Take a photo of a barcode or cover
2.05k reviews by:
tachyondecay
It’s time … to travel … in time.
Animorphs played with time travel once before, in #7: The Stranger, but that was at the hands of the Ellimist. This time, the Animorphs accidentally create a Sario Rip—technobabble for “hole in space-time,” which is technobabble for … well … you know … stuff—when the Dracon beams they fired from a stolen Bug fighter intersected with the Dracon beams from Visser Three’s Blade ship, and—
—what? Oh, yeah. The Animorphs totally steal a crashed Bug fighter, get it operational (thanks, Ax), and initiate an epic suborbital chase sequence with Visser Three. Sorry I skipped that part.
In terms of just pure awesome action sequences, The Forgotten has to rank up there with the first Megamorphs novel, which was really the Michael Bay of Animorphs novels. In this book, we have the aforementioned spaceship duel, with five kids and an Andalite facing off against the biggest, baddest six-shooter in the galactic west. The fight is so badass it punches a hole in the space–time continuum, and so everyone gets thrown back in time.
To the day before.
(It wasn’t that big a hole.)
Jake is our narrator, so in between more epic chase sequences and monkeying around (literally—they morph monkeys), he worries he’s going crazy. There is a totally legitimate explanation for his crazies (other than, you know, being a child leader of child soldiers in a messed up secret war). But I commend Applegate for broaching this subject. There is a lot of pressure on all the Animorphs, and more so on Jake than any other. Marco, in his trademark lack of subtlety, points this out: Jake is the leader, so he isn’t allowed to go crazy. He can’t have a day off; he can’t mess up. Because everyone follows his lead, so if he makes a mistake, people could die.
Welcome to the big leagues, son.
Applegate uses the big ol’ reset button excuse that is all too common in time travel plots. She can get away with this simply because, as children’s/young adult literature, Animorphs is likely introducing a lot of readers to some of their first science-fiction stories. So what’s cliché to me is going to seem pretty cool and novel to a new reader. And even to someone as jaded as I am now, I’ll concede that the reset button makes sense in the context of what Applegate wants to do here. The Forgotten is precisely that: it’s a pocket adventure for only Jake to remember, one where he learns the important lesson: sometimes being a leader is luck.
This idea kind of flies against the face of the big American Dream that you can get ahead purely by working hard. But it jives entirely with Applegate’s series-long crusade against the glorification of war. I’m pretty sure most veterans will tell you that a large part of why they survived is just luck. They were in the right place at the right time, missed the bomb, the mine, the bullet—or got injured, but just enough to get sent home rather than killed. Similarly, we like to talk up the great strategic victories in the history of warfare and laud the minds of the Alexanders, the Attilas, the Caesars, the Napoleons. We don’t talk nearly as much about how most of the time these people are lucky—or at least, the luck allows them to survive long enough to get good.
This also explains why the Animorphs seem to fail an awful lot. Marco himself lampshades the fact that their hasty plans always fall apart in this book. Applegate is deliberately and carefully trying to delay the power creep that is inevitable in a series about superpowered people. Even though Ax can fly a Bug fighter, things still go wrong, and they crash. The best plans inevitably fall apart on first contact with the enemy.
The Forgotten was not as engaging for me as some of the more recent books. However, I see the appeal, particularly for less experienced and jaded readers. And it’s a good Jake book, if you are Team Jake. In fact, it’s mostly a Jake book, and that’s probably why I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did. In addition to Jake being the only one who remembers what happens, the other Animorphs don’t quite come through as distinctly as they do in other books. This is a super-Jake book, in other words. So if you need a Jake dose, Jake yourself up with this Jake. Jake jake jake jake.
Next time, Rachel burps crocodile DNA. Need I say more?
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #10: The Android | #12: The Reaction →
Animorphs played with time travel once before, in #7: The Stranger, but that was at the hands of the Ellimist. This time, the Animorphs accidentally create a Sario Rip—technobabble for “hole in space-time,” which is technobabble for … well … you know … stuff—when the Dracon beams they fired from a stolen Bug fighter intersected with the Dracon beams from Visser Three’s Blade ship, and—
—what? Oh, yeah. The Animorphs totally steal a crashed Bug fighter, get it operational (thanks, Ax), and initiate an epic suborbital chase sequence with Visser Three. Sorry I skipped that part.
In terms of just pure awesome action sequences, The Forgotten has to rank up there with the first Megamorphs novel, which was really the Michael Bay of Animorphs novels. In this book, we have the aforementioned spaceship duel, with five kids and an Andalite facing off against the biggest, baddest six-shooter in the galactic west. The fight is so badass it punches a hole in the space–time continuum, and so everyone gets thrown back in time.
To the day before.
(It wasn’t that big a hole.)
Jake is our narrator, so in between more epic chase sequences and monkeying around (literally—they morph monkeys), he worries he’s going crazy. There is a totally legitimate explanation for his crazies (other than, you know, being a child leader of child soldiers in a messed up secret war). But I commend Applegate for broaching this subject. There is a lot of pressure on all the Animorphs, and more so on Jake than any other. Marco, in his trademark lack of subtlety, points this out: Jake is the leader, so he isn’t allowed to go crazy. He can’t have a day off; he can’t mess up. Because everyone follows his lead, so if he makes a mistake, people could die.
Welcome to the big leagues, son.
Applegate uses the big ol’ reset button excuse that is all too common in time travel plots. She can get away with this simply because, as children’s/young adult literature, Animorphs is likely introducing a lot of readers to some of their first science-fiction stories. So what’s cliché to me is going to seem pretty cool and novel to a new reader. And even to someone as jaded as I am now, I’ll concede that the reset button makes sense in the context of what Applegate wants to do here. The Forgotten is precisely that: it’s a pocket adventure for only Jake to remember, one where he learns the important lesson: sometimes being a leader is luck.
This idea kind of flies against the face of the big American Dream that you can get ahead purely by working hard. But it jives entirely with Applegate’s series-long crusade against the glorification of war. I’m pretty sure most veterans will tell you that a large part of why they survived is just luck. They were in the right place at the right time, missed the bomb, the mine, the bullet—or got injured, but just enough to get sent home rather than killed. Similarly, we like to talk up the great strategic victories in the history of warfare and laud the minds of the Alexanders, the Attilas, the Caesars, the Napoleons. We don’t talk nearly as much about how most of the time these people are lucky—or at least, the luck allows them to survive long enough to get good.
This also explains why the Animorphs seem to fail an awful lot. Marco himself lampshades the fact that their hasty plans always fall apart in this book. Applegate is deliberately and carefully trying to delay the power creep that is inevitable in a series about superpowered people. Even though Ax can fly a Bug fighter, things still go wrong, and they crash. The best plans inevitably fall apart on first contact with the enemy.
The Forgotten was not as engaging for me as some of the more recent books. However, I see the appeal, particularly for less experienced and jaded readers. And it’s a good Jake book, if you are Team Jake. In fact, it’s mostly a Jake book, and that’s probably why I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did. In addition to Jake being the only one who remembers what happens, the other Animorphs don’t quite come through as distinctly as they do in other books. This is a super-Jake book, in other words. So if you need a Jake dose, Jake yourself up with this Jake. Jake jake jake jake.
Next time, Rachel burps crocodile DNA. Need I say more?
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #10: The Android | #12: The Reaction →
I love that truth—in this case, history—is often stranger than fiction. Take Razorhurst. The year 1932, and in a run down section of Sydney, Australia, gangs of men rove the streets, scarring each other with razor blades.
Cool alternate history, right? Wrong. That’s true facts. Justine Larbalestier might have created some composite characters based on real people from that era, but the setting is real. These razor gangs of Surry Hills were real. That’s pretty cool. I knew my Aussie friends were dangerous, but I’m going to be extra careful around the ones from Sydney….
The most fictional (most fictional—is that a thing?) component of Razorhurst would be the ghosts that our two protagonists, Kelpie and Dymphna, can see. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don’t, but always they lurk, a presence unfelt and unremarked upon by anyone other than these two—who are, you know, rather busy running for their lives. The ghosts don’t quite play as active a role as one might expect. Rather, they are mostly commentary on the unsavoury nature of life in Surry Hills under the rule of Gloriana Nelson and Mr Davidson.
The short span of time covered in this book impressed me while reading. Flashbacks aside, all of Razorhurst happens in a day and a night—and what an eventful night! As Kelpie and Dymphna travel across Surry Hills, through other parts of Sydney, and back, we learn more about what life has been like for them.
Dymphna isn’t originally from Sydney, but having made her way here (Edit: Apparently I misread that part, Dymphna is from Sydney.) She has fallen into a life of a working girl. Larbalestier’s careful depiction illustrates how sex work has the potential both to be a positive force for women as well as a dangerous one. Thanks to her self-possession and shrewdness, Dymphna is Gloriana’s “best girl” and has a modicum of independence and savings. Unlike the other girls, she has her own place, and she has a little more leeway in her interactions with the haughty and capricious Glory. However, there is no doubt that her position is precarious. Someday someone older and more attractive, more popular, is going to come along—or, as we see happen here, someone is going to start a gang war. Oh, and Dymphna’s really young—same age as Kelpie, who is older than she looks.
This parallel between the two protagonists is cool. Dymphna and Kelpie are the same age, but they are so different. The former seems very adult. She works, she lives—she loves. Kelpie, on the other hand, is more child than adult, more girl than woman, both physically and emotionally. Since the death and fading of her adoptive mother, Kelpie has gone from ghost to ghost to find companionship. She grew up on the streets of Sydney, never knowing her true parents.
In some ways Kelpie is more independent than Dymphna. Ghost assistance (and Snowy) aside, Kelpie has grown up and survived on her own for years. She learned how to read (thanks, Mrs. Lee!) and is rather well-read for a street urchin. In fact, her deer-in-the-headlights reaction to Dymphna dragging her through Sydney on this day seems quixotic at first. Then she sucker punches another girl and steals a wicked knife, and I’m all, “That’s the Kelpie from chapter 1!”
So throughout their adventure, it’s these parallels between Kelpie and Dymphna that make Razorhurst so enthralling. Larbalestier captures the sentiment that this time and this place, like many others in history, doesn’t really care about these individuals. Kelpie frequently refers to the spectre of Welfare—the noun and capital letter serving as metonymy for an insufficient bureaucracy pretending to care about the people in its charge. Even the ghosts, in their own way, testify to this lack of interest on the universe’s part: coming back is cold comfort, either to the deceased or the person or place they haunt.
Watching Dymphna and Kelpie nervously get to know each other from necessity, and then start to bond, is the best part. It makes the ending worthwhile. I’m pleased that Razorhurst is standalone (or at least, it can be standalone—I’m sure Larbalestier could write a sequel if she chooses). Larbalestier could have drawn the events in this book out into a trilogy. Instead, after this one, eventful day and night in Surry Hills, the book concludes on a bittersweet note of dreadful optimism.
I mourn the one we lost, cut down in his prime.
I’m happy that Kelpie and Dymphna receive some closure, in more ways than one.
Razorhurst is both fun and terrifying. Its use of a unique and fascinating period in Sydney’s history provides plenty of interesting opportunities for the narrative and the characters. The protagonists are two well-realized young women fighting literally for survival in an uncaring war of territory, power, and influence. Larbalestier crafts a sequence of events exciting and exhilarating because they are so clearly the result of dominoes falling and plans spinning ever faster out of control. It’s invigorating.
Cool alternate history, right? Wrong. That’s true facts. Justine Larbalestier might have created some composite characters based on real people from that era, but the setting is real. These razor gangs of Surry Hills were real. That’s pretty cool. I knew my Aussie friends were dangerous, but I’m going to be extra careful around the ones from Sydney….
The most fictional (most fictional—is that a thing?) component of Razorhurst would be the ghosts that our two protagonists, Kelpie and Dymphna, can see. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don’t, but always they lurk, a presence unfelt and unremarked upon by anyone other than these two—who are, you know, rather busy running for their lives. The ghosts don’t quite play as active a role as one might expect. Rather, they are mostly commentary on the unsavoury nature of life in Surry Hills under the rule of Gloriana Nelson and Mr Davidson.
The short span of time covered in this book impressed me while reading. Flashbacks aside, all of Razorhurst happens in a day and a night—and what an eventful night! As Kelpie and Dymphna travel across Surry Hills, through other parts of Sydney, and back, we learn more about what life has been like for them.
This parallel between the two protagonists is cool. Dymphna and Kelpie are the same age, but they are so different. The former seems very adult. She works, she lives—she loves. Kelpie, on the other hand, is more child than adult, more girl than woman, both physically and emotionally. Since the death and fading of her adoptive mother, Kelpie has gone from ghost to ghost to find companionship. She grew up on the streets of Sydney, never knowing her true parents.
In some ways Kelpie is more independent than Dymphna. Ghost assistance (and Snowy) aside, Kelpie has grown up and survived on her own for years. She learned how to read (thanks, Mrs. Lee!) and is rather well-read for a street urchin. In fact, her deer-in-the-headlights reaction to Dymphna dragging her through Sydney on this day seems quixotic at first. Then she sucker punches another girl and steals a wicked knife, and I’m all, “That’s the Kelpie from chapter 1!”
So throughout their adventure, it’s these parallels between Kelpie and Dymphna that make Razorhurst so enthralling. Larbalestier captures the sentiment that this time and this place, like many others in history, doesn’t really care about these individuals. Kelpie frequently refers to the spectre of Welfare—the noun and capital letter serving as metonymy for an insufficient bureaucracy pretending to care about the people in its charge. Even the ghosts, in their own way, testify to this lack of interest on the universe’s part: coming back is cold comfort, either to the deceased or the person or place they haunt.
Watching Dymphna and Kelpie nervously get to know each other from necessity, and then start to bond, is the best part. It makes the ending worthwhile. I’m pleased that Razorhurst is standalone (or at least, it can be standalone—I’m sure Larbalestier could write a sequel if she chooses). Larbalestier could have drawn the events in this book out into a trilogy. Instead, after this one, eventful day and night in Surry Hills, the book concludes on a bittersweet note of dreadful optimism.
I mourn the one we lost, cut down in his prime.
I’m happy that Kelpie and Dymphna receive some closure, in more ways than one.
Razorhurst is both fun and terrifying. Its use of a unique and fascinating period in Sydney’s history provides plenty of interesting opportunities for the narrative and the characters. The protagonists are two well-realized young women fighting literally for survival in an uncaring war of territory, power, and influence. Larbalestier crafts a sequence of events exciting and exhilarating because they are so clearly the result of dominoes falling and plans spinning ever faster out of control. It’s invigorating.
This book has an amazing title, and amazing art, and very clever writing. It’s filled to the brim with witty advice and brief interviews from a panoply of self-proclaimed fangirls. So why did it leave me feeling so meh?
Obvious disclaimer here: I identify as a cis man, so by most definitions I’m not really a fangirl, and I’m never going to experience the discrimination that women often face when they present as geeks in person or online. Nevertheless, I’m interested in geekdom, and I like building my sense of empathy for other people, especially people who have very different experiences from me. If I’m going to be a feminist and an ally, I need to know what some women go through and the ways in which many women are creating their own safe subcultures within geekdom.
So from that vantage point, perhaps it’s redundant to point out that I’m not the target audience of The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy. And, although I’d probably cop to being a fan/fanboy/fangirl/fanwhatever, and I’m pretty good at geeking out online, I eschew a broad swath of the geeky culture Maggs describes here. Indeed, that was initially why I dismissed my unease while I was reading—I just chalked it up to not really being into merchandising or writing fanfic or going to cons, above and beyond my whole not being a woman.
As I kept reading, though, I started to wonder who is the target audience? Maggs seems to want to have it both ways. She includes chapters (well, lists, really) that are primers for a total newbie: here’s the cliques; here’s some rules for helping you tackle cons; here’s how you use Twitter and Facebook—wait, what? I could see this appealing to teenagers just beginning to spread their geeky wings, except I think teenagers probably know how to use Twitter and Facebook. So is that for the established fangirl who is just venturing into social media? If that’s the case, what’s up with all the definitions and guides to starting out in one’s geekery? When I first started reading this, I was super-excited, to the point of putting a copy in my online shopping cart so I could buy it as a birthday present for a friend. Then I was like, “Wait, what if she thinks I think she isn’t a good fangirl already if I give her this?”
I guess I’m just getting mixed messages here, and these contradictions made it more difficult to enjoy a book that tries—and largely succeeds—to be fine. Maggs is a great writer. Her language is sharp and contemporary. She can explain the concepts, memes, an in-jokes that make online cultures go round (again, not quite sure to whom she’s explaining these things).
The interviews smooshed between each chapter are nice, but they are so short and more like soundbites. I would rather see longer-form contributions, more like the moving essays in Chicks Dig Timelords, Chicks Dig Comics, etc. (I’m not saying they need to be as long as those essays, but a little more varied, maybe.)
Probably my favourite chapter is “Geek Girl Feminism,” where Maggs lays down the basics of being a geek and being feminist. She busts some myths and also highlights several feminist icons in science fiction and fantasy fiction. Given some of the very gendered, very misogynist rhetoric emanating from some sections of geekdom lately (Gamergate, anyone?), it’s so important, now more than ever, that we reaffirm that most excellent philosophy of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
So there’s lots of good in this book, lots to celebrate and enjoy. I had fun reading it. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t quite come together into a coherent volume. Labour of love? Yes. Great production quality? Yes—love these illustrations. Fun? Sure. There are lots of reasons you might want to pick this up. But there was little enough about the content or substance of The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy to … well, make me fangirl about it.
Sorry, but not having the feels here.
Obvious disclaimer here: I identify as a cis man, so by most definitions I’m not really a fangirl, and I’m never going to experience the discrimination that women often face when they present as geeks in person or online. Nevertheless, I’m interested in geekdom, and I like building my sense of empathy for other people, especially people who have very different experiences from me. If I’m going to be a feminist and an ally, I need to know what some women go through and the ways in which many women are creating their own safe subcultures within geekdom.
So from that vantage point, perhaps it’s redundant to point out that I’m not the target audience of The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy. And, although I’d probably cop to being a fan/fanboy/fangirl/fanwhatever, and I’m pretty good at geeking out online, I eschew a broad swath of the geeky culture Maggs describes here. Indeed, that was initially why I dismissed my unease while I was reading—I just chalked it up to not really being into merchandising or writing fanfic or going to cons, above and beyond my whole not being a woman.
As I kept reading, though, I started to wonder who is the target audience? Maggs seems to want to have it both ways. She includes chapters (well, lists, really) that are primers for a total newbie: here’s the cliques; here’s some rules for helping you tackle cons; here’s how you use Twitter and Facebook—wait, what? I could see this appealing to teenagers just beginning to spread their geeky wings, except I think teenagers probably know how to use Twitter and Facebook. So is that for the established fangirl who is just venturing into social media? If that’s the case, what’s up with all the definitions and guides to starting out in one’s geekery? When I first started reading this, I was super-excited, to the point of putting a copy in my online shopping cart so I could buy it as a birthday present for a friend. Then I was like, “Wait, what if she thinks I think she isn’t a good fangirl already if I give her this?”
I guess I’m just getting mixed messages here, and these contradictions made it more difficult to enjoy a book that tries—and largely succeeds—to be fine. Maggs is a great writer. Her language is sharp and contemporary. She can explain the concepts, memes, an in-jokes that make online cultures go round (again, not quite sure to whom she’s explaining these things).
The interviews smooshed between each chapter are nice, but they are so short and more like soundbites. I would rather see longer-form contributions, more like the moving essays in Chicks Dig Timelords, Chicks Dig Comics, etc. (I’m not saying they need to be as long as those essays, but a little more varied, maybe.)
Probably my favourite chapter is “Geek Girl Feminism,” where Maggs lays down the basics of being a geek and being feminist. She busts some myths and also highlights several feminist icons in science fiction and fantasy fiction. Given some of the very gendered, very misogynist rhetoric emanating from some sections of geekdom lately (Gamergate, anyone?), it’s so important, now more than ever, that we reaffirm that most excellent philosophy of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
So there’s lots of good in this book, lots to celebrate and enjoy. I had fun reading it. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t quite come together into a coherent volume. Labour of love? Yes. Great production quality? Yes—love these illustrations. Fun? Sure. There are lots of reasons you might want to pick this up. But there was little enough about the content or substance of The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy to … well, make me fangirl about it.
Sorry, but not having the feels here.
This might be one of my favourite Charles Stross books. I think it’s the effortless blend of bureaucratic humour and horror, and the slight homages to spy fiction, that makes The Atrocity Archives so appealing. It’s not just any one thing, and it isn’t too much of any of these things. There are plenty of ways to play the "secret government agency that fights the supernatural" angle, and plenty of them are valid. Stross has gone the tongue-in-cheek, cryptopunk route, and his particular brand of relentless, sardonic humour fits perfectly with this style.
The Atrocity Archives speaks to me as a math geek. All the magic in this book is arguably sufficiently advanced science, in the sense that it’s done using math—incredibly complex math. Turing cracked the P=NP problem, and in so doing realized it gave access to other universes. Many of these infinite universes are inhabited by beings like or unlike us—demons and spirits and Lovecraftian Old Ones. And it’s not just what Stross creates; it’s how he describes it: “the many-angled ones who live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set”. He seamlessly integrates math jargon into the conversation, never pausing to explain the lesser terms (he does give a bit of a crash course to things like the Turing problem in a little exposition). I can’t speak for how the mathematically uninitiated will feel about this—I can only hope that the patter will also be seamless, if slightly less explicable—a gentle background noise that eases on into the atmosphere Stross is trying to create.
That atmosphere is probably familiar to readers of spy fiction, particularly the over-the-top stories of Fleming and his ilk, for whom the perfect spy is the suave and sophisticated but unrealistically flashy James Bond or lookalike. The agents of the Laundry face global, perhaps even universal, annihilation on a regular basis. Standing toe-to-toe with such unimaginable horror, the only thing one can do is shrug and laugh. It’s the Dr. Strangelove, or Catch-22, appeal to absurdity. Stross reinforces this with many allusions to the Cold War and its lasting effects on the Laundry’s tangled org chart and resources.
The Laundry itself is as much a bastion of bureaucracy as it is badassery. Prior to being approved for fieldwork, Bob is little more than a glorified IT technician, running madly around the office trying to keep ancient servers running. His superiors harass him non-stop over missing paperwork; this continues even after he becomes a field agent and begins going on classified operations. Bob doesn’t like putting up with this, and he occasionally manages to wiggle out of it, but the bureaucrats always seem to get the last laugh. (Stross expounds further on that last idea in The Concrete Jungle, a sequel novella that is included in this edition of the book.)
So he’s sold me on the setting. The main character is slightly more generic than I might like for a protagonist. But Bob did grow on me—partly, I think, because he isn’t uber-competent, and his intuitive leaps of brilliance always make sense, thanks to sensible foreshadowing. For example, there is one point near the climax of the book where he needs to quickly construct a charm that will render him invisible to some bad guys. Earlier in the book, we established such a charm exists and how it’s made—and, conveniently, Bob had the principal ingredient on his person for an entirely unrelated reason. It all comes together nicely, in a way that signals tight writing and editing that I always appreciate seeing.
I’ll admit to getting a bit lost with the plot a few times. Stross draws on obscure points of history and nuances of politics that occasionally escape my grasp (especially when reading this on a transatlantic flight when I should be sleeping but can’t). This doesn’t mar my enjoyment of the story, though; the fun of the action and tone of Bob’s narration is quite enough to see my through to the end. I suspect I’m also just lazy and used to authors who feel the need to explain every detail to the reader, whereas Stross decides to leave the bigger picture disassembled and let the reader put it together—or not—at their own pace and leisure.
The Atrocity Archives is the first in a fun series. It’s James Bond meets Dilbert or Douglas Coupland, a story where black humour screens the oppressive knowledge of all the immensely powerful things that go bump in the night. It teeters on the yawning chasm of despair, its appeal to absurdity only just holding it back—and that powerful juxtaposition of light and dark tones creates a story worth reading and discussing.
My reviews of the Laundry Files:
← The Jennifer Morgue
The Atrocity Archives speaks to me as a math geek. All the magic in this book is arguably sufficiently advanced science, in the sense that it’s done using math—incredibly complex math. Turing cracked the P=NP problem, and in so doing realized it gave access to other universes. Many of these infinite universes are inhabited by beings like or unlike us—demons and spirits and Lovecraftian Old Ones. And it’s not just what Stross creates; it’s how he describes it: “the many-angled ones who live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot set”. He seamlessly integrates math jargon into the conversation, never pausing to explain the lesser terms (he does give a bit of a crash course to things like the Turing problem in a little exposition). I can’t speak for how the mathematically uninitiated will feel about this—I can only hope that the patter will also be seamless, if slightly less explicable—a gentle background noise that eases on into the atmosphere Stross is trying to create.
That atmosphere is probably familiar to readers of spy fiction, particularly the over-the-top stories of Fleming and his ilk, for whom the perfect spy is the suave and sophisticated but unrealistically flashy James Bond or lookalike. The agents of the Laundry face global, perhaps even universal, annihilation on a regular basis. Standing toe-to-toe with such unimaginable horror, the only thing one can do is shrug and laugh. It’s the Dr. Strangelove, or Catch-22, appeal to absurdity. Stross reinforces this with many allusions to the Cold War and its lasting effects on the Laundry’s tangled org chart and resources.
The Laundry itself is as much a bastion of bureaucracy as it is badassery. Prior to being approved for fieldwork, Bob is little more than a glorified IT technician, running madly around the office trying to keep ancient servers running. His superiors harass him non-stop over missing paperwork; this continues even after he becomes a field agent and begins going on classified operations. Bob doesn’t like putting up with this, and he occasionally manages to wiggle out of it, but the bureaucrats always seem to get the last laugh. (Stross expounds further on that last idea in The Concrete Jungle, a sequel novella that is included in this edition of the book.)
So he’s sold me on the setting. The main character is slightly more generic than I might like for a protagonist. But Bob did grow on me—partly, I think, because he isn’t uber-competent, and his intuitive leaps of brilliance always make sense, thanks to sensible foreshadowing. For example, there is one point near the climax of the book where he needs to quickly construct a charm that will render him invisible to some bad guys. Earlier in the book, we established such a charm exists and how it’s made—and, conveniently, Bob had the principal ingredient on his person for an entirely unrelated reason. It all comes together nicely, in a way that signals tight writing and editing that I always appreciate seeing.
I’ll admit to getting a bit lost with the plot a few times. Stross draws on obscure points of history and nuances of politics that occasionally escape my grasp (especially when reading this on a transatlantic flight when I should be sleeping but can’t). This doesn’t mar my enjoyment of the story, though; the fun of the action and tone of Bob’s narration is quite enough to see my through to the end. I suspect I’m also just lazy and used to authors who feel the need to explain every detail to the reader, whereas Stross decides to leave the bigger picture disassembled and let the reader put it together—or not—at their own pace and leisure.
The Atrocity Archives is the first in a fun series. It’s James Bond meets Dilbert or Douglas Coupland, a story where black humour screens the oppressive knowledge of all the immensely powerful things that go bump in the night. It teeters on the yawning chasm of despair, its appeal to absurdity only just holding it back—and that powerful juxtaposition of light and dark tones creates a story worth reading and discussing.
My reviews of the Laundry Files:
← The Jennifer Morgue
Did you finish The Atrocity Archives and think, “Gee, I liked this magical computational spoof on James Bond quite a lot, but I wish it had been Bondier and spoofier?” Well, if you did, then The Jennifer Morgue is the Laundry Files novel for you.
I didn’t—so keep that in mind when I say things like, “All I wanted to do with my life was read this book.”
I am not a Bond fan. I’ve never had a Bond film marathon. In fact, aside from seeing Skyfall in theatres with friends and (maybe) Casino Royale, I don’t know if I’ve actually watched a Bond film in its entirety from start to finish. I certainly haven’t read any of the books. While the idea of a suave kickass superspy is as appealing to me as it is to the next person, the whole Bond scenario just doesn’t do much for me. I need slightly more self-deprecating and vulnerable protagonists.
Enter Bob Howard. Totally not James Bond. But maybe James Bond?
Although The Atrocity Archive did not hide its allusions to Bond and sundry, The Jennifer Morgue is where Charles Stross truly engages in spoof. However, it’s self-aware, somewhat parodic spoof. The bad guy, Ellis Billington, is trying to raise a sunken wreck from an ancient civilization that might predate—or at least disturbs—the BLUE HADES Old Ones we don’t want to talk about. To keep the governments of the world off his case, Billington activates a “hero geas,” which draws on the power of millions of Bond fans throughout the world to set him up as the evil mastermind. Only a lone British spy sent in to infiltrate the operation and stop him stands a chance—and Billington plans to stop the geas just after the climax where the villain has the upperhand, lest it run to its inevitable and unfortunate (for him) conclusion.
It’s an intriguing way to spoof the Bond franchise while also hanging a lampshade on it. I would expect nothing less from Stross. Despite the fact I’ve seldom awarded his books five stars, he remains one of my favourite writers. Even if his books themselves don’t always work as a whole to impress me, his writing is invariably entertaining and intelligent. Stross has a talent for making the outrageous and fantastic sound realistic. It’s what makes his Merchant Traders series compelling: applying economic theory to alternative-universe interactions. Here, Stross uses his knowledge of economics, history, geopolitics, and of course, computer science to weave the perfect chthonic endgame plot for our Bond-like villain.
Pay attention when you’re reading, because Stross foreshadows with the best of them. Little offhand remarks, say that Billington makes about his cat, turn out to make much more sense in hindsight. I love it when an author throws me off by including something that seems strange or nonsensical, only for the resolution to put that event in a new light. It shows a great deal of control, planning, and execution that you want, especially in a novel as tightly packed as this one.
Unfortunately, most of the characters tend to conform to the Bond character archetypes and are not as well-drawn as I’d like them to be. Ramona, Bob, Mo, McMurray, etc. … despite good attempts at creating tension through devices like Ramona and Bob’s destiny entanglement, I doubt you’re going to meet anyone who said they liked this book for its characterization. This is a plot-driven, adrenaline- and allusion-fuelled joyride. Like it on those grounds, or leave it.
And the truth is, I didn’t like this as much as The Atrocity Archives. Despite being full of action, there are scenes just full of exposition and the most boring manner of infodumps possible—I wanted to reach through the page and strangle the people having these conversations. Yet whenever I had to put the book down—because real life sucks and tends to interrupt me when I want to read—I couldn’t wait to return to Bob’s adventure. That is a pretty high compliment to pay to a book, I think, right up there with “I want to read it over and over” and “I would like to have this cover tattooed on sensitive areas of my body” (neither of those applies to The Jennifer Morgue).
This novel continues the trend Stross began in the first one of a healthy blend of urban fantasy, modern technology, and computer science. The Atrocity Archives got me because, as a mathematician and a programmers, I love the idea that doing higher-level mathematics could let demons possess you. (It would explain a lot.) It appeals to my belief that math allows us to understand and even affect the universe in a very profound way. The Jennifer Morgue explores this a bit more. We have magical distributed surveillance, thanks to creative marketing, and Bob enjoys pwnz0ring the yacht’s computer network through a PC media centre. So there’s that.
This edition came with a bonus short story, “Pimpf,” at the end. I did not like it that much. But, hey, bonus short story! I want more novels to do that…. I could have done without the semi–self-aware afterword though.
Basically, if you liked the first book, you are going to like this book a little more or a little less, depending on how much Bond you want in your Brit. If you didn’t like the first book but were on the fence about it, then try The Jennifer Morgue anyway, because the plot or tone is different and might appeal to you more. In general, I think I like the series more for the ideas Stross invokes than the actual stories—but they are good enough stories that I can enjoy them as the diversions they are while Stross hacks my brain.
I’m going to go reboot now. Praise shoggoth!
My reviews of the Laundry Files:
← The Atrocity Archives | The Fuller Memorandum →
I didn’t—so keep that in mind when I say things like, “All I wanted to do with my life was read this book.”
I am not a Bond fan. I’ve never had a Bond film marathon. In fact, aside from seeing Skyfall in theatres with friends and (maybe) Casino Royale, I don’t know if I’ve actually watched a Bond film in its entirety from start to finish. I certainly haven’t read any of the books. While the idea of a suave kickass superspy is as appealing to me as it is to the next person, the whole Bond scenario just doesn’t do much for me. I need slightly more self-deprecating and vulnerable protagonists.
Enter Bob Howard. Totally not James Bond. But maybe James Bond?
Although The Atrocity Archive did not hide its allusions to Bond and sundry, The Jennifer Morgue is where Charles Stross truly engages in spoof. However, it’s self-aware, somewhat parodic spoof. The bad guy, Ellis Billington, is trying to raise a sunken wreck from an ancient civilization that might predate—or at least disturbs—the BLUE HADES Old Ones we don’t want to talk about. To keep the governments of the world off his case, Billington activates a “hero geas,” which draws on the power of millions of Bond fans throughout the world to set him up as the evil mastermind. Only a lone British spy sent in to infiltrate the operation and stop him stands a chance—and Billington plans to stop the geas just after the climax where the villain has the upperhand, lest it run to its inevitable and unfortunate (for him) conclusion.
It’s an intriguing way to spoof the Bond franchise while also hanging a lampshade on it. I would expect nothing less from Stross. Despite the fact I’ve seldom awarded his books five stars, he remains one of my favourite writers. Even if his books themselves don’t always work as a whole to impress me, his writing is invariably entertaining and intelligent. Stross has a talent for making the outrageous and fantastic sound realistic. It’s what makes his Merchant Traders series compelling: applying economic theory to alternative-universe interactions. Here, Stross uses his knowledge of economics, history, geopolitics, and of course, computer science to weave the perfect chthonic endgame plot for our Bond-like villain.
Pay attention when you’re reading, because Stross foreshadows with the best of them. Little offhand remarks, say that Billington makes about his cat, turn out to make much more sense in hindsight. I love it when an author throws me off by including something that seems strange or nonsensical, only for the resolution to put that event in a new light. It shows a great deal of control, planning, and execution that you want, especially in a novel as tightly packed as this one.
Unfortunately, most of the characters tend to conform to the Bond character archetypes and are not as well-drawn as I’d like them to be. Ramona, Bob, Mo, McMurray, etc. … despite good attempts at creating tension through devices like Ramona and Bob’s destiny entanglement, I doubt you’re going to meet anyone who said they liked this book for its characterization. This is a plot-driven, adrenaline- and allusion-fuelled joyride. Like it on those grounds, or leave it.
And the truth is, I didn’t like this as much as The Atrocity Archives. Despite being full of action, there are scenes just full of exposition and the most boring manner of infodumps possible—I wanted to reach through the page and strangle the people having these conversations. Yet whenever I had to put the book down—because real life sucks and tends to interrupt me when I want to read—I couldn’t wait to return to Bob’s adventure. That is a pretty high compliment to pay to a book, I think, right up there with “I want to read it over and over” and “I would like to have this cover tattooed on sensitive areas of my body” (neither of those applies to The Jennifer Morgue).
This novel continues the trend Stross began in the first one of a healthy blend of urban fantasy, modern technology, and computer science. The Atrocity Archives got me because, as a mathematician and a programmers, I love the idea that doing higher-level mathematics could let demons possess you. (It would explain a lot.) It appeals to my belief that math allows us to understand and even affect the universe in a very profound way. The Jennifer Morgue explores this a bit more. We have magical distributed surveillance, thanks to creative marketing, and Bob enjoys pwnz0ring the yacht’s computer network through a PC media centre. So there’s that.
This edition came with a bonus short story, “Pimpf,” at the end. I did not like it that much. But, hey, bonus short story! I want more novels to do that…. I could have done without the semi–self-aware afterword though.
Basically, if you liked the first book, you are going to like this book a little more or a little less, depending on how much Bond you want in your Brit. If you didn’t like the first book but were on the fence about it, then try The Jennifer Morgue anyway, because the plot or tone is different and might appeal to you more. In general, I think I like the series more for the ideas Stross invokes than the actual stories—but they are good enough stories that I can enjoy them as the diversions they are while Stross hacks my brain.
I’m going to go reboot now. Praise shoggoth!
My reviews of the Laundry Files:
← The Atrocity Archives | The Fuller Memorandum →
It’s safe to say that the Laundry Files is my favourite of Charles Stross’ series. It’s starting to rank up there with the Dresden Files as far as urban fantasy goes. The two series have a lot in common: each book is a self-contained, madcap thriller with supernatural elements; while overall, the series mythology continues to grow and head towards some kind of apocalyptic climax.
In The Fuller Memorandum, Bob and Mo become tangled up in a plot by some cultists to steal Teapot, also known as the Eater of Souls. (One guess what this entity does.) The cultists are being manipulated by a bigger, badder, blacker order that wants to bring on CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN (also known as the end of the world) sooner rather than later. If that’s not bad enough, Bob’s boss, Angleton, goes missing, and Bob is suspended from work with pay pending an investigation into a civilian fatality he accidentally caused.
Once again, Stross combines the most hilarious parts of British bureaucracy with the spoofiest of James Bond spoofs. Bob is not your typical suave secret agent; he is a civil servant. Mo isn’t a smoking hot assassin; she’s a professor of philosophy. Together, or sometimes separately, they work for the Laundry.
Immediately The Fuller Memorandum endeared itself to me more than The Jennifer Morgue. The plot is somewhat more straightforward. Mostly, though, it’s just more fun. I had fun watching Bob stalk through London, being used as bait, and basically getting fed up with everyone stonewalling him. I had fun with the way the bureaucratic parts of the Laundry can be as much of an obstacle as the cultists armed with shotguns.
In this book, we learn a little more about Angleton. Last time we learned that Angleton has been with the Laundry since practically its inception—yet hasn’t seemed to age. I like that Stross continues to spin out bits and pieces of Laundry mythology. It’s this kind of exposition that I find so tantalizing.
The other kind of exposition, where Bob goes on for paragraphs at a time about Chthonic beings and Lovecraftian monsters and computational demonology … well, it’s cute the first time. And the second time. But the third, fourth, and nth times, it starts becoming a drag. Bob is a fun character, but after a while, Stross’ style of narration can become a drag. He has a very clever voice, one that moves kilometres a minute and wants to include witty political and historical allusions. It’s all well and good for a bit, and then I just feel like being one of those Terry Gilliam animations from Monty Python: “Get on with it!”
While you could jump into this book without reading the rest of the series, I recommend you check out The Atrocity Archives and work your way forward. They aren’t long—though, pleasantly for such short books, the stories themselves are dense. I feel like I really get a lot of story for my $8.99 (Canadian), and you can’t say that about every book. The Fuller Memorandum is another reliable instalment in the series, and I look forward to reading the next books.
My reviews of the Laundry Files:
← The Jennifer Morgue
In The Fuller Memorandum, Bob and Mo become tangled up in a plot by some cultists to steal Teapot, also known as the Eater of Souls. (One guess what this entity does.) The cultists are being manipulated by a bigger, badder, blacker order that wants to bring on CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN (also known as the end of the world) sooner rather than later. If that’s not bad enough, Bob’s boss, Angleton, goes missing, and Bob is suspended from work with pay pending an investigation into a civilian fatality he accidentally caused.
Once again, Stross combines the most hilarious parts of British bureaucracy with the spoofiest of James Bond spoofs. Bob is not your typical suave secret agent; he is a civil servant. Mo isn’t a smoking hot assassin; she’s a professor of philosophy. Together, or sometimes separately, they work for the Laundry.
Immediately The Fuller Memorandum endeared itself to me more than The Jennifer Morgue. The plot is somewhat more straightforward. Mostly, though, it’s just more fun. I had fun watching Bob stalk through London, being used as bait, and basically getting fed up with everyone stonewalling him. I had fun with the way the bureaucratic parts of the Laundry can be as much of an obstacle as the cultists armed with shotguns.
In this book, we learn a little more about Angleton. Last time we learned that Angleton has been with the Laundry since practically its inception—yet hasn’t seemed to age. I like that Stross continues to spin out bits and pieces of Laundry mythology. It’s this kind of exposition that I find so tantalizing.
The other kind of exposition, where Bob goes on for paragraphs at a time about Chthonic beings and Lovecraftian monsters and computational demonology … well, it’s cute the first time. And the second time. But the third, fourth, and nth times, it starts becoming a drag. Bob is a fun character, but after a while, Stross’ style of narration can become a drag. He has a very clever voice, one that moves kilometres a minute and wants to include witty political and historical allusions. It’s all well and good for a bit, and then I just feel like being one of those Terry Gilliam animations from Monty Python: “Get on with it!”
While you could jump into this book without reading the rest of the series, I recommend you check out The Atrocity Archives and work your way forward. They aren’t long—though, pleasantly for such short books, the stories themselves are dense. I feel like I really get a lot of story for my $8.99 (Canadian), and you can’t say that about every book. The Fuller Memorandum is another reliable instalment in the series, and I look forward to reading the next books.
My reviews of the Laundry Files:
← The Jennifer Morgue
Picked this up off the New Books shelf at the library and decided to take a chance. As I’ve said before, this is why I love libraries. I have no interest in heavy metal, and the back cover copy is somewhat vague in communicating what this book is about. But what’s the worst that could happen? I don’t like it, and I have to return in a few weeks. Libraries are awesome for letting you take a chance on a book you’re not sure about—and sometimes, as in the case of Boring Girls, you’re pleasantly surprised.
Huuuuuuge trigger warning, though, for rape, and for this review as well.
I’m not sure I can do this book justice, because any attempt to summarize what happens is going to make Boring Girls sound … well, boring. This is a novel that manages to be dark and disturbing but also feel a little clichéd. When Rachel’s parents confront her about her new taste for death metal, she says: “You don’t know the sort of things that I like. You don’t get what I am.” And I couldn’t help but hear that in an incredibly overwrought teen girl voice. It’s like, you did not just write that, did you?
I’d like to give Sara Taylor the benefit of a doubt, however, and mark down such campiness as an intentional counterpoint to what might otherwise be a rather horrific book. I mean, we’re talking about two characters vowing to get famous so they can kill people very publicly in order to get revenge. It’s simultaneously dark and somewhat laughably unrealistic. The tension between these two elements is what kept me reading far past what should have been my bedtime.
At its core, this is a book about double standards—hence the title. Rachel’s parents would love for her to be a boring girl, because boring girls—nice girls, good girls—don’t get into trouble, don’t make trouble, and otherwise live boring, nice, normal lives. When Rachel butts heads with authority figures, it’s over her attempts at expressing herself. She finds solace in metal because its’s a subculture built around the idea of being an outcast, of throwing up a defensive barricade of shocking obscenity to keep the rest of the world out. But even within this world, she keeps running up against that double standard, the gatekeepers who don’t think girls belong in metal or the “assholes” for whom metal is simply another way to indulge their cravings for power, sex, etc.
So Taylor tears down this idea that there is any one perfect refuge from abuse. She sets Rachel up for disappointment—you just know that when she gets the opportunity to meet Balthasar it’s not going to go well. I didn’t quite think that it would go as far as rape. Unlike some other depictions of rape as plot devices, however, Boring Girls treats rape as the serious and devastating experience it is. And I appreciate, in particular, how Taylor shows that there is no one universal reaction to being raped. Fern shuts down, pulls away from the rest of the world, and her band members notice but can’t understand why. Rachel, on the other hand, uses the rape as a way of kindling that ever-present rage that has always seemed to lurk beneath the surface.
What I found really interesting, however, is the role reversal that happens just before the climax. When Fern has the opportunity to confront another rapist, she breaks out from her shell. Suddenly it isn’t Rachel who is proposing murder: Fern is the one leading the charge, and again in the cemetery. As Fern regains her energy and transforms into a somewhat manic, quite frankly scary person, Rachel finds herself less interested in interaction. When they finally have the opportunity to strike against DED, Rachel—the one who proposed the revenge plot in the first place—does not want to go through with it, following Fern more out of friendship and loyalty than a commitment to the revenge they both craved.
Part of me was disappointed, at first, by the ending and the lack of closure we get around Rachel and what happens to her in the aftermath of the murders. That being said, I can appreciate why Taylor might have chosen to go this route. There is a certain fragility to Boring Girls—as I said above, the plot isn’t exactly realistic. This is not a story one should examine closely, in minute detail, in the hopes of making sense of it all. More to the point, one of the hardest things about writing is deciding where the story should end (or begin). Narratives aren’t like real life. In deciding to end the story just after the culmination of Rachel and Fern’s revenge, Taylor foregrounds this as the defining act of the novel.
This act catalyzes the rest of the story. Everything that leads up to it suddenly takes on a new meaning. Even though we know, broadly, what is going to happen, the details and emotions that Rachel relates alter our understanding of everything that went before. I love it when a book does that, when the ending allows you, motivates you, to go back and leaf through previous pages with fresh insight.
Ultimately this is a character study. Taylor shows us how a combination of things Rachel does and things people do to her lead her to this tragic act. Through a rage disguised as justice and a stark, unforgiving sense of clarity, Rachel formulates a plan that she knows she can’t come back from. But she is OK with that. She makes her peace with it—at least intellectually, until the actual visceral moment approaches and she finds Fern has the will where she does not. She makes her peace with it, because DED took away from her the one thing she thought she had made hers: the safety of metal. The rape didn’t just take away her sense of physical autonomy; it shuttered, once and for all, any hope that Rachel could feel welcome or included in this space that was supposed to be marked for outcasts of all stripes. With literally nowhere left to go, Rachel had no reason left to care.
Boring Girls is a novel both bleak and sympathetic. Rachel is a layered character: at times she is as naive as any teenager, and she certainly is as much an asshole as all the other people she applies that label to. This is a story of the rawest of human emotions being put to a purpose dark yet somehow fitting. It is not an uplifting book, but in some ways it is a rewarding one.
Huuuuuuge trigger warning, though, for rape, and for this review as well.
I’m not sure I can do this book justice, because any attempt to summarize what happens is going to make Boring Girls sound … well, boring. This is a novel that manages to be dark and disturbing but also feel a little clichéd. When Rachel’s parents confront her about her new taste for death metal, she says: “You don’t know the sort of things that I like. You don’t get what I am.” And I couldn’t help but hear that in an incredibly overwrought teen girl voice. It’s like, you did not just write that, did you?
I’d like to give Sara Taylor the benefit of a doubt, however, and mark down such campiness as an intentional counterpoint to what might otherwise be a rather horrific book. I mean, we’re talking about two characters vowing to get famous so they can kill people very publicly in order to get revenge. It’s simultaneously dark and somewhat laughably unrealistic. The tension between these two elements is what kept me reading far past what should have been my bedtime.
At its core, this is a book about double standards—hence the title. Rachel’s parents would love for her to be a boring girl, because boring girls—nice girls, good girls—don’t get into trouble, don’t make trouble, and otherwise live boring, nice, normal lives. When Rachel butts heads with authority figures, it’s over her attempts at expressing herself. She finds solace in metal because its’s a subculture built around the idea of being an outcast, of throwing up a defensive barricade of shocking obscenity to keep the rest of the world out. But even within this world, she keeps running up against that double standard, the gatekeepers who don’t think girls belong in metal or the “assholes” for whom metal is simply another way to indulge their cravings for power, sex, etc.
So Taylor tears down this idea that there is any one perfect refuge from abuse. She sets Rachel up for disappointment—you just know that when she gets the opportunity to meet Balthasar it’s not going to go well. I didn’t quite think that it would go as far as rape. Unlike some other depictions of rape as plot devices, however, Boring Girls treats rape as the serious and devastating experience it is. And I appreciate, in particular, how Taylor shows that there is no one universal reaction to being raped. Fern shuts down, pulls away from the rest of the world, and her band members notice but can’t understand why. Rachel, on the other hand, uses the rape as a way of kindling that ever-present rage that has always seemed to lurk beneath the surface.
What I found really interesting, however, is the role reversal that happens just before the climax. When Fern has the opportunity to confront another rapist, she breaks out from her shell. Suddenly it isn’t Rachel who is proposing murder: Fern is the one leading the charge, and again in the cemetery. As Fern regains her energy and transforms into a somewhat manic, quite frankly scary person, Rachel finds herself less interested in interaction. When they finally have the opportunity to strike against DED, Rachel—the one who proposed the revenge plot in the first place—does not want to go through with it, following Fern more out of friendship and loyalty than a commitment to the revenge they both craved.
Part of me was disappointed, at first, by the ending and the lack of closure we get around Rachel and what happens to her in the aftermath of the murders. That being said, I can appreciate why Taylor might have chosen to go this route. There is a certain fragility to Boring Girls—as I said above, the plot isn’t exactly realistic. This is not a story one should examine closely, in minute detail, in the hopes of making sense of it all. More to the point, one of the hardest things about writing is deciding where the story should end (or begin). Narratives aren’t like real life. In deciding to end the story just after the culmination of Rachel and Fern’s revenge, Taylor foregrounds this as the defining act of the novel.
This act catalyzes the rest of the story. Everything that leads up to it suddenly takes on a new meaning. Even though we know, broadly, what is going to happen, the details and emotions that Rachel relates alter our understanding of everything that went before. I love it when a book does that, when the ending allows you, motivates you, to go back and leaf through previous pages with fresh insight.
Ultimately this is a character study. Taylor shows us how a combination of things Rachel does and things people do to her lead her to this tragic act. Through a rage disguised as justice and a stark, unforgiving sense of clarity, Rachel formulates a plan that she knows she can’t come back from. But she is OK with that. She makes her peace with it—at least intellectually, until the actual visceral moment approaches and she finds Fern has the will where she does not. She makes her peace with it, because DED took away from her the one thing she thought she had made hers: the safety of metal. The rape didn’t just take away her sense of physical autonomy; it shuttered, once and for all, any hope that Rachel could feel welcome or included in this space that was supposed to be marked for outcasts of all stripes. With literally nowhere left to go, Rachel had no reason left to care.
Boring Girls is a novel both bleak and sympathetic. Rachel is a layered character: at times she is as naive as any teenager, and she certainly is as much an asshole as all the other people she applies that label to. This is a story of the rawest of human emotions being put to a purpose dark yet somehow fitting. It is not an uplifting book, but in some ways it is a rewarding one.
When it comes right down to it, Animorphs plots are pretty silly. I mean, they kind of have to be, for a bunch of kids to stymie Visser Three on a regular basis. He is only slightly more competent than Dr. Drakken.
(I’m just going to pause here for a moment so you can envision the gloriousness that would be an Animorphs/Kim Possible crossover. That’s right. How awesome would that be?)
Fortunately, Applegate recognizes this, and that’s why she tends to serve up a helpful dosage of internal conflict with each novel. The Reaction is no exception. Indeed, it’s one in a long line of “bizarro morphing” plots. Rachel acquires a crocodile, but in the process, loses control over her morphing powers. She starts morphing at random, morphing parts of different animals. That’s not good. So while the Animorphs confront the Yeerk plot of the day to take over the world by using a teen heartthrob as the poster boy for their boys and girls club, Rachel has to deal with her new allergy.
There are just so many reasons to enjoy this book, even if, unlike me, you are not a Rachel fan.
Rachel enlists Cassie to hide this embarrassing development from the others, at least at first, hoping to consult with Ax privately. (“Well, doctor, I seem to be having this problem where I transform into various animals…”) Even once the rest of the Animorphs are in on the secret, Rachel lies to them again because she doesn’t want to be left out of the mission to rescue Jeremy Jason McCole. This is part of Rachel’s character: she consistently sees herself as integral to the success of the team. You get a great sense in this book of how driven she is to make sure the Yeerks don’t succeed.
Each of the Animorphs have their own reasons for fighting. Marco and Jake both have loved ones who are Controllers. Cassie is in it to save nothing less than the Earth, as an ecosystem, itself. Tobias has nothing left to lose now. And Ax is honour-bound to avenge his brother. Rachel, in some ways, has the least personal stake in this fight—way back in The Visitor we see how affected she is by Melissa Chapman’s plight. So it speaks volumes, then, this impersonal commitment she has to fighting the injustice of the Yeerks. Marco is always half-joking when he likens Rachel to Xena, but it’s an apt comparison in more ways than one.
With the whole embarrassing morphing allergy, Applegate finds a new an interesting way to play with the morphing power. This creativity is one of the reasons Animorphs is such a successful series and was able to go for so many books while still feeling fresh. There is a lot of morphing in The Reaction, and aside from Rachel’s crocodile morph at the very beginning, Applegate doesn’t linger on the actual experience of morphing so much in this novel. But she still manages to convey the weirdness of the experience through Rachel’s allergy.
I also see some parallels between this allergy (and morphing in general) and puberty. When you’re at the age of these kids, and the target audience’s age, weird stuff happens to your body. Hair appears, as if out of nowhere, in places where there was no hair. You get moody for no good reason. Your body does not, really, feel like your body any more. So this allergy is allegorical for the loss of control and loss of certainty that occurs during puberty. As with puberty, Rachel isn’t keen on letting others know what’s happening to her; it’s a very personal problem.
But when you’re fighting to save the world, you don’t get personal problems. You can’t take a personal day. You’re a warrior, and in war, you don’t always get sick leave. Sometimes you just have to keep fighting. So Rachel risks it all—somewhat foolishly, maybe, but that’s just what the Animorphs tend to do.
Next up is The Andalite Chronicles, so I am very excited. In a break from the regular format, Applegate delivers a much longer story, this one filling us in on Elfangor and once again changing our entire perspective on the Animorphs universe.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #11: The Forgotten | The Andalite Chronicles →
(I’m just going to pause here for a moment so you can envision the gloriousness that would be an Animorphs/Kim Possible crossover. That’s right. How awesome would that be?)
Fortunately, Applegate recognizes this, and that’s why she tends to serve up a helpful dosage of internal conflict with each novel. The Reaction is no exception. Indeed, it’s one in a long line of “bizarro morphing” plots. Rachel acquires a crocodile, but in the process, loses control over her morphing powers. She starts morphing at random, morphing parts of different animals. That’s not good. So while the Animorphs confront the Yeerk plot of the day to take over the world by using a teen heartthrob as the poster boy for their boys and girls club, Rachel has to deal with her new allergy.
There are just so many reasons to enjoy this book, even if, unlike me, you are not a Rachel fan.
Rachel enlists Cassie to hide this embarrassing development from the others, at least at first, hoping to consult with Ax privately. (“Well, doctor, I seem to be having this problem where I transform into various animals…”) Even once the rest of the Animorphs are in on the secret, Rachel lies to them again because she doesn’t want to be left out of the mission to rescue Jeremy Jason McCole. This is part of Rachel’s character: she consistently sees herself as integral to the success of the team. You get a great sense in this book of how driven she is to make sure the Yeerks don’t succeed.
Each of the Animorphs have their own reasons for fighting. Marco and Jake both have loved ones who are Controllers. Cassie is in it to save nothing less than the Earth, as an ecosystem, itself. Tobias has nothing left to lose now. And Ax is honour-bound to avenge his brother. Rachel, in some ways, has the least personal stake in this fight—way back in The Visitor we see how affected she is by Melissa Chapman’s plight. So it speaks volumes, then, this impersonal commitment she has to fighting the injustice of the Yeerks. Marco is always half-joking when he likens Rachel to Xena, but it’s an apt comparison in more ways than one.
With the whole embarrassing morphing allergy, Applegate finds a new an interesting way to play with the morphing power. This creativity is one of the reasons Animorphs is such a successful series and was able to go for so many books while still feeling fresh. There is a lot of morphing in The Reaction, and aside from Rachel’s crocodile morph at the very beginning, Applegate doesn’t linger on the actual experience of morphing so much in this novel. But she still manages to convey the weirdness of the experience through Rachel’s allergy.
I also see some parallels between this allergy (and morphing in general) and puberty. When you’re at the age of these kids, and the target audience’s age, weird stuff happens to your body. Hair appears, as if out of nowhere, in places where there was no hair. You get moody for no good reason. Your body does not, really, feel like your body any more. So this allergy is allegorical for the loss of control and loss of certainty that occurs during puberty. As with puberty, Rachel isn’t keen on letting others know what’s happening to her; it’s a very personal problem.
But when you’re fighting to save the world, you don’t get personal problems. You can’t take a personal day. You’re a warrior, and in war, you don’t always get sick leave. Sometimes you just have to keep fighting. So Rachel risks it all—somewhat foolishly, maybe, but that’s just what the Animorphs tend to do.
Next up is The Andalite Chronicles, so I am very excited. In a break from the regular format, Applegate delivers a much longer story, this one filling us in on Elfangor and once again changing our entire perspective on the Animorphs universe.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #11: The Forgotten | The Andalite Chronicles →
World War I is not the sexier World War. The technology isn’t advanced; it didn’t end with a noisy double atomic bang; and it lacks the grandiose operatic tragedy of the Holocaust to offer a thematic background. Indeed, the political quagmire of nationalism and militarism that precipitated and fuelled the Great War might be interesting to historians, but to bored schoolkids, it just prompted us to wonder what we had done so wrong to deserve this. Wouldn’t World War I be cooler if it had genetically-engineered beasts on one side and steampunk walking machines on the other?
Scott Westerfeld covers just those bases in Leviathan. In this alternate history, Charles Darwin discovers DNA, and the field of genetics makes amazing leaps forward. Britain now depends on fabricated creatures for some of the simplest things—electricity, for example, is seen as dreadfully unreliable. Meanwhile, in Austria–Hungary and Germany, the Clankers prefer the reassuring sound of pistons and smell of oil. In lieu of tractor-tread tanks, they produce bipedal, quadripedal, octopedal walkers and zippy planes. Oh, and zeppelins. Because always zeppelins. (TVTropes)
Even in this much-altered Europe, the political situation remains tense. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, ignites war just as it did in our history. There are some differences in how the assassination happens, and they only have a single child to survive them. This child, Aleksander, is one of the two protagonists. After being led by the nose by two of the Archduke’s most loyal (but grumpy) officers, Alek starts acquiring a mind of his own.
I appreciate how much Alek is not a Mary Sue. He has a sound mind for tactics and proves talented at a walker. But he can’t suddenly persuade men to join the cause. He tends to screw up in all the ways an inexperienced adolescent boy would. Mostly he’s just trying to process the fact that his parents are gone—as in dead gone—and might have been killed by the rest of his family, who hated his mother, and if they weren’t, the family certainly looked the other way. Oh, and now that family wants to capture him, if not to kill him than to sequester him away somewhere he can’t cause any trouble.
Life is rough sometimes, you know?
So Alek and his trusty companions, Volger and Klopp, manage to slip into Switzerland, where Alek’s late father managed to provision a rundown castle in the Alps (like you do). But with the Leviathan’s inconvenient crash-landing nearby, Alek is forced to work with the Darwinists, especially when the Germans start breathing down everyone’s necks.
The conflict between Alek and Volger that precedes him sneaking out to help the Leviathan crew is great. Once again, Alek is making a potential stupid decision that is still probably the right one—he is acting like a leader, taking counsel and then ignoring it if it goes against his gut. But, of course, he also has to live with the consequences. If it weren’t for some quick thinking later in the book, he could very easily have gotten everyone killed.
Meanwhile, Deryn is just busy trying to avoid anyone discovering she’s a girl, especially that pesky Dr. Barlow. Unlike Alek, I found her skills verging a little too much towards the Mary Sue. However, it’s important to note that she isn’t technically a Mary Sue because, despite being a protagonist, she is not overly important to the plot. The captain doesn’t suddenly put her in charge after he recognizes her natural ability to command scores of men. Dr. Barlow overrules Deryn and orders her about just like she might any other middie. So in that sense, Deryn is much like Alek.
And that, of course, is the power of Leviathan’s characterization. Westerfeld creates these two … dare I say, starcrossed? … characters. One Darwinist. One Clanker. Both with something to hide. Both having lost a great deal so young. Both full of hope and dreams and ambitions—ambitions, I should say, that are suspiciously about learning and growing one’s mind. It’s like Westerfeld wants kids to like learning or something. Terrible propaganda!
Oddly enough, this delivery of so much one wants in a YA novel is probably why I liked but did not love Leviathan. It’s just too blandly YA. By fulfilling so many of the tropes—admittedly in creative, fun, well-executed ways—it ensures it will entertain, perhaps even dazzle. But it lacks the opinionated, thought-provoking stare that Uglies and its sequels turn on you. Whereas those books make you uncomfortable, challenge you to check your pre-conceptions at the door, these ones have a lot more in common with a blockbuster like Jurassic Park: alternate history, big beasties, lots of stuff go boom.
To my shame, it has been five years since I read the Uglies trilogy, and I am only now getting around to reading anything else by Westerfeld. He’s a prolific and popular writer, so I’ve quite the backlog to get through now. And I’m pleased, honestly, that he can produce something quite different from Uglies; it bodes well for the rest of his catalogue if each novel or series has its own unique voice to it.
I also genuinely believe that a lot of people will fall in love with Leviathan, with its world, and with its characters. As I implied at the beginning of my review, this is the perfect novel for a kid who is interested in history but not really interested in the geopolitics behind World War I. Westerfeld has done a masterful job creating an alternative early twentieth-century Europe here. Likewise, both protagonists are fun and exciting. Alek is a fallible young boy only barely holding grief in check. Deryn is a fierce and capable young woman trying to deal with the patriarchal nature of her world even as she struggles simply to do what she loves—fly. There’s a lot in here to speak to the reader, if you open your mind and listen.
By no means perfect—and, in fact, hindered in my view by a regrettable adherence to a kind of rote embrace of YA tropes—Leviathan is still stunning. I totally see why it got (and continues to get) all the hype, even though I’m not personally ready to jump on that bandwagon.
Scott Westerfeld covers just those bases in Leviathan. In this alternate history, Charles Darwin discovers DNA, and the field of genetics makes amazing leaps forward. Britain now depends on fabricated creatures for some of the simplest things—electricity, for example, is seen as dreadfully unreliable. Meanwhile, in Austria–Hungary and Germany, the Clankers prefer the reassuring sound of pistons and smell of oil. In lieu of tractor-tread tanks, they produce bipedal, quadripedal, octopedal walkers and zippy planes. Oh, and zeppelins. Because always zeppelins. (TVTropes)
Even in this much-altered Europe, the political situation remains tense. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, ignites war just as it did in our history. There are some differences in how the assassination happens, and they only have a single child to survive them. This child, Aleksander, is one of the two protagonists. After being led by the nose by two of the Archduke’s most loyal (but grumpy) officers, Alek starts acquiring a mind of his own.
I appreciate how much Alek is not a Mary Sue. He has a sound mind for tactics and proves talented at a walker. But he can’t suddenly persuade men to join the cause. He tends to screw up in all the ways an inexperienced adolescent boy would. Mostly he’s just trying to process the fact that his parents are gone—as in dead gone—and might have been killed by the rest of his family, who hated his mother, and if they weren’t, the family certainly looked the other way. Oh, and now that family wants to capture him, if not to kill him than to sequester him away somewhere he can’t cause any trouble.
Life is rough sometimes, you know?
So Alek and his trusty companions, Volger and Klopp, manage to slip into Switzerland, where Alek’s late father managed to provision a rundown castle in the Alps (like you do). But with the Leviathan’s inconvenient crash-landing nearby, Alek is forced to work with the Darwinists, especially when the Germans start breathing down everyone’s necks.
The conflict between Alek and Volger that precedes him sneaking out to help the Leviathan crew is great. Once again, Alek is making a potential stupid decision that is still probably the right one—he is acting like a leader, taking counsel and then ignoring it if it goes against his gut. But, of course, he also has to live with the consequences. If it weren’t for some quick thinking later in the book, he could very easily have gotten everyone killed.
Meanwhile, Deryn is just busy trying to avoid anyone discovering she’s a girl, especially that pesky Dr. Barlow. Unlike Alek, I found her skills verging a little too much towards the Mary Sue. However, it’s important to note that she isn’t technically a Mary Sue because, despite being a protagonist, she is not overly important to the plot. The captain doesn’t suddenly put her in charge after he recognizes her natural ability to command scores of men. Dr. Barlow overrules Deryn and orders her about just like she might any other middie. So in that sense, Deryn is much like Alek.
And that, of course, is the power of Leviathan’s characterization. Westerfeld creates these two … dare I say, starcrossed? … characters. One Darwinist. One Clanker. Both with something to hide. Both having lost a great deal so young. Both full of hope and dreams and ambitions—ambitions, I should say, that are suspiciously about learning and growing one’s mind. It’s like Westerfeld wants kids to like learning or something. Terrible propaganda!
Oddly enough, this delivery of so much one wants in a YA novel is probably why I liked but did not love Leviathan. It’s just too blandly YA. By fulfilling so many of the tropes—admittedly in creative, fun, well-executed ways—it ensures it will entertain, perhaps even dazzle. But it lacks the opinionated, thought-provoking stare that Uglies and its sequels turn on you. Whereas those books make you uncomfortable, challenge you to check your pre-conceptions at the door, these ones have a lot more in common with a blockbuster like Jurassic Park: alternate history, big beasties, lots of stuff go boom.
To my shame, it has been five years since I read the Uglies trilogy, and I am only now getting around to reading anything else by Westerfeld. He’s a prolific and popular writer, so I’ve quite the backlog to get through now. And I’m pleased, honestly, that he can produce something quite different from Uglies; it bodes well for the rest of his catalogue if each novel or series has its own unique voice to it.
I also genuinely believe that a lot of people will fall in love with Leviathan, with its world, and with its characters. As I implied at the beginning of my review, this is the perfect novel for a kid who is interested in history but not really interested in the geopolitics behind World War I. Westerfeld has done a masterful job creating an alternative early twentieth-century Europe here. Likewise, both protagonists are fun and exciting. Alek is a fallible young boy only barely holding grief in check. Deryn is a fierce and capable young woman trying to deal with the patriarchal nature of her world even as she struggles simply to do what she loves—fly. There’s a lot in here to speak to the reader, if you open your mind and listen.
By no means perfect—and, in fact, hindered in my view by a regrettable adherence to a kind of rote embrace of YA tropes—Leviathan is still stunning. I totally see why it got (and continues to get) all the hype, even though I’m not personally ready to jump on that bandwagon.
.jpg)
There’s nothing quite like a good Agatha Christie novel, hmm? I find reading one of her mysteries so comforting. It’s like the perfect intellectual beach read: you know what to expect, yet there are still surprises (even if you manage to guess whodunit, which I seldom do). The Hercule Poirot novels in particular must be among my favourites. Mystery was my first genre love, even way back before I got into science fiction and fantasy, and in mystery, Christie made history. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, sensational and controversial and regarded by so many as her best work, definitely attests to her skill as a writer.
We start, as we often do, in a quaint English country village. This is set sometime after Poirot has retired “to grow the marrows.” But just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in! Poirot finds himself neck-deep in the murder of the eponymous Ackroyd, with a whole household of suspects. In the place of the faithful Captain Hastings we have a Watsonian Dr. Sheppard, who not only narrates the book and assists Poirot but also found the body.
For the first part of the novel, Poirot figures very little. We learn about Sheppard’s practice and life, how he attended to Mrs. Ferrars after she died, and we see him meet with Roger Ackroyd. During this time Christie lays the groundwork, scattering clues—or clews as they are spelt here—that will be significant much later in the story. Poirot is just a batty old “Frenchman” who has taken the cottage next door and who is so opaque that not even Caroline, Sheppard’s sister and the town gossip, can divine his identity.
That all changes, of course. But I love the idea that Poirot wants out of the limelight in his retirement—just as I find it eminently believable that he wouldn’t be able to resist the thrill of the mystery. Although there is a little bit of the, “Oh, poor M. Poirot is past his prime and really should go back to growing marrows,” in general the other characters treat Poirot with a little bit of veneration. He is known, here.
Of course, it’s the identity of the killer that ultimately resulted in this novel receiving so much acclaim (and controversy). Christie was the first to employ “the narrator did it!” I find her use of an unreliable narrator itself enjoyable, regardless of the fact he also happened to be a murderer. I like to think that in any of the books narrated by Hastings, part of the reason I don’t solve the crime is because I’m forced to “wear a Hastings cap” and see everything through his eyes. Here, the narrator isn’t just omitting or garbling information that Poirot readily receives first hand: he is actively deceiving both Poirot and the reader.
I want to take a moment to emphasize what a technical feat this is. Separated from this book by just shy of ninety years, and exposed to countless derivative plot devices since then, it’s tempting for a modern reader to shrug their shoulders and go, “Meh,” when they read those final chapters. Even if you aren’t impressed by Sheppard’s guilt (if, indeed, he is guilty—we have only his word to go on here, and he has already lied to us!), just think about what Christie had to do to write this book.
I like think of murder mysteries as n-dimensional objects. The writer of a mystery necessarily must perceive it from a different perspective than the reader: the writer knows, from the beginning, who did it and why. All the pieces are apparent to them, whereas the reader only discovers this as a function of time. But that’s not all a writer does. She has to rotate this mystery and perceive it from other angles. She has to consider how it looks to the detective—how does Poirot fit all the pieces together to get to the solution? Then she has to consider how the mystery looks to the narrator (and thus, usually, to the reader) at a given point in time.
In other words, writing mysteries be complex, yo.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd stands out because Christie took it a step further, having to consider how the mystery looks to the narrator and then how the narrator makes things look to the reader. That must have required a lot more thought and planning. So my hat off to her.
I’ll also just add that I love how as these novels age they become intricate studies in the attitudes of the day. Christie’s characters have so much unexamined class privilege. I just find it so fascinating that our ideas of class have changed so much with time. Back then, to be considered reasonably well-off, you had to have some servants. Even Sheppard and his sister, who live alone in a little house, have a servant! Servants are a curious fixture in Christie novels, because they tend to be invisible and nameless (think of the Breton-capped woman who waits on Poirot in the Larches) unless they are relevant to the mystery, in which case they are naturally suspect.
So I wonder if we’re reaching a point where Christie’s novels are beginning to go the way of the Regency romances. That is, the writer assumes cultural knowledge the reader no longer has, so that which is left unsaid, or implied, is almost entirely lost on us. Just as modern readers have a hard time really comprehending the world of Jane Austen without some historical grounding first, I suspect that most of us don’t have as full an understanding of the world Christie depicts here either. Unlike Shakespeare, where this problem has a great deal to do with language drift, this is almost entirely a function of cultural assumptions.
While I lack some of the understanding to completely immerse myself in her world, however, I still fully enjoy these novels. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is no exception. It is every bit as clever and charming and compelling as you might be led to believe.
We start, as we often do, in a quaint English country village. This is set sometime after Poirot has retired “to grow the marrows.” But just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in! Poirot finds himself neck-deep in the murder of the eponymous Ackroyd, with a whole household of suspects. In the place of the faithful Captain Hastings we have a Watsonian Dr. Sheppard, who not only narrates the book and assists Poirot but also found the body.
For the first part of the novel, Poirot figures very little. We learn about Sheppard’s practice and life, how he attended to Mrs. Ferrars after she died, and we see him meet with Roger Ackroyd. During this time Christie lays the groundwork, scattering clues—or clews as they are spelt here—that will be significant much later in the story. Poirot is just a batty old “Frenchman” who has taken the cottage next door and who is so opaque that not even Caroline, Sheppard’s sister and the town gossip, can divine his identity.
That all changes, of course. But I love the idea that Poirot wants out of the limelight in his retirement—just as I find it eminently believable that he wouldn’t be able to resist the thrill of the mystery. Although there is a little bit of the, “Oh, poor M. Poirot is past his prime and really should go back to growing marrows,” in general the other characters treat Poirot with a little bit of veneration. He is known, here.
Of course, it’s the identity of the killer that ultimately resulted in this novel receiving so much acclaim (and controversy). Christie was the first to employ “the narrator did it!” I find her use of an unreliable narrator itself enjoyable, regardless of the fact he also happened to be a murderer. I like to think that in any of the books narrated by Hastings, part of the reason I don’t solve the crime is because I’m forced to “wear a Hastings cap” and see everything through his eyes. Here, the narrator isn’t just omitting or garbling information that Poirot readily receives first hand: he is actively deceiving both Poirot and the reader.
I want to take a moment to emphasize what a technical feat this is. Separated from this book by just shy of ninety years, and exposed to countless derivative plot devices since then, it’s tempting for a modern reader to shrug their shoulders and go, “Meh,” when they read those final chapters. Even if you aren’t impressed by Sheppard’s guilt (if, indeed, he is guilty—we have only his word to go on here, and he has already lied to us!), just think about what Christie had to do to write this book.
I like think of murder mysteries as n-dimensional objects. The writer of a mystery necessarily must perceive it from a different perspective than the reader: the writer knows, from the beginning, who did it and why. All the pieces are apparent to them, whereas the reader only discovers this as a function of time. But that’s not all a writer does. She has to rotate this mystery and perceive it from other angles. She has to consider how it looks to the detective—how does Poirot fit all the pieces together to get to the solution? Then she has to consider how the mystery looks to the narrator (and thus, usually, to the reader) at a given point in time.
In other words, writing mysteries be complex, yo.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd stands out because Christie took it a step further, having to consider how the mystery looks to the narrator and then how the narrator makes things look to the reader. That must have required a lot more thought and planning. So my hat off to her.
I’ll also just add that I love how as these novels age they become intricate studies in the attitudes of the day. Christie’s characters have so much unexamined class privilege. I just find it so fascinating that our ideas of class have changed so much with time. Back then, to be considered reasonably well-off, you had to have some servants. Even Sheppard and his sister, who live alone in a little house, have a servant! Servants are a curious fixture in Christie novels, because they tend to be invisible and nameless (think of the Breton-capped woman who waits on Poirot in the Larches) unless they are relevant to the mystery, in which case they are naturally suspect.
So I wonder if we’re reaching a point where Christie’s novels are beginning to go the way of the Regency romances. That is, the writer assumes cultural knowledge the reader no longer has, so that which is left unsaid, or implied, is almost entirely lost on us. Just as modern readers have a hard time really comprehending the world of Jane Austen without some historical grounding first, I suspect that most of us don’t have as full an understanding of the world Christie depicts here either. Unlike Shakespeare, where this problem has a great deal to do with language drift, this is almost entirely a function of cultural assumptions.
While I lack some of the understanding to completely immerse myself in her world, however, I still fully enjoy these novels. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is no exception. It is every bit as clever and charming and compelling as you might be led to believe.