Art is one of humanity’s most constructive, creative impulses, yet we spend so much time chronicling our darker, more tragic moments. Science fiction in particular is fascinated by the paradox of our humanity: we strive for, and are capable of, great acts, but underneath it all we are still the product of millions of years of evolution and prone to acts of irrationality, tribalism, and prejudice. Kim Stanley Robinson continues this great tradition in Aurora, a story about a generational starship that crosses the vast gulf of interstellar space to reach its destination, only to find insurmountable barriers when they arrive.

I’ve got mixed feelings about Aurora, which shouldn’t surprise you if you’ve read any of my other KSR reviews. Robinson’s vision and ability to use science fiction for thought experiments is unquestionable. He has a spark of creative genius that makes his books fascinating; moreover, he backs up that genius with an attention to scientific and technical details that others might be tempted to call “hard” SF. I find that term too loaded, myself, but there is something to be said for a novel that helps you appreciate the complex and challenging undertaking that travelling between the stars would be.

Despite his vision, however, Robinson often seems to get bogged down in the story, at least more so than I prefer. His characters are almost always flat, their growth, if any, painted in broad strokes, with the narrator distant and unemotional. This was one of the reasons I struggled with Red Mars, which is otherwise an excellent book about colonizing Mars. In Aurora, the narrator is the AI (or collection of AIs) that control the generational ship, having been instructed by one of its occupants to create a narrative account of the ship’s journey. This provides Robinson with an excuse for the somewhat dispassionate prose.

And that’s what it is: an excuse. It’s a crutch that lets Robinson get away with being somewhat lazy, especially with exposition. It’s OK for the ship to rattle off vital statistics and use more technobabble. Robinson is just being true to the voice of the ship! Now, there are some fascinating aspects of this choice of narrator. Explicitly, Robinson asks if a computer really can tell a story—which is to say, summarize events in a way that humans find interesting and compelling. It’s easy for a computer to keep track of everything that happens, but choosing which events to include—and the perspectives for those events—is a more difficult task. So, in between the story parts of the story, there are moments where the AI reflects on its attempts to create this narrative, and those are interesting.

Still, the end result is the same for me: another story in which Robinson’s characters lack much in the way of dimension. Devi is a single-minded, somewhat pessimistic engineer who refuses to live in the moment. I identified a little more with Badim. Freya’s superpower is listening, I guess? Somehow she ends up being one of the most important people on the ship despite not actually doing any specific job; she’s more of a wanderer. Basically, Robinson gives me little reason to care for these people specifically. And I didn’t care too much for the crew in general, because, you know, generational ship.

I was pretty sure it would end in tears.

Hence my real ambivalence about Aurora beyond my usual complaints about style: we’ve seen this before. The generational starship story is a well-established trope of science fiction, and it has been done to death, both realistically and otherwise. Did we really need another one? Does this book really do anything different?

Robinson attempts to introduce a twist in the form of the alien pathogen that so dramatically changes the crew’s focus in the second half of the book. And I’ll give him this: while I wasn’t surprised that something went wrong and everyone started being terrible to everyone else, the actual cause is pretty neat. I wish the book had spent more time analyzing this facet of the problem instead of moving on so quickly. Some of the ensuing unrest feels contrived—believable, sure, but I want to think there are probably protocols and procedures that could have been in place to prevent many of the initial problems. Robinson’s version of a generational ship is basically “the inmates are running the asylum.” Concepts like professionalism weren’t taught to this generation, apparently.

My interest diminished with the third act, when the ship turns around and heads back to Earth. Robinson tries to enhance the tension by asking whether the ship’s ecosystem will be able to support the crew, even greatly reduced, during the voyage home. To some extent he is successful, but by this point I just didn’t have much emotional investment anymore. I wanted to know what happens, but I didn’t actually care one way or the other. This is what happens when someone is really eager to show that he did the research on how deceleration at relativistic speeds works.

Aurora has some breathtaking moments of clarity, moments that make you sit in awe of the vastness of space and our own comparative smallness. I started playing Elite: Dangerous this week, because I have time off (yay) and, more importantly, a new computer that can actually handle games (yay). It’s an addictive, staggering, immersive experience. And there are times when this book comes close to that feeling. Like Red Mars, it’s a good example of its subgenre of science-fictional adventure. Unlike that book, though, I’m less convinced that Aurora refreshes the already-established paradigm.

So let’s say you’re unsure on this whole evolution thing. You’ve got questions. But, for one reason or another, science never stuck with you in school. Maybe your classes (or teachers, sigh) were a bit on the boring side—lots of memorization and dull textbooks, and no explosions, no episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy on VHS on the bulky 27" CRT television wheeled out from the A/V cabinet (ahhh, those were the days). Or maybe you had the misfortune to attend an underfunded public school in the United States—worse still, one in a state where politicians have decided that little things like “facts” don’t belong in curricula. Evolution is “just a theory,” and so you aren’t taught about it, at least not properly.

Let’s say you’re one of those people. Because they exist, and if some people have their way, these people will become more numerous. The scientifically semi-literate, they will have a working knowledge of technology and a basic grasp of science, but they will drift through life forever uncertain and apprehensive of the controversial strides we are making because of science. And this is not their fault. It’s not something inherently wrong with them, a closed-mindedness they were born with or inculcated early at birth. They weren’t raised by a backwater cult. They simply had the misfortune to be educated in a broad swath of the United States.

I’m not one of these people, of course. I was lucky enough to grow up in Ontario, Canada; while our education system is far from perfect, its science curriculum is fact-based at least. Although I don’t have the patience, determination, or fiddly manual dexterity to become a scientist myself (I went the more abstract route of mathematics!), I grew up with a great fascination of and respect for science and scientists. Bill Nye’s educational children’s show was a huge part of that. It is not exaggerating to say that he inspired my generation towards STEM careers.

Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation is Nye’s attempt to reach out to those who weren’t so lucky to receive that education the first go round. At least, that’s what it seems to me. He wrote this book as a follow-up to his debate with Ken Ham. But here, as there, his goal is not to try to persuade hardcore creationists. And even more so than in the debate, this book is not about evolution versus creationism so much as it is about evolution full stop. I already knew a good deal about evolution, and much of what Nye talks about is not new to me—but I still learned, because his prose is straightforward and his explanations accessible. This is the book about evolution for those who are genuinely curious or confused but don’t know how to find out more information.

Nye brings a huge amount of compassion to the table, something scientists and sceptics (ahem, Dawkins) fail to do. Although he is unfailingly critical of creationism, Nye is not here to harangue or lecture the reader. And his aims are, as they were when he was the star of that beloved TV show, to educate:

Frankly, my concern is not so much for the deniers of evolution as it is for their kids. We cannot address the problems facing humankind today without science—both the body of scientific knowledge and, more important, the process. Science is the way in which we know nature and our place within it.

As a teacher, this is hugely important to me. One of the current—and, sadly, most effective—tactics used by creationist lobbies is the “teach the controversy” model, where science teachers must present creationism (or its gussied-up cousin, intelligent design) as a viable alternative theory alongside evolution, as if there were some debate amongst scientists it. This attempt to legitimize creationism as “creation science” and the use of pseudoscientific lines of reasoning in creationist arguments is pernicious and troubling, because creationism is not science. Nye makes this distinction clear from the beginning: science is open-ended and always changing; creationism is a fixed, closed worldview not amenable to new evidence or theories.

Creationism’s textbook, the Bible, hasn’t changed (aside from translations) in over a millennium. And for a religious text, that is absolutely fine—like Nye (and unlike Dawkins) I have no problem with the idea that religion and science can coexist, and that you can be a scientifically-minded religious person, or a religious scientist. But as a scientific text, that is bonkers. Though The Origin of Species might be the seminal work on evolution, that doesn’t mean it’s a holy text for scientists. Darwin is widely lauded as the “father of evolution,” but his was the spark. Generations of scientists since then have carried the idea farther. Along the way we learned about genes and DNA, and we understand so much more than we did in the 1860s. And that’s wonderful.

I agree wholeheartedly with Nye when he argues that creationism is an inherently useless perspective, because it will never lead to anything new. Creationism attempts to couch its beliefs in scientific language these days, but scratch the surface and you soon arrive at “God did it.” Again, as a religious argument this is fine. But as a scientific argument it is worthless, because we can’t extrapolate from “God did it.” Creationism insists that our world cannot be investigated in a systematic way—that, in fact, for some reason this all-loving creator has gone out of its way to fool us with all these fake fossils and sediments and whatnot. If that is the case, then how could we hope to learn more about how the world works, and in so doing, invent new things and improve our ways of life for everyone?

The mutability of science with evidence is huge, and Nye has demonstrated this. In this very book, chapter 30 is all about GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and how he thinks we should “slow down” because there’s something very “unnatural” about putting fish genes in a tomato. I really don’t like this chapter; even though he is apprehension about GMOs is legitimate, it feels like he is falling back on a lot of unscientific and emotional appeals here. He is right that we should be concerned about GMOs and we need to think carefully about how we are creating/using them. Nevertheless, Nye has fulfilled the statement he made at the Ken Ham debate and reiterates in this book: in the face of evidence, he changed his mind about GMOs. Because that’s how science works.

I also share Nye’s bemusement over the fact that evolution is, by and large, singled out among scientific theories as controversial. Few enough people argue about the principles that underline, say, aircraft or computers or phones. Physics is somehow less controversial—maybe because all that math makes it harder for laypeople to debate? (I mean, there are areas of the internet were people seriously talk about relativity as if it is a “liberal conspiracy,” but nowhere near to the extent as the popular debate over evolution). I suppose it’s easy enough to ignore the parts of the Bible that feel dated these days. But we can’t do that with science. As Nye explains in this book, evolution is inextricably linked to the chemical and physical properties of the universe—and is a consequence of those properties. It is illogical and irrational to take the parts and fruits of scientific discovery you feel comfortable with but discard the ones that disagree with your pet worldview.

Nye responds to this exasperation with the same exuberance for science that inspired so many watching his TV show. For Nye, and for myself and so many others, science is just awesome. It’s so amazing to think about the processes that led to me and you. Like A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book’s enthusiasm and love for science and learning rings loudly.

Undeniable is also one of the most accessible popular science books on evolution you’re likely to find. The chapters are short, averaging about 8 pages each, and there are no equations—but hey, Nye does include some sketches he drew himself! Drawing on his decades as a science communicator, Nye is able to use analogies and plain English to explain these complicated processes. And while there are areas I notice he elides, for the most part his accounts are both accurate and accessible, which is not easy to do.

So if you like science but want to know how to talk about evolution in mixed company, this is the book for you. Or if you’re open-minded but genuinely not sure about evolution, this is the book for you. There is no test at the end.

But really, I think the most controversial thing Bill Nye mentions in this book is that he read Fifty Shades of Grey. My entire world is shaken, Bill!

I’m not sure how much of a compliment this is, what with the low opinion I have of most CW shows (Supernatural notwithstanding), but Zeroes is one of the first superhero novels I’ve read that could be a CW show. It reminds me a lot of the well-intentioned but ill-fated attempts like Alphas (which I know wasn’t the CW, but that’s neither here nor there), in that it follows the standard formula: a group of people have powers, or abilities, and come together clandestinely to tackle your everyday grievances. But they are unsure of themselves, and sometimes each other, so they have those internal conflicts to sort out along the way.

Oh, and here they’re only fifteen years old.

I’ve only read books by Scott Westerfeld and not Margo Lanagan or Deborah Biancotti, so it’s hard to see the influence of individual authors here. But I have a suspicion that fans of any of these three authors will enjoy Zeroes, if only because the book has a unified voice despite being a product of three. I was sceptical about having six perspectives—this isn’t Game of Thrones—but it helps that the narration stays in third person. More importantly, the different perspectives help us understand that the real challenge the Zeroes face is not the world out there but their own conflicting emotions about their anomalous abilities.

Westerfeld et al do a great job at balancing teenage angst and superhero angst. It’s this combination of angst that makes me think about CW shows. Here we have an ensemble cast balanced in gender and diverse in ethnicity, and each character has their own struggles at home in addition to (or because of) their power. Although Flickonymous steals the show for me, I am surprised how invested I became in all of the Zeroes—it’s hard to choose favourites.

Even Nate, manipulative, scheming, Nate, is a great example of someone who is sympathetic even if he’s not likable. With his power to harness the charisma of crowds for his own uses, Nate has ambitions of a political bent. And he doesn’t hesitate to prod the Zeroes into going along with him on things. The way Chizara (and, occasionally, Flicker) butt heads with him is a nice reminder that he doesn’t always speak for the group. And I can see a future where Nate misuses his powers and ends up more on the supervillain side of things. Forget Chizara’s crash-induced highs: if any of the Zeroes go dark, my money would be on Nate.

The tagline on this edition’s cover reads, “Every power has a price.” Too many superhero stories these days seem to focus on this facet of the superpower trope set. Simply put, a lot of stories about superpowers turn into downers; in the quest for gritty realism or conflict, authors end up making their superpowered characters cursed and burdened. Zeroes certainly explores this angle: Anonymous can’t stick in people’s heads, not even the other Zeroes’; Ethan’s voice, of course, always gets him into trouble. Nevertheless, the book takes a more proactive approach to this theme. The Zeroes see their powers develop as they use them more, and it becomes clear (as in the case of Flicker and Anonymous) that there are more dimensions to their powers.

There are also subtle attempts to examine what it means to be a hero, which for me is always what superhero stories need to be about. (It’s for this reason that I’m loving Supergirl on CBS so much—small shout-out here!) Chizara’s credo of “do no harm” with her power leads to her breaking with the other Zeroes. As much as my “can’t we all just get along?” voice cringed at this moment, I was totally with Chizara and her tirade against Nate’s meddling. But it’s not black-and-white, and towards the climax of the book, Chizara learns that sometimes not doing something can in fact result in harm. To her credit, she realizes this pretty quickly.

This is a young adult book in the sense that its characters are young. And they mess up like fifteen-year-olds might. Nate seems much too mature for his age—and that’s because he’s a little precocious, given his upbringing and charms—but the other Zeroes show the cracks in their adolescent facades. There are times when Westerfeld et al stretch credibility a little thinly—lots of underage driving here. Similarly, while I might believe a group of fifteen-year-olds getting mixed up with drug lords, the book tries too hard to walk the line between gritty and goofy.

Superhero novels are so often a mixed bag, and Zeroes is no exception. But it’s probably a better mixed bag than I’ve read in a while. Its characters are diverse—not just in terms of their backgrounds, but also in their personalities. None of them are too dominant, in the sense that I never groaned when the book switched to a specific character’s perspective. And although the background plot involving drug gangs and mobsters and a bank robbery gone awry occasionally gets lost in the relationship drama, this feels all too appropriate for the Zeroes’ first outing. I’m very interested to see what happens in the next book.

Oh, and I totally ship Flicker/Anonymous. Soooooo good. I wouldn’t be surprised if Chizara and Nate hit it off next, though it might be weird of the six Zeroes all start pairing off with each other. But Flicker is my fave, and I’m glad she was able to help her little lost Nothing boy.

Why not finish out 2015 by reading a book called Year Zero? I was ambivalent about this one, and I figured this for a win–win proposition. Either I love it, so my year ends with a bang; or I hate it, but if so, then there’s always next year! I was correct—and I’m coming down on the “hate it” side. So here’s to 2016: a brand new year for reading! But first, let’s sweep away this year with one last scathing review!

The warning signs for Year Zero start early. The prologue, Chapter Zero, is a neutron-star–dense cludge of exposition dropping us into this universe, where the universe’s civilizations are enthralled by humanity’s music but, because they are bound to respect our laws, are now guilty of copyright infringement and owe us ALL THE MONEY in statutory fines. It’s a stupid premise—and I’m OK with that. I appreciate that Rob Reid is trying to poke fun at a subject we normally consider dry and uninteresting, even though it’s super important. The cover copy of this book tries to liken it to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is sacrilege and inaccurate. And it’s clear that Year Zero is trying to be a hip, zany-but-compelling critique of the music business and the absurdity of (American) copyright laws. Yet it is just so poorly written (and edited) that it falls short of even the most generous expectations I might set for it.

The prologue is short; I’ll give it that. If it were the only example of egregious exposition, then I might be able to move past it. But the infodumping really only gets worse from there. When Nick Carter, our hero, meets his first aliens, he naturally has lots of questions. And so most of the scenes are question-and-answer dialogues that lead us down increasingly convoluted rabbit-holes replete with pop culture references that might have been relevant and interesting in the nineties but just feel tired now. Nick periodically pauses to curse out Windows (and the last chapter is devoted, in a sad digression, almost entirely to that), and Reid alludes to Clippy, the Backstreet Boys, Brittney Spears … for a book from 2012, it feels dated almost instantly.

Meanwhile, between the constant, unwanted stream of information and the dated pop culture references, keeping track of the high-concept plot becomes an unwieldy proposition. There’s a reason why law shows focus on the drama among lawyers and their minions and courtroom scenes are unrealistically presented: real-life law can be boring. It’s tedious and dull. And the legal parts of Year Zero are exactly that. The moment Nick or someone else starts talking about the law, my eyes begin to glaze over. It doesn’t help that Reid belongs to the select group of people who think that footnotes are funny or somehow add something to a novel. (Full disclosure: I was briefly one of those people one summer in 2006, but I was also 16, so I feel like I have a bit of an excuse.) While they might have a claim to being more appropriate given the law motifs of the book, the footnotes are universally unfunny and forgettable; indeed, they are simply another excuse to shove more “facts” at us and more irrelevant names and dates.

I get the feeling that Reid is just trying so hard to be funny with every single page, as if the sheer volume of humour contained within the story might somehow make people care about copyright reform. Now, I already care about copyright reform, and I actually completely agree with some of Reid’s real-life positions on the absurd nature of these infringement laws. So maybe it’s a case of preaching to the choir, but this book neither made me laugh nor made me care about copyright.

There was one set of remarks I found both genuinely hilarious and thought-provoking. Reid has Nick comment on how the executives in the music industry seem to hate everyone who helps them make money:

And as for decisive, these people are clinically paralyzed by ignorance, arrogance, politics, bureaucracy and, above all else, fear — fear of doing the wrong thing. And it's not just fear of hurting themselves that has them hamstrung. No — what brings on the night sweats is their fear of doing something that might inadvertently benefit someone they hate. And this is a real risk, because the giant music execs seem to hate everyone their businesses touch. They hate each other, for one thing. And boy, do they hate the musicians (spoiled druggie narcissists!) They certainly hate the radio stations that basically advertise their music for free (too much power, the bastards!) And they loathe the online music industry (thieving geek bastards!) They hated the music retailers, back when they still existed (the bastards took too much margin!) They hate the Walmart folks, who account for most of what's left of physical CD sales (red state Nazi cheapskates!) They've always hated the concert industry (we should be getting that money!) And they all but despise the music-buying public (thieves! they're all a bunch of down-loading geek bastard thieving-ass thieves!)

He continues in this vein to point out how the industry’s hatred of Apple for revolutionizing digital music sales (and striking the biggest blow to piracy) with iTunes/iPods is irrational. This is a really great point, and this moment resonated for me. And then the book goes and makes another stupid joke about something else, and the moment is gone.

I’m sure a great deal of work went into this. And that’s where the editing needed to be better—burn it down and salt the earth help. Because the constant stream of “look at me and how clever and relevant I can be” jokes, however hard it might have been to come up with them, just feels like an attempt to cover up a lazy plot that meanders and goes almost nowhere, only to fizzle at the end. This also in the way Reid names things: Wrinkles, Perfuffinites, pluuhhs, and Guardians. It’s so half-baked and lazy that it almost feels contemptuous, as if Reid is intentionally writing bad science fiction in order to mock it—and, to be clear, I’m certain that isn’t the intent. But this is what happens when, in trying to be humourous, you make the mistake of not taking the genre itself seriously.

Further to the idea of laziness, Year Zero’s protagonist is a great example of one of the more common and troubling effects of white male privilege in literature. It’s kind of the corollary to the uproar over more diverse casts, or casting non-white, non-male actors as leads in “important” movies like Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Basically, we white dudes are very good at believing that everyone likes to read stories where the hero is a white dude like us. Now, by itself, a story with a white dude as the hero is not a bad thing. But it gets really problematic when the white dude is almost certainly less competent and less interesting than other members of the cast.

Nick Carter is somewhat boring and not all that original—much as his boss initially pegs him. Indeed, Manda and Judy both seem far more suited to the task of dealing with aliens—and despite Nick’s eleventh hour inspiration to make him the hero once again, they pretty much shoulder the heavy lifting. And both Manda and Judy feel like far more interesting characters than Nick, to the extent that the entire book could have been written from one of their perspectives, without Nick at all, and been better for it.

But white male privilege often means authors have a huge blindspot here and labour under the assumption that a bland white guy with no particular redeeming talents or skills will, by default, be a more likable and sympathetic protagonist than competent women. While this is a problem for Year Zero, it’s not so much a critique of Reid in particular as an author but an example of a more systemic problem with our literature. We need to do better here, and one way to do it is to stop and think about who the main character of our books should really be.

Aside from that brief moment of lucidity I mentioned above, Year Zero almost manages to come together and feel coherent towards the end of the book. Nick and Manda are racing, almost out of time before the baddies’ plot comes to fruition. This crunch lends an urgency to the pacing that not even the constant infodumping can dispel. Unfortunately, Reid doesn’t sustain this suspense, and at what should have been a fretful climax, Nick miraculously saves the day in one of the most boring and tedious courtroom scenes I’ve read. And then there’s that last chapter about how Bill Gates and Windows are evil (amirite), and I just wanted to groan.

If Year Zero demonstrates anything, it isn’t the absurdity of copyright law. It’s that writing comedy is difficult. Not only does it take hard work, but I think a lot of people don’t realize that even good comedy writers end up discarding a lot of material just because it doesn’t work. Sometimes it can be salvaged, and sometimes it gets put to rest for good. But just because you have tried your best to be funny doesn’t mean you should put that best effort out there and expect a gold star.

I’m disappointed in this book not just because it’s terrible but because it’s terrible and it’s about a subject close to my heart. I’m really sympathetic to the ideas Reid portrays here; I wish I could love this book and hold it up as a great way to learn more about what bad copyright laws are doing to our society. It’s not meant to be.

So here’s to my last review of 2015!

The real meaning of the title The Best of All Possible Worlds doesn’t become apparent until the end of the book. Nevertheless, Karen Lord makes a strong case from the beginning that Leibniz’s pronouncement is correct, although whether it’s because of Caretakers, angels, or simply the strong anthropic principle might ultimately be left up to you. Science fiction likes to tantalize with the prospect of alternative realities—and it is a great idea, to be sure. Yet when we get down to it, no matter what disasters or catastrophes confront us, we have only this world. We have to do what we can with it.

Set against the backdrop of such disaster, this book follows a Cygnian woman, Grace Delarua, as she works closely with survivors from the planet Sadira. With many Sadirans settling on Cygnus Beta, and many more men than women, they are interested in discovering the extent to which Sadiran genes remain in the Cygnian population, which is a mixture of genes from the various offshoots of humanity that have spread amongst the stars. Grace accompanies Dllenahkh, an older Sadiran male, and a mixed group of Cygnians and Sadirans, on a circumnavigation of Cygnus Beta to test and interview the diverse groups who inhabit this world.

There’s so much I enjoyed about the way Lord tells this story. First, the focus on recovering from the destruction of Sadira is inescapably personal. This is not a grand space opera in which the characters are players and pawns in some interstellar strategy game. Although Lord refers to the political background, it is always just that—background noise, which doesn’t encroach upon or affect the main characters directly. The Ain supergeneral or whoever perpetrated Sadira’s destruction never shows up in a battleship, only for Grace and Dllenahkh to defeat him in single unarmed combat. Our heroes do not cross light-years or hold intense diplomatic discussions. Instead, Lord concerns herself with how Dllenahkh and a small group of his Sadiran associates are handling the trauma of losing their homeworld and becoming permanent exiles.

Second, Grace has an appealing fallibility that makes her a relatable protagonist. She isn’t preternaturally skilled at her job, nor is she always in the right. Sometimes she does the right things for the wrong reason, or the wrong things for the right reasons—she acts unethically but “appropriately,” as the Sadirans might say. These flaws also offset what otherwise might be a trend towards Mary Sueishness (in particular, Grace for some reason comes up with the inspiration for the literal deus ex machina that saves two other characters). It also helps that the ensemble of supporting characters get their chances to shine; Qeturah and Tarik and Nasiha and the others are all valuable members of the team.

Third, The Best of All Possible Worlds is inclusive and open-minded in nice, subtle ways. There are numerous mentions of polyamory. Lian, a supporting cast member, is agender. These things are mentioned and discussed, but never in a way that feels preachy. Rather, they are depicted simply as normal, which is what we need to strive for, both in fiction and in real life. I have some reservations, to be sure. For example, when Grace first explains that Lian is agender, she says, “This may or may not mean that Lian is asexual, though many of those who are registered as gender-neutral are indeed so.” When I first read that line, I—and I don’t feel alone in this, from a few other comments I’ve seen—interpreted it as meaning that only agender people can identify as asexual, and that otherwise, having gender implies some form of sexual attraction. Being asexual myself but cis male all the same, that somewhat rankled me. I’m pretty sure that’s not what Lord intended to imply, but combined with the fairly intense emphasis on hetero-romantic feelings in the main plot, and you can see why people have mixed feelings about this aspect of the book. Even so, lest I quote out of context, I should add that the following sentence reads, “However, it doesn’t matter, because this i has no bearing on our mission and is thus none of our business” (emphasis original). And that line made me cheer as much as the previous one made me frown. So Lord tries hard, and it pays off—mostly.

Related to this inclusivity and open-mindedness is the diversity of Cygnus Beta. Planet of Hats (TVTropes) is a rather defining trope of the genre, for good reasons. I’m really happy to see Lord avert it here. Cygnus Beta might have a one-world government, but it’s clear this is more of a bureaucratic fiction than anything else. Its societies are distinct and spread out around the world, with different languages and unique cultures and values. Sometimes these conflict slightly with the expedition’s mission or ideals (more on that in a bit). But Lord reminds us that if ever we end up colonizing other worlds, those planets will be just as diffident as our own. It won’t be “colony of smiths” and “colony of intellectuals” and “colony of phone sanitizers” (we put those in the B ark).

So let’s talk about this elephant (for those who have read the book, no pun intended!) in the book: Grace and Dllenahkh, sitting in a tree, not-so-K-I-S-S-I-N-G. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the story comprises a romance between them, since Lord makes no secret that events and characters are conspire to match them from the beginning. (I will not reveal whether they actually get together in the end, though.) I’m so ambivalent about this. On one hand, romance plots don’t do a lot for me, although I admire them when they are well done (see: Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith). On the other hand, I really like that the book tries to be a balanced, science-fiction romance. The romantic undertones might not be subtle, but they are also not exaggerated in the sense that there are precious few shouting matches or last-minute-running-through-the-airport scenes. So, you know, while I wasn’t left clutching the book to my heart and smiling at the resolution, or sobbing over the last page as all my hopes were dashed, I at the very least enjoyed the experience.

I did not enjoy the episodic nature of this epistolary tale. New chapter, new settlement, new central conflict. A kind of “problem of the week,” if you will, usually with Grace smack in the middle, making a mess of it. The first few times, it was almost cute, but as it kept happening, it started to wear thin. There is no sense of continuity, no feeling that these small encounters matter. Worse, the conflict feels like a flimsy attempt to compensate for a lack of conflict among the main and supporting characters. Aside from some token confrontations that everyone moves on from very quickly, these people just don’t disagree all that much. There is almost never any disappointment, any bitterness, any acrimony. They’re a little too happy and synergetic. So all these external conflicts, culminating in Lian and Joral being trapped in a cave-in, feel that much more contrived.

Similarly, that ending! Literal deus ex machina? The whole angle of time travel and parallel worlds comes out of nowhere, but it isn’t all that troubling. Nevertheless, the way Grace manages to resolve Lian and Joral’s situation, only for everyone else to go back to status quo without so much as blinking, just frustrated me. Lord does such a great job of remaining coy throughout the novel, only to interfere at that last moment.

Raising my hopes only to dash them at the last moment is a fitting summary of The Best of All Possible Worlds, I think. It’s a science fiction romance novel that is an all right example of both genres but doesn’t quite exceed expectations in either. I see a lot of comparisons to Le Guin, but for me the anthropological aspects hearkened more towards Mary Doria Russell’s portrayal of different civilizations. While I like Lord’s choice of processing trauma by focusing on a single pair of characters, her handling of the core romantic narrative leaves much to be desired. I had a great time reading this book, but it has left me with very mixed feelings. Good for discussion then, I guess?

Wow, reading some of the popular reviews on Goodreads, it seems like Hexed is a love-it-or-hate-it kind of novel. Except, of course, I have to be difficult: I neither loved nor hated this. I can see why people would come down in either camp. Michelle Krys delivers an unlikable protagonist, Indigo, who nevertheless tries to be better in the midst of a harsh world (high school) made all the harsher by a shadowy war where neither side particularly cares about Indie and her family. In particular, I appreciated the twist at the end that reveals why the Family is so chill about the all-important book falling into the hands of the Priory’s sorcerers.

But I digress.

Indie discovers she is a witch. Maybe. The book actually hedges this for much longer than I expected (though, let’s be honest, “She’s not a witch, surprise!” would make for a very different book). Turns out that witches (and warlocks, if you’re a dude) are governed by the Family, and sorcerers are governed by the Priory. And each hates the other, because while both witches and sorcerers can both do magic, they are totally different, and sorcerers are evil. It’s like those two guys from Star Trek’s “Let This Be Your Last Battlefield”:



Seriously, all we have to go on is the Family’s word that the Priory is evil. Well, that and the fact that Leo and Frederick killed Bishop and a bunch of other people to get to the book. But they could be an isolated case! #NotAllSorcerers

It’s worth noting that Krys shuts down the whole “Chosen One” nonsense very effectively. In addition to the Family’s gambit around the book, it’s pretty clear that Indie’s family of witches are not special. Indie is not special. The Family doesn’t care whether Indie, or her mom, or her aunt, or anyone else, really, lives or dies. Aside from assigning Bishop to train her and Jezebel’s … involvement? … the Family is nearly absent, because it turns out that what is a very personal conflict for Indie is not all that important on the grand scale. I like this idea; it’s certainly possible to have compelling stories about young characters “coming of age” into powers and such, without making them heroes or pivotal players in a political game whose complexities would probably elude them.

Still, Krys sketches out that broader conflict in about as vague terms as you can go. This is a problem that Hexed runs into a couple of times: namely, it feels like a very generic YA urban fantasy novel. Strike “witches” for vampires, werewolves, golems, or what-have-you, and replace the Family and Priory with two other groups at each other’s throats … and you have a large swath of the YA market right there. In terms of this conflict, Hexed doesn’t add anything new to the conversation. It doesn’t even offer the type of moral ambiguity other stories at least attempt: as previously mentioned, we’re told (shown?) that sorcerers bad, witches good, end of story. Although Krys hints at nuance through the inaction of the Family, I would have welcomed a fuller exploration of these ideas.

I’m also not impressed with the fantasy component of Hexed in general. This is probably the fantasy nerd in me, who loves explanations of how the magic system works. Krys seems to have taken fairly stock ideas—incantations/spells, maybe some candles and incense—and combined those with a couple of cool showcases—flight, sticking someone in a movie screen, etc. So, yeah, there’s magic … but Indie doesn’t do much of it, and little of the book is focused on what it means for Indie to have these powers. There is a great deal of crisis crisis crisis and reaction, but not much time to sit down and think through the implications.

This same aversion to depth does not plague Indigo’s personal growth. When the story starts, Indie is quite literally a Mean Girl, or a Popular Bitch: she sits at the “Pretty People” table, as she describes it, is a star cheerleader, dates the quarterback, and parties all the time. She cringes at the idea of being associated with her nerdy next-door neighbour, but is fine with using her after she discovers that her best friend is not so great a friend. Indie sucks, and I totally get why people hate her.

But she tries to get better. When she learns she might be a witch, her first thought is not “I’ll put a hex on everyone! I’ll show them!” Unlike Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, who is probably a more likable character overall, Indie doesn’t immediately fool around with her magic for high school shenanigans. And although her new friendship with Paige begins as a sham, the first-person narration shows us that she gradually comes to understand her previous shallowness. I literally cheered when Indie gets up and walks over to sit with Paige at lunch—I was hoping all chapter that she would do it, and Krys delivered. Boo-yeah.

Unlike the dichotomy of Family versus Priory, Indie sees her friendships as something other than a binary. She might not be best friends with Bianca or Devon any more, but towards the end it’s clear they aren’t enemies either. It’s complicated. There needs to be some healing, some reconciliation. This is the nuance I was looking for, and it’s a realistic portrayal of the complex relationships we form in high school. (Or at least I would assume—I was never one half of “power couple” and never got cheated on by the other person.)

So there’s little bits to love and hate about Hexed, and I can see where the mileage varies. My feelings reading it reflect this: I was alternately engaged and uninterested, enthusiastic and then bored. It’s an uneven book whose flaws might be expected in a debut novel. I don’t blame other people for putting it down or not wanting to pick up the sequel—the fact that Krys is a local author will probably prompt me to give Charmed a try and see how her writing has changed.

That cover and jacket design tho. So gorgeous.

What have I learned from Haruki Murakami’s first two novels, freshly published in an English translation for the first time? Tautologically: Murakami is Murakami. If you’ve read anything else by him, some of his motifs are going to be quite familiar: main character is a young man, somewhat disconnected from the world around him, exploring life through an extended metaphor (in this case, pinball). Other characters are little more than stock; Murakami takes it somewhat further in these novels in that none of the characters, not even the narrator, have a proper name. Some have nicknames, like “the Rat” while others are just an initial (“J”) or completely unnamed.

I enjoyed some of the conceits in these two novels. The narrator’s interactions with the twins, and his assistant at the translation service, or J and the Rat, all provided little insights. Even at the beginning of his career, Murakami is able to present the world through a single character’s point of view, and iterate effortlessly in a kind of tunnel vision. It’s an interesting experience—at no point did I feel bored by the novels, despite their stories being somewhat unexciting.

Hear the Wind Sing features the narrator’s inability to properly start a relationship with a woman he takes home from a bar and nursemaids through alcohol poisoning. It’s a little creepy, and Murakami kind of lampshades that. The woman and the narrator orbit each other, each one making overtures that the other never quite decides to take up. I couldn’t really bring myself to care for this failed relationship, however, or for whatever was happening with the Rat’s subplot.

Pinball, 1974 was slightly better. The narrator seems more personable with the passage of time. The whole fetishized business of living with an interchangeable set of twins is, again, creepy. But at least this story feels like it has a little more momentum to it. Wrapped as it is around the metaphor of life like a game of pinball, Murakami seems to be flexing muscles he later builds up for his more momentous works.

I’m struggling to find something profound, or even more analytical, to say about these novels. But really, they seem remarkable only because they are Murakami’s first novels. That is to say, I wouldn’t give them a second glance if someone else had written them. And this isn’t the place to start if you’ve never read Murakami. While they definitely have his style and many of his signatures, they lack the careful flourish that I’ve enjoyed in his other novels. The building blocks are here, but Murakami has yet to assemble them into something worthy of more than a glance.

This is an odd book. I'm pretty sure it’s good, but I’m not sure I liked it. It took me far longer to read Black Feathers than I usually take to read any book. Part of that was because I spent more time focused on other things over the past few weeks. Most of it, I think was avoidance. Joseph D’Lacey’s writing is good; don’t get me wrong. But I was never in a hurry to return to this world.

Black Feathers is an amalgam of older-style dystopian YA of The Giver’s generation and new-style dystopian YA. I’m using these terms loosely only to make the distinction that, in the recent renaissance of YA and its emphasis on dystopias, authors have been experimenting with how to present “the end of the world.” D’Lacey’s storytelling is reminiscent, in many respects, of the simplistic, allegorical style of The Giver, with people named things like The Keeper, and an emphatic call to respect the land. However, he departs from the usual post-apocalyptic formula of having the apocalypse long in the past. Through a dual narrative, he depicts the end of the world even as he shows how, generations later, one young woman apparently has the ability to begin humanity’s healing process proper.

My reservations about this novel stem more from my personal reaction to D’Lacey’s style rather than any perceived problems with the writing or story. This verges on fantasy horror, or maybe more accurately, a kind of fantasy suspense—think Stephen King at his most mythological, or perhaps Tim Powers. And those authors don’t do it for me. They have an intense fascination with the psychology of broken characters and explore those psychologies by (sometimes literally) putting those characters through hell. I’ll leave that to Thomas Hardy, please. Basically what I’m saying is that if you are a King or Powers fan, you will probably get more enjoyment from this book than me, and the rest of this review might not be helpful (although there’s plenty I liked).

For example, the dual narrative structure works very well here. D’Lacey weaves the parallel times together deftly, often switching between them in media res with little in the way of a break. The stark juxtaposition between a world falling apart and a world broken beyond recognition means this isn’t as confusing as it would otherwise be. However, I did find it difficult to develop much of an attachment to Megan.

Both Megan and Gordon are, alas, Chosen Ones in a very standard mould. The Keeper quite literally goes up to Megan’s parents and gives them a textbook speech about how the literal fate of humanity lies in her hands—no pressure! Alas, Megan never crystallizes for me as a character with much agency. She follows, and while she occasionally drags her heels or questions, she is a reactionary protagonist. The story propels her, instead of the other way around.

Gordon is somewhat different in that respect: he keeps moving forward. So it is easier to enjoy his narrative (though “enjoy” probably isn’t the best word—the things he experiences are pretty bleak! Gordon is a fugitive—and far too young to be expected to survive on his own, let alone undergo these ordeals. But D’Lacey pulls no punches in his portrayal of an England falling apart from crisis after crisis. It is, in fact, all very depressing … and given the levels of denial from politicians of many countries, it resonates far too much with our current political climate.

The novel is all about the search for the Crowman. This is a mythical figure, an urban legend in Gordon’s time and simply a legend in Megan’s. Both protagonists seek the Crowman in their own way. D’Lacey sets up the Crowman as a kind of Luciferian figure—not so much the evil Devil as the Fallen Angel, the Lightbringer. In this story, the Crowman is an omen of an Earth dangerously out of balance. Although this refers in part to phenomena such as global warming, D’Lacey also makes it clear that part of this balance comes from the way humans interact with each other.

Black Feathers is an attempt at a kind of contemporary fairy tale or myth, and I love that. D’Lacey anticipates the way people of the future might talk about our society if we are the progenitors of their fallen state. At times, the level of detail and verbosity of his prose makes for some thorny, slow-going reading—there are very few pages of snappy dialogue in this book, and lots of huge paragraphs of description and introspection. But even if I don’t particularly like the end result, I appreciate that it is a cohesive, unified story with very little in the way of disappointing or untidy ends. I probably won’t read the sequel, but I don’t regret reading this book. There are just other books I’m sure I would enjoy more—whereas if this sounds like your cup of tea, then you should probably check it out.

The Great and Secret Show reminds me of the only Tim Powers novel I’ve read, Last Call. And that, for anyone wanting a one-sentence review (contingent upon understanding the nature of my opinion of Last Call), is that.

In many ways, coming across a book that doesn’t interest one even though it’s a good book makes writing a review far more difficult than coming across a bad book. But if one truly reads widely—and it’s something I take pride in doing—then it will happen. So what then?

I could try to praise The Great and Secret Show for its merits, for the characteristics that endear it to other readers. Clive Barker brings an impressive imagination to the table. His credentials portray him as someone more in the “horror” camp of speculative fiction, and that’s borne out by the book—not horror in the nu-school sense of gore and death, but horror in the old-fashioned sense of dread, evil, and doom.

There are times when Barker’s baddies are positively Lovecraftian. Behind the shadows, lying in wait, pulling the strings, exist the Iad Uroboros on another plane of existence. They are the stuff of nightmares’ nightmares and want only to slip into our dimension, drive us mad, and subjugate the empty shells of human beings who are left. If that doesn’t describe an Old One, I don’t know what does. Thankfully, there is a magical "ocean" called Quiddity lying between us and them.

Central to the story is the attempt by one character to upset this balance. Randolph Jaffe is a sociopath who stumbles upon the secrets of Quiddity and the Art, gradually morphing into a less-than-human being known as the Jaff. He recruits an unconventional scientist, Fletcher, to help him with a final apotheosis. It goes wrong, but Fletcher turns against him. The two transcend human existence and wage war, embodying aspects of what a more limited mind might call “good” and “evil”. Their battles bring them to a temporary rest in Palomo Grove, California.

And then it gets to the weird, horror part of the story, what with the impregnation and the children and the creepy love-at-first-sight. But even this is good, in a sense. Even this I can understand. Barker needs to provide the reader with more human characters—the story of the endless battle between the Jaff and Fletcher has grown thin. But as various humans become drawn into the conflict, the stakes increase. The bad guys become more real, and suddenly this becomes a battle for reality itself.

For the right audience, I can see how this book would be the pitch-perfect blend of creepy horror and high-stakes urban fantasy. Alas, at times it drags, feeling far longer than it needs to be. Plus, this just isn’t my favourite corner of the fantasy realm. I enjoy a bit of darkness with my fantasy, particularly when that darkness has its origins in our own, flawed human nature, as Barker portrays through Jaffe and, to some extent, Kissoon. Yet I’m very picky when it comes to the ways in which urban fantasy deals with the interface between the magical and the mundane. The Great and Secret Show approaches the supernatural as a very spiritual, personal experience, whereas I tend to prefer magic that is showier, flashier, more style than substance. Is that crass of me? Probably. But I just like its stark contrast against the backdrop of an otherwise ordinary, regular world.

So, there is much working in favour of this book. And I’m having a hard time understanding why I didn’t enjoy it much more than I did—but this problem itself indicates to me that, for whatever reason, the book and I just didn’t click. Is this what dating feels like? I’m sorry, The Great and Secret Show: it’s not you; it’s me.

I read this book on a plane over the Atlantic as I travelled to England for job interviews. It even tickled me to see the place where I would be staying (Bury St Edmunds) mentioned in passing. Jo Walton’s familiarity with England, Wales, and presumably girls’ boarding schools all comes through clearly in these diary pages. As Morwenna unspools the story of her recovery after the accident that claimed her twin sister’s life, we learn about her and her struggle to reconcile the real and the fantastic. Among Others is a diary of loss, gain, and self-exploration—that is, pretty much what all teenagers go through, albeit usually without fairies.

The defining moment of the book actually takes place before the story begins. Morwenna and her sister, Morganna, are involved in a magical ritual gone wrong, and Morwenna survives while her sister does not. According to Morwenna (or Mori, as she calls herself), the fairies were trying to help them stop her mother from committing some unspeakably evil act. Mori has now escaped her mother’s clutches, at least temporarily, and been remanded to the custody of her estranged father, whose sisters promptly pack her off to a boarding school.

We know Morwenna only through her diary, meeting her first as she goes off to boarding school and getting to know her as she adjusts to this new life. The term unreliable narrator is apt here: there is no reason that anything Mori provides us is accurate or true. Indeed, there is plenty of room for interpreting her discussions of magic and fairies as post-traumatic delusions. In this world, magic is so subtle that it is almost impossible to know if one is actually succeeding in using it. This might seem convenient, but it provides the source for real ethical quandaries as Mori experiments with using magic for her own ends.

We learn almost immediately that Mori is a bibliophile of the first order. Not only does she love books; she devours them with a speed approaching the supernatural. Though she reads widely, she has a fixation with science fiction and fantasy as only a teenager can have: that wide-eyed fascination with the idea that there are so many possibilities and conceptions of the future and the past. One of the most appealing things about Among Others to me, and I imagine to many other readers, is the extent to which we can identify with Mori the SF reader. We see in her our own introverted tendencies as teenagers. I had friends as a teenager, but I spent most of my time with books, building up relationships with authors through their works. I still do.

The name-dropping of SF and fantasy authors turns Among Others into a feast of intertextuality. These authors and their works form a kind of background for the rest of the story. I’m sure that Walton was very deliberate in choosing whom she mentioned and where she mentioned them, so people familiar with these authors might recognize resonances in this book. As it is, I particularly enjoyed Mori’s references to Le Guin (whom I adore) and Delany (whose Triton I read relatively recently). I love her reflections on these works and how they prompted her to ask questions of her own views on things like gender and sexuality:

But on the other hand, I do have sexual feelings. And Triton, and Heinlein, and The Charioteer have made me think that actually sex itself is neutral, and it’s society demonizing it that makes it icky. And the whole sex-change thing in Triton, there must be a sort of spectrum of sexuality, with most people somewhere in the middle, drawn to men and women, and some off on the ends—me at one end and Ralph and Laurie at the other. One of the things I’ve always liked about science fiction is the way it makes you think about things, and look at things from angles you’d never have thought about before.

From now on, I’m going to be positive about sex.

Can you imagine generations of girls and boys growing up and tackling the thorny issues like sex and gender with the help of thought-provoking SF instead of magazine ads and TV commercials telling them they don’t look good enough? What a world that would be.

Mori’s move to a boarding school is something in the way of a fresh start, a clean break with aspects of her past life. Having been “rescued” from her mother and briefly reunited with her father, she enjoys a period of somewhat unsupervised independence. Owing to her academic prowess and self-sufficient nature, she goes off on her own to explore. She finds a library: that eternal refuge and endless resource, a sanctuary where you’re not only allowed but encouraged to walk away with books for free! She joins a book club for science fiction and fantasy, makes friends, even finds a boyfriend. Gradually, she begins to recover from the events in the past that broke open her body and mind.

As all this happens, however, there are the more subtle, perhaps magical events moving in parallel. Mori receives letters from her mother, including photographs with Mori burnt away. She wonders if her aunts are also witches, if they are trying to control her and restrain her budding power. She does a spell looking for companionship, then has to live with the fear that whatever she did made the book club happen, that these people’s lives and memories were different before she interfered. And every time Mori returns home, she gets a feeling that her sister is still there, lurking between life and death, waiting for some kind of resolution.

I loved the writing in Among Others. I liked getting to know Mori; Walton gives her a great voice, showing her stumble and critique herself and then try to change and become better. I wish I could love the ending just as much, but as far as the story goes, Among Others is somewhat lacking. In retrospect, that last visit to the Valleys clearly sets us up for the climax and Mori’s final confrontation with her departed sister. But when I was first reading, I remember turning the last page only to find myself confronted with a “books by the author” page. (I was reading this on my tablet, so I didn’t really have a sense of how close I was to the end.) That’s it? No closure, no wrap-up afterwards? What did it all mean?

I suppose that Walton considers us mature enough to draw our own conclusions and pad out the post-story as we see fit. But I’m still left wanting more, wanting more specifics that the subtlety of magic use in this book doesn’t seem to provide. The close relationship between Mori and her sister underpins much of the book, but what exactly happened between them? What was her mother really up to?

There are plenty of things that make Among Others a good book, not of the least of which are the main character and how many SF fans will find themselves identifying with her. Still, I’m not sure I would call it a complete book, because it leaves me wanting. In the end I find myself conflicted: I loved the character but was never really captivated by her story.