I am ambivalent about this one. On the one hand, Ax! Being delightfully too human! Soaps! On the other hand … everything else.

The plot of #28: The Experiment is a mess. It’s backwards, in fact, with the big reveal delayed and stuck at the end as some kind of huge twist when it should have been up front. What we’re left with is a couple of attempts by the Animorphs to infiltrate a meat-packing plant, some righteous indignation from Cassie, and Visser Three being played for laughs. In my opinion, the series is at its worst when it undermines Visser Three’s callous disregard for laugh for humourous purposes—there are plenty of other ways to be funny in these books, as every time Ax describes a human activity can attest.

So I’m not even going to mention the plot. It’s dumb and forgettable, and it didn’t have to be that way, but it is. Enough of that.

Ax is lovely. While the ghostwriter for this one probably over-emphasized his goofy obsession with, say, food, or bemused relationship with human clothing, I love the Ax books, because they provide a different perspective on humans and the other Animorphs. He is able to be a bit more honest when describing, say, Cassie’s conflicted position on morphing sentient beings. As an alien, he has a less biased vision of how the Animorphs interact with each other.

There are some awkward moments in this book, moments where Marco or someone else butts heads with Cassie and her moral nature. Indeed, perhaps The Experiment’s greatest success is in how it reminds us that, prior becoming the Animorphs, these kids didn’t really hang out much. They weren’t always a social group. Jake and Marco were besties, and Jake and Cassie were kind of friends, and Jake and Rachel were cousins … but that was it. And I think it is a nice way to introduce young readers to the idea that you don’t have to be friends, or even really get along with, coworkers: sometimes you just have to do a job with people you don’t much like, and you have to be professional about it. Marco and Cassie might have very different priorities when it comes to saving and rescuing animals, but at the end of the day, they have to work together here.

OK, that’s all I have for this one. Next time, on a Very Special Episode, Ax gets deadly sick. We continue reading … after These Messages….

My reviews of Animorphs:
← #27: The Exposed | #29: The Sickness →

At first glance, Medicine River has a gentleness to its plot that is easily mistaken for the monotony of nothing happening. I’ll freely admit that, especially at the beginning of the novel, I had trouble finding something specific about the story that I could point to as a defining moment, or even a central conflict. Will’s circuitous narration, interspersed with frequent flashbacks, and Harlen’s idiosyncratic way of saying everything indirectly, make for a book that might seem frustratingly dull on the surface. To his credit, however, Thomas King packs much more into this slim story than initially meets the eye. And as I devoured the last few chapters, I started understanding why Medicine River has received so much praise.

My first instinct was to ascribe this book’s slow pacing to the fact that it’s “character driven”—but it’s not, not really. Even the characters seem to drift in and out of focus like a camera with a slightly janky lens (see, I worked in a photography simile). Medicine River’s power comes from context rather than character or even event. It is a novel steeped in cultural and symbol; and so, I can see how people unwilling or unable (for whatever reason) to engage at that level might find it wanting.

One way to approach the book is a bit obvious but no less revealing: the protagonist, Will, is an Indigneous man who moves back to Medicine River after spending much of his adult life in Toronto. As a result, he has kind of lived in “both worlds,” rural and heavily urban. He knows what life is like on a reserve (which Medicine River borders) as well as what it’s like in Canada’s biggest city. And one of the recurring motifs in this book is the way Will feels various “pulls” from different aspects of the societies he belongs to.

On the one hand, Will has spent a great deal of his life away from his people and his spiritual home. We don’t earn a lot about Will’s teenage years, about how he ended up in Toronto after living in Calgary and Medicine River with his mother and brother as a child. It’s clear that Will enjoys the art of photography, and that he is a capable small business owner. But there is a question mark hovering over his head, a kind of latent sense of expectation: What now? What next?

If Harlen Bigbear gets his way, “now” and “next” entail moving back to Medicine River as the town’s “only Native photographer” and moving in, if not marrying, Louise Heavyman. And so we see Will’s Indigenous identity interrogated. He constantly finds himself involved in his culture and its practices in a way that he wasn’t back in Toronto, where he was usually the “token Native.”

This is really the most brilliant aspect of Medicine River, but you really need to want to see it in order to appreciate that brilliance. King parodies and subverts and lampshades the stereotypical depiction of Indigenous peoples in media: almost always absent, when Indigenous people show up in Canadian or American productions, they almost always fit into one of a few narrow moulds. From the “noble savage” or “warrior” stereotype in historical productions to the “intensely spiritual, connected to the land” stereotype you might see in more contemporaneous depictions, Indigenous people in settler media seldom have the chance to be individuals. Contrast this with Medicine River, where the cast is predominantly Indigenous and the characters are just that: individuals, just regular, everyday people, with all the hang-ups and vices you might expect.

I don’t want you to get the impression, however, that King is only saying, “Hah hah, see, we’re just like white folk!” But this is a vital reminder—and one that even people like me, who work with Indigenous individuals on a daily basis, need: we get so caught up in “Indigenous issues” that we fall into the trap of generalizing experiences that are often very personal. King does engage with the stereotypes and the racism and marginalization that Indigenous feel in various ways. Take, for example, the casual wisecrack to Will about the irony of him being a photographer given “what Indians believe about photographs” (cricket chirp). Or the various references to clashes between colonial powers and Indigenous peoples, from Custer’s Last Stand to the more recent Wounded Knee occupation. Even among Indigenous people, there are conflicts and confrontations about how to perform Indigeneity (see Big John versus Eddie). And while it is not always in the foreground, the struggles with alcoholism, abuse, and crime that disproportionately affect Indigenous members of our society are always there in the background, as Will and Harlen discuss members of their community who experience these traumas.

The point, then, is that while many other books (like the amazing Indian Horse) by Indigenous authors address poignant issues head-on, King does so through a snapshot of contemporary Indigenous society as he sees it in the 1980s. It’s very easy to complain about this, to say it’s just a very literary book where “nothing happens”—but white people write books like that all the time and win awards for it! Medicine River looks the reader in the eye and challenges you about what you believe a book by or about Indigenous people should be like.

I read this because I’m embarking on my first time teaching Grade 11 College Preparation English to a group of adult Aboriginal students. There are also four students in the class taking it as a “Contemporary Aboriginal Voices” Native Studies/English credit, so I’m very much focusing on Indigenous issues, culture, and content. Obviously this is a challenge for a white guy like me! Although my fellow teachers often teach Indian Horse in their Grade 11 classes—and I might very well do it at some point soon!—Medicine River appeals to me for its broader scope and less traumatic tone. That’s not to say we should avoid trauma (hell, I taught Lullabies for Little Criminals to my previous English class); however, we will touch on residential schools and other traumas plenty in other areas of the course. I’m very much looking forward to studying this book in further depth with my students and hearing their feedback and opinions about it.

So earlier this month, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, announced that the residential schools program was a program of “cultural genocide” against indigenous peoples. If you’re looking for some background and a good beginner discussion to this, check out the Canadaland Commons podcast episode on residential schools. Desmond Cole and Andray Domise break it down with the help of two expert guests. Unfortunately, despite the release of this report and so much other activism over the past few years, our federal government continues to ignore the needs and opinions of Canada’s indigenous peoples. Prime Minister Harper and his party’s lack of respect for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis nations and their citizens is manifest. And it’s sad that a government so interested in nationalistic chest-beating and touting Canada as a role-model for other countries is still not mature enough to recognize these problems and set aside the colonialism that is in place even today.

Oh, didn’t expect me to get so political? Sorry (not sorry). But you can’t not get political with a novel like Indian Horse, really—or at least, I can’t. I mean, yes, on one level Richard Wagamese tells a compelling story about an individual’s struggle with the effects of abuse, his love for the game of hockey, and his journey into and out of the oblivion of alcoholism. This book is intense and very personal, narrated as it is in Saul’s matter-of-fact, pull-no-punches style of descriptive delivery. Yet if I drew the line there, and ignored the fact that Saul is an Ojibway man taken from his family as a boy, forced to attend a residential school, abused and “lucky” enough to leave the school before it killed him, only to further experience systematic and personalized discrimination at the hands of others while he plays hockey … well, I’d be ignoring a handy chunk of subtext of this book.

I’d be doing exactly what Harper is doing: erasing and negating the struggles of indigenous peoples because it’s inconvenient to the narrative that Canadians are nice and polite. And he is not the only one—hence his actions, and words, because politicians are not big on leading the charge. He’s just making it a little easier for people like Richard Gwyn to ask us to tone down the rhetoric, eh.

So let’s get political.

No, scratch that. Let’s get angry, hmm?

I’m not going to start quoting statistics or link to reports. There are Wikipedia articles for that. Humans are bad at numbers. It’s why we find movies like Schindler’s List more compelling than a dry recounting of how many concentration camps there were and how many people died each day. We are more attached to narratives than numbers. That’s why Indian Horse matters: it packages the depth of Canada’s racism in the twentieth century into a form our brains can grok. And it does so in a humanizing, deeply empathetic way.

I think I need to make that clear. I am angry, for a whole bunch of reasons I’ll elaborate on later, but Indian Horse the novel is actually not an angry book. It is a compassionate book. It is not a book about how all white people are guilty, guilty, guilty and bad, bad bad (and I don’t think that either—again, more later). Rather, Wagamese demonstrates how Saul experiences systemic racism as a result of what the culture and policies were like in the 1960s and 1970s. But even though the events in this book are often dark and, frankly, disgusting, the ending is one of optimism and hope.

It’s the same reason we have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, not a Blame and Bad Feelings Commission. What matters is that we listen to people when they talk about their experiences and believe them, even if that means we feel horrible. It is good that we feel horrible, because that means we are empathetic human beings—if you listen to someone talk about all the people they lost to a residential school, or their own experiences therein, and you feel nothing, then something is wrong. Feeling horrible is a natural reaction—but just because something makes you feel bad is not a reason to ignore and erase it. That’s a childish reaction, to be sure. We need to accept the past before we can move on.

Such is the theme of Indian Horse. For Saul, the past includes not just his time at residential schools but also his relationship to his ancestors. I’m given to understand that many indigenous cultures believe strongly in an ongoing connection to one’s ancestors. Even if they are dead, their spirits can still guide you. Wagamese shows this with Saul’s visions later in the book when he returns to Gods Lake. It is incredibly important that Saul’s journey of reconciliation with his past led him not just to St. Jerome’s but also to Gods Lake. Like many indigenous men his age, he had his connection with his heritage brutally severed—only to find that—surprise!—the society that had severed it was never planning to accept him. So he has to reconnect not just with the memories of residential school that he pushed down so deep he didn’t tell us the first time, but also with the memories that maybe hurt as much, if not more, because they are of a family he can never get back.

That is the unrelenting and unforgivable nature of the cultural genocide that happened through residential schools and other means. Despite Gwyn’s protests that residential schools were successful because, decades later now, more aboriginal youth are entering university (I’m feel vaguely nauseous even typing that paraphrase), the veracity behind any claims, religious or otherwise, that residential schools were for the improvement of indigenous peoples is totally irrelevant. No matter how you spin it, assimilation was never going to work, because even if indigenous peoples went along with it, gave up their culture, and became culturally white, other people would still kick them out of the white club and treat them differently.

Wagamese demonstrates this through the incredibly appropriate arena of hockey. A bit of a personal disclaimer here: I don’t watch, follow, or even really know much about hockey. I know the names of some of the positions, the fact it tends to get played in three periods, and that there is a puck and a stick and goals and … oh yeah, ice (usually). So as Saul ticks off the names of hockey legends, indigenous or not, and describes the inherent beauty and grace of their skating or his, of their shots or his moves and speed … well, none of that resonates with me on a personal level. But that’s OK. Wagamese is a good enough writer that I still managed to get sucked into the descriptions. I still got a tingling sensation and a rush of adrenaline as Saul talks about the Moose’s first game against the Chiefs and how he contributes to their come-from-behind win. Moreover, it’s just clever for Wagamese to take the utterly Canadian game of hockey and use it for these purposes, appealing to people who might not otherwise find themselves open to reading a story like this.

Saul is a hockey natural. Everyone says so. Yet his pure enjoyment of the game is marred by the misbehaviour of white players and fans who view him as trespassing on a whites-only game. In this way, Wagamese makes Saul’s experience into a microcosm for the attempts to assimilate indigenous peoples. It doesn’t matter if Saul adheres to the stereotypes of an Indian or not—some people just can’t get past the colour of his or his teammates’ skin. Wagamese belies the myth of meritocracy: even as numerous (white) people believe that Saul has NHL potential and help to elevate him to another level of play, the rampant racism that pigeonholes him as the Rampaging Redskin pushes him away from the sport he once loved. This is why meritocracies can’t exist the way some people want to believe they do: it doesn’t matter how good you are, if people don’t see you, just their prejudices about you.

All those countless micro-aggressions, as I’ve heard some people talk about recently—and for Saul and other indigenous people in the 1960s, and today, let’s face it, it’s more like actual aggression—wear Saul down. He’s one guy, and he has lost the one thing in his life that was giving him happiness. So he gives in. He wallows in self-pity and the stereotype and the solace of the nothingness of the bottle. I don’t drink. I only understand, on the barest intellectual level, why people might become drunks. But Wagamese does an excellent job explaining, through Saul’s paradoxically poetic prose, the lure of alcohol in its capacity to make time and memories slip.

This is what cultural genocide does. It forcibly takes children from their families in the name of “educating” them—actually no, let’s be honest, and call it “civilizing” the savages, as Saul so accurately relates it during the chapters at St. Jerome’s. It subjects these children—the most vulnerable and innocent members of our society—to abuses that literally send chills down most people’s spines, driving some insane, or to suicide. While inflicting these psychological (and physical) scars, it punishes the children if they speak their own language—because obviously that isn’t civilized—erasing their heritage and leaving a void in its place. It’s like they reached in with a scoop and hollowed out Saul … and then when they couldn’t fill that void, he turned to hockey, with mixed success. Those that they did not kill residential schools broke, as people, condemning them to spend the rest of their lives adrift, unattached to culture, in a society overtly hostile to their existence.

That’s … I can’t even. Evil is an appropriate enough word that springs to mind, I think.

But it’s not all bad news. And I mean that not in the way that apologists like Gwynn would have it—residential schools were all bad news. Rather, it’s good that we are beginning to talk about this. That the Truth and Reconciliation Commission releasing these findings and some people are listening. That Richard Wagamese is writing books like this, receiving national recognition. That people are reading these books. That finally we are maybe, just maybe, open to learning about, talking about, and processing the depths of the injustices in our country, past and present.

Because Canada doesn’t just have a history of colonialism: it is an ongoing process. If you don’t believe that, just look at the number of missing and murdered indigenous women. Still not convinced? Then why are there so many First Nations communities without healthy running water? We are supposedly a first-world, developed country, yet we can’t bring a basic need to thousands of people? That is shameful. And if it were any other country it would get international attention and be called the humanitarian crisis it is. Maybe one of those nice democratic countries could send in some troops to help us out.

Canada turns 150 in two years. The government in power at the time will spend an unfathomable amount of money on the celebration. The Harper government has made it clear that if it’s still in power, it’s going to do so in a way that glorifies the Eurocentric, white part of Canada’s national heritage and minimize and ignore the part where there have been people living in this land for millennia. That is, after all, the only way to prove we have no history of colonialism: can’t be colonialist if there wasn’t anyone here to colonize, eh?

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t take pride in and celebrate the good parts of our nation’s history and heritage and simultaneously ignore the bad stuff, pretending it didn’t happen or pretending it doesn’t matter. That is, as I said, childish. And we are nearly 150, Canada. So let’s grow up, and learn to deal with the bad in our past. Indian Horse offers one, valuable perspective on how to do that. Read it, and read other books and blogs like it, and listen to people as they talk about their history and their heritage. Have this conversation, like the adults we are.

I’ll conclude with this: earlier I was careful to make the distinction in this review between the compassionate tone of Indian Horse and the anger I’m feeling, partly as a result from reading it. Being white, I can’t really be angry for the injustice done to “my people” when I read this story. So what do I have to be angry about? What, aside from the fact that this isn’t fiction, but more a fictionalized account of terrible things that happened to actual human beings? That isn’t enough to get angry about?

I’m angry because I’m white, and as a result, I don’t know enough about a hugely important part of our nation’s heritage, simply because it either wasn’t taught to me or wasn’t taught very well. I’m angry that Stephen Harper and people like him would like to excise this inconvenient part of our history from the textbooks, just like some elements of American society want to talk about how “some” slaves were “happy” to have masters and work on plantations (again with the near-nausea of writing that sentence). Because that is part of my history as much as it is part of any indigenous person’s. While I don’t feel guilty for what white people inflicted on aboriginal people in the past, I feel responsible, as a person with privilege in today’s society, to help make things better right now, for the people alive today. One way to do that is to talk about why things are so bad today, about how it got this way, rather than simply shrugging and saying, “Nope, no colonialism here—move along now!” I will be angrier still if we continue to let Harper get away with this, if we write him another blank cheque to do whatever the hell he wants to this country, regardless of how much it perpetuates the colonialist attitude he ignores in the most Orwellian of ways.

So be the change, right? Read Indian Horse. Read other books. Listen to indigenous activists on the radio and TV and online—or, you know, go to things in person, if unlike me you happen to enjoy leaving your house. Learn more about these subjects. It isn’t the job of indigenous peoples to stand up and educate us about these problems; it is our responsibility, as Canadians, to come together, not out of shame or guilt or blame, but simply common human decency. Canada has a super-colonialist history—but it also has a history with some pretty amazing moments in it. We can celebrate the latter even while we acknowledge and regret and rectify the former. Because we can do better. We must.

This what A Wizard of Earthsea taught me:
* To know a thing's true name is to know its nature.
* Don't fuck with dragons (unless you know their true names).
* Summoning the spirits of the dead is a bad idea, especially on a schoolboy dare.
* Truly changing your form is dangerous, because you can become lost in the aspect you assume.
* If you find yourself hunted, turn it around and become the hunter.
* Above all else, know yourself.

I don't know how I acquired this particular copy of A Wizard of Earthsea. It's an old, 1977 reprint that is, aside from its yellowing pages, in remarkably good condition for something that, in its day, cost $1.50 in Canada or 50 p in the UK. It bears no evidence of a previous owner, be that person, library, or used bookstore. Perhaps someone gave it to me. However I got it, I remember that I read A Wizard of Earthsea for a second time through this copy. I read it mostly in the backseat of my mom's van and then in a hair salon while waiting for her to get her hair done. So this book is firmly ensconced in my mind as a book I read "when I was younger," and I associate it with my childhood (even though I suspect I was probably in my early teens).

When I first came upon China Miéville a few years ago, I was an adult and approached his books with an adult's ideas about fantasy. I've only ever known Miéville's works through the eyes of adulthood, and that is something outside of my control, but it definitely affects how I view his works. In contrast, Ursula K. Le Guin has been with me my entire life, stalking me, if you will. Curiously enough, her books have never played the formative role in my reading, especially my fantasy reading, that others like The Belgariad, A Song of Ice and Fire, or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have done. I don't have a pithy story about reading a Le Guin book as a child or adolescent that then opened my eyes and inspired me to read more fantasy. So it's all the more intriguing that I distinctly remember Le Guin being in my life ever since childhood. I don't remember when I first read one of her books, only that I did. And when I pick up A Wizard of Earthsea, I'm connected to my childhood, to that memory of this particular copy, as well as to memories of reading fantasy in general. This is a gateway book, and that's why it means so much to me.

If you don't have this type of connection to Le Guin or to A Wizard of Earthsea, I can understand how easy it is to dismiss this book as a 2- or 3-star endeavour. It's a condensed story with a small cast of characters who aren't necessarily the most intriguing bunch you'll ever meet. There's a lot of narration and exposition covering most of Ged's childhood and adolescent years. It's not exactly the big-budget, epic type of fantasy story that is so popular now. Nor is Ged your typical fantasy farm boy Called to be the Chosen One. He's a wizard of no small talent who, because he's a cocky adolescent boy, screws up and spends no small part of his adult life attempting to rectify the mistake.

There's a lot of darkness in this book. It reminds me, this time around, of Arthurian legends: well-meaning, valorous people struggling against their darker selves, and sometimes losing. Even the Knights of the Round Table had the advantage of knowing they were heroes though—Ged is not a hero; he's just this guy, you know? He's not preternaturally gifted with good sense, so like any inexperienced adolescent, he makes bad decisions and is full of flaws. He ditches his master on Gont, Ogion, to go learn wizardry at Roke because he's eager to learn "real magic." He feels like Ogion is holding him back (we readers, of course, recognize that Ogion is the wise sensei who teaches his student the value of wisdom and work first). At Roke, Ged allows himself to be manipulated into magical pissing contests by his rival, Jasper. The result is the escape of a "shadow" into the world of Earthsea, and its encounter with Ged leaves it with some of his power and a hunger to absorb the rest of his aspect. This would be bad, for Ged, and for the world. But A Wizard for Earthsea shares with Arthurian legend that underlying motif of temptation and the sin of pride: people and magic continually tempt Ged, and his successes are measured in the varying degrees by which he overcomes and rejects those temptations. Sometimes he fails miserably, resulting in the unleashing of a gebbeth into the world! Other times, he succeeds admirably, such as in the case of the dragon Yevaud.

Ged's encounter with the dragon of Pendor is nominally what turns him into a legendary "dragonlord." He manages to learn the dragon's true name, and with it he wrangles from the dragon a promise never to fly to the Archipelago. The safety of the islands of Earthsea thus secure, he departs Pendor to resume his life and his apparently-eternal flight from the gebbeth.

Ged's confrontation with Yevaud is right out of the classical "man versus beast battle of wits" canon. What stuck with me for the rest of the book, however, was how Ged deals with Yevaud's brood. He ruthlessly does battle with these dragonspawn, killing six of them. Dragons in Le Guin's Earthsea are predators but intelligent ones: their speech is the same Old Speech from which Earthsea wizards draw power. So I can't help but feel that in slaying these creatures, Ged is wreaking destruction on a much larger scale. He's destroying something unique and wonderful, even if it is dangerous to humans. And Ged is rather cavalier about it: he goes to Pendor because he's decided to leave the town he was protecting from possible dragon attacks, and before he goes he wants to ensure the town will be safe. This is his first act of major wizardry as a full-fledged wizard, and it is interesting that it is one of destruction, even if it benefits those he swore to protect.

After his encounter with Yevaud, Ged bums around Earthsea for a little while, faces another great trial, and almost doesn't survive. Fortunately he finds his way back to Ogion, who sets him straight and gives him the best possible advice:

If you go ahead, if you keep running, wherever you turn you will meet danger and evil, for it drives you, it chooses the way you go. You must choose. You must seek what seeks you. You must hunt the hunter.

If you read A Wizard of Earthsea as a straight fantasy story about good versus evil and wizards and dragons, you will probably be disappointed. Read this way, it's a good book, but it isn't great. It's too brief to be a satisfying epic meal. The strength of Wizard of Earthsea is neither its style nor its substance but its subtext. This book embodies "literary fiction" a lot better than much of what gets marketed under that term today.

The cover of my edition, aside from its regrettable whitewashing of the characters, seems to support the idea that this is a children's book. The brief description on the back of the book continues this illusion: "A tale of wizards, dragons and terrifying shadows, in which the young wizard Sparrowhawk strives to destroy the evil shadow-beast he has let loose on the world." This description does not do the book justice, nor do I think calling A Wizard of Earthsea a "children's book" does any favours for the book or for children. This is not a children's book any more than other books that children or adults might read are "adult books." This is a book, a book for children and for adults, and frankly one that people should read early and often.

I read A Wizard of Earthsea as a child, again as an adolescent, and now I've read it as an adult. Each time, I've read it slightly differently, and it has told me different things; my opinions of Le Guin and her works have changed as my perspective changes from childhood to adulthood. For me, A Wizard of Earthsea is memorable and magical because of what it teaches through its story. It deserves five stars because, for a fantastic tale at a slim 200 pages, this book seems to contain an inordinate amount of truth.

My Reviews of the Earthsea series:
The Tombs of Atuan →

I feel really bad, because I received an ARC of Fever at Dawn from House of Anansi in exchange for a review … and then my to-be-read pile of books quite literally swallowed this ARC and two others. In the chaos of real life and having to read other books, I just forgot these were around. I have unearthed them, however, and like precious gems I shall now read and review them diligently. If you would like to send me free books for me to ignore far longer than you probably want, please contact me!

This is a fictionalized account of how Péter Gárdos’ parents met and courted during their convalescence in different hospitals in Sweden following the holocaust. Miklós, Gárdos’ father, is diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis. Despite having six months to live, he strikes up a correspondence at random with Lili. It’s not really a spoiler to say that they don’t die, I hope, since obviously Gárdos is around to tell the tale. How can you not love a story like this? It’s the kind of against-all-odds type of romantic comedy fodder that is too good to be true (except, in this case, it is true).

For both Miklós and Lili, their letter-writing is essential to their rebuilding of self following World War II. Both endured horrible mistreatment at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and when they were “liberated” they were near death. This novel, then, is the story of them coming back—not just physically, but mentally. Gárdos captures in a microcosm this struggle for many Europeans who were involved not just in fighting but in survival during the war. So in addition to their physical recuperation, both Miklós and Lili need to find hope in humanity again.

The tenderness and touching misunderstandings offer a nice counterpoint to the more serious moments. For example, I loved when another one of Miklós’ correspondents pays a surprise visit to his hospital to declare her undying love for him and her intent to marry him. He smoothly pawns her off on the Don Juan of the hospital, claiming he only wrote the letters on Harry’s behalf because he has the best penmanship. Is it true? I don’t know, nr do a I care (it’s fictionalized, after all)—it’s fun.

As I mentioned to a friend while reading this, “This is what they did before online dating.” That is, Miklós first finds Lili by requesting a list of Hungarian women about his age, from about his hometown, who are also convalescing in Sweden. Then he writes them cold, sees who responds, and decides which ones he should keep as pen pals. As someone who, because of the time and place of my birth, never got much into letter writing (and, because of me, has never gotten into dating), I found this entire procedure fascinating.

Since the resolution of this story is foregone, we need a different source of tension. Gárdos introduces this in the relationships with the main characters and the particulars of the protagonists’ lives. There is some doubt with regards to whether Lili’s parents survived. Similarly, it’s not clear what Miklós and Lili will do once they are released from hospital. Miklós commitment to socialism recurs throughout the book, so it’s implied that he wants to join the cause in some way (and Gárdos does explain further in his afterword, but not within the story itself). Lili is more lukewarm on socialism. She has several friends who tug at her in different ways. The conflict among Judit, Lili, and Miklós and the question of the couple’s official religion provides enough tension through the climax of the novel.

I was surprised by how much I liked Fever at Dawn. I do like books set in/around World War II that are not about World War II per se. And I’m a bit of a sucker for sappy “based on a true story.” However, I was worried there wouldn’t be enough substance here. Fear not: Gárdos provides plenty in the way of characterization, philosophy, and turns of phrase. The setting is intricate, if not in description then in atmosphere. The story is a careful depiction of the combination of levity and gravity that must have permeated these hospitals full of concentration camp survivors: everyone is excited and happy to be alive, yet at the same time, so many that they knew were not as lucky. In this time, it is easy to lose hope—or to regain it. And so Fever at Dawn is a simple story, but it is a heartwarming one, and definitely one I enjoyed reading.

My review of Flannery has been pre-empted because as I write this I’m out of town (a rare occurrence). Rather than try to write that review without referring to the book for the choicest tidbits, I might as well review Anansi Boys, which I read during the combined three hours of flights I had on Tuesday evening. I previously read this book a while ago, but like many of Neil Gaiman’s novels, it was before Goodreads, so I’m re-reading them slowly (and savouring them).

It’s strange seeing this listed as “American Gods #2” on Goodreads. I mean, I get it—Mr. Nancy shows up in American Gods, albeit briefly, so the universes are somewhat connected. But I want to be clear: you do not need to read American Gods to read this book, or vice versa. Obviously you should read both, because they are both excellent novels … but the order in which you read them isn’t that important.

This reminds me somewhat of a Doctor Who story. Firstly, there is the whole obsession with story itself and the elements of myth-building and storytelling as having power. Secondly, Mr. Nancy has many similarities to the Doctor, who himself is often seen as a god-like figure, a wanderer, and perhaps even a Trickster. Much of the fun in reading this story comes from trying to puzzle out just how much Mr. Nancy is interfering (you didn’t really believe he was dead, even for a minute, did you?). This reminds me of how the Doctor often takes a back seat in the stories, sometimes to the point of faking his death or disappearance like Mr. Nancy, but subtly (or not so subtly) nudges other characters into the role of protagonist.

And that’s really, basically, what Anansi Boys is all about. Fat Charlie has kind of sleepwalked through life, and now with his father dead and his stranger brother showing up to ruin everything, he suddenly finds that he needs to act. He and his brother become proxies in Anansi’s tricksy little war with Tiger. But on a more personal level, it’s really just all about Fat Charlie coming to terms with himself, finding himself, finally shedding the metaphorical weight he put on in adolescence. Gaiman very much depicts Mr. Nancy not as a “good” father or “good” man but as the kind of being who wants to do right by his sons but just doesn’t always know how. So often, the obligations of gods and humans clash, and what is just or moral for us is not always so clear-cut for those with greater “power.”

Fat Charlie isn’t necessarily an easy protagonist to like. He bumbles. He’s a bumbler. He has a kind of sponginess to him, and is a bit whiny—or at least, he starts that way. I’d argue that watching Fat Charlie grow is another one of the joys of Anansi Boys; I love seeing him turn from whiner to confident hero. Many of the supporting cast get similar development. Unlike American Gods, this is truly an “ensemble cast” novel, very reminiscent of Good Omens.

Indeed, the whimsical tone of the story bears more in common with that Pratchett collaboration than with the other novel featuring Mr. Nancy. This is ultimately a somewhat silly novel, and that suits the story. Everything from the ferret-like Grahame Coats and his “absa-tively” to the goofiness of Saint Andrews, its inhabitants, and their obsession with Fat Charlie’s lime, just creates that kind of situation where you’re always on the verge of giggling while you read, even if you never quite burst out loud laughing. Gaiman is at his best when he has a diverse cast of characters, each one interesting in their own peculiarities. Eventually you realize that each little witticism sums to a much deeper reflection on the ways in which we navigate through these strange lives of ours.

Anansi Boys might be silly, but there are still serious moments. There are epiphanies. This story doesn’t have the masterpiece feel that American Gods has for me, but it still feels so satisfying to read. I’m really glad I chose it for my airplane read, because there was never a dull moment where I thought, "Ugh, can we just get on with it?” Gaiman’s stories are the kind that linger but seldom over-stay their welcome.

A very welcome change in pace after reading a couple of historical fiction novels and a non-fiction book about sex! Trading in Danger is strategy-filled space opera. Kylara Vatta, or Ky for short, is a young woman kicked out of military academy for being a little too trusting. Relegated to commanding an obsolete ship that is on its last voyage as part of her family’s massive trading empire, Ky senses the opportunity for profit … and lands smack in the middle of a warzone. Elizabeth Moon brings us action scenes, introspection, and a nice sense of the scale of a galactic economy. It’s a little pulpy, a little classic, and a lot of fun.

The book hinges on whether you care much about Ky. It’s tempting, especially at first, to call her a Mary Sue: everyone seems to like her, and everyone seems to subtly give her a leg up. Even the mercenary in charge of the boarding party that boards her ship turns out to have a heart of gold when it comes to Ky. And she always seems to be able to wriggle her way out of whatever dead-end situation she finds herself in at the moment. However, Mary Sues warp the fabric of plot and space-time around themselves effortlessly, simply by existing. Ky, on the other hand, has to work hard at that plot warp. And that’s the difference: we get to see her agonize over her decisions. Moon explains how Ky weighs the variables. It’s clear that being the child of the CFO of a major shipping business means that Ky has grown up immersed in economics and trade. From the way she speaks to the way she formulates plans, Ky is all about that bottom line—it is, as she keeps saying, “all about the money.”

I suppose, then, it also matters whether you want your space opera to more like sword-and-sorcery, smash-and-grab, or if you don’t mind discussions of trade, profit, and interstellar politics. I’ve been playing a lot of Elite: Dangerous lately, a massively-multiplayer online space sim game. It has a background story of galactic politics, Powerplay, influenced by the actions that groups of players can take to prop up various political factions. I don’t participate in Powerplay myself, but I enjoy the flavour it adds to the background the game. Similarly, Moon manages to create the feeling of a much wider universe than she shows in this book, and with minimal effort. Take the ISC—InterStellar Communications Corporation. They have a monopoly on the ansible network (a standard FTL comms trope, thanks to Le Guin). They don’t do politics (hah), but if anyone messes with their ansibles, they bring the thunder and fury down on those ne'er-do-wells. And while these types of monopolies aren’t great in real life, I admit I like the absolutist feel of the sense of justice such powerful entities bring to a story (provided our protagonist on the right side of it, eh). There is nothing quite so satisfying as that feeling when the cavalry shows up and you don’t want to stand near the bad guys lest you get some of them on you when they get blown to pieces.

So there is a “cowboys who are making money in space” vibe to Trading in Danger, and I guess that’s why I like it so much. Moon might play fast-and-loose with a lot of the physics involved, but she still reminds us that space travel is an expensive and dangerous enterprise. Ky takes on crew from another ship that left them behind because it couldn’t afford to wait for a quarantine to be lifted—they were stranded in another star system! And when her ship acts as a holding vessel for the passengers and crew of some impounded civilian ships, there is a lot of talk of fuel ratios and food levels and rationing. As with most things SF, “realistic” is not the correct word here. But this is not a universe where there are magic solutions to every problem.

Ky also undergoes quite a journey in a short book. She begins as a brash, headstrong cadet being drummed out of the academy. She ends as a brash, headstrong, but much more experienced captain of a trading vessel. Along the way, though, we see her struggle with the conflicts between her lack of practical experience and the fact that she just happens to be good at confrontations. There are two running observations that people who encounter Ky make: firstly, that she is much younger than they expected; secondly, that she is oddly cool and calm under pressure for a civilian captain. It’s a dangerous combination, one easily underestimated. And I love that when Ky ends up having to use violence, and killing people, Moon keeps revisiting the moment. I love the admission that Ky liked the feeling of killing those people. It adds some depth to her character, reminds us that people are not simple, squeaky-clean heroes or dastardly villains. Ky is our hero, the one we want to cheer for, and she seems to be a good person in general. But we all have darker sides, parts of us that we keep locked down, except in emergencies.

I think the obvious comparison here is Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga. Ky is a bit like Cordelia and/or Miles: very intelligent, quick to act under pressure, well-connected but quickly finds herself cut off from those connections. This universe has a similar feel to Bujold’s universe, with various interstellar powers jockeying, mercenaries, trading vessels, etc. Both series are a lot of fun. It’s accurate to say I could barely put down Trading in Danger while reading it, and I am itching to read the next books in this series.

My reviews of Vatta’s War:
Marque and Reprisal →

A sequel to #19: The Departure, The Sickness moves forward the Yeerk peace movement subplot. And I don’t know how you can possibly hate on Cassie after reading this book, because she literally saves the day single-handedly. She is boss mode.

I mean, if Cassie had been any more successful, she would be a Mary Sue. Not only does she infiltrate the Yeerk Pool, without any backup, by hosting a sympathetic Yeerk, rescue Aftran, evade capture, and make it out alive … then she proceeds to perform brain surgery on an Andalite without killing him.

So … yeah. That might be the best plot summary of an Animorphs book in a long time.

Not to mention, Cassie has the most adorable attitude while doing it: that kind of, “Ugh, I guess I’ll have to take care of this by myself—again” attitude super-capable people occasionally get when their friend reneges on a plan for the nth time because they are “sick” or something. With the other Animorphs out of commission thanks to a less serious form of the sickness gripping Ax, Cassie (it’s never explained why she is unaffected) is the only one able to do anything. The stakes are incredibly high: if Visser Three successfully interrogates Aftran, they will reveal the true identities of the Animorphs, and it is game over.

It’s no wonder Cassie wanted to quit the Animorphs ten books ago, and look at what she has had to go through since then. The Howler thing practically tore her up inside. And Marco is getting really insensitive with his jibes. So when Cassie has to step up, she does so in a big way, because she is ever the reluctant Animorph these days. And there are no thanks for her, no awards, of course, because this is a secret war. This book does a great job of describing the pressure a lone soldier can feel when an important mission hinges on their success.

I also love the ending. I think the way they manage to save Aftran without compromising another human being is excellent. Not only do they foreshadow it during the usual start-of-book exposition, but it has a kind of romantic righteousness to it. Of course this is how morphing technology could be used to end things.

But … but … the best thing about this book is, bar none, the ongoing developments in the Cake relationship. Jake “asks” Cassie to prom … well, OK, Rachel voluntells Jake to take Cassie to the prom. It’s pretty much the same thing. But the way that they are so sweet on each other is lovely here … and it is heartbreaking at the same time, this being my second read-through of the series, because we know what is coming. While I have no clear memories of any specifics from the finale, I know that it does not end well for Cake—and in retrospect, that makes sense. But in the here and now, things seem to be going so well. Oh, young, starcrossed lovers….

Next time, it’s another Megamorphs, which means … you guessed it … more time travel!

My reviews of Animorphs:
← #28: The Experiment | Megamorphs #3: Elfangor's Secret →

Louise O’Neill is scary good at writing amazing but depressing books. I thought her second novel, Asking For It, was powerful, but her debut, Only Ever Yours, is arguably even darker. I’m happy I picked it up, but not happy having read it—this is about as far from a feel-good book as one gets.

I want to put some trigger warnings on this book and review but am not sure where to draw the lines; the entire book is kind of triggering. Definitely be wary of the body-shaming. But, I mean, while I wasn’t triggered from reading this book, there were points where I came close to feeling physically ill from the what the protagonist experiences and the way this fictional society is set up. Originally I planned to start off by saying that I don’t think women need to read this book, because in my comprehensive and infallible experience as a man, I feel like O’Neill has captured (and just amplified) all the negative messages women receive today. I’ve changed my mind; of course women, or some women, need to read this, because it’s easy for women to internalize society’s misogyny and believe that books like this aren’t necessary. The reason I was originally going to say it, though, was simply to emphasize that I think all men would benefit from reading this book.

One of the pernicious effects of male privilege is that I’ve seldom been told I can’t do or be something. It’s true that it is incredibly unlikely I will ever be a famous athlete, rap artist, or movie star. I have certain talents, most of which are best executed while sitting in a chair. But the message I have overwhelmingly received since I was a wee young thing goes like this: you can strive for whatever goals you want, and you will be judged based on your actions; we live in a wonderful meritocracy and you can do anything. Nobody ever told me I should worry about my appearance; I never had to learn how to judge whether my clothing gives the wrong signals or whether my make-up is too light or too heavy. I know the patriarchy exists and that this society is set up for someone like me because I can coast through it—society lends me inertia, leaves me untouched. The ultimate kicker, of course, is that because of this privileged existence, it is often difficult to understand the challenges less privileged people face. Simply admitting that I have privilege is good, but it’s not enough. It doesn’t give me perfect knowledge of all the struggles others face.

Only Ever Yours feels so essential for male readers, then, because it’s kind of like a crash course in the toxic socialization women face from childhood through adolescence. O’Neill ticks all the boxes that you would learn about if you pay attention and listen to women in other venues, but she exaggerates it and amplifies it, distilling it down into a core of toxicity, so there can be no doubt what effect it has on women. By telling a science-fictional story about a post-apocalyptic world where women are genetically engineered and decanted as “eves,” with lowercase names, and trained until age twenty when they are married off or turned into sex slaves, O’Neill is not so much attempting to prognosticate. Like many, she is using science fiction as a lens to examine our modern society: it’s not that this is where our world might be going, but that all the elements of this world already exist in our society today.

And it sticks with you. I can still hear the mantras that freida has memorized and repeats under stress: I'm a good girl. Good girls don’t cry, or Nobody likes fat girls. The only difference between freida’s world and ours is that in the former, these messages are explicitly taught through School, whereas in our world they might not be in the curriculum, but women still learn them in school. freida’s interactions with the other girls, particularly megan, are total Mean Girls territory. Similarly, the way her childhood friendship with isabel crumbles as they both fail to understand each other feels like something that all-too-often happens to people as they move into adolescence and acquiesce to the different priorities thrust upon them. As the Ceremony draws closer and the girls jockey to present themselves in the best light to the male Inheritants who will be determining their fate, the betrayals only get worse.

freida herself is, like Emma from Asking for It, another example of an unlikable but sympathetic protagonist. freida is very much an eve, a product of this society, and while occasionally we catch glimmers of the potential for independent thought or rebellion—nature documentaries, etc.—she largely plays the role she was designed to play. This is not a story about a girl rebelling against the system; it is a story about a girl subsuming herself, giving into the system, playing by the rules … and, of course, not being rewarded for it. I kept yearning, page after page and chapter after chapter, for her to break away, stop betraying isabel, fight back. I practically screamed it at the pages sometimes. I wanted her to do something more than stab other girls in the back and watch reality TV and consider outfits.

I am also fascinated by megan as an antagonist and a foil to freida. megan is much better than freida at playing the game; maybe she “wants” it more. The ways in which various people, such as chastity-ruth and Darwin, exhibit their loathing of megan while simultaneously rewarding her sociopathic behaviour, are very telling. Only Ever Yours captures the double pressures, physical and mental, that society places on women. In addition to the obsession with weight and appearance, which is a running refrain in this book, it’s also clear that in this world, eves cannot have friends. megan repeats, “We're best friends,” so many times, usually just before or after (or both, for good measure) she does something unspeakably foul to freida. And freida agrees. Because what else are you supposed to do, punch a bitch in the face? That would get you sent Underground. So Ms “I’m not here to make friends” megan plays the game and gets “ahead,” or at least thinks of it that way. She is willing to “be controlled,” which is considered a virtue in this society. Shudder.

The ending, of course, is an absolute downer in so many ways. We finally learn isabel’s big secret, the reason why she is so special. (I didn’t guess it, but I think it’s possible if one pays closer attention.) But O’Neill sticks to her guns and does not give in to the temptation of offering us anything as cheap as hope. If anything, chastity-ruth’s closing speech seems to imply that freida was almost certainly destined for failure from the moment she was born. This is like the hamartia of old in Greek tragedies, but flipped and used to criticize the society instead of the person. O’Neill’s point is that freida never stood a chance: she was bad at playing the game, and by the time she realized this and tried to rebel, it was too late.

Only Ever Yours thus offers a concentrated dose of the objectification, shaming, and misogynistic messaging that women receive growing up in our society. While women could take a lot away from this, I think men in particular will find this eye-opening. Moreover, while this book focuses overwhelmingly on women’s issues, O’Neill subtly includes examples of the harmful effects of patriarchy on men and boys. Consider the way Darwin’s feelings towards freida change. At first he is intrigued by her and the way she seems different from the other girls; eventually, after his father “persuades” him (through physical abuse, it’s heavily implied) that freida would be an unsuitable companion for a Judge, he gravitates towards the more odious but tractable megan. In this way, O’Neill observes how patriarchy’s constraints based on gender harm everyone, regardless of whether they identify as man, woman, etc. As with freida’s experience, this is presented as a tragedy, as something that will make Darwin’s life less than it otherwise could have been.

There is a lot going on in this book. In terms of the writing, Asking for It has the edge; this one is more obviously a debut effort. Don’t interpret that as a criticism, though, because I can’t decide which one I like more. You should read both. Probably not back to back, mind you, because that would be even more depressing. But Louise O’Neill is so skilled at highlighting the problems our society faces with regards to gender norms and misogyny. Only Ever Yours is a brilliant piece of science-fictional satire, from SleepSound to Keeping Up with the Carmichaels. If you are at all interested in more feminism in your fiction, you must check this out.

Every so often, you read a novel that knocks it out of the park. And I’m not talking about the obvious classics, or the much-hyped new releases that also deliver on what they promise. I’m talking about the ones that sneak up on you. Arcadia is one of the best time travel stories I’ve read in a long while—more than that, it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a year already burgeoning with good reads. Iain Pears takes what could have been a good, converging story of multiple characters and times and turns it into a transcendent love letter to literature and storytelling itself.

It all starts … actually, that doesn’t really work for recapping the plot of a book about time travel. Arcadia’s universe is very much a block-time one, wherein, as Angela explains, all moments are happening simultaneously: time is simply a limiting illusion we humans have to put up with. Pears keeps most of the technical details around how Angela’s machinery works vague, but I think that’s for the best. But here are the settings: 1960s Oxford, the late 22nd century, and Anterwold (the temporal location of which I best not divulged for fear of spoilers). The inciting force, if you will, takes place in the second of these settings: Angela Meerson has invented a machine her boss believes will let them access (and exploit) parallel universes, but she believes it “merely” enables time travel within our universe. She proves this, at great personal cost, and turns herself into a fugitive in the process. Hiding out in the twentieth century, she continues tinkering with the machine, creating Anterwold in the process from the notes of her temporally native friend, Henry Lytten. There are, of course, complications.

Arcadia possesses a certain level of self-deprecation, or at least, of insouciance towards to the sacredness of a text. It is filled with allusion and intertextual shenanigans. Take Rosalind, for instance, the fifteen-year-old girl who feeds Henry’s cat and subsequently stumbles into Anterwold, setting into motion a series of events that have profound repercussions for the universe as a whole. Pears goes beyond merely lampshading the allusion to As You Like It in Rosalind’s name by making the parallels much more explicit. There are all the Shakespeare standbys of cross-dressing and mistaken identity, complete with Rosalind disguising herself as “Ganimed” and hanging out in a forest with Aliena until she falls in love with an exiled nobleman. Done so deliberately, this could still be seen as derivative—if it weren’t for the fact that Anterwold is itself a construct, a fake reality Angela’s machine has generated, in which these patterns of plot are destined to play out.

It’s this essential paradox, the idea that Anterwold is both an imagined and real place at the same time, that blows my mind. In some ways Pears draws on modern ideas of procedurally generated universes now becoming more popular in games: Anterwold comes from a set of rules Henry has dreamed up in his attempt to create a “better” fantasy society. It’s Tolkien without the dragons; Lewis without the talking animals. The inhabitants and the way they act are supposed to feel somewhat artificial, because aside from the “major” characters Henry sketched himself, they literally are stock characters. Yet at the same time, Rosalind’s interference means that Anterwold has also become “real” in the sense that it is connected to the 1960s timeline in some way. It is the 1960s’ past or future. So we have this literary creation now reified, with people who were once creations of another person’s mind. It is all very meta.

Meanwhile, in the future, there are those who would like to track down Angela and the data she took with her. Pears’ 22nd century is a terrifying place where “science” has been co-opted into state-sponsored scientism. The population is kept happy with mood-altering drugs and cognitvely-boosting implants; they live to work and produce and consume. Anyone who wants to think for themselves or question this status quo is a “renegade” and either arrested or, if they are lucky, barely tolerated in one of the several Retreats dotted throughout the world. Angela, born into this society and fortunately among the elite herself—albeit with a strong streak of individualism—admits she only began questioning it after experience the comparatively liberal, if technologically primitive, 1930s through 1960s.

My favourite part of Arcadia’s incredibly complex, interwoven strands of narratives have to be Rosalind’s interactions with Anterwold’s inhabitants. She is a fierce, intelligent, uncompromising young woman—in short, every bit the heroine of her namesake, transported into the 1960s and born to parents who just don’t have her breadth of vision for the potential that her life could have. Rosalind is so alive, and I love it. When she takes the Anterwold characters to task, she seems much older than her years—yet so often, her actions betray a kind of naive optimism fostered by her somewhat sheltered youth. Furthermore, I love the rapport she develops with Angela. The “us against the world” vibe is very satisfying, especially against the somewhat comical backdrop of communist intrigue (in England) and a murder-mystery-slash-uprising (in Anterwold). Most importantly, these protagonists when against bigger, badder, better-armed forces not through the use of force or even its threat, but through sheer, unadulterated brilliance. Those are my kinds of heroes.

There are so many other stories happening within this book, though, it is hard to play favourites. It took me longer than usual to read it, partly because I was dragging it out, not wanting it to end. I was savouring every plot line, because even the other plots were fascinating. I wanted to see Jack More continue to develop as an individual as he hunted down evidence of Angela in his present and further explored his nascent attraction to her estranged daughter. Alas, all that potential doesn’t seem to go anywhere, and I was a little disappointed that Jack never quite seems to come into his own. Emily, on the other hand, is delightful. While I suppose some might consider the last-minute reveal at the end something of a cheat, or at the very least, somewhat cheap, I adored it. The foreshadowing was there, and Pears just brings it all together so masterfully.

It’s this intricate evidence of a plan that makes Arcadia a masterpiece. Other reviews mention that this book initially came out as an app, and that one could explore it interactively or non-linearly or something. I don’t know about that—this hardcover does not mention any app whatsoever, and I experienced the narrative linearly insofar as I read it from first to last page as Pears has structured the pages. So I can’t speak to what others experienced when they dipped into this story, but I love the little glimpses at the seams that he gives us. Time travel stories are really tough to do. And there is so much seeming coincidence here in this novel—yet it all ties together. Even Lucien Grange’s disappearance isn’t left hanging but instead comes together, neatly providing a solution to the mystery of the Devil’s Handwriting and giving Angela further thought to chew on. And with each new development in this vein, my impression of Arcadia became more thoroughly positive: I was just having such a good time and getting so much stimulation, intellectually and emotionally, as a result.

I took a chance on Arcadia. I’d never heard of Iain Pears, hadn’t really any hype about this book online. It was just there, staring at me from the New Books shelves in the library, daring me to take it. I almost said no. The description on the jacket does little to beguile the reader; it reminded me of those books that overreach, and that made me wary. I’m so, so happy I overruled my inner cynic and took this chance. Arcadia is more than an entertaining read for me: it was a refreshing, reinvigorating look at science fiction and storytelling and all sorts of clever literary tricks and conceits. I had fun; I relished every page. I want to do it all again, and my only regret is that there can only be one first reading.