It’s difficult to overstate how much I loved Laurie Penny’s Unspeakable Things. You should read it, full stop. So when I heard she had a novella coming out, of course I pre-ordered it right away. Whereas some science fiction speaks so optimistically to the potential for technological innovations to make our world better, Everything Belongs to the Future falls decidedly on the opposite side of that scale. The dystopian world that Penny imagines here is chilling because it feels all too realistic. Worse still, I’m not sure I disagree with her protagonists’ methods of challenging it.

One thing that Unspeakable Things does well is ground feminist thought in systemic, rather than personal, critiques. That is to say, individual people might commit sexist or misogynistic acts, but we have to view those actions as part of a larger system (the patriarchy). Penny is very good at describing how the systemic nature of discrimination is harmful to people of all genders. When viewed in this way, it becomes more evident why feminism cannot be about “women hating men” or somehow overthrowing them and usurping their power—because in the system we have today, even men don’t necessarily have as much power (they just have privilege that allows them to remain blind to this fact). Feminism and the fight for equity, liberation, and justice can benefit men as well as women, because it’s about replacing a broken system, not championing one gender over another.

Penny explores this idea further in Everything Belongs to the Future. I like how there are no explicit villains in this piece. One of the antagonists, Alex, is a POV character who clearly feels that his actions are justified, that he is acting in his (and even Nina’s) best interests. The character arguably closest to being a villain, Parker, Penny portrays more like just any other cog in the machine of the company. We don’t get as much access to his head, so it’s hard to tell if he has bought into the company line as much as he seems to have done. Nevertheless, even Parker is simply another representative of the system of oppression. It’s this system, the gerontocratic version of patriarchy, that is the real villain of the piece. Penny invites us to have empathy even for the antagonists and to understand that the work of changing society is difficult and often lateral rather than direct.

Penny draws heavily on Foucault as she explores the ramifications of an age-extending pill—literal biopower, if you will—on our society. I’m not sure if Foucault ever commented on the role of biopower as exercised by a corporation rather than nation-state (but I’m sure his successors have since articulated such theories). Penny imagines a future that is, unfortunately, all too possible: one wherein corporations have more power thanks to their personhood, patents, and other legal devices that individuals cannot afford to wield.

The setting is full of interesting ideas. In particular, Penny observes that all the people whose lives have been extended suddenly have to deal with the consequences of global warming that they were previously happy to heap onto their descendants’ shoulders. This is science fiction at its best: a technological innovation just beyond our reach, with its consequences considered carefully as the author uses it to reflect the issues that haunt our contemporary culture. In this case, the age-extending pill just makes explicit what people who experience poverty already know: rich people can afford more time. They can afford medical treatments to extend their lives or treat debilitating illness; they don’t have to worry about working as much to make ends meet. Poverty is a kind of double tax, on one’s wallet and one’s time. And Penny is spot on when she postulates that if such an innovation were to hit the markets, it wouldn’t be the poor who benefit from it.

This is not a comfortable book to read. This is not a book where our band of plucky underdogs heroically take on the big bad corporation and win (or even lose gloriously).

There are not really heroes in this book. There are just people who do bad things and believe their actions justified. Penny minces no words, acknowledging that our protagonists are unabashed terrorists. One of my favourite passages comes from a fictitious piece quoted within the story:

If one puts aside for a second the question of strict political morality with the understanding that it is dangerous to do so for more than a second one soon realizes that the Time Bomb is as much a paradigm shift in human violence as the machine gun, the tank or the atom bomb. Few lives are lost in its detonation, except at the center of the blast zone; strictly speaking, no injuries are caused. It is a weapon at once entirely humane and utterly monstrous.

Do you remember that awful Justin Timberlake movie In Time, where one’s time left to live has become a quantifiable commodity to be bought and sold? The trajectory of this novella’s plot reminds me of that movie, if that movie had not been quite so hokey. In both stories, time becomes a weapon, and characters fight over who can give it or take it away.

The comparison to—and contrast with—the atomic bomb is apt. The atomic bomb rightly freaked out everyone at the time, because it was just so destructive. Since then, though, we’ve designed plenty of equally destructive weapons—or, arguably, weapons that are even more destructive on an absolute scale, simply because we use them infinitely more often than nukes. Remotely-operated drones are freaky and deadly, but we don’t see as many people campaigning against drone strikes—partly because, since they don’t put soldiers on our side in as much danger, they seem like a safer, more “humane” way to wage war.

So, returning to the biopower theme, we have this idea that the next weapons breakthrough will revolve around “humane” weapons. This is a common motif in dystopias, where the forces of social coercion are usually insidious because they are not necessarily forceful. In Everything Belongs to the Future, if you play your cards right, you get extra years on your life. If you don’t cooperate, then you will remain a mere mortal and expire, while those you snubbed will get on with their plots without you.

But I can’t stop thinking about how the Time Bomb is so terrible and yet our protagonists use it anyway and Penny acknowledges it’s a bad thing. I’m reminded of the Season 5 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and what Giles does because he knows that Buffy can’t do it: “She’s a hero, you see. She’s not like us.” Moments like this are a challenge to the reader, because you have to stop and ask yourself if you would make the same choices. Would you do it? If I were in Nina’s position, would I use such a terrible device? I don’t know the answer, of course—I don’t think it’s possible to know, really, not having experienced the same intense nadir of hopelessness that Nina and her crew have. But it bears thinking about, because even if we don’t have age-extension and Time Bombs in our current society, we are all complicit in a system of aggression—some of it micro-, far too much of it macro—and we have to ask ourselves how best we can change this system.

It’s so easy to dress up for the part of revolutionary, to call for revolution. It is harder to actually become a revolutionary and live with yourself if you start one.

And that ending! That ending is brutal. I can’t say I’m sorry to see it turn out that way. I don’t think it’s a particularly undeserved ending, if you know what I mean—but it’s not the way you want your stories to end. It’s an uncomfortable ending for an uncomfortable book. I like that this is a novella, and while it certainly could have been a novel, I disagree with people who are saying it should have been. The story might be novella-length, but the time that would have been taken reading a novel-length version still gets used up just thinking about what’s already here. I’m actually really grateful Penny hasn’t dropped a novel on us yet, because I’m not sure my brain could handle that much.

So don’t let the size fool you here: Everything Belongs to the Future is intensely thought-provoking. It touches on matters of gender and class and sexuality. It challenges us to think about the relationship between resistance and terrorism, between corporations and consent and rape culture. These are all pressing topics in this day and age, and through the lens of the future, Penny brings clarity to the conversations we should be having in the present.

I’m not sure I should have read this book this week, the week of that infamous election, of all weeks. All the Birds in the Sky is somewhat apocalyptic, and this week feels much the same. Although this book is entertaining, I can’t say it gave me much in the way of hope that humanity might find a way to pull itself together, either through science or magic or some combination of both. This was so weird. In a good way. But weird. It’s well worth the hype and a really good first novel from Charlie Jane Anders, whose io9 writing and editing has always been a pleasure.

It would be accurate to say that this book is about a conflict between science and magic, but that isn’t the whole story. In fact, I’d argue that misses the point of the book, which is that different groups of humans are (mis)using science and magic in their quest to manipulate or affect nature. This theme emerges very early in the book (in Patricia’s conversation with the Tree) but reverberates throughout the book. Patricia and her crew condemn Laurence and Milton’s obsession with using science to escape the planet, but the witches are just as guilty of making doomsday plans. As Anders explores this idea, she shows how two people can get so lost in their desire to belong, to have a life that has a meaning, that they lose sight of their own lives.

Parts of this book are sucker punches. The opening is a kind of escapist response to child negligence and abuse, with Anders critiquing various ways in which parents fail to raise their children, while the children themselves manage to discover (through magic and technology, respectively) ways to escape their situations. I found the beginning of the book, with the way Laurence and Patricia get treated by their parents, much harder to read than the later parts, which actually contain comparatively more violence.

Parts of this book are silly, in a gonzo, Nick Harkaway kind of way. I could have done without Theodophilus Rose of the Nameless Assassins. Anders walks a fine line between whimsical absurdity and twee, and it doesn’t always work for me. However, I appreciate the attempt, if only because it keeps the book from taking itself too seriously. All the Birds in the Sky reminds me of The Magicians (and there is a blurb from Lev Grossman on the back of this copy), but in a good way. The Magicians felt like it was trying too hard. This book touches on similar themes—Laurence and Patricia, like Quentin and Julia, find that excellence in their chosen fields doesn’t suddenly make their lives make any sense. However, this book is less eager to shit all over my beloved fantasy fiction of youth. I mean, if you like The Magicians, you’ll still like this book—but if you didn’t like The Magicians, like me, you will also like this book. So … bonus?

All the Birds in the Sky uses a climate change apocalypse as its main source of conflict. However, the book isn’t so much about long-term anthropogenic global warming as it is the conceitedness of people who believe we can just engineer our way out of the problem (or, indeed, just dispose of this entire planet and move elsewhere). Anders reminds us that science is not a value-neutral proposition, that it is influenced by the biases of those who do it. I see all these wide-eyed articles about how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and all these billionaires are funding moonshot-style projects to give us more energy, mine asteroids, or take us to Mars. And that’s fascinating, and it might even lead to appreciable improvements in our lives. But it also comes from a position of wealth and privilege that most people don’t inhabit, and such positions tend to bring a certain level of hubris.

Very often, narratives that critique the use of science to manipulate or control nature fall back on the idea that magic is somehow the bond between nature and humans. Scientists (and rationality) become a strange, outsider phenomenon. See this, for example, in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home. Anders’ portrayal of magic is more Earthsea than that: the witches in this book are very well aware of the problems that having power brings—they call it Aggrandizement, and it’s a constant source of frustration for Patricia to be accused of it.

Patricia and Laurence are interesting, flawed, dynamic main characters, and their weird non-romantic romance is one reason I kept reading. I like how they both make mistakes, misunderstand one another, and give up on each other at different times. By showing us their childhoods, Anders helps us understand what drives them as adults. I particularly enjoyed this exchange near the end:

“Remember when we were kids?” He hander he a hot mug. “And we used to wonder how grown-ups got to be such assholes?”

“Yeah.”

“Now we know.”

“Yeah.”

That really underscores the arc of this book. Patricia and Laurence try so hard to forge their own paths. In the end, they are pulled into the larger problems that face our society, and in becoming embroiled in those problems, ignore things that are important to them (as seen by Laurence’s deteriorating relationship with Serafina, or Patricia’s inability to relax and have a life beyond doing magic).

For such an amazing and fascinating book, though, the ending disappoints me. It’s somewhat of a deus ex machina, and while that is acceptable in this situation, I’m not sure I like the message I see in it. If it’s bad to assume that humans can fix what we’ve done to the environment purely through a technical solution, isn’t it just as bad to put our faith in some kind of alien entity (albeit one birthed by humans?)? Isn’t this just a techno-magical spin on the Kurzweilian idea that the Singularity will fix everything? I know Anders doesn’t take it quite that far, leaving the ending more ambiguous, but I’m still uneasy. Patricia and Laurence walking off into the brave new world feels more like an abrogation of responsibility than anything else.

Oh man, I did not pick the right time to start reading Haters: Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online (yay Oxford comma!). I started this two days before the American Election Day, and then after those results, I just had to kind of … put it down a bit. I was planning to read it over a week or so, because like Indigenous Writes, this is an academic-but-accessible book about some heavy stuff, and reading it in one or two sittings wasn’t going to do me any favours. Bailey Poland speaks knowledgeably and constructively about exactly what it says in the title. She grounds the book both in academic theory and in recent, important examples of targeted abuse and hatred campaigns online. The result is a book both illuminating and, at times, galvanizing—but it’s also a heavy subject. Trigger warning for abusive, misogynistic language and gendered insults.

Poland acknowledges her own privileges upfront. Moreover, she repeats this throughout the book. I really like this. She says near the beginning:

Sexism as it affects online life is the major focus of this work, with the key caveat that online harassment and abuse are rarely—if ever—linked to gender alone.

(It’s at this point that I started to think I’d really like this book.) Towards the end, as she examines the explicit theoretical roots of cyberfeminism, Poland adds:

A modern cyberfeminism must be an intersectional cyberfeminism, with room to examine how technology and the Internet can be used to combat multiple oppressions, rather than creating easy metaphors that erase variety and disguise problems that have many roots.

I appreciate that Poland acknowledges her privilege and some of the privilege and biases present in the work of her predecessors. In doing this, she avoids some of the “white feminist” problems that plague a lot of feminist discourse, particularly within the spaces of tech and the Internet. Poland attempts to spotlight and centre the struggles that Black women and trans women, in particular, face, without trying to speak for these groups (as she does not belong to them).

The first part of the book is devoted to defining, explaining the origins of, and categorizing cybersexism. Although Poland mostly discusses explicit examples of misogynistic acts and utterances, she also mentions the unconscious bias that pervades online spaces:

For example, the design of technology to suit an ideal user (presumed to be male) or to make it more difficult for women to access and use is also cybersexism. Some examples include making smartphones too large for the average woman’s hand, health and fitness tracking apps that exclude menstruation (or regard the tracking of menstruation as only for cisgender women and aimed only at pregnancy) or designing a “revolutionar”y heart implant that works for 86 percent of men and only 20 percent of women.

I’ve long been fascinated by science and technology, but I also grew up believing science was this objective, neutral pursuit. Even after I started understanding gender issues and feminism, it took me a long time to come around to the idea that science is as much of a social construct as something like gender. So this is a theme that is close to my heart, because even though I don’t go around cussing out women on the Internet, my behaviours can still be sexist. The mostly-male teams designing the technologies Poland mentions above are not sitting around going, “Hey, how can we make the world more awesome, except for women?” This is being done because people aren’t stopping to think about how users other than themselves might experience the technology—and, of course, because not enough women are represented in the field.

Poland goes on to examine some specific examples of massive abuse campaigns, most notably Gamergate. (I had totally missed Christina Hoff Sommers’ involvement with Gamergate, so that was interesting to learn about.) With well-cited reference to studies and philosophers of technology and power, Poland notes how “online spaces have always been, and remain, areas where dominance and control remain deeply important”, and so:

In many ways that’s the true purpose of cybersexist abuse; to wear down individual women so that they give up and leave the space to the men.

This type of silencing is so troubling to me. It’s not just outright physical threats of violence. It’s more pernicious than that. And for those of us who are not exposed to such levels of abuse, this silencing is even easier for us to overlook, ignore, and erase. In doing so, even those of us with the best of intentions unintentionally contribute to the silencing of women, and that makes online spaces all the poorer.

Fortunately, Haters is not just about the harassment that women experience. It is also a call to action. Poland addresses multiple stakeholders who can solve this problem. She calls on social media platforms to take more responsibility for preventing harassment without putting the onus on the victim. She calls on politicians and law enforcement to recognize online harassment for the serious problem it is, and to educate themselves so they understand what it means when someone reports being doxxed or is worried they’ll be swatted.

Finally, she passes on Leigh Alexander’s advice to men:

She suggests that men need to stop asking women what to do, stop expecting women to educate them about the abuse they are suffering, stop trying to explain the harassment, and stop telling women how to respond to it.

Again, this is another one of those times that even well-intentioned allies can get it wrong and exacerbate a situation. It’s really natural to ask someone to explain an issue to you, especially when, as an ally, you’ve just started to learn that you should listen to the voices of marginalized people instead of talking over them. But it’s not the job of women to educate men about the harassment they are facing. If women like Poland and Alexander and Quinn, et al, want to speak out about it, then hell yeah we should listen—but we shouldn’t demand it of them.

So I’ll amplify what Poland is saying in Haters (so you can get the gist of it, until you read it yourself, obviously). Men should be more aware of how their privilege helps them, blinds them, and affects those around them. We should help women one-on-one, without emphasizing their role as victims. We should reach out and help educate other men, because we shouldn’t assume that women are going to do it for us.

As I’m writing this review, I’m doing two things that demonstrate the paradox of the Internet. First, I’m watching Desert Bus for Hope 10, a streaming charity marathon where a large group of people play a boring video game 24/7 to raise money for Child’s Play Charity. During the run, the group interacts with people in a chatroom, busks by performing challenges to drum up donations, and runs silent and live auctions and giveaways. There are celebrity call-ins, and good times are had. It’s all for the children, and Desert Bus manages to raise an incredible amount of money every year. This marathon is one of my favourite annual events, and it is an example of how the Internet can help bring strangers together to help other strangers. There is a wonderful power here—but there are biases too.

The second thing I’m doing is watching a woman I follow on Twitter, an author, deal with days-long misogynistic and anti-Semitic abuse because she dared to email an elector with her opinion about why he shouldn’t vote for Donald Trump in December. She posted the rude response that she received, and this led to more hatred and abuse. She is far from the only woman I follow on Twitter whom I’ve seen deal with this or talk about it; and they all deal with it far more than I know about. And I’m really sad that this happens, that people feel it’s OK to do this—and that too many bystanders let it happen or don’t consider it a serious problem because “it’s online” and therefore not real.

I don’t experience this type of abuse. I’m a nobody, so I don’t get any abuse, and even if I did, I’m white and male and able-bodied and present straight, so I have a whack of privilege that insulates me from these experiences. I’m so insulated, in fact, that if I didn’t pay attention and go out looking for these incidents, and books about these incidents like Haters, I could miss them. I could believe that the problem is not as widespread, urgent, or harmful as women claim it is.

Here’s the thing about whether or not you should believe women when they say they’re being harassed.

Many, many women can tell you stories of being harassed. So either you believe them, or you don’t. If you don’t believe women, it means you think they are lying (or mistaken because aren’t they all overly-emotional and sensitive?). And the idea that women, as a category of people, are deceptive, is stereotypical and sexist.

Believing women is a prerequisite for feminist thought and, you know, being a decent human being.

Unfortunately, those of us with male privilege often have experiences that make it hard for us to understand the perspectives that many women have as a result of their experiences. And it’s for this reason that I feel Haters is essential reading for men more so than for women, for whom much of this book will probably feel very obvious and familiar. Not saying women shouldn’t read this book—academically it’s quite interesting—but it will hopefully be more useful for men like me who better want to understand these experiences that we just don’t have.

Haters does feel very academic, coming as it does with numerous references and a very dry, didactic tone. Unlike more polemical feminist non-fiction, then, it took a little longer for me to read—but that makes it no less useful. I wouldn’t recommend starting out here (go read Unspeakable Things first!), but if you want to continue to broaden your understanding of the complicated ways in which the Internet can be harmful for women and other marginalized groups, Haters is a great resource.

Thanks to NetGalley and the University of Nebraska Press for allowing me to read an electronic ARC of this book.

It’s strange, because Neuromancer is over 30 years old and relies on concepts of technology that have diverged from our own world (Gibson’s cyberspace and the visualizations it birthed seem remarkably quaint these days)—yet in almost every respect, it holds up far better than Zero History, which is only 6 years old.

It was the constant use of the word iPhone that got to me. Every character kept taking out their iPhone—not their phone, but their iPhone. These days, of course, unless we particularly want to telegraph a character’s brand allegiance, we would just say phone. It’s assumed to be a smartphone. But in 2010, smartphones were still the new kid on the block, and iPhones the poster child of this technology. So it makes total sense for Gibson to do this, but it means that only 6 years on, Zero History already feels ancient.

We’re back with Hollis Henry, Milgrim, and Hubertus Bigend again. This time Bigend ensnares Hollis and Milgrim to sleuth for the mysterious creator of the Gabriel Hounds line of clothing. It’s some gambit to corner some market or another in the usual ineffable way that Gibson has of presenting Bigend as a kind of capitalist artistic genius. As with Spook Country, the actual details aren’t supposed to be important. What’s important are the ways in which our protagonists negotiate the parameters created by the changing technologies of our world.

Surveillance is a heavy spectre over this novel. The title itself refers to the idea of evading or outsmarting surveillance, as Garreth and Hollis do towards the end of the novel with his T-shirt hack for the surveillance cameras. Who can see us, who we let see us, is a very important factor in our interactions. Seeing and being seen provides leverage. Whether it’s Sleight tracking Milgrim, or Bigend(?) tracking Hollis, surveillance is an indication of power dynamics, a tool for control—but also something we willingly submit to, if we think we get something in return.

I had no trouble getting into Zero History, because sinking into a Gibson novel is like sinking into a bath of the perfect temperature. His prose style is distinctive. I love the little notations he makes on what characters are wearing, or something they’re doing, that calls to mind the tenor of the moment. When a character is exhausted, we feel their exhaustion. He’s not an overly descriptive writer, but he makes each word count towards an overall description.

I had considerably more trouble finishing the book, unfortunately, because it seems to lack much in the way of plot. Hollis is ostensibly searching for the Hounds designer, all right, but she and Milgrim meander around London and Paris for a while, and he kind of spies for an American law enforcement agent, and … there just doesn’t seem to be much driving the first two thirds of the book. Then, as if a switch were flipped, the last third is this energetic, over-the-top thriller involving double crosses and body doubles and drones with tasers and weird special ops knowledge coming out from left field.

The whole experience left me dissatisfied, because it just felt so uneven. I want to be able to gush about William Gibson’s writing, because he really does have a unique and interesting perspective on digital technologies’ intersections with our lives. But the meat of Zero History, the story, does not excite or dazzle me—in fact, just the opposite. Instead of seeing a fresh new way of looking at our world, I’m seeing something that feels off, a little stale, and not all that interesting. I don’t know if that’s the book, or if it’s just me, or if it’s a combination of these things and maybe the particularly time and place where I’m reading it.

Regardless, Zero History did not make the same impression that many of Gibson’s other works have left with me.

That Cayce cameo is double-A-plus nice, though.

Somebody’s getting married!

It’s not Marco. That would be weird. Applegate has a lot of messed up stuff in Animorphs, including child soldiers, but not child brides (or grooms).

No, Marco’s dad has a new love interest, and it’s serious. Marco doesn’t know how he feels about this, what with his mother still being alive but playing host to an evil alien bent on killing or subjugating all humans. Unfortunately, the Animorphs have a new mission, so Marco doesn’t have time to sit in a dark room processing his emotions by listening to increasingly intense ’90s alt rock. He has to deal with it like a man, which is to say, bottling those emotions up until they explode in uncontrollable rage-morphing that compromises the mission and ruins everything. But in a manly way.

The Proposal has lots of interesting ideas but doesn’t really get off the ground. I’m coming to the conclusion that Marco is funnier when he isn’t the narrator. As the narrator he’s a bit of a downer. With that wall stripped away, we really get to see the hollow shell of the child Marco once was—and while this is illuminating, it is not as humorous as when Marco is cracking wise in other Animorphs’ stories.

Moreover, the pacing of this book is just bizarre. Dropping in a stepmom for Marco is something that could have been spread over multiple books. There’s the barest of nods to the Animorphs investigating Norah to see if she is a Controller, and that’s about it. Otherwise, we just learn that she has been dating Marco’s dad for a few months now. Was this happening during previous books, and Marco just never mentioned it? Or has it been months since the last book? There’s very little dramatic tension with this subplot, very little conflict: we know she is not a Controller; we know they are getting married, etc. By the end of the book, Marco admits that he is slightly overreacting and it’s not going to be a huge deal.

In other words, there is either not enough happening here or too much happening for it to be crammed into one book.

The other plot, the Animorphs’ latest mission, concerns a particular celebrity Controller whom they try to discredit. I really like the idea behind this one, because the Animorphs have to concoct a plan to make the Controller break his character so that he ruins his host’s reputation. It’s much more subtle than we usually see in this series—although the Animorphs often use smaller morphs for spying and infiltration, this is one of the few times we see them go on the offensive without literally tearing holes in walls (well, that happens too). However, it seems to be at odds with Marco’s intermittent inability to control his morphing. If the two plots worked better together, this might be a tenser, more interesting book. As it is, The Proposal is a hot mess.

Fortunately, I get to read the utterly amazing Visser special next before diving back into the regular series, and I am very much looking forward to that. One of the best things about Animorphs is its ability to promote empathy. While Visser Three is a nasty dude, the idea that we can get inside his head and understand why he became such a nasty dude is an important one. But more on that in the next review!

My reviews of Animorphs:
← #34: The Prophecy | #36: The Mutation → (And then Visser, promise.)

It always tickles me when people criticize progressive portrayals of social justice in historical settings as being “unrealistic” even when those books have magic in them. Leaving aside the fact that there have always been radicals in every era, if you can stomach sorcerers and fae in your story, you should be able to accept that some men in Georgian England might want women to be educated.

I’ve had an ebook of Sorcerer to the Crown for ages but am only now getting around to reading it after receiving it in the Book Riot September Book Mail box. Boy, was I missing out! Zen Cho has created an excellent alternative history fantasy here, complete with everything from class/race/imperialism consciousness to kickass magic scenes and political intrigue.

I’m seeing some criticism that the book is slow to start, and I would agree. That might seem like a strange statement, considering that Cho immerses us in several mysteries. Why is Britain’s access to magic, which seeps into the world from Faerie, dwindling? Zacharias Wythe has become the Sorcerer Royal under mysterious circumstances, and although we don’t believe those nasty rumours he killed Sir Stephen, why exactly is Sir Stephen’s ghost hanging around with him, and where is the Sorcerer Royal’s familiar, Leofric? These conundrums, combined with the more existential opposition Zacharias faces as a Black, former slave acceding to the position of Sorcerer Royal, should be enough to get Sorcerer to the Crown off to a marvellous start.

Perhaps it is this overabundance of potential conflict that slows down the story. There isn’t much magic happening at first. Instead, we spend most of our time hearing about how Zacharias needs to leave London for his own good, or seeing the Government attempt to manipulate him for their own ends. Cho doesn’t infodump on us, but she tries to manage a lot of plots at once, so she has a hard time bringing any one of them into focus.

This all changes when Prunella enters the picture. I actually don’t like Prunella much (I find her annoying precocious and rude), but I love the role that her character plays and her effect on Zacharias and the novel. What we essentially have in the meet-cute is the beginning of a Power Couple who can set magic in Britain on its head. And then we get this passage, wherein Zacharias mulls over the question of educating magical women properly in the craft, which I love:

But could female ability be any argument for encouraging women to exercise it? Surely feminine magic must be curbed, magic being so peculiarly detrimental to women’s delicate frames. Besides, magic was too hard to come by in these days for it to be frittered away in women’s frivolities—ballgowns and christening gowns and gowns of other descriptions.

I love this, because Cho depicts Zacharias both as a radical and as a man of his own time. On the one hand, he can empathize with Prunella’s situation, because like her he has experienced oppression and discrimination as a result of his skin colour and a taint of “foreignness” about him. On the other hand, he is a man, who has been raised in English society, and therefore acquired certain ideas about women. Rather than portraying Zacharias as a feminist crusader from the beginning, Cho smartly has him come around to these ideas gradually. He starts as an open-minded but somewhat biased male, and as he gets to know Prunella better and thinks more on the subject, he changes his mind. We need to see more of this in fiction: the flawed characters who make the same journeys we have to make.

As the story picks up, the disparate plot elements converge in a very pleasing way. Cho adds in critiques of nineteenth century English imperialism, particularly in Southeast Asia. She delivers some low-key romance, which is very satisfactory in the way it doesn’t eclipse the main plot. The thaumaturgical antagonists are disappointingly obtuse and one-dimensional, but I liked most of the Faerie elements. “Faerie” itself is such a generalized, often-used creation these days that it has almost become a trope in and of itself. Cho does some interesting things with it, particularly when it comes to familiars and their relationship with their sorcerer masters, to keep it fresh.

I also really enjoyed the ending. I like Zacharias’ solution to his ethical dilemma, and the way that Cho essentially bursts this whole gender thing wide open. This lays the ground for such an interesting new set of conflicts in the sequel! Similarly, the romance element of the book feels more natural and satisfying than if it had been a bigger part of the picture.

Sorcerer to the Crown is an exciting blend of historical fantasy, mystery, and socially aware commentary on gender and race. The diction and somewhat humorous lens will be familiar to anyone who has read modern writing set in Georgian or Regency England. Additionally, Cho’s characters are intriguing and diverse. I’m reminded a bit of Steeplejack, which, like Sorcerer to the Crown, is a slow burn to start but a brief candle by the end.

A victim turns into a perpetrator; a naked body that people were willing to commit theft to see becomes unsightly and shameful the moment it’s exposed consensually. Sexually pure or sexual predator, uncorrupted virgin or corrupting whore, godly or Godzilla: These are the options. Thus are trainwrecks made.

Somehow, in the midst of the French Revolution, we, as humans, managaed to stumble onto one more crucial insight. The media could advance any political agenda it wanted, and whip up people’s emotions in any direction they felt necessary, and they didn’t even have to tell the truth to do it, as long as the other side was projected onto the body of an unlikable woman. There and then, in Theroigne and Marie, in war and blood and turmoil, the contemporary trainwreck was forged.

Oh my god give me all these books I want this entire series on my shelf right now. Alliance builds on the exciting promise made by S.K. Dunstall in Linesman to bring us a new space opera series that is bold both in its vision of interstellar politics and its cool SF technology. After a long time avoiding space opera (except to catch up on the good stuff I’ve missed) because of the overgrown weeds of nanotech posthumanism, I’m so happy to be enthusiastic about a brand new entry into this subgenre. While this particular instalment of the series didn’t excite me quite as much as Linesman, returning to Ean’s world and his quest to change humanity’s relationship to the alien lines is still a thrilling experience. As usual, no spoilers for this book, but spoilers for the previous one abound.

Picking up a few months after the ending of Linesman, Alliance shows us a human galaxy in a state of warmed-over cold war. Gate Union and the New Alliance are technically at war but basically not outright fighting, with each hoping that the other will blink. Smart money seems to be on Gate Union, since it controls the assignment of jumps—but the New Alliance’s privileged access to a fleet of alien ships throws a big unknown into this assessment. And so Dunstall immediately establishes the stakes: you know, nothing short of massive interstellar conflict and death and injury on a staggering scale. No pressure, Ean.

Whereas, in the first book, Ean is largely a marginalized figure who suddenly finds himself in the spotlight, Alliance sees him adapting to his more prominent role. He is in charge of training linesmen (and people passed over for line training) in his much-maligned method of singing to the lines. As this takes traction among the Alliance contingent, a faction within Gate Union plots to kidnap Ean and steal his secrets. But they fundamentally misunderstand both his role within the Alliance and the key to his skills, meaning that their kidnapping attempts fail comically. Meanwhile, any number of smaller schemes between factions or groups of individuals within the New Alliance threaten to impinge on Ean and his team’s attempts to master the alien ships they suddenly have access to. This last includes the political decision over who to appoint captain of the alien flagship, the Eleven. Who better than a traumatized captain only recently recovered from losing her ship in a sneak attack?

Looking back on that last paragraph, I marvel now at Dunstall’s ability to fit so much into such a confined volume! When reading the book, it didn’t really feel like a lot was happening. Yet there is so much; there are so many minor players and pawns involved, people I didn’t even mention—it is really a testament to the skill of sisters Sherylyn and Karen that they manage to keep it all together as a cohesive narrative. We’re not quite talking A Song of Ice and Fire level complexity here—Dunstall sensibly keeps the narration following Ean and Selma Kari Wang, for the most part, with a few interjections from third parties. Nevertheless, Alliance has a decent plot density that really contributes to what people often talk about when they toss around terms like worldbuilding. Without going into too much exposition about this universe, Dunstall manages to describe its functioning simply through the progression of the plot itself. Love it.

We learn a little bit more about the functions of the lines. Most of the developments, however, centre on Ean’s relationship to the other linesmen and how his training will affect their profession. I like the juxtaposition of Ean’s disruptive program with his cartel dealings with the Rickenback, Paretus, and Rigel. One really gets the sense that we’re in the middle of this intense paradigm shift in how humanity uses the lines. Outright mind-blowing revelation scenes are few and far between, but there are just so many moments of varying subtlety to indicate how the lines are more complex than linesmen have traditionally believed. From Ean’s observations of the captains of the Eleven’s fleet to the would-be kidnappers underestimating Ean’s abilities, it is clear that in this incipient war, technology might not be the determining factor so much as the ability to adapt to these new circumstances.

Some of my favourite characters, like Abram and Michelle, are more sidelined in this book. That makes me a little sad. This is the type of series, though, where the author will eternally have the dilemma of wanting to give a little fan service by giving us the same-old, same-old that we crave and actually challenging us by opening up new vistas. Abram’s promotion and subsequent replacement by Vega creates some necessary new conflict in Ean and Michelle’s life. I just wish we got more of these characters than we did! Still, I’m optimistic they will play larger roles next time around. Conversely, I could have done with even less of Stellan. His incompetence verged on dull at times. I admire how Dunstall uses his failure to emphasize the fundamentally flawed approach that Markan is taking to dealing with Ean and the Alliance. Nevertheless, he himself verges on a kind of buffoonish caricature of a villain, in my opinion. Hopefully as the war heats up we’ll see more sides to him.

Alliance introduces a new, significant protagonist in Selma Kari Wang. She complements Ean very well in so many respects. I also love how Ean is initially very excited by the way Eleven seems ready to bond with her, but when she inadvertently threatens the safety of the ship/fleet, he suddenly gets super protective. The fluidity and fragility of their fledgling relationship feels very real and organic. Similarly, Selma initially views Ean as a Lancastrian puppet and a know-it-all Level 10 linesman; she has no idea of what has happened in recent months because of her injuries. So she has to get up to speed, and both of them will gradually have to develop a working respect (one would hope).

If there is one thing I want to get across here, it’s the marvellous and myriad ways Dunstall creates and takes advantage of the opportunities for conflict within Alliance. In addition to the over-arching galactic conflict, there are so many little conflicts among minor characters, between people who are supposed to be allies, etc. Whether it’s the frenemy bromance brewing between Ean and Jordan Rossi or the grating tension between Ean and Vega, there are so many little sparks that could potentially become fires. Note that it’s the potential that matters: if everything developed into a full-blown subplot this book really would be longer than Game of Thrones … rather, Dunstall artfully picks and chooses which conflicts to emphasize and which to let simmer on the backburner, much like in real life. (And so we come to the dirty secret of space opera: it’s more about opera than it is about space; human conflicts, human stories, are the bread and butter. The “space” is just an excuse for everyone to wear form-fitting catsuits.)

Alliance did not wow me quite as much as Linesman did, that much is true. That’s partly just because Linesman was that good, though; don’t think of Alliance as worse, but simply as building off that platform. It furthers the story arc of the series and has kept me excited—so much so, in fact, that I pre-ordered Confluence, out in November, because I want that book as soon as I can get it, and, since there’s no point in owning just the third book in a series, I’ve bought these first two books as well.

I don’t know if this is a trilogy or an ongoing series—I eternally hold out hope for the latter, but even if it’s the former, I’ve high hopes for Confluence. Alliance left me with several questions, most of which I won’t get into so as to avoid spoilers, but here are the biggies: when will we meet aliens, and why hasn’t humanity run into them before?

I am looking forward to finding out!

My reviews of the Linesman series:
← Linesman | Confluence →

Spoilers for the first two books but not this one, except maybe a minor not-quite spoiler at the very end.

Hey, SyFy executives who totally spend their time reading some rando’s reviews on Goodreads when they should be doing Important Executive Things™: you need to option the Linesman series and develop it for TV like you did with The Expanse. You did a really good job with The Expanse, by the way; I’m back on board the SyFy train after those few rocky years. I think you’d do Linesman justice, and this is a series that needs to be adapted.

I’m not saying that because I think good books must inevitably be televised or turned into a movie in order to reach their zenith. No, this is purely selfish: I really need something to tide me over until the next Linesman book comes out. A TV series will do it.

Confluence is the third book in this series, and S.K. Dunstall is back in fine form. Whereas the previous book, Alliance, focused on fighting an external power play, this book’s politics turn inwards. Emperor Yu thinks Lancia got a raw deal when his daughter, Crown Princess Michelle, orchestrated its founding role in the New Alliance. So it’s a daddy vs daughter dynastic struggle, with Ean and friends caught in the middle. Fight!

Meanwhile, hold the phone, because we get a Radko POV.

Yeah, it’s everything it sounds like. And more. Radko gets sent off on a covert ops mission to Redmond. Everything goes horribly wrong (obviously), and she has to improvise big time. Although she does end up in a bit of a damsel-in-distress situation where Ean has to “rescue” her, I’d argue it’s forgivable because he wouldn’t even know how to find her if it weren’t for her quick thinking, nor would they be aware of the traitor in their midst. But … I promised no spoilers! Suffice it to say, Radko and her actions are pivotal to the plot of Confluence.

As I mentioned in my review of Alliance, Dunstall has a great knack for sowing the seeds of potential conflict throughout their characters. They show us multiple perspectives so we have an idea of the different plots afoot, yet you’re never 100 per cent certain who is on any given character’s side. It’s both maddening and exciting, and for people who have now grown up and grown used to epic storylines à la Game of Thrones, this series is going to hit that sweet spot. There isn’t as much senseless brutality as something like Game of Thrones, but the high-stakes politicking is there.

I’ve previous compared this series to the Vorkosigan saga and stand by it. If you’re missing Miles, then you should check out these books. There isn’t a single analogous character, but rather an ensemble cast—Ean, Radko, Abram, and Michelle all have aspects of Miles to them. This series also feels like a worthy spiritual successor to Dune. It emulates a lot of the feudal structures that both Bujold and Herbert brought into their space opera, allowing for the kind of romantic power struggles that are so difficult to replicate among parliamentary or congressional type governments. And, as with Dune’s novum of the spice, the lines in this series make for such an intriguing technology that humans only barely control and continue to explore.

That being said, don’t get the impression that this series is derivative. It’s a descendent, but it is its own story. You see this most clearly around the fringes of the narrative, which is to say, where the seams start to become more visible. For three books now, Dunstall has tantalized us with the promise of aliens. They are out there—they built the Confluence and the Eleven, and we have stasis-locked corpses of them now. But where are the living ones? How pissed off will they be when they discover that humanity has jacked their fleet? Again, no spoilers about what we learn in this book.

Suffice it to say, Ean continues his experimentation with the lines. We learn less about them than we have in previous books. Instead, the subplot here is more about the ethics around Ean’s experiments. Various figures voice differing degrees of concern, from Rossi’s conviction that Ean is an amoral madman to Helmo’s nervousness regarding cold jumps. It’s so interesting to see how Dunstall balances these moments. Even in situations when the plot would be more efficiently served by some handwaving and letting Ean get away with, say, monumental cold jumps, Dunstall often chooses the slower path. I was quite frustrated, sometimes, by the narrative’s unwillingness to just give the New Alliance the ability and comfort with cold jumping—but then again, that would make for a different book. I really applaud the way Dunstall doesn’t go for the low-hanging fruit but instead lays the groundwork for even better twists.

I love the way the characters disagree, confront each other, but reluctantly work together when necessary. We see this in Ean and Rossi, such polar opposites in so many ways. Rossi never misses a chance to get a dig in at Ean, who is becoming a little better at returning those serves; additionally, Rossi is quite vehement, even violent at times, in voicing his disapproval of how Ean is experimenting with the lines. Nevertheless, there are moments when Rossi backs up Ean or even gives him advice! Similarly, Radko finds help from unexpected quarters (no spoilers, but someone we know from Alliance!). Each character has their own strengths and flaws. Ean is a sublime level twelve linesman, but he is hopeless at politics and statecraft and knows it. So he can’t Mary Sue his way through the narrative; he can’t always get what he wants. (But he hopefully will get what he needs.)

The action scenes in this one are even stronger than the previous two. There’s so much happening here; the stories are so busy, but I was never confused about what was happening, where, or when. I don’t know how else to say this is except that I literally could not stop reading, could not wait to pick it up again when Real Life intervened (I intentionally waited until the weekend to read this so I could basically spend all of Saturday afternoon on it, stopping only to make dinner). There was one point where I literally leaned forward in my chair because I needed to read a scene faster lest it somehow escape from me.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: books are my drug. And when I find a good one, I mainline it until my supply runs dry. After discovering and devouring Linesman and Alliance in quick succession, I waited months for the release of Confluence. It met, maybe even exceeded, my expectations. Dunstall writes fun space opera with high stakes and awesome characters. I don’t really know what else to say. It sounds like they have more Linesman books planned but are writing a different space opera next. I’m down with that; I wish for more Linesman sooner rather than later, but I’m excited to see what they do next.

Now for the minor not-quite spoiler: as much as I shipped Ean and Rossi as frenemies, I totally ship Ean and Radko. They are so cute together.

My reviews of the Linesman series:
← Alliance

It’s entirely a coincidence that I read about Marie Antoinette in Trainwreck just prior to picking up Marie Antoinette’s Darkest Days. That being said, it was nice to have a little primer from Sady Doyle about why Antoinette is such a fascinating character from a feminist perspective. Here, Will Bashor pieces together Antoinette’s experiences while imprisoned in the Conciergerie prior to her trial and execution. He draws upon a wealth of primary sources in an attempt to fill a gap in his reading of histories and biographies of this queen. While he doesn’t always succeed at holding my interest, it’s undeniable that he has produced a work of detail and an elegantly structured resource for anyone trying to learn about the French Revolution.

Thanks to NetGalley and Rowman & Littlefield for providing an ARC of this book. My Kindle version wasn’t formatted very well. This book has lots of pictures that were just sort of haphazardly tossed in here, and the footnotes were scattered throughout the paragraphs (in red), like they had just scanned in the print edition and run OCR on it. There are also many extended quotations that are neither in quotation marks nor offset from the author’s text, so it can be hard to tell when they end. I say none of this to knock the book, for I’m sure the final editions will be professionally formatted—but I wanted to provide context for why I found this book difficult to read at times.

My main issue with Marie Antoinette’s Darkest Days arises from Bashor’s tone and decisions to convey so much of the primary source material directly to the reader. He warns in the Author’s Note:

Considering the efforts to reconstruct these scenes, readers may find that Marie Antoinette’s Darkest Days at times reads like a novel. However, with vigorous research and study of archived documents and secondary material from mostly eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources, I have made every effort to retell this incredible story as accurately as possible.

OK, unpopular opinion time: If you want to write a novel, write a novel. If you want to write a non-fiction history, write a non-fiction history.

Consider Alison Weir, whose fiction and non-fiction both I have enjoyed in the past. I know Weir’s non-fiction is a bit more pop than Bashor might be going for here. The point, however, is that she recognized when she wanted to make use of the conceits and freedom provided by a novel to explore a historical person and place. If Bashor wanted to write extended scenes of mostly dialogue, whether in transcript form or no, and plumb the depths of his characters’ minds … perhaps he should have written an actual novel, instead of writing a non-fiction book and then offering up the excuse that it “reads like a novel”.

I recognize that this is a stylistic quibble and that other readers can probably get over this hurdle just fine. Indeed, most of my criticism here is stylistic in nature. Marie Antoinette’s Darkest Days is far from a poor book in either structure or execution (uh, pardon the pun—and that one). It’s quite accessible to people like me, who only have a general knowledge of the French Revolution, despite Bashor offering little in the way of generalized exposition (there is a “prelude” at the front and a chronology, though, both of which are helpful). I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this as the very first book anyone reads about the Revolution, but you don’t need extensive background knowledge to follow what happens here.

By the same token, Bashor sticks to his topic. Any time he deviates from discussing Antoinette directly is only to discuss the key players in those last months of her life or the investigations surrounding plots to free her. He mentions the concurrent developments in France and political squabbles between Jacobins and Girondins only insofar as they are germane to Antoinette’s situation. I applaud this focus and ability to keep on track. Each chapter follows in a logical progression from the previous one, beginning with Antoinette’s transport to and imprisonment in the Conciergerie and ending with her trial and execution. (The trial chapters were a little boring. Again, lots of transcript and minute recounting every detail.) There’s even an epilogue that traces the decades following her death and the fates of those who survived her.

Marie Antoinette’s Darkest Days is at times too thorough, and this is the comment that both praises and damns the book. I can see this being a valuable resource for a student of French history, if only because Bashor has already done so much work for them in terms of finding primary and secondary sources and translating it into English. For more general audiences like myself, your reaction is likely to be far more mixed. If you’re really keen on learning about Antoinette, you will learn a little from here—though maybe not as much in her own words as you might expect.