is with frenzied enthusiasm that does not live up to the story’s resolution.

On its own, this story isn’t overly great. Yet it clearly has merits, considering how it has inspired so many other works of fiction and served as the source material for numerous adaptations. And it’s a good enough yarn for an evening read by the fire—provided you’re not in Antarctica, of course.

Read as part of The Mammoth Book of Short Science Fiction Novels.

The Moon Goddess and the Son, this anthology helpfully informs us, is a novella that was later turned into a longer novel (not all that uncommon an occurrence). And after reading this I wonder what the novel is like, because the novella, at least, demonstrates some of the shortcomings of the shorter-length form of fiction. Donald Kingsbury has an interesting story to tell, but even making this novella as long as he does, he still has to condense a great deal of it. As a result, he robs the story of some of its charm and potency. Maybe a novel could restore that.

Essentially this is about Diana, a girl who wants to escape her abusive family by going to the moon. She runs away from home and begins using men to get what she wants, all the while retaining her virginity until she meets Byron, an actual lunar engineer. He’s a manipulative bastard who isn’t happy that she turns out to be a minor and isn’t happier still when, after he rejects her, she takes up with his son. Charlie has spent his life attempting to foil his parents’ plans for him, but he soon grows besotted with Diana even though she keeps a candle burning for his dad.

Yeah, it’s … complicated.

And this is where the shorter format can’t do the story justice. The chapters within spend more time on exposition and narration than they should. We’re told things that would be better off being shown to us—but Kingsbury can’t, because if he did, this would be … well, it’d be a novel. No wonder he had to expand it. There is so much he wants to cram into here: international politics, space exploration politics, issues of child abuse and sexual maturity, parenting philosophies … though the characters and their actions never seem as complex as they should be, lurking beneath the surface is an intense and magnificent story, just waiting to have the space to stretch itself out and breathe.

As it is, though, The Moon Goddess and the Son feels more like a sketch of a story than a satisfactory story on its own. The characters, though given deep aspirations and attributes, never strike me as very real people. The resolution, compared to the amount of time spent on the setup, is a rushed affair that leaves a lot to be desired.

The writing and plotting is certainly on a higher level—akin more to Profession than Time Safari—and Kingsbury channels well a mythic atmosphere of fairytale-esque fate that cocoons his characters and influences their actions. I just wish that this had been something … more … though I can’t really blame it for having to work within the constraints of its form.

Read as part of The Mammoth Book of Short Science Fiction Novels.

My first outing with Thomas Usher didn’t go so well. People died. He moped around. I wasn’t sure why or how I should care. Pretty Little Dead Things was a car crash of a dark and nasty novel that would definitely appeal to certain people who are not me. But still, I had Dead Bad Things on my tablet courtesy of my Angry Robot Books subscription, so I thought I would give it a chance.

Gary McMahon brings Usher back to Leeds in Dead Bad Things, this time for far more personal reasons. I won’t pretend to remember (or care) exactly what happened in the first book. It doesn’t matter, although if you haven’t read the first book, you might be confused about why this is referred to as “a Thomas Usher novel.” Usher doesn’t exactly feature heavily in the first half. Rather, the story is more about Sarah Doherty, a police constable out to find the truth about her deceased father, the much-respected and much-feared Emerson Doherty. But the truth proves to be far darker and sinister: the mystery has moved from network to cable territory.

As with the first book, McMahon pulls no punches in the territory of description and dialogue. I blamed Pretty Little Dead Things for depressing me. Dead Bad Things doesn’t have quite the same effect—I think the lighter role of Usher has something to do with it; though Sarah is not exactly a bright personality, she has a certain liveliness to her that is to be appreciated. However, I don’t mean to suggest that this is a light-hearted romp. It is every bit as graphic as the first novel, maybe more so. There are serious depictions of all sorts of depravity, from murder to child rape.

Even when he’s not describing how Trevor is recalling his domination and torture of his brother Michael, McMahon still impresses with an ability to imply or otherwise plumb the depths of humanity’s darker natures. From Sarah and Benson’s decidedly unprofessional and kinky relationship to the armless psychic Immaculee and her assistant Tracy, the characters in this book are vivid depictions of stark and uncompromising humanity. This is not a warm-and-fuzzy novel about an antihero who redeems himself. It is not a gritty and noir thriller where characters reveal secret hearts of gold.

That being said, Usher is much more bearable here. He does redeem himself, in my eyes, as he fights back against the Pilgrim and discovers how he and Sarah are connected. (The whole mystery, I should mention, is all rather predictable and second-string to the more visceral experience McMahon creates as the characters move along the vicious whirligig roller coaster of his own invention.) Whereas previously, Usher was driven by more external motivating factors, here he seems driven for personal reasons, and this makes him a far more sympathetic individual.

I’m still not going to go as far as to say I liked Dead Bad Things. It just isn’t in my wheelhouse. But I think it’s a better novel than the first Thomas Usher book, so here’s hoping McMahon can keep the trend going if there is a third, yes? So if you got more mileage from Pretty Little Dead Things than I did, this is a safe bet. If you didn’t much care for it, but you like this type of fiction, then give this a try. But if, like me, you find this particular combination of horror and fantasy not to your liking, don’t expect Dead Bad Things to change itself for you.

I’ve never really considered what the collective noun would be for a group of mages (coven might work, but it has more specific connotations than just a gathering). Blight is probably as good as any. The mages of Dorana certainly seem to fit the description. Never have I met such a pack of whiny and entitled people. I was happy to see their country destroyed.

Yes, it is this fury that Karen Miller has inspired in me with A Blight of Mages. Barl Lindin is an unranked mage (she’s not good enough to sit with the cool kids and go to Hogwarts). She is stuck toiling in obscurity, building fantastic clocks under the watchful stink-eye of an artisan of mediocre skill and character. She itches only for a chance to prove herself and be admited to the College of Mages, where she feels that she can learn and be just as good as any mage of rank. Silly Barl doesn’t understand that the world is ranged against her because she lacks both money and family and hence lacks power. It doesn’t matter how much she whines or stamps her feet; she is doomed to a mundane life of work until she dies.

Setting plot aside for a moment, I just have to remark on how much I enjoyed Miller’s depiction of a mage-dominated society plagued with the same problems of class and power relations that our non-mage–dominated societies here on Earth have. (At least, I think our societies aren’t dominated by mages. Huh. That might explain things.) At the pinnacle are the First Families, the ones lucky enough to be born into old money and power. Below them are the majority of Dorana’s population: unranked mages of various levels of skill. Miller weaves magic throughout all of Doranen society, as demonstrated in detail at the beginning when we get to watch Barl make clocks. At the very bottom of the social hierarchy are the unlucky numpties like Rumm who don’t have much magical affinity at all. These muggles get to spend their lives as servants to the mages. And Barl, though she’s nice enough to them, reveals her own position of privilege through her relative insensitivity towards their inequity.

I don’t like Barl that much. Fortunately this appears to be intentional on Miller’s part, for she writes Barl as a very unlikable person: arrogant with a capital “A”, Barl wastes no time informing everyone in earshot that she is Awesome and Amazing and is totally better than Artisan Arndel, who is—I have it on good authority from her—a poopyface. She single-handedly delivers the bestest, most amazingest clock for Lady Grue (who does not live in caves, despite what her name might suggest). She single-handedly saves the artisanry from nigh-certain disaster at the hands of an incompetent fellow mage, though of course with no evidence of the impending disaster remaining, we just have to take her word for it. Barl has all the makings of a Mary Sue … except that, in the grand scheme, she is actually really bad at anything not directly related to mageworking.

Seriously, Barl is a trainwreck through this entire book. From the first page to the last, she pisses off, to various degrees, every single person she meets. Fortunately, Remmie is related to her, so he forgives her (repeatedly). And Morgan … well, he’s Morgan. He saves Barl only to succumb to the siren song that is their mageworking combined. And so they proceed down the direst road of good intentions that I have seen in a long time.

Morgan’s character development as a tragic hero is delicious. At the start of the book, he is little more than your generic rich heir. He courts a lady mage of rank with all the enthusiasm one would expect from a man being pushed into marriage by an ailing, misogynistic crust of father. (Morgan’s daddy issues are later cited by a few other characters as contributing factors to his skewed view of the world, and I’m inclined to agree.) As the story continues, and particularly once Morgan meets Barl and they start cooking with azafris, he grows more of a spine. But that’s not a good thing.

Miller manages to pull of a twist of situational irony that is so clichéd and predictable it should fall flat—but it works. And it works, at least for me, because of the thick and reassuring waves of schadenfreude that wash over me as I watch Dorana crumble. The reactions of the other mages to the nascent catastrophe are reminiscient of global warming deniers. (As much as I like Morgan’s character development, plenty of the secondary characters, particularly antagonists like Sallis and Morgan’s father, are stubbornly one-dimensional in their moustache-twisting commitment to being Bad People.)

So Dorana falls apart, and it’s actually all Morgan and Barl’s fault, even though they were trying to prevent this very thing from happening. Surprise! Except it’s not a surprise to the reader, because we’ve seen this before. Miller knows this, so rather than standing awkwardly around and trying to extract further plaudits, she swiftly moves the book on to the most satisfying part: an extended epilogue that sets the stage for the main part of this series, which had already been published.

After Morgan descends into madness, Barl and the surviving Doranen mages become refugees. They flee to Lur, which by all accounts is a pretty desolate place. Mountains won’t stand in Morgan’s way, though, so Barl has to work one last feat of magic to cut Lur off from the rest of the world and isolate the Doranens and Olken for as long as possible.

On a thematic level, it’s very interesting how Miller has Barl repeat her earlier mistakes rather than learn from them. Once again, Barl shoulders all the responsibility—that arrogance making it impossible for her to admit that someone else could do it—for “saving” people. She has a cross to bear, and she’s none too reluctant to make sure everyon knows she is bearing it for them. I suppose I’ll have to wait until I read the next book to find out what comes of the walled-up refugees. For now, though, I just enjoyed watching the disasters come one after the other, escalating until, finally, all of society crumbles.

Well, Barl gets her wish after all. All of Dorana’s mages are equally screwed. (Or dead.)

A Blight of Mages makes me think back to the good ol’ days of my youth when I was curled up with the larger instalments of Modesitt’s Recluce saga. This book has the same feel of scope and intricate attention to the harmony between magic and the world around us. I suspect that, had I read it back then, I would have found it just as influential as I did Modesitt. As it is, like with Modesitt’s work now, I can see the cracks in the brickwork. It’s not a perfect book—it’s a little long, a little repetitive at times in its insistence on characters endlessly dancing around issues instead of doing things about them. But, as my flippant commentary above hopefully communicates, the book remains extremely entertaining. Despite its length, there was never a point where I found myself putting it down and wanting to walk away: I just wanted to see what fool thing Barl or Morgan might do next.

So far, this world is far cooler than the Godspeaker trilogy, and I look forward to reading the rest of the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker books.

Like some of the other entries in this anthology, Enemy Mine feels like a prototype that defines the mould for an entire subgenre of science fiction. In this case, Barry Longyear uses the plight of two individuals to highlight the folly of the blind hatred taught to them by their respective species. With a human and a Drac soldier stranded together on an inhospitable world in the middle of a war, they must work together to survive. When the Drac reproduces (asexually) and then soon dies, Davidge is left to care for its offspring and raise it into the Drac culture, which he has come to respect and appreciate in a way no other human has.

There’s a lot to like about Enemy Mine. It moves at a good pace. And it’s a textbook case of character development, as Davidge goes from being a good Drac-hating soldier to a thoughtful, introspective student of Drac culture and history. (I loved the bit at the beginning when Jeriba attempts to enrage Davidge by insulting Mickey Mouse.) The conflict within the story works on two levels, with both the visceral, environmental dangers of trying to survive on the planet as well as the higher, emotional dangers of Davidge’s attempts to raise Zammis.

I’d argue, however, that it’s Longyear’s depiction of the inevitable close-mindedness of both cultures after Davidge and Zammis get off the planet that makes Enemy Mine truly great. This isn’t just a story about two enemy soldiers surviving together and coming to respect one another as people rather than monsters from the other side. Instead, Davidge and Zammis attempt to build a bridge between their two peoples—dragging both, kicking and screaming, towards mutual respect. It’s so chilling to watch both humans and Drac obstruct Davidge’s quest to find Zammis again and present him for his recitation of the Jeriba line.

Enemy Mine, therefore, does exactly what a great science-fiction story should do: it uses strange settings to explore a potent idea that is nevertheless relevant to the time in which it was written. It’s often said that the ability to wage war is an attribute unique to humans, a defining characteristic of our species. Yet our effectiveness in war tends to be proportional to the amount to which we can dehumanize ourselves and our enemy: we switch off those emotions that complicate the act of killing, and we build up this idea in our minds of an implacable foe who is somehow less than human. These phenomena repeat throughout history in every war.

It is difficult to deal with how this happens on the scale of entire societies, though. In restricting himself to an individual, Longyear is able to explore how propaganda and misunderstanding allows one person to develop such a distorted view of the enemy. It’s easier for Davidge to kill Dracs when he believes they are terrible monsters. When he actually gets to know one, the thought of going back to the war and killing more Dracs sickens him.

In war, empathy for one’s enemy is a weakness. It was true then, and it is true now. Propaganda of the kind the human authorities spread about Drac for purposes of imperialist expansion is still in use today, making Enemy Mine no less relevant, or less interesting, for another generation.

Read as part of The Mammoth Book of Short Science Fiction Novels.

When I clued into the fact that Broken is a Frankenstein-inspired mashup of resurrection-related romance and teenage angst, I was determined not to like it. I don’t see why we need to revisit Frankenstein but set it in high school. So A.E. Rought was fighting a pitched battle to earn my approval—but she makes a good case.

Broken’s relationship with its source material is similar to how all other vampire stories relate to Dracula. The resurrected boy is named Alex Franks, and Emma attends Shelley High, but these nods and the idea of creating a patchwork quilt of life are the extent to which this book emulates the original. Indeed, Alex is no monster, and his father is not trying to create new life from dead parts stitched together. Rather, Alex is a real person resurrected by a very skilled mad scientist of a father.

None of this is spoiler material, because it is pretty obvious from the beginning. That being said, Rought makes a good attempt at building up to the revelation to Emma that Alex is more than just the new kid on the block. She drops subtle hints—scars along his body, absences when Alex is getting treatment, and of course, the eyes that look so much like Daniel’s…. Unfortunately, Rought milks the dramatic irony of the disparity between the reader’s awareness and Emma’s for far too long. By the time Emma understands the situation, the book is nearly over.

There were a couple of times, when I wasn’t careful, that I almost fell for Broken. I’m blaming Emma and her voice here. She’s a very likable and relatable protagonist, despite being a self-absorbed teenage girl still trying to process the death of her boyfriend. She is introspective enough to provide thoughtful narration and speculate on her own motives. But she is also very flawed, very adolescent in her approach to the world. Rought does a good job depicting such a worldview in Emma’s dialogue, thoughts, and actions.

So there is a core to this book that works very well. Unfortunately, it is surrounded by a plot that drags. Emma takes forever to learn the truth about Alex. There are far too many scenes in which she and Alex exchange angsty looks while having angsty dialogue about how they are both so full of angst because her boyfriend is dead and his father is a mean old bastard. Once in a while, if we are lucky, we get treated to watching Emma order coffee.

Initial prejudice aside, I suspect that I also have a problem with Broken because, deep down, it just doesn’t seem speculative enough. The only science-fictional or fantastic component of the whole book is Alex’s situation, and Rought spends very little time investigating or explaining how his condition works. I was going into this expecting a full-on fantasy or science-fiction story and instead got YA romance with a side of electromagnetic resurrection. This isn’t Broken’s fault, necessarily, though I think it’s another indication of the missed potential.

That’s what it comes down to with this book. Broken is competent and borderline fascinating, but it doesn’t stand out. It doesn’t take risks with its storytelling. Its protagonist has an enjoyable voice, but she lives in a drab world where coming back to life requires very little explanation, save perhaps an ironic eyebrow arch of hipster solidarity. In the end, I’m forced to concede that I had this book all wrong: aside from the most superficial of similarities, this book has nothing to do with Frankenstein—and that is a shame.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that stories about robots, and in particular stories about love between robots and humans, are actually just stories about humans. Most stories are—about humans, that is. The Mad Scientist’s Daughter is no exception. It’s right there in the title: this is about the daughter Cat, and not so much about the robot, Finn. He’s absent for much of the novel—though never gone. His presence throughout Cat’s life, from her childhood when he tutors her to her early days as an adult, affects the way she forms relationships with other people. More than that, by examining such a long stretch of Cat’s life, Cassandra Rose Clarke explores how someone’s relationship with a sentient robot can evolve.

The Mad Scientist’s Daughter is what one might call “soft” post-apocalyptic fiction. In a soft apocalypse, civilization doesn’t end so much as weather a massive catastrophe. In this case, it’s the creatively named “Disasters.” By the time Cat is growing up, life is better—we’re building a base on the moon, and we have robots that are starting to camp in the uncanny valley and demand rights. Yet within this vision of the future, there are odd echoes of a twentieth-century past. Cat’s bohemian life as a near-penniless artist contrasts with Richard’s intense, fast-paced life of business deals and stock options. She "settles" for marrying him because it’s the easy thing to do, and so she slips into a tiresome life of being a trophy wife and eye-candy for Richard. Clarke makes a big deal out of this being, in part, a reaction against Cat’s mother’s attempts to push Cat into a STEM career under the belief it would make Cat a more independent woman. But the housewifey nature of Cat’s story arc seems so out of place in what’s supposed to be the future in a very retro way.

It’s the future, but gender dynamics and professions don’t seem to have changed that much (and, in fact, might have regressed a little from the present). I feel like, realistically, having the technology feasible to build a moonbase or robots of the sophistication portrayed here would lead to wider social changes than what Clarke shows us. Of course, that isn’t the story Clarke wants to tell—she’s writing about the powerful and conflicting nature of love—and I respect that. She is taking a gamble, with every possibility that it could go wrong and I could be complaining about it.

Indeed, I stumbled through the first half of the book with little interest in events or the characters experiencing them. Clarke’s detached narrative style did not appeal to me. There is so little exposition about what Finn is, how he came to be, until closer to the end of the book, that I struggled to understand what the point of the entire story was—and so I nearly missed it. Yet somewhere between climax and denouement, The Mad Scientist’s Daughter finally reaches a crescendo that makes me care. More than that—it cut me up. The ending of this book demolished me. And unlike many better books that have done this, with this one, I didn’t see it coming.

One could make the argument that this is a love story, but I won’t. Cat’s relationship with Finn is more complicated than love. Unlike a human lover, Finn does not age. Although his programming grows in complexity over the years, as he and Dr. Nowak make various improvements, in general he remains the same. Cat, meanwhile, ages considerably. She grows up from a solitary child into a creative but frustrated young woman. And thanks to the environment and experiences she has, her youth is not as cozy as she might have liked it to be.

Clarke highlights Cat’s difficulties through the changing nature of her relationship with Finn. It’s most noticeable, of course, when the issue of sex enters into the equation:

She thought about Finn’s touch, but she did not allow herself to think about the deviancy of it. Only damaged people slept with androids. People who couldn’t stand human touch. Cat wasn’t like that.

I love that line: “Only damaged people slept with androids.” It just sums up Cat’s entire self-image, from adolescence on through into adulthood. She is damaged. Her parents are emotionally distant, switched off, yet full of expectations for their daughter. Her mother badgers her into making something of herself, having a career, while her father simply retreats into his lab, allowing Finn to take care of the thorny issues of teaching. Cat’s social contact is limited during her childhood to the point of negligence.

The line above comes at a time when Cat is entertaining a marriage proposal. She doesn’t want to marry Richard. She doesn’t love Richard. But the proposal is difficult to refuse, because it has the tantalizing stamp of normality. If she gets married, to a human, and turns her back on Finn, then she gets to prove she is not damaged. Though Richard is—even if he wouldn’t admit it—essentially taking Cat on as a trophy wife, in many ways Richard himself is a trophy for Cat’s own self-esteem.

Cat realizes the first part—that marrying Richard is a desperate grab for normality—but doesn’t realize the second until it’s too late:

She used to think that he was using her in their marriage—as a decoration on his arm, as a test subject for his AI—but she understood now that she had used him, that he had loved her and she never once reciprocated despite claiming otherwise, over and over again.

And so Clarke emphasizes the flaws that brought Cat to this point. Nothing in this excuses Richard’s self-centred and insensitive behaviour. But Cat is not blameless when it comes to entering into the relationship. She was too busy deceiving herself, trying to push Finn aside, and failing.

It’s not until Cat has a child of her own and her father’s health fails that she begins to develop much personal momentum of her own. Caring for her father and for a child transforms Cat; it gives her responsibilities far beyond anything else she has ever had, whether it’s a commission for a tapestry or taking care of the stultifying suburban house she had shared with Richard. Cat starts to live again, even as her father slips away from her.

This is the point where the novel started to catch me. Cat’s awakening, if you will, the moments where she starts to grow up and actually become a person, moved me far more than I anticipated. And while Finn’s return might have been inevitable, I respect that Clarke doesn’t just through the two of them together into each other’s arms. There is a certain wariness, an uneasiness brought about by the way in which they never said goodbye and the circumstances of their reunion. We’re left with the implication that it is not happily ever after, but that it is happy for now, and that the potential for happiness always exists, even if there are moments when it isn’t realized.

This is not a story about a robot. It’s not even a love story about a robot and a human. It’s a story about a damaged little girl who happens to know a very special robot while she grows up. And his presence complicates her life, but not so much that she doesn’t move on, for a little while. When things fall apart for her, she seeks out the entity that has been a constant, the person who has never let her down. He just happens to be artificial.

I can’t commend The Mad Scientist’s Daughter for brilliant prose or incredible writing. Like The Assassin’s Curse and its sequel, this book suffers from underdeveloped characters. But Clarke knows how to tell a story. And while I was sceptical at the start, the book eventually won me over through persistence and pathos. This isn’t an amazing story. But it is thoughtful, meditative, and above all, beautiful. And that is certainly commendable.