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tachyondecay
I don’t pay much attention to blurbs on book covers. The worst one are when the publisher has cherry-picked a list of adjectives from someone’s review, as if hearing that the New York Times thought a book is “inspiring, powerful, thought-provoking” is going to make me want to read it any more or less. Blurbs have little substance and are not helpful. Most of the time. But I’m going to start off by quoting the Library Journal blurb on the front cover of my edition of Memory & Dream:
This is an exception that proves the rule. This is a blurb that matters. It counts, in all the right ways, and I’m hard pressed to think of a better way to describe Memory & Dream and the effect it has on a reader.
Charles de Lint is a pretty great writer. Firstly, of course, he’s Canadian—I am legally required to point that out. Secondly, he writes contemporary urban fantasy without any of the paranormal investigation tropes that are so popular these days. His books could be mistaken for literary fiction, if you got dropped on the head and just ignored the parts with magic in them. They are just at the edge of the spectrum of magical realism, where it starts to bleed over into pure fantasy.
In this particular case, de Lint tells a story across two time periods. Isabelle Copley—or Izzy, as she is known in her younger time—is an artist with a gift. Mentored by a reclusive and manic artist named Vincent Rushkin, Izzy learns how to create paintings that act as gateways, bringing across numena from another world who manifest in the forms she paints. But after her relationship with Rushkin sours, Izzy retreats, becomes Isabelle, and turns her back on this gift. Only five years after the suicide of her best friend does Isabelle start confronting the events of twenty years ago.
The title here is key: de Lint hints that Isabelle’s memory is not always reliable, that she has edited history to be easier to deal with. By telling the story across two time periods, we get to see two versions of Isabelle: the growing, blossoming artist who is struggling with her newfound ability; the older, more experienced woman who has been burned once (literally) and is reluctant to engage again on that level.
It’s viscerally disturbing, watching young Izzy fall prey to all sorts of perils. From the abusive nature of her mentorship under Rushkin to the creepy vibe in her relationship with John, Izzy seems to fall repeatedly into these situations where she is unable or unwilling to have agency. It’s interesting that in the times she does exercise her agency, pushes away Rushkin or John or rejects her ability to create numena, she almost always ends up regretting it.
I have to hand it to de Lint, because I don’t actually like Isabelle (or Izzy) all that much as a character. She doesn’t have much in the way of fierce determination or backbone—gumption, they’d probably call it in the old days—but instead tends to go along with the flow, even if it’s going to end badly. Nevertheless, de Lint’s skill as a writer means I can still sympathize with Isabelle. I understand why she is that way, why she reacts to these challenges in the way she does. I don’t like it, but I sympathize with it.
Because that’s what de Lint has managed to capture here: a simple but important truth, which is that life is hard. Creating is hard. Having responsibility for something external to oneself is hard.
I’m not much for the visual arts, despite having worked in a gallery for six of the last eight years. I did enjoy de Lint’s description of the technical parts of Isabelle’s creative process, however, as much as I liked hearing about Kathy and Alan’s literary endeavours. Creative people like this recur throughout de Lint’s books, and they always seem to be the ones able to pierce the veil and cross the void between worlds. According to de Lint, creativity is our direct line to our soul, and to our creator.
So in his portrayals of Isabelle and Kathy, Alan and Marisa, Jilly and Rolanda—and we mustn’t forget the numena either—de Lint examines the marks that creativity leaves on people. He depicts both the great joys and relief that creativity brings as well as the terrible doubts, the stress, the pain. Rushkin and his twisted numena, the very idea of consuming the spirits we create, alludes to the darkness in the core of every human being. Creativity allows us to tap into that darkness in a raw and powerful way, but it is not without its dangers. This is the problem Isabelle has, the fear that if she brings across more numena, she will fail them (like she failed Kathy…).
Layered atop these questions is the question of whether the numena are real. What is reality anyway? Is it being able to bleed and dream, having the “red crow,” as Cosette puts it? Or is Isabelle correct—are the numena real because she gave them a piece of herself in their making? And will they survive her own death? So many questions, none of which de Lint ever hands down a single, definitive answer. But this only makes the story that much more tantalizing. My interest was starting to flag towards the end (I think the book itself is a hundred pages too long), but I kept going, not out of a sense of duty to finish, but because I was still intrigued by this particular theme.
As with his previous books that I’ve read, Memory & Dream concerns a protagonist’s personal journey as it intersects with a larger external conflict. Isabelle must stop Rushkin. But to do that, she has to confront the barriers she has erected within herself. De Lint seems interested in how we construct our own realities, how we lie to ourselves or change our memories to suit us, and how we define ourselves: are we artists or painters, writers or authors—what labels do we use? Whereas in some of his novels the fantasy element is foregrounded, here the numena are companions, but they never steal the stage. This is a story about how we value and judge ourselves and our creations. It is very powerful. It’s not perfect; it’s a little long, and your mileage will vary when it comes to how much you like the protagonist. But it’s yet another example of why Charles de Lint is a fantastic voice in fantasy.
De Lint moves gracefully through the borders between reality and imagination, weaving a powerful tale about the relationship between an artist and her work.
This is an exception that proves the rule. This is a blurb that matters. It counts, in all the right ways, and I’m hard pressed to think of a better way to describe Memory & Dream and the effect it has on a reader.
Charles de Lint is a pretty great writer. Firstly, of course, he’s Canadian—I am legally required to point that out. Secondly, he writes contemporary urban fantasy without any of the paranormal investigation tropes that are so popular these days. His books could be mistaken for literary fiction, if you got dropped on the head and just ignored the parts with magic in them. They are just at the edge of the spectrum of magical realism, where it starts to bleed over into pure fantasy.
In this particular case, de Lint tells a story across two time periods. Isabelle Copley—or Izzy, as she is known in her younger time—is an artist with a gift. Mentored by a reclusive and manic artist named Vincent Rushkin, Izzy learns how to create paintings that act as gateways, bringing across numena from another world who manifest in the forms she paints. But after her relationship with Rushkin sours, Izzy retreats, becomes Isabelle, and turns her back on this gift. Only five years after the suicide of her best friend does Isabelle start confronting the events of twenty years ago.
The title here is key: de Lint hints that Isabelle’s memory is not always reliable, that she has edited history to be easier to deal with. By telling the story across two time periods, we get to see two versions of Isabelle: the growing, blossoming artist who is struggling with her newfound ability; the older, more experienced woman who has been burned once (literally) and is reluctant to engage again on that level.
It’s viscerally disturbing, watching young Izzy fall prey to all sorts of perils. From the abusive nature of her mentorship under Rushkin to the creepy vibe in her relationship with John, Izzy seems to fall repeatedly into these situations where she is unable or unwilling to have agency. It’s interesting that in the times she does exercise her agency, pushes away Rushkin or John or rejects her ability to create numena, she almost always ends up regretting it.
I have to hand it to de Lint, because I don’t actually like Isabelle (or Izzy) all that much as a character. She doesn’t have much in the way of fierce determination or backbone—gumption, they’d probably call it in the old days—but instead tends to go along with the flow, even if it’s going to end badly. Nevertheless, de Lint’s skill as a writer means I can still sympathize with Isabelle. I understand why she is that way, why she reacts to these challenges in the way she does. I don’t like it, but I sympathize with it.
Because that’s what de Lint has managed to capture here: a simple but important truth, which is that life is hard. Creating is hard. Having responsibility for something external to oneself is hard.
I’m not much for the visual arts, despite having worked in a gallery for six of the last eight years. I did enjoy de Lint’s description of the technical parts of Isabelle’s creative process, however, as much as I liked hearing about Kathy and Alan’s literary endeavours. Creative people like this recur throughout de Lint’s books, and they always seem to be the ones able to pierce the veil and cross the void between worlds. According to de Lint, creativity is our direct line to our soul, and to our creator.
So in his portrayals of Isabelle and Kathy, Alan and Marisa, Jilly and Rolanda—and we mustn’t forget the numena either—de Lint examines the marks that creativity leaves on people. He depicts both the great joys and relief that creativity brings as well as the terrible doubts, the stress, the pain. Rushkin and his twisted numena, the very idea of consuming the spirits we create, alludes to the darkness in the core of every human being. Creativity allows us to tap into that darkness in a raw and powerful way, but it is not without its dangers. This is the problem Isabelle has, the fear that if she brings across more numena, she will fail them (like she failed Kathy…).
Layered atop these questions is the question of whether the numena are real. What is reality anyway? Is it being able to bleed and dream, having the “red crow,” as Cosette puts it? Or is Isabelle correct—are the numena real because she gave them a piece of herself in their making? And will they survive her own death? So many questions, none of which de Lint ever hands down a single, definitive answer. But this only makes the story that much more tantalizing. My interest was starting to flag towards the end (I think the book itself is a hundred pages too long), but I kept going, not out of a sense of duty to finish, but because I was still intrigued by this particular theme.
As with his previous books that I’ve read, Memory & Dream concerns a protagonist’s personal journey as it intersects with a larger external conflict. Isabelle must stop Rushkin. But to do that, she has to confront the barriers she has erected within herself. De Lint seems interested in how we construct our own realities, how we lie to ourselves or change our memories to suit us, and how we define ourselves: are we artists or painters, writers or authors—what labels do we use? Whereas in some of his novels the fantasy element is foregrounded, here the numena are companions, but they never steal the stage. This is a story about how we value and judge ourselves and our creations. It is very powerful. It’s not perfect; it’s a little long, and your mileage will vary when it comes to how much you like the protagonist. But it’s yet another example of why Charles de Lint is a fantastic voice in fantasy.
ANIMORPHS!!!
That’s it. Review done. Go home.
What else do you want me to say? This was my series growing up. Sure, I read Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew—and someone was still writing new volumes in those series, too, updated for the modern 1990s. (I’m sure there is an entire PhD thesis devoted to tracing the ways those two series have been revised and rewritten and re-released throughout the twentieth century—and if there isn’t, there should be.) But it was probably an early indicator of my lifelong love for science fiction that I fell hard for Animorphs.
I depended on my school and public libraries to furnish me with copies of these books. For some reason, the first ten books were hard to find, so I didn’t read most of them until I was well into the series. After about #17, I just started buying them. With actual money. Or with paper Chapters gift certificates. Remember those? I remember getting multiple copies of #21 for a birthday—this was the first time I learned the dangers of asking for a specific book for a present—and the excitement of going to Chapters with gift receipts and exhanging the book for sweet sweet store credit.
I remember staying up late at night with the comfortable thickness of The Andalite Chronicles and The Ellimist Chronicles and enjoying the feel of the shiny cover as I turned page after page, long after my bedtime. (I was a rebel, in my own way.)
I guess what I’m saying is that I have a lot of good childhood nostalgia about Animorphs. Now, here I am, 25 years old—and I’m going to reread them all. I’ve considered it, off and on, for a while. Coincidentally, two separate things have galvanized me to do it now: Read it and Weep, one of my favourite podcasts, just did an episode on Animorphs; and Goodreads friend Julie has embarked on her own series re-read, and I like nothing more than copying people cooler than myself. Go read her reviews!
As far as The Invasion itself goes, it sets the stage for the rest of the series. The writing is shit, of course—and this is before the Scholastic interns take over. Applegate pretty much tells instead of shows at every opportunity. I have a little more faith in the ability of children to grasp subtext (I think they can understand it, even if they don’t have the critical framework to explain it to someone else). I suspect, however, that because these were Scholastic books, they were supposed to be easy to read.
And it would be a mistake to conclude that poor writing style means poor storytelling. Even in this first book, the signs of the heights this series would attain are there.
You’ve got the main enemy: the Yeerks, pure evil brain slugs who want to snatch our bodies. No one in authority seems to know this is going on. Only five kids who happen to be around when a dying alien crash-lands his ship learn the truth.
That truth is harsh. These kids are in middle school (so, I’m assuming Grade 7 or 8). They’re just beginning to brim over with hormones and body image issues. (We could get sidetracked for hours talking about how morphing is a metaphor for body image and confidence….) And suddenly a blue deer alien with a scythe on its tail gives these kids the power to morph into any animal—but only for two hours!—but, oh by the way, you’ll need this power to stop evil aliens, and their leader’s host body can also morph. This leader, Visser Three, promptly shows up and eats the injured Andalite, Prince Elfangor, while our five protagonists watch from their hiding spots in terror.
This is what I love about children’s literature. If you did this in a movie, the MPAA would be all up in your rating, and you’d get angry letters about nightmares. But Animorphs occasionally taps into some deep, Grimm fairytale levels of darkness.
The Invasion, of course, also introduces us to the five Animorphs themselves. Jake is the viewpoint protagonist for this first book. His voice is frustratingly average-pre-teen-boyish. Already, however, we start to get a sense of the diversity in the group—and I’m not just talking about the 1990s-style, one-of-every-major-ethnicity ensemble casting that pervaded our television shows. Even this early in the series, Applegate lays the ground for exploring issues in the Animorphs’ lives that have influenced them and set them on this path to being heroes. Jake has a complex relationship with his brother Tom (who happens to be a Controller!). Cassie has grown up caring for animals. Rachel has an absent father, a mother who isn’t always there, so she shoulders a lot of responsibility for her siblings. Marco tries to use humour to hide his insecurities. And Tobias—poor Tobias—is the kid neither aunt nor uncle wants, the kid who ends up being trapped as a red-tailed hawk and is probably better off for it.
They don’t always get along. There are plenty of debates and arguments about whether they should be fighting or, as the series progresses, how they should be fighting. This is not the unified team you see in Saturday morning cartoons; there are no cheeky winks at the audience as the Animorphs team up to trounce the incompetent henchmen yet another day. The Hork-Bajir are terrifying; the Taxxons are gross but still threatening. And we haven’t even seen Visser One yet!
As far as series openers go, The Invasion is pretty intense. It raises the stakes with every chapter, not just establishing the setting and main conflict but planting seeds for subplots and story arcs galore. This series ran for over 50 books. So no matter how poorly written the dialogue and descriptions are here, I can’t fault Applegate or her editors for their vision or ability to plan ahead.
Next review I get to talk about Rachel—who is, hands down, my favourite—and the wonderful way Animorphs handles gender roles.
My reviews of Animorphs:
#2: The Visitor →
That’s it. Review done. Go home.
What else do you want me to say? This was my series growing up. Sure, I read Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew—and someone was still writing new volumes in those series, too, updated for the modern 1990s. (I’m sure there is an entire PhD thesis devoted to tracing the ways those two series have been revised and rewritten and re-released throughout the twentieth century—and if there isn’t, there should be.) But it was probably an early indicator of my lifelong love for science fiction that I fell hard for Animorphs.
I depended on my school and public libraries to furnish me with copies of these books. For some reason, the first ten books were hard to find, so I didn’t read most of them until I was well into the series. After about #17, I just started buying them. With actual money. Or with paper Chapters gift certificates. Remember those? I remember getting multiple copies of #21 for a birthday—this was the first time I learned the dangers of asking for a specific book for a present—and the excitement of going to Chapters with gift receipts and exhanging the book for sweet sweet store credit.
I remember staying up late at night with the comfortable thickness of The Andalite Chronicles and The Ellimist Chronicles and enjoying the feel of the shiny cover as I turned page after page, long after my bedtime. (I was a rebel, in my own way.)
I guess what I’m saying is that I have a lot of good childhood nostalgia about Animorphs. Now, here I am, 25 years old—and I’m going to reread them all. I’ve considered it, off and on, for a while. Coincidentally, two separate things have galvanized me to do it now: Read it and Weep, one of my favourite podcasts, just did an episode on Animorphs; and Goodreads friend Julie has embarked on her own series re-read, and I like nothing more than copying people cooler than myself. Go read her reviews!
As far as The Invasion itself goes, it sets the stage for the rest of the series. The writing is shit, of course—and this is before the Scholastic interns take over. Applegate pretty much tells instead of shows at every opportunity. I have a little more faith in the ability of children to grasp subtext (I think they can understand it, even if they don’t have the critical framework to explain it to someone else). I suspect, however, that because these were Scholastic books, they were supposed to be easy to read.
And it would be a mistake to conclude that poor writing style means poor storytelling. Even in this first book, the signs of the heights this series would attain are there.
You’ve got the main enemy: the Yeerks, pure evil brain slugs who want to snatch our bodies. No one in authority seems to know this is going on. Only five kids who happen to be around when a dying alien crash-lands his ship learn the truth.
That truth is harsh. These kids are in middle school (so, I’m assuming Grade 7 or 8). They’re just beginning to brim over with hormones and body image issues. (We could get sidetracked for hours talking about how morphing is a metaphor for body image and confidence….) And suddenly a blue deer alien with a scythe on its tail gives these kids the power to morph into any animal—but only for two hours!—but, oh by the way, you’ll need this power to stop evil aliens, and their leader’s host body can also morph. This leader, Visser Three, promptly shows up and eats the injured Andalite, Prince Elfangor, while our five protagonists watch from their hiding spots in terror.
This is what I love about children’s literature. If you did this in a movie, the MPAA would be all up in your rating, and you’d get angry letters about nightmares. But Animorphs occasionally taps into some deep, Grimm fairytale levels of darkness.
The Invasion, of course, also introduces us to the five Animorphs themselves. Jake is the viewpoint protagonist for this first book. His voice is frustratingly average-pre-teen-boyish. Already, however, we start to get a sense of the diversity in the group—and I’m not just talking about the 1990s-style, one-of-every-major-ethnicity ensemble casting that pervaded our television shows. Even this early in the series, Applegate lays the ground for exploring issues in the Animorphs’ lives that have influenced them and set them on this path to being heroes. Jake has a complex relationship with his brother Tom (who happens to be a Controller!). Cassie has grown up caring for animals. Rachel has an absent father, a mother who isn’t always there, so she shoulders a lot of responsibility for her siblings. Marco tries to use humour to hide his insecurities. And Tobias—poor Tobias—is the kid neither aunt nor uncle wants, the kid who ends up being trapped as a red-tailed hawk and is probably better off for it.
They don’t always get along. There are plenty of debates and arguments about whether they should be fighting or, as the series progresses, how they should be fighting. This is not the unified team you see in Saturday morning cartoons; there are no cheeky winks at the audience as the Animorphs team up to trounce the incompetent henchmen yet another day. The Hork-Bajir are terrifying; the Taxxons are gross but still threatening. And we haven’t even seen Visser One yet!
As far as series openers go, The Invasion is pretty intense. It raises the stakes with every chapter, not just establishing the setting and main conflict but planting seeds for subplots and story arcs galore. This series ran for over 50 books. So no matter how poorly written the dialogue and descriptions are here, I can’t fault Applegate or her editors for their vision or ability to plan ahead.
Next review I get to talk about Rachel—who is, hands down, my favourite—and the wonderful way Animorphs handles gender roles.
My reviews of Animorphs:
#2: The Visitor →
So I’m on a relativistic shuttle, waiting for you…. I never found anybody else and I don’t want anybody else. I don’t care whether you’re ninety years old or thirty. If I can’t be your lover, I’ll be your nurse.
Hey kids, you know how people keep using that word allegory, and you’re never really sure what they mean, and they probably aren’t even sure what they mean?
This. This is an allegory.
If there’s a reason we have the phrase “deceptively slim” in our book reviewing vocabulary, it’s for books like The Forever War. This thing won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. No mean feat, that. And for the first little bit, I couldn’t figure out why. Joe Haldeman gets off to a slow start, with a book that is refreshingly familiar in the way it lampoons the gung ho enthusiasm with which an conscript army gets sent off to be slaughtered in the name of politics and the economy. It’s Vietnam, only in space.
Or is it?
I think the quotation I used to open this review shows that The Forever War is actually a love story, where the lovers are not merely starcrossed but starscattered through time and space.
We don’t learn a lot about William Mandella the person prior to the war. We know he was a physics teacher; we meet his “younger” brother and his mother, and that is about it. The start of the war marks an epoch for Mandella, even though by his subjective reckoning, the Forever War lasts less than ten years.
The Mandella we initially meet seems to be a man of few convictions. He was conscripted into the army. He doesn’t put up a fuss. There is a fatalistic quality to Mandella’s actions and remarks—he is seldom happy about what is going on, but he never seems able to stir himself to do anything about the situation. He is, indeed, a terrible leader, as he himself remarks on numerous occasions. Really the only thing that makes him stand out is the charmed life he leads: he hasn’t managed to die yet.
In this way, Haldeman, of course, remarks on the impartiality with which war strikes down officers and enlisted personnel, heroes and cowards alike. War is like the honey badger: it doesn’t give a shit. And for all the fancy technology both UNEF and the Taurans have, neither can alter such a fundamental apathetic constant of the universe.
Haldeman spends little time exploring the motives behind the war. The inciting reason is something along the lines of “Our ship blew up. The Taurans were there. We should do something. War is doing something. We should do war.” It’s like the worst false syllogism ever—but that, of course, is the point. War, as they say, is good for absolutely nothing—except as an economic machine in which human lives are the lubricant.
However, if you’re looking for science fiction with intense ground battles and descriptions of sexy powered mecha suits, then this is not the book for you. There are a few action sequences, but Haldeman opts for a more realistic approach to space combat. He invokes relativistic velocities, logistical computers, acceleration couches, and even probability tables. This is space combat as it probably would be, not the sexy space combat we see in science fantasy shows. And I give mad kudos to Haldeman for spending the time to explore what trying to fight at relativistic speeds might entail. I love the idea that, because of all this relativistic travel, you’re encountering an enemy who is either decades or centuries ahead of or behind you, technologically. Blows my mind.
Where I went wrong at the start of the book, actually, was assuming this would be more about the minutiae of war, the battles and the experience of boots on the ground, than it is. To be fair to me, that’s kind of how Haldeman sets us up at the beginning. Mandella and the new recruits are all training for ground operations by day and having randomized free-lovin’ sex by night. Man, those 1970s….
Fortunately, the rest of The Forever War corrected my interpretation. By the end I started to understand why this book has received so much acclaim.
In addition to the wealth of discussions we can have about warfare, we can also talk about the portrayal of sex and gender here. I suspect by 1970s standards it was fairly avant garde. The way Haldeman posits a fluidity of sexual orientation, including cultural and social shifts normalizing homosexuality over heterosexuality, reminded me a little of Samuel R. Delany’s work. Like Delany, Haldeman is notable not just for mentioning such lifestyles but actually challenging the heteronormativity of the author’s contemporary society.
By our standards today, some of the way Haldeman deals with gender roles remains problematic. Sexual orientation is decisively dichotomous (with the possible exception of Kahn, who, if we can give them any kind of label, might be considered pansexual). And although Haldeman joins Delany in portraying alternative sexualities, he doesn’t go so far as to deconstruct gender identity much—men are still men, women are still women, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in between.
Still, I have to give Haldeman credit for the way he handles gender roles. Women in this book are just as capable as men, with just as much diversity in attitude and behaviour. There are weak women and men, strong women and men, thoughtful women and men, and so on. All of Haldeman’s characters are people rather than stereotypes of class, race, and gender, something that is to his credit as a writer.
Despite these elements, however, The Forever War is not so much transgressive as it is expressive of hopes and cautious optimism. After all, as I said earlier, it’s really just a long con culminating in a heteroromance for the ages. Mandella and Potter finally find each other and get a postscript baby in a galaxy. They live on one of several enclave planets with other heterohumans on tap as breeding stock in case the main Man, Kahn, discovers a flaw in its many-and-sundry clones.
This is the part where you might be wondering if, somewhere between page 180 and 210, you nodded off and drowned (because you were reading this in the bathtub like me—you mean you don’t read in the bathtub? How odd). That last development seems like it comes out of left field—but I kind of see it as the logical extreme of the type of progression Haldeman was showing each time Mandella swung back towards Earth. And that’s not the only possible resolution, but it was one way to puncture the cyclic equilibrium of destruction and rebuilding that Earth underwent while UNEF played soldiers with its excess population.
But I digress.
Mandella and Potter’s romance is rather low-key. They start off, like everyone else in their basic training, as randomized sleep partners. Gradually they become a couple. For a little while, as Mandella remarks, it seems like they stay together mostly out of inertia: by being posted to the same assignments and by virtue of, you know, not dying, they happen to be the only people left alive from their time period. Relativity and war have taken care of everyone else. I understand how that could be a powerful bond, more powerful even than physical or emotional attraction.
I swear that the only reason Haldeman hammers us with repetitive explanations of what these relativistic voyages are doing to Mandella and Potter is so that when they get split up, it’s immediately tragic and poignant. Mandella spells it out for us (in case you were nodding off in that bathtub again—stop doing that), but that doesn’t undermine the pathos at all: they will be inextricably separated, forever.
Of course I had peeked at the last page and knew they wouldn’t be….
But that letter from Marygay, the one with the quotation I used above, is probably one of the best things about this book. It just has such a spirit of optimism about it. When William reads it, realizes what it signifies … it’s as if the weight of those centuries that have passed him by lifts from his shoulders, and he becomes a person again rather than a cog in the machine. I would have liked to see his reunion with Marygay in person, rather than an epistolary epilogue—but that might just be me.
The Forever War hasn’t jumped to the top of my list as far as war novels go. But I’m glad I read it. There’s something to be said for classics that are short: if they don’t live up to your expectations, then you haven’t wasted much time—but if they do, then you can re-read them again and again without feeling like you’re reliving every Russian winter Tolstoy spent writing them. The Forever War falls into the latter camp for me. I haven’t decided if I’ll check out the sequels, but I’m sure I’ll come back to this book some years from now, and see what else it has to show me.
We continue my epic re-read of the Animorphs series with book 2, because I’m boring and read series in order, OK?
Animorphs resembles an after-school kids show: each book is like an episode of the show in which the kids have an adventure while learning an important life lesson. In The Invasion the lesson was, “Yes, your principal is an alien bent on enslaving humanity.” The Visitor is about the harsh effects of marital strife on children and their friendships.
We are eternally indebted to The Invasion for kicking off the series. As I explored in my first review, it is a great series opener. Nevertheless, as a story it has a lot of problems. Applegate has to do a lot of heavy lifting to establish the ground rules of the series. If that book is all about the Animorphs getting powers, then The Visitor, as the sequel, is about them exploring what it means to have powers, and the consequences of discovering an alien invasion in progress.
I criticized Applegate’s writing on a technical level. While I stand by that criticism in general, I have to backtrack and admit that there is one area in which her powers of description excel: describing the experience of a new morph.
This isn’t like television, where we can see someone turn into an animal. And I would argue that television is a less useful form here, because it’s harder to telegraph what someone is feeling as they become that animal. It’s hard enough to do that in writing, but Applegate manages. She doesn’t stop after describing the physical transformation. No, she puts effort into communicating the psychological effect of having that animal’s instincts, and she does so with deftness. Here’s Rachel on becoming a cat named Fluffer McKitty:
Applegate could have remarked on the cat’s cool night vision and left it at that. I love this extra touch. It’s accurate and apt and entirely on a level that both kids and adults can relate to. Becoming another animal isn’t just about looking different and walking on four legs or having wings. It’s a whole new way of viewing the world and a different set of priorities.
The narration and descriptions of other things are still underwhelming. But I can live with that to get more of the above.
Rachel is our narrator this time around. She fills the roles both of Action Girl and Girly Girl in our band of merry alien resistance fighters. That’s right: Rachel is athletic and aggressive and dresses fashionably. What’s up with that?
I’m being deliberately flip and superficial, because Applegate decidedly is not: Rachel has a complexity of character that belies all such neat attempts to pigeonhole her. Just as we learned about Jake’s changing relationship with his Controller brother, Tom, in the first book, here we learn about Rachel’s home life: her estranged father whom she rarely sees; her overworked mother who isn’t always able to be there for them; her two younger siblings who look to her for support. Rachel has to shoulder much more responsibility and maturity than we think adolescents should have to bear, and that goes a long way to explaining her motivations and her attitude.
If I had to choose one word to describe Rachel, it would be resilient.
Her gung-ho attitude is easy to mistake for mindless aggression, but that’s not the case at all. Rather, Rachel simply falls into the “a strong offence is the best defence” school of thought. So far what she has seen of life has taught her that no one can be absolutely depended upon. She has already learned she has to look out for herself—and for those who depend on her, like her siblings, her friends, and even her mother. And there is so much in the world that can hurt you and the ones you care about—better you strike out at them first, strike back while you are strong, than scrabble to defend yourself later.
It’s this pre-emptive strike philosophy that Rachel embodies. We see it a lot in later books—made more ragged and morally ambiguous by the fog of war, yes—but it’s apparent early on. Rachel doesn’t go back into the Chapmans’ residence, risking her life and risking exposure of the Animorphs, just to get more information. She goes back in there for her friend Melissa:
My heart did break right then. How can you not cry?
I know what it’s like to feel alone and upset and have only your cat to hold and cry against. (It is one of the universe’s most beautiful paradoxes that, while pretending to be aloof and uncaring at all other times, most cats will magically appear next to you when you are crying and purr. I think it’s a bonding thing.)
Rachel chooses to spend a little time comforting Melissa while posing as her cat. Then Rachel decides, unequivocally, that the Yeerks must be opposed and that she will be the one to do it. Because friendship. And love.
And it breaks my heart to know what will happen as the series progresses. It’s all so fresh and new at this point—sure, the Animorphs still haven’t fully realized what it means to be in this fight. They haven’t conceptualized what is to fight yet, let alone whether they might win. They are poking the anthole with a stick so far.
A lot more than ants are about to pour out.
Rachel, you are and always will be my favourite Animorph. Cassie gets the label of Compassionate One, but you simply wear your compassion in a different way. You are the avenging angel, the brightest light.
The Invasion is a book of action and discovery, of intense revelations. The Visitor is more down-to-Earth—well, as down-to-Earth as Andalites and Hork-Bajir can be…. But it’s more about hidden costs, and empathy, and what it means to be human in the face of a non-human threat.
This might be written for kids. But it’s a lot more mature than some things out there written for adults.
Next review I’ll get to praise Rachel a bit more, even though it’s a Tobias book. And we learn why Red Bull doesn’t give you wings.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #1: The Invasion | #3: The Encounter →
Animorphs resembles an after-school kids show: each book is like an episode of the show in which the kids have an adventure while learning an important life lesson. In The Invasion the lesson was, “Yes, your principal is an alien bent on enslaving humanity.” The Visitor is about the harsh effects of marital strife on children and their friendships.
We are eternally indebted to The Invasion for kicking off the series. As I explored in my first review, it is a great series opener. Nevertheless, as a story it has a lot of problems. Applegate has to do a lot of heavy lifting to establish the ground rules of the series. If that book is all about the Animorphs getting powers, then The Visitor, as the sequel, is about them exploring what it means to have powers, and the consequences of discovering an alien invasion in progress.
I criticized Applegate’s writing on a technical level. While I stand by that criticism in general, I have to backtrack and admit that there is one area in which her powers of description excel: describing the experience of a new morph.
This isn’t like television, where we can see someone turn into an animal. And I would argue that television is a less useful form here, because it’s harder to telegraph what someone is feeling as they become that animal. It’s hard enough to do that in writing, but Applegate manages. She doesn’t stop after describing the physical transformation. No, she puts effort into communicating the psychological effect of having that animal’s instincts, and she does so with deftness. Here’s Rachel on becoming a cat named Fluffer McKitty:
But it wasn't just how well I saw that was strange. It was what I noticed.
A human being will notice colors, for exam ple. Now, a cat can see colors, more or less. He just isn't interested in colors. It's like, okay, that thing is red. Who cares?
What cats really notice is movement. If anything moves, even the tiniest bit, the cat sees it. I was standing there on the grass, looking around with my big cat eyes, and I saw nothing but movement.
Applegate could have remarked on the cat’s cool night vision and left it at that. I love this extra touch. It’s accurate and apt and entirely on a level that both kids and adults can relate to. Becoming another animal isn’t just about looking different and walking on four legs or having wings. It’s a whole new way of viewing the world and a different set of priorities.
The narration and descriptions of other things are still underwhelming. But I can live with that to get more of the above.
Rachel is our narrator this time around. She fills the roles both of Action Girl and Girly Girl in our band of merry alien resistance fighters. That’s right: Rachel is athletic and aggressive and dresses fashionably. What’s up with that?
I’m being deliberately flip and superficial, because Applegate decidedly is not: Rachel has a complexity of character that belies all such neat attempts to pigeonhole her. Just as we learned about Jake’s changing relationship with his Controller brother, Tom, in the first book, here we learn about Rachel’s home life: her estranged father whom she rarely sees; her overworked mother who isn’t always able to be there for them; her two younger siblings who look to her for support. Rachel has to shoulder much more responsibility and maturity than we think adolescents should have to bear, and that goes a long way to explaining her motivations and her attitude.
If I had to choose one word to describe Rachel, it would be resilient.
Her gung-ho attitude is easy to mistake for mindless aggression, but that’s not the case at all. Rather, Rachel simply falls into the “a strong offence is the best defence” school of thought. So far what she has seen of life has taught her that no one can be absolutely depended upon. She has already learned she has to look out for herself—and for those who depend on her, like her siblings, her friends, and even her mother. And there is so much in the world that can hurt you and the ones you care about—better you strike out at them first, strike back while you are strong, than scrabble to defend yourself later.
It’s this pre-emptive strike philosophy that Rachel embodies. We see it a lot in later books—made more ragged and morally ambiguous by the fog of war, yes—but it’s apparent early on. Rachel doesn’t go back into the Chapmans’ residence, risking her life and risking exposure of the Animorphs, just to get more information. She goes back in there for her friend Melissa:
I had stopped purring. Probably because I was preoccupied, arguing with Tobias. I started purring again. I felt Melissa needed me to purr.
She was still crying. Still scratching slowly behind my ears.
"What did I do, Fluffer?" she asked again. "Why don't they love me anymore?"
I felt like my own heart would break right then.
Because I knew now why Melissa had stopped hanging out with me. I knew why she had become more withdrawn. And I knew how little hope there was for her.
My stomach turned and twisted.
Next time Marco asked why we were fighting the Yeerks, I knew I would have a whole new answer. Because they destroy the love of parents for their daughter. Because they made Melissa Chapman cry in her bed with no one to comfort her but a cat.
My heart did break right then. How can you not cry?
I know what it’s like to feel alone and upset and have only your cat to hold and cry against. (It is one of the universe’s most beautiful paradoxes that, while pretending to be aloof and uncaring at all other times, most cats will magically appear next to you when you are crying and purr. I think it’s a bonding thing.)
Rachel chooses to spend a little time comforting Melissa while posing as her cat. Then Rachel decides, unequivocally, that the Yeerks must be opposed and that she will be the one to do it. Because friendship. And love.
And it breaks my heart to know what will happen as the series progresses. It’s all so fresh and new at this point—sure, the Animorphs still haven’t fully realized what it means to be in this fight. They haven’t conceptualized what is to fight yet, let alone whether they might win. They are poking the anthole with a stick so far.
A lot more than ants are about to pour out.
Rachel, you are and always will be my favourite Animorph. Cassie gets the label of Compassionate One, but you simply wear your compassion in a different way. You are the avenging angel, the brightest light.
The Invasion is a book of action and discovery, of intense revelations. The Visitor is more down-to-Earth—well, as down-to-Earth as Andalites and Hork-Bajir can be…. But it’s more about hidden costs, and empathy, and what it means to be human in the face of a non-human threat.
This might be written for kids. But it’s a lot more mature than some things out there written for adults.
Next review I’ll get to praise Rachel a bit more, even though it’s a Tobias book. And we learn why Red Bull doesn’t give you wings.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #1: The Invasion | #3: The Encounter →
One of the most important parts of designing a magic system, or a set of superpowers, or anything that allows characters to defy the ordinary laws and assumptions of our universe, is deciding what the costs will be. You can’t get something for nothing, and if you break the rules, you have to pay a price. For the Animorphs, it’s a two-hour time limit. If you stay in a morph longer, you’re stuck there. No backsies.
The Animorphs run up against this in The Encounter. Our narrator this time is Tobias, who fell victim to the two-hour rule back in the first book. He is now stuck as a red-tailed hawk—an ordinary hawk, no morphing, nothing special except the mind of a human and the ability to telepathically communicate. So he’s got that going for him. But his entire life has changed, and he’s still reeling.
Tobias is a foil to the other four in so many ways. Setting aside his newfound place in the taxonomy, even as a human Tobias was different. He wasn’t Jake and Marco’s “friend” so much as a hanger-on whom the other two tolerated because they are nice guys. Tobias lacked the kind of stable family situation the other Animorphs mostly have; he gets shuttled betwixt an aunt and an uncle who don’t have time for him. So he was already the outsider of the group before he become a hawk.
Tobias is also unique in having stuck around long enough at the construction site to hear Elfangor’s dying words and receive a little more intel on the Yeerks. He doesn’t talk much about that experience in this book. If I recall correctly, however, Tobias eventually discovers much more inner strength and comes to play a very important role, especially once Ax comes on the scene—Ax and Tobias understand each other, as outsiders do.
Stuck as a hawk now, Tobias is a living warning to the other Animorphs about the dangerous side of morphing. Applegate spares nothing as she describes Tobias’ attempts to adapt to his new life—but not adapt too much. See, that’s the problem: it would be so easy for Tobias to give in, let the hawk take over, hunt and kill and live that life. He is trying to hold on to his humanity, and this entire book is him confronting the possibility that it is inexorably slipping out of his grasp.
The ways in which the other Animorphs react to Tobias’ condition and try to help him say a lot about their archetypes. Jake, the leader, makes a home for Tobias in his attic, and brings Tobias human food stolen under the nose of his family. Marco, as the most reluctant Animorph so far, seems the most disturbed by Tobias. He hides behind humour, of course, but sometimes it is shrill to the point of cutting. Rachel and Cassie try to be compassionate and caring—but I think that Cassie, since she works with animals so much, has trouble separating Tobias the person from Tobias the animal.
It’s Rachel who offers Tobias the most unconditional link back to humanity. He returns to her repeatedly, and she’s the one who reminds him why he is still human, despite being a hawk:
Clichéd? Maybe. Maybe not for a young adult series. Regardless, this is why I love Rachel. She takes Tobias for what he is: a human in a hawk body, someone in both worlds. She accepts it unconditionally, uncritically, and is ready to support him. She backs him up—even when he has crazy plans, like freeing a caged red-tailed hawk.
Sorry, I know this is a Tobias book. But Rachel is just awesome.
Anyway, The Encounter features the Animorphs’ first true action against the Yeerks. Infiltrating the Kandrona pool in The Invasion was kind of an accident, and in The Visitor they were always only gathering intel. This is the first time they agree to do something to strike back against the Yeerks, hopefully exposing them to the rest of the world.
And it goes horribly wrong, almost from the first step.
Once again, Applegate is not pulling punches here. We have to watch Tobias listen to Rachel saying goodbye because they are trapped aboard this Yeerk ship. No, scratch that—Rachel quite blatantly asks Tobias to somehow bring the ship down so that they will die before they are discovered and tortured or enslaved.
That’s a lot of responsibility to put on one bird’s shoulders.
It’s also a very dark thing to have a kid consider: we don’t want to be taken alive.
True, a last-minute flash of insight—human insight—allows Tobias to save the day. You didn’t really think the four other Animorphs were going to die in book 3, did you? But it remains one of the more sobering moments in a series that, three books in, actually has quite a few sobering moments. From broken families to black ops gone awry, Animorphs balances a blend of reality and fantasy that somehow results in great stories.
Next review, I’ll spend some time speculating about the Andalite morphing technology. And, oh yes, how Animorphs would work as a period drama.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #2: The Visitor | #4: The Message →
The Animorphs run up against this in The Encounter. Our narrator this time is Tobias, who fell victim to the two-hour rule back in the first book. He is now stuck as a red-tailed hawk—an ordinary hawk, no morphing, nothing special except the mind of a human and the ability to telepathically communicate. So he’s got that going for him. But his entire life has changed, and he’s still reeling.
Tobias is a foil to the other four in so many ways. Setting aside his newfound place in the taxonomy, even as a human Tobias was different. He wasn’t Jake and Marco’s “friend” so much as a hanger-on whom the other two tolerated because they are nice guys. Tobias lacked the kind of stable family situation the other Animorphs mostly have; he gets shuttled betwixt an aunt and an uncle who don’t have time for him. So he was already the outsider of the group before he become a hawk.
Tobias is also unique in having stuck around long enough at the construction site to hear Elfangor’s dying words and receive a little more intel on the Yeerks. He doesn’t talk much about that experience in this book. If I recall correctly, however, Tobias eventually discovers much more inner strength and comes to play a very important role, especially once Ax comes on the scene—Ax and Tobias understand each other, as outsiders do.
Stuck as a hawk now, Tobias is a living warning to the other Animorphs about the dangerous side of morphing. Applegate spares nothing as she describes Tobias’ attempts to adapt to his new life—but not adapt too much. See, that’s the problem: it would be so easy for Tobias to give in, let the hawk take over, hunt and kill and live that life. He is trying to hold on to his humanity, and this entire book is him confronting the possibility that it is inexorably slipping out of his grasp.
The ways in which the other Animorphs react to Tobias’ condition and try to help him say a lot about their archetypes. Jake, the leader, makes a home for Tobias in his attic, and brings Tobias human food stolen under the nose of his family. Marco, as the most reluctant Animorph so far, seems the most disturbed by Tobias. He hides behind humour, of course, but sometimes it is shrill to the point of cutting. Rachel and Cassie try to be compassionate and caring—but I think that Cassie, since she works with animals so much, has trouble separating Tobias the person from Tobias the animal.
It’s Rachel who offers Tobias the most unconditional link back to humanity. He returns to her repeatedly, and she’s the one who reminds him why he is still human, despite being a hawk:
"Because what counts is what is in your head and in your heart," she said with sudden passion. "A person isn't his body. A person isn't what's on the outside."
Clichéd? Maybe. Maybe not for a young adult series. Regardless, this is why I love Rachel. She takes Tobias for what he is: a human in a hawk body, someone in both worlds. She accepts it unconditionally, uncritically, and is ready to support him. She backs him up—even when he has crazy plans, like freeing a caged red-tailed hawk.
Sorry, I know this is a Tobias book. But Rachel is just awesome.
Anyway, The Encounter features the Animorphs’ first true action against the Yeerks. Infiltrating the Kandrona pool in The Invasion was kind of an accident, and in The Visitor they were always only gathering intel. This is the first time they agree to do something to strike back against the Yeerks, hopefully exposing them to the rest of the world.
And it goes horribly wrong, almost from the first step.
Once again, Applegate is not pulling punches here. We have to watch Tobias listen to Rachel saying goodbye because they are trapped aboard this Yeerk ship. No, scratch that—Rachel quite blatantly asks Tobias to somehow bring the ship down so that they will die before they are discovered and tortured or enslaved.
That’s a lot of responsibility to put on one bird’s shoulders.
It’s also a very dark thing to have a kid consider: we don’t want to be taken alive.
True, a last-minute flash of insight—human insight—allows Tobias to save the day. You didn’t really think the four other Animorphs were going to die in book 3, did you? But it remains one of the more sobering moments in a series that, three books in, actually has quite a few sobering moments. From broken families to black ops gone awry, Animorphs balances a blend of reality and fantasy that somehow results in great stories.
Next review, I’ll spend some time speculating about the Andalite morphing technology. And, oh yes, how Animorphs would work as a period drama.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #2: The Visitor | #4: The Message →
The Last Colony was the triumphant conclusion to the trilogy of John Perry and Jane Sagan vs. the Universe. Reluctant leaders of the new Roanoke colony, John and Jane manage to stave off a couple of deadly attacks and do an end-run around the Colonial Union brinksmanship that would otherwise have proved deadly for the colony in the long term. And they do this all while being the adoptive parents of a sixteen-year-old who is also beloved of a terrifying efficient alien species.
Zoë is one of the best things about The Last Colony, so she is a good choice for a spin-off/tie-in book. Scalzi also hints that she has significant adventures of her own—and that’s even before John sends her off on an Obin ship to pay a visit to General Gau and somehow she returns with a Consu sapper field generator. Zoe’s Tale is more than just a retelling, then; it adds new, “deleted scenes” that were not in the original.
I highly recommend Zoe’s Tale if you’ve read The Last Colony. I suspect which one you like better will largely be a matter of taste (as in, if you have taste, you will agree with me that this one is better). However, I don’t think this book will be as satisfying if you haven’t already experienced The Last Colony. I left a nearly ideal gap in between reading that book and this one: long enough that my memories of the events had begun to fade, but not so long that I was a little lost when Scalzi didn’t spell things out explicitly.
As he mentions in his afterword, writing a “retelling” book is more difficult than it might seem. I like to think of it as breaking the fifth wall, like when I try to poke around into the houses and lives of NPCs in video games. In the good ol’ days of PC gaming Star Trek: Elite Force and whatnot, I’d use the console commands to turn off clipping and explore the map for hidden areas, discovering enemies just waiting until they were transported onto the map. Breaking this fifth wall reminds you that storytelling is a perspective-dependent illusion: shift the perspective a little, and suddenly things start to break down. The secondary characters are not independent beings; they don’t have lives and timelines separate from whatever the requirements of the narrative demand. So when you try to turn things around and explore their lives, you run into interesting conundrums of continuity and motivation that you have to address.
For the most part, Scalzi does pretty well here. Zoë is an interesting departure from the previous characters of the Old Man’s War series. Unlike John and Jane, she has never served as a soldier in the Colonial Defense Force. She is, at heart, a teenage girl. This makes for a radically different narrator (or it should—once again, Scalzi seems unable to keep a minimum level of sardonic smugness out of his characters) with very different priorities. Having spent several years living on Huckleberry with John and Jane, now, Zoë has of course acquired certain traits from them. But Zoe’s Tale allows us to get a much better idea of how much she has become her own person.
In particular, Scalzi has more time to explore Zoë’s complex relationship with the Obin and what this signifies for her and for them. Though this relationship is a huge plot point in The Last Colony, it’s always mediated through John’s limited understanding of the situation. Now we see it through the eyes of its object: Zoë is a kind of idol for the Obin, as well as a role model. It’s something she is never comfortable with, yet events force her to adjust to this status and learn how to wield it, when necessary.
This culminates with Zoë’s trip to Gau, which involves a sideline where she agrees to let Obin fight Consu convicts to the death. (Don’t ask.) Up until this point, I was enjoying the book, but reading it was mostly the sensation of coasting through a comfortable story. The moral dilemmas inherent in Zoë’s use of the Obin here, however, got my attention. I love the way she agonizes over what’s happening, then makes her decision and manipulates the Consu. And then when the Obin demonstrate what I can only describe as loyalty to Zoë, I was nearly in tears. It’s touching, and wonderful, and I love that Scalzi manages to pull it off with making Zoë like a Mary Sue—she beats the Consu, yes, but only in a limited arena.
Indisputably a companion novel in this series, Zoe’s Tale nevertheless has plenty to offer on its own. If you’re still reading these novels, there’s no reason to skip over this one. And there’s so much potential here for more stories about Zoë: what does she do as a young adult? How does her relationship with the Obin involve? I’d be happy to read another book told from her perspective.
My reviews of the Old Man’s War series:
← The Last Colony | The Human Division →
Zoë is one of the best things about The Last Colony, so she is a good choice for a spin-off/tie-in book. Scalzi also hints that she has significant adventures of her own—and that’s even before John sends her off on an Obin ship to pay a visit to General Gau and somehow she returns with a Consu sapper field generator. Zoe’s Tale is more than just a retelling, then; it adds new, “deleted scenes” that were not in the original.
I highly recommend Zoe’s Tale if you’ve read The Last Colony. I suspect which one you like better will largely be a matter of taste (as in, if you have taste, you will agree with me that this one is better). However, I don’t think this book will be as satisfying if you haven’t already experienced The Last Colony. I left a nearly ideal gap in between reading that book and this one: long enough that my memories of the events had begun to fade, but not so long that I was a little lost when Scalzi didn’t spell things out explicitly.
As he mentions in his afterword, writing a “retelling” book is more difficult than it might seem. I like to think of it as breaking the fifth wall, like when I try to poke around into the houses and lives of NPCs in video games. In the good ol’ days of PC gaming Star Trek: Elite Force and whatnot, I’d use the console commands to turn off clipping and explore the map for hidden areas, discovering enemies just waiting until they were transported onto the map. Breaking this fifth wall reminds you that storytelling is a perspective-dependent illusion: shift the perspective a little, and suddenly things start to break down. The secondary characters are not independent beings; they don’t have lives and timelines separate from whatever the requirements of the narrative demand. So when you try to turn things around and explore their lives, you run into interesting conundrums of continuity and motivation that you have to address.
For the most part, Scalzi does pretty well here. Zoë is an interesting departure from the previous characters of the Old Man’s War series. Unlike John and Jane, she has never served as a soldier in the Colonial Defense Force. She is, at heart, a teenage girl. This makes for a radically different narrator (or it should—once again, Scalzi seems unable to keep a minimum level of sardonic smugness out of his characters) with very different priorities. Having spent several years living on Huckleberry with John and Jane, now, Zoë has of course acquired certain traits from them. But Zoe’s Tale allows us to get a much better idea of how much she has become her own person.
In particular, Scalzi has more time to explore Zoë’s complex relationship with the Obin and what this signifies for her and for them. Though this relationship is a huge plot point in The Last Colony, it’s always mediated through John’s limited understanding of the situation. Now we see it through the eyes of its object: Zoë is a kind of idol for the Obin, as well as a role model. It’s something she is never comfortable with, yet events force her to adjust to this status and learn how to wield it, when necessary.
This culminates with Zoë’s trip to Gau, which involves a sideline where she agrees to let Obin fight Consu convicts to the death. (Don’t ask.) Up until this point, I was enjoying the book, but reading it was mostly the sensation of coasting through a comfortable story. The moral dilemmas inherent in Zoë’s use of the Obin here, however, got my attention. I love the way she agonizes over what’s happening, then makes her decision and manipulates the Consu. And then when the Obin demonstrate what I can only describe as loyalty to Zoë, I was nearly in tears. It’s touching, and wonderful, and I love that Scalzi manages to pull it off with making Zoë like a Mary Sue—she beats the Consu, yes, but only in a limited arena.
Indisputably a companion novel in this series, Zoe’s Tale nevertheless has plenty to offer on its own. If you’re still reading these novels, there’s no reason to skip over this one. And there’s so much potential here for more stories about Zoë: what does she do as a young adult? How does her relationship with the Obin involve? I’d be happy to read another book told from her perspective.
My reviews of the Old Man’s War series:
← The Last Colony | The Human Division →
So, I enjoyed The Warrior’s Apprentice, and The Mountains of Mourning made me cry. How I would react to The Vor Game was anyone’s guess, but I knew that this last story in the Young Miles omnibus would not disappoint me.
Indeed, with this book, Lois McMaster Bujold hits it out of the park. I totally get why this won the Hugo Award in 1991. It is bold and brash but has a deeper psychological element to it, and the combination of these components results in an extremely entertaining work of character space opera. If The Mountains of Mourning endeared me to Miles Vorkosigan and Bujold’s bizarre feudalistic society of Barrayar, then The Vor Game proves that Bujold can do with Miles what she did with Cordelia in Shards of Honour.
This might be a backwards way to start a review, but I want to talk about the afterword to Young Miles first. Bujold provides a fascinating look at the genesis of the Vorkosigan saga and her career as a published author. She describes how the first Vorkosigan books obtained a home at Baen, and her experience preparing The Vor Game. At one point, she remarks how the book was stubbornly threatening to turn into a murder mystery set entirely on Kyril island, backing off only when she altered the contents of the mysterious package Miles finds from money to cookies. I understand that feeling, and I appreciate Bujold sharing such anecdotes. Much of what she says rings true and dovetails with my experience reading The Vor Game—and, ultimately, is that not some of the highest praise we can give an author?
Superficially, this novel is much like The Warrior’s Apprentice: Miles embarks on what should be a fairly straightforward journey, only to be drawn into an ever-increasingly complex and dangerous set of circumstances.
You cannot understand what it means to “raise the stakes” until you’ve read a Vorkosigan novel. Bujold did not invent the concept, obviously, but I think she might have perfected it (along with the related concepts of pacing and the dramatically ironical twist).
I could spend all day, and all night, counting the awesome number of twists, gambits, reversals, and stakes-raising that Bujold pulls off here. Let me just list, cryptically so as not to be all spoilery, a few: Metzov’s return and new lover; Miles finding Gregor (or should I say “Greg”?), losing him, and finding him again; the hilarious confusion of Cavilo and Metzov and Oser as they independently attempt to unravel Miles’ many and sundry identities; the sheer audacity of Miles’ plan culminating in the triumphant arrival of the Prince Serg.
The crowning achievement atop all this is Bujold’s pinpoint sense of humour. It’s not just that she manages to continuously and effectively raise the stakes: she’s funny while she does it. I chuckled throughout most of The Vor Game. I read the last 10% or so while on a plane ride home, and I had to work very hard not to disrupt my neighbours and contain my near-constant laughter. Some of the laughter was “funny-hah-hah,” but most of it was the laughter of delight—I giggled nearly uncontrollably at how Bujold portrays the reactions of people to the outcomes of Miles’ insane schemes.
Miles feels less like a Mary Sue in this book. I hope that’s the effect of The Mountains of Mourning on him: he still has that same “subordination problem” and the related, probably incurable, certainly terminal problem of not knowing when to stop—but now he has a sense of purpose. He knows why he schemes. And that’s what separates him from similarly clever, stunningly intelligent people like Cavilo—he can match her on her own playing field, but because he has a purpose, he has a sense of solidity that she can never have. Ultimately, that proves to be her undoing.
In addition to Miles’ creepy sexual tension with Cavilo, the second deeper, psychological aspect to The Vor Game is there in the title. Emperor Gregor turns up in an unexpected place, thinking suicidal thoughts. This catches Miles in a bind, because if he doesn’t somehow succeed—against all odds—in helping return Gregor to Barrayar, then there will be those who think he disposed of Gregor in order to place himself (or his father) on the throne. It’s so complicated! And meanwhile, we get to see how growing up as the emperor has affected Gregor, for better or worse.
I admire how Bujold manages to work these more serious themes into a novel that is, pacing- and plot-wise, a lighter and more fantastic work of fiction. That’s my bottom line: there was nothing boring about The Vor Game, no moment where I wanted to put the book down and do something else. I never had to push myself to keep reading. I never wanted to put it away! And I want more, more, more—oh look, another omnibus edition….
This is good stuff, people.
My reviews of the Vorkosigan saga:
← The Mountains of Mourning
Indeed, with this book, Lois McMaster Bujold hits it out of the park. I totally get why this won the Hugo Award in 1991. It is bold and brash but has a deeper psychological element to it, and the combination of these components results in an extremely entertaining work of character space opera. If The Mountains of Mourning endeared me to Miles Vorkosigan and Bujold’s bizarre feudalistic society of Barrayar, then The Vor Game proves that Bujold can do with Miles what she did with Cordelia in Shards of Honour.
This might be a backwards way to start a review, but I want to talk about the afterword to Young Miles first. Bujold provides a fascinating look at the genesis of the Vorkosigan saga and her career as a published author. She describes how the first Vorkosigan books obtained a home at Baen, and her experience preparing The Vor Game. At one point, she remarks how the book was stubbornly threatening to turn into a murder mystery set entirely on Kyril island, backing off only when she altered the contents of the mysterious package Miles finds from money to cookies. I understand that feeling, and I appreciate Bujold sharing such anecdotes. Much of what she says rings true and dovetails with my experience reading The Vor Game—and, ultimately, is that not some of the highest praise we can give an author?
Superficially, this novel is much like The Warrior’s Apprentice: Miles embarks on what should be a fairly straightforward journey, only to be drawn into an ever-increasingly complex and dangerous set of circumstances.
You cannot understand what it means to “raise the stakes” until you’ve read a Vorkosigan novel. Bujold did not invent the concept, obviously, but I think she might have perfected it (along with the related concepts of pacing and the dramatically ironical twist).
I could spend all day, and all night, counting the awesome number of twists, gambits, reversals, and stakes-raising that Bujold pulls off here. Let me just list, cryptically so as not to be all spoilery, a few: Metzov’s return and new lover; Miles finding Gregor (or should I say “Greg”?), losing him, and finding him again; the hilarious confusion of Cavilo and Metzov and Oser as they independently attempt to unravel Miles’ many and sundry identities; the sheer audacity of Miles’ plan culminating in the triumphant arrival of the Prince Serg.
The crowning achievement atop all this is Bujold’s pinpoint sense of humour. It’s not just that she manages to continuously and effectively raise the stakes: she’s funny while she does it. I chuckled throughout most of The Vor Game. I read the last 10% or so while on a plane ride home, and I had to work very hard not to disrupt my neighbours and contain my near-constant laughter. Some of the laughter was “funny-hah-hah,” but most of it was the laughter of delight—I giggled nearly uncontrollably at how Bujold portrays the reactions of people to the outcomes of Miles’ insane schemes.
Miles feels less like a Mary Sue in this book. I hope that’s the effect of The Mountains of Mourning on him: he still has that same “subordination problem” and the related, probably incurable, certainly terminal problem of not knowing when to stop—but now he has a sense of purpose. He knows why he schemes. And that’s what separates him from similarly clever, stunningly intelligent people like Cavilo—he can match her on her own playing field, but because he has a purpose, he has a sense of solidity that she can never have. Ultimately, that proves to be her undoing.
In addition to Miles’ creepy sexual tension with Cavilo, the second deeper, psychological aspect to The Vor Game is there in the title. Emperor Gregor turns up in an unexpected place, thinking suicidal thoughts. This catches Miles in a bind, because if he doesn’t somehow succeed—against all odds—in helping return Gregor to Barrayar, then there will be those who think he disposed of Gregor in order to place himself (or his father) on the throne. It’s so complicated! And meanwhile, we get to see how growing up as the emperor has affected Gregor, for better or worse.
I admire how Bujold manages to work these more serious themes into a novel that is, pacing- and plot-wise, a lighter and more fantastic work of fiction. That’s my bottom line: there was nothing boring about The Vor Game, no moment where I wanted to put the book down and do something else. I never had to push myself to keep reading. I never wanted to put it away! And I want more, more, more—oh look, another omnibus edition….
This is good stuff, people.
My reviews of the Vorkosigan saga:
← The Mountains of Mourning
This omnibus edition contains The Warrior’s Apprentice, The Mountains of Mourning, and The Vor Game. I reviewed each book separately.
So good.
So good.
One of the highlights of re-reading this series is the intense 1990s nostalgia it’s bringing back. These books have aged so much, and it’s no one’s fault but the march of time and technology. In The Visitor, Rachel talks in code by inviting Jake over to listen to a new CD. And here in The Message, Jake produces a VCR tape of a nightly news show—kids, I won’t bother explaining what VCRs were, but let’s just say the modern equivalent would be “pulling up a clip on YouTube.”
This technological ennui extends to wider plot points as well. Cassie describes how the Animorphs take different routes to their rendezvous at Rachel’s house, and how they check if they’re being followed. Like spies. And that’s sufficient to thwart human Controllers, maybe—but this was written in a simpler, more innocent time, when we only suspected the NSA was spying on every American. Can you imagine what would happen if Visser Three had access to programs like PRISM? The conversation would go down like this:
When I shared a (more condensed) version of this remark with my Animorphs-buddy Julie via Twitter, she wondered if this would be an obstacle to remaking an Animorphs TV show. If they wanted to set it in the present day, then yes, I think it would. But then it occurred to me: this is actually a golden opportunity in disguise. Wait another forty or fifty years, and we’ll be the proper distance from the 1990s that shows set in it will be like shows set in the 1950s or 1960s for us. Animorphs could be adapted into a period drama targeted at children.
You’ll be rich, Scholastic. If you’re still around. If anyone reads books anymore.
I’ll continue to discuss my nostalgia, particularly around the technology portrayed in the series, in later reviews. Now I’ll move on to a second ongoing topic: morphing technology.
This is the kind of thing we can (and people have) spent years discussing and debating on the Internet, so I’m not going to pretend to settle anything here. Instead, I’m more interested in looking at how our understanding of morphing technology develops as the books progress.
The Message is really our first opportunity to explore some of the deeper questions about morphing. It’s notable, firstly, for being the first time the Animorphs acquire multiple new morphs in quick succession. In the previous book, they acquired one, maybe two morphs—and these were a pretty big deal. Now they’re acquiring dolphins and seagulls all nonchalantly like—if they aren’t careful, they might start feeling normal about this whole “turning into animals” thing.
Secondly, the book introduces Ax, who you must all agree is the coolest. (Rachel is still my favourite, but even I will admit that Ax is cooler.) Ax is an Andalite pre-teen, you guys! I didn’t clue into this at the time, because when I first read these I was a kid, so it was just naturally that Ax was a kid. And, in retrospect, the idea of Ax being any more mature than the other Animorphs would have been creepier, I guess. But it only now dawned on me, re-reading this book, how much less mature Ax is than all those other Andalites out there.
Anyway, Ax is a potential new source of information about morphing. He might not know much about the technology (it sounds like he doesn’t pay much attention in Andalite school, alas), but he seems to know the rules. We learn here for the first time that more experienced morphers can acquire the DNA of multiple members of a species—including humans—and then synthesize an entirely new organism. That’s actually really awesome.
And Applegate introduces an entirely too convenient plot device whereby Andalites all have the ability to track the passage of time. So no more worrying about making Tobias wear a watch from now on. Thank God.
Because this is Cassie’s book, however, the best part of the morphing discussion revolves around the animals themselves. She balks initially at the prospect of morphing into a dolphin, because dolphins are higher-order thinkers—intelligent, perhaps on a level close to human beings. Is it right to morph a sentient being? Applegate treads dangerously close to deep questions of the philosophy of mind, the nature of cognition, and embodiment. Are we our minds, or are we our brains? Can we separate our consciousness from our bodies? How, exactly, does morphing change us—we already know that when one morphs, one has to control the animal instincts of one’s new form. So if one morphs a sentient being, will one feel another personality there?
That this is perilously close to what the Yeerks do to their hosts escapes neither Applegate nor the Animorphs. And while Cassie never receives a satisfactory answer one way or the other, eventually she accepts that even if what they do isn’t the most ethical course of action, it is within an acceptable range as a result of necessity.
(I want to point out, however, that while Cassie’s concern about the dolphins is well and good, she never once questioned the propriety of Marco morphing a gorilla in the first book. One wonders if Applegate, or a beta reader, stumbled on to this moral dilemma in between the writing/editing of books 1 and 4.)
The Toast has a pretty solid article on the cognitive philosophy of Animorphs, if that’s the sort of thing you want to read during your break.
I really enjoyed the way they communicate with the whales. Applegate manages to make that seem … well, not realistic—we are talking about people who morph into dolphins, after all—but at least not so fantastical. She essentially introduces children to the idea that there is more than one way to be conscious, more than one type of privileged sentience, and I think that’s pretty powerful.
The last revelation about morphing seems obvious, particularly for those of us who read the series before: if you are injured in a morph, you can unmorph/remorph, and you’ll be fine. The DNA you acquire is frozen, so you always morph into the animal in a fit state. Setting aside, finally, questions about how this works, we can at least all acknowledge that this is convenient for the story.
The Message, then, does a great deal to advance the overall series arc. It introduces a new main character—an alien, no less—and fleshes out a great deal of the morphing mythology. The Animorphs beat Visser Three again, acquire a few new morphs, and have some fun in the ocean. And we get our first adventure narrated by Cassie, whose compassion and attention to detail make her a strong member of the team, a perfect balance to the impulsive Rachel or the overwrought Marco. Even here, in the fourth book, there are blatant allusions Cassie/Jake. (Jassie? Cake? OMG. CAKE. YES. That’s the one.)
Next up is the first Marco book, thus completing the “origin stories” of the five human Animorphs. I’ll talk about comic relief, loyalty, and the abundance of hope that Applegate sows throughout this series. Also: Ax and food, man. Ax and food.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #3: The Encounter | #5: The Predator →
This technological ennui extends to wider plot points as well. Cassie describes how the Animorphs take different routes to their rendezvous at Rachel’s house, and how they check if they’re being followed. Like spies. And that’s sufficient to thwart human Controllers, maybe—but this was written in a simpler, more innocent time, when we only suspected the NSA was spying on every American. Can you imagine what would happen if Visser Three had access to programs like PRISM? The conversation would go down like this:
Visser Three: CAPTURE THE ANDALITE WARRIORS.
Controller-Snowden: Actually, sir, the computer says there is a 96.3% probability the “Andalite warriors” are humans. Children, actually.
Visser Three: What? How?
Controller-Snowden: Well, we have access to petabytes of data, thanks to our infiltration of the human intelligence networks, as well as powerful algorithms that let us mine the data for trends. We’ve discovered a group of four pre-adolescents with a suspicious pattern of activity. They spend an inordinate amount of time in the presence of a red-tailed hawk, and they are often spotted on cameras wearing nothing but form-fitting clothing and no shoes.
Visser Three: Interesting. Well. This was less challenging than I thought it would be.
When I shared a (more condensed) version of this remark with my Animorphs-buddy Julie via Twitter, she wondered if this would be an obstacle to remaking an Animorphs TV show. If they wanted to set it in the present day, then yes, I think it would. But then it occurred to me: this is actually a golden opportunity in disguise. Wait another forty or fifty years, and we’ll be the proper distance from the 1990s that shows set in it will be like shows set in the 1950s or 1960s for us. Animorphs could be adapted into a period drama targeted at children.
You’ll be rich, Scholastic. If you’re still around. If anyone reads books anymore.
I’ll continue to discuss my nostalgia, particularly around the technology portrayed in the series, in later reviews. Now I’ll move on to a second ongoing topic: morphing technology.
This is the kind of thing we can (and people have) spent years discussing and debating on the Internet, so I’m not going to pretend to settle anything here. Instead, I’m more interested in looking at how our understanding of morphing technology develops as the books progress.
The Message is really our first opportunity to explore some of the deeper questions about morphing. It’s notable, firstly, for being the first time the Animorphs acquire multiple new morphs in quick succession. In the previous book, they acquired one, maybe two morphs—and these were a pretty big deal. Now they’re acquiring dolphins and seagulls all nonchalantly like—if they aren’t careful, they might start feeling normal about this whole “turning into animals” thing.
Secondly, the book introduces Ax, who you must all agree is the coolest. (Rachel is still my favourite, but even I will admit that Ax is cooler.) Ax is an Andalite pre-teen, you guys! I didn’t clue into this at the time, because when I first read these I was a kid, so it was just naturally that Ax was a kid. And, in retrospect, the idea of Ax being any more mature than the other Animorphs would have been creepier, I guess. But it only now dawned on me, re-reading this book, how much less mature Ax is than all those other Andalites out there.
Anyway, Ax is a potential new source of information about morphing. He might not know much about the technology (it sounds like he doesn’t pay much attention in Andalite school, alas), but he seems to know the rules. We learn here for the first time that more experienced morphers can acquire the DNA of multiple members of a species—including humans—and then synthesize an entirely new organism. That’s actually really awesome.
And Applegate introduces an entirely too convenient plot device whereby Andalites all have the ability to track the passage of time. So no more worrying about making Tobias wear a watch from now on. Thank God.
Because this is Cassie’s book, however, the best part of the morphing discussion revolves around the animals themselves. She balks initially at the prospect of morphing into a dolphin, because dolphins are higher-order thinkers—intelligent, perhaps on a level close to human beings. Is it right to morph a sentient being? Applegate treads dangerously close to deep questions of the philosophy of mind, the nature of cognition, and embodiment. Are we our minds, or are we our brains? Can we separate our consciousness from our bodies? How, exactly, does morphing change us—we already know that when one morphs, one has to control the animal instincts of one’s new form. So if one morphs a sentient being, will one feel another personality there?
That this is perilously close to what the Yeerks do to their hosts escapes neither Applegate nor the Animorphs. And while Cassie never receives a satisfactory answer one way or the other, eventually she accepts that even if what they do isn’t the most ethical course of action, it is within an acceptable range as a result of necessity.
(I want to point out, however, that while Cassie’s concern about the dolphins is well and good, she never once questioned the propriety of Marco morphing a gorilla in the first book. One wonders if Applegate, or a beta reader, stumbled on to this moral dilemma in between the writing/editing of books 1 and 4.)
The Toast has a pretty solid article on the cognitive philosophy of Animorphs, if that’s the sort of thing you want to read during your break.
I really enjoyed the way they communicate with the whales. Applegate manages to make that seem … well, not realistic—we are talking about people who morph into dolphins, after all—but at least not so fantastical. She essentially introduces children to the idea that there is more than one way to be conscious, more than one type of privileged sentience, and I think that’s pretty powerful.
The last revelation about morphing seems obvious, particularly for those of us who read the series before: if you are injured in a morph, you can unmorph/remorph, and you’ll be fine. The DNA you acquire is frozen, so you always morph into the animal in a fit state. Setting aside, finally, questions about how this works, we can at least all acknowledge that this is convenient for the story.
The Message, then, does a great deal to advance the overall series arc. It introduces a new main character—an alien, no less—and fleshes out a great deal of the morphing mythology. The Animorphs beat Visser Three again, acquire a few new morphs, and have some fun in the ocean. And we get our first adventure narrated by Cassie, whose compassion and attention to detail make her a strong member of the team, a perfect balance to the impulsive Rachel or the overwrought Marco. Even here, in the fourth book, there are blatant allusions Cassie/Jake. (Jassie? Cake? OMG. CAKE. YES. That’s the one.)
Next up is the first Marco book, thus completing the “origin stories” of the five human Animorphs. I’ll talk about comic relief, loyalty, and the abundance of hope that Applegate sows throughout this series. Also: Ax and food, man. Ax and food.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #3: The Encounter | #5: The Predator →
Why is it Ursula K. Le Guin always makes my life as a reader and reviewer difficult? Her books can’t be nice, straightforward stories—no, she has to create lyric, moving pieces of experimental literature that transcend our ordinary definitions of form and genre. I have a problem with Always Coming Home, but that problem is entirely independent of the book itself. It is, rather, a result of me and my particular biases and hang-ups.
I can’t help it: I love novels.
I know that, as far as literature goes, the novel is a relatively new invention—more of a fad, really, than anything else. And, as much as it pains me to admit it, studying novels really isn’t all that necessary when studying English. As much as I would love, as a teacher, to sink my teeth into a great novel with a class and watch them explore it … well, at least in the limited time we’re allotted these days in the school calendar, there are more pressing concerns. Literature isn’t the alpha and omega of English, and the novel is not the only entry or exit into that particular part of the discipline.
But I can’t help it. I’ll watch a play, sure. Read a short story? In a pinch. Devour a novella during a car ride? Can do. None of those satisfy the itch like a good, well-written, honest-to-goodness novel. Novels are my jam. I crave semi-linear narratives about a defined and stable group of people.
So when Le Guin sets out to deliberately break—well, shatter, really—these conventions with something like Always Coming Home, I can admire her aims even though I’m not particularly enthralled by the result.
Far from a novel, Always Coming Home is an intricate collection of texts by and for and about the Kesh, a culture of people inhabiting a Pacific Northwest valley in the far future. The editor of this volume has conducted an archaeology and anthropology of the future, recovering texts, interviewing inhabitants, reproducing poems and songs, and describing customs. Le Guin separates out the driest of this into “The Back of the Book,” an entirely academic section that explores the background of the society—its houses, naming conventions, marriage, etc. The remainder of the book is a medley of literary forms, genres, and conceits.
The most recognizably narrative sections are “Stone Telling,” about an eponymous woman from the Valley whose father is from another people known as the Condor. Unlike the Kesh, the Condor people replicate the type of patriarchal society seen ad nauseum in human history. Stone Telling’s father drops into her life when he visits the Valley, and eventually she leaves the Valley to live among his people. While she doesn’t necessarily regret it, it’s clear that her time among the Condor people is not the highlight of her life. Predictably for me, I enjoyed these sections (they are spread across the book but form a single narrative)—Le Guin is, aside from anything else, a consummate storyteller.
I also enjoyed some of the other sections. If you’re paying attention (and on an airplane, there is nothing to do with a book except pay close attention) you can see the general outlines of the future world as Le Guin conceives it. Humanity unleashes a combination of radiological and biological disasters—not as a single, grand apocalypse like the twentieth century envisioned, but the gradual and cumulative death that we embrace so far in the spectres of global warming and biodiversity collapse. Our machines go on without us in the City of Mind, replicating and bootstrapping themselves towards artificial godhead, spreading out to other planets and stars. Meanwhile, humanity survives as a species if not a civilization, rebuilding and restarting in various paradigms. The Kesh seem, at first brush, “primitive” by our highly ethnocentric, Western ideals. Yet they have access to certain “modern” conveniences, and in many ways their society is more equal and better structured than ours.
Le Guin’s heritage as an anthropologist’s daughter informs all her work, but it is overt in Always Coming Home. The unconventional structure has the effect of reminding (most of) us that our tastes and perceptions of literature are, to begin with, highly Westernized and Eurocentric in their origins. We have shed many of the traits of a predominantly oral culture, and as a result we do not necessarily privilege poetry, song, and dance in the ways that we once did and other cultures still do. In particular, I thought a lot about Aboriginal cultures and storytelling traditions while I read this book. I live somewhere with a large Aboriginal population, and I’m interested in learning more about Aboriginal cultures and storytelling. At the same time, it’s somewhat ironic for me to resolve to “read more Aboriginal-authored literature,” because while that is a laudable goal, it also makes certain suppositions about worthy ways to transmit culture….
So we come down to that eternal question for reviewers. Do we review based on our perception of a book’s merit? If so, Always Coming Home has a lot. Or do we review based on our enjoyment of the book? In which case, while I didn’t hate it, this was a much more lukewarm experience. Both of these modes are eminently subjective, of course—perceptions of merit can make no more claim to objectivity than personal enjoyment. But what do I want to say?
Well, once more Le Guin astounds and impresses with her skill. She is a juggernaut, a force of literature not to be taken lightly, and the world will be a darker place when she leaves it. Always Coming Home only reaffirms these convictions in every sense. This is a powerful, intense, complicated construct.
I didn’t like it that much. It wasn’t the kind of book I wanted to read on my flights last week.
So if you go into this book unaware of its nature, you will likely be disappointed (or else, really pleasantly surprised). You have to be willing to explore and immerse yourself in this book, at which point it will be rewarding. Always Coming Home isn’t a novel, never purports to be, and I shouldn’t fault it for that. Alas, my fallible human nature means I can’t necessarily give it all the praise it deserves.
I can’t help it: I love novels.
I know that, as far as literature goes, the novel is a relatively new invention—more of a fad, really, than anything else. And, as much as it pains me to admit it, studying novels really isn’t all that necessary when studying English. As much as I would love, as a teacher, to sink my teeth into a great novel with a class and watch them explore it … well, at least in the limited time we’re allotted these days in the school calendar, there are more pressing concerns. Literature isn’t the alpha and omega of English, and the novel is not the only entry or exit into that particular part of the discipline.
But I can’t help it. I’ll watch a play, sure. Read a short story? In a pinch. Devour a novella during a car ride? Can do. None of those satisfy the itch like a good, well-written, honest-to-goodness novel. Novels are my jam. I crave semi-linear narratives about a defined and stable group of people.
So when Le Guin sets out to deliberately break—well, shatter, really—these conventions with something like Always Coming Home, I can admire her aims even though I’m not particularly enthralled by the result.
Far from a novel, Always Coming Home is an intricate collection of texts by and for and about the Kesh, a culture of people inhabiting a Pacific Northwest valley in the far future. The editor of this volume has conducted an archaeology and anthropology of the future, recovering texts, interviewing inhabitants, reproducing poems and songs, and describing customs. Le Guin separates out the driest of this into “The Back of the Book,” an entirely academic section that explores the background of the society—its houses, naming conventions, marriage, etc. The remainder of the book is a medley of literary forms, genres, and conceits.
The most recognizably narrative sections are “Stone Telling,” about an eponymous woman from the Valley whose father is from another people known as the Condor. Unlike the Kesh, the Condor people replicate the type of patriarchal society seen ad nauseum in human history. Stone Telling’s father drops into her life when he visits the Valley, and eventually she leaves the Valley to live among his people. While she doesn’t necessarily regret it, it’s clear that her time among the Condor people is not the highlight of her life. Predictably for me, I enjoyed these sections (they are spread across the book but form a single narrative)—Le Guin is, aside from anything else, a consummate storyteller.
I also enjoyed some of the other sections. If you’re paying attention (and on an airplane, there is nothing to do with a book except pay close attention) you can see the general outlines of the future world as Le Guin conceives it. Humanity unleashes a combination of radiological and biological disasters—not as a single, grand apocalypse like the twentieth century envisioned, but the gradual and cumulative death that we embrace so far in the spectres of global warming and biodiversity collapse. Our machines go on without us in the City of Mind, replicating and bootstrapping themselves towards artificial godhead, spreading out to other planets and stars. Meanwhile, humanity survives as a species if not a civilization, rebuilding and restarting in various paradigms. The Kesh seem, at first brush, “primitive” by our highly ethnocentric, Western ideals. Yet they have access to certain “modern” conveniences, and in many ways their society is more equal and better structured than ours.
Le Guin’s heritage as an anthropologist’s daughter informs all her work, but it is overt in Always Coming Home. The unconventional structure has the effect of reminding (most of) us that our tastes and perceptions of literature are, to begin with, highly Westernized and Eurocentric in their origins. We have shed many of the traits of a predominantly oral culture, and as a result we do not necessarily privilege poetry, song, and dance in the ways that we once did and other cultures still do. In particular, I thought a lot about Aboriginal cultures and storytelling traditions while I read this book. I live somewhere with a large Aboriginal population, and I’m interested in learning more about Aboriginal cultures and storytelling. At the same time, it’s somewhat ironic for me to resolve to “read more Aboriginal-authored literature,” because while that is a laudable goal, it also makes certain suppositions about worthy ways to transmit culture….
So we come down to that eternal question for reviewers. Do we review based on our perception of a book’s merit? If so, Always Coming Home has a lot. Or do we review based on our enjoyment of the book? In which case, while I didn’t hate it, this was a much more lukewarm experience. Both of these modes are eminently subjective, of course—perceptions of merit can make no more claim to objectivity than personal enjoyment. But what do I want to say?
Well, once more Le Guin astounds and impresses with her skill. She is a juggernaut, a force of literature not to be taken lightly, and the world will be a darker place when she leaves it. Always Coming Home only reaffirms these convictions in every sense. This is a powerful, intense, complicated construct.
I didn’t like it that much. It wasn’t the kind of book I wanted to read on my flights last week.
So if you go into this book unaware of its nature, you will likely be disappointed (or else, really pleasantly surprised). You have to be willing to explore and immerse yourself in this book, at which point it will be rewarding. Always Coming Home isn’t a novel, never purports to be, and I shouldn’t fault it for that. Alas, my fallible human nature means I can’t necessarily give it all the praise it deserves.