I read Soon I Will Be Invincible in a single sitting (although the two-hour rain delay before the ball game began helped). It has an easygoing, tongue-in-cheek style that makes it a pleasure to read. Sometimes it feels like a comic book, other times it feels like a parody of the superhero/supervillain genre in general. In making an effort not to be too serious, Austin Grossman has created a literary mélange of [a:Douglas Coupland|1886|Douglas Coupland|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1264509011p2/1886.jpg]-style humour, characters worthy of [a:Jim Butcher|10746|Jim Butcher|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1205261964p2/10746.jpg]'s Dresden Files, and an offbeat sense of plot reminiscent of [a:Terry Pratchett|1654|Terry Pratchett|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1235562205p2/1654.jpg].

Now, to be fair to those three great authors, I'll state explicitly that they all do it better than Grossman. Soon I Will Be Invincible is good, but it has plenty of room for improvement. For instance, while the characters remind me of those in The Dresden Files owing to their attitude, most of them lack depth. The only characters we really learn much about are the two narrators--the villainous Doctor Impossible and the cyborg heroine Fatale--and Lily, Doctor Impossible's ex-girlfriend with a plot twist buried in her past.

While I can't speak for all readers, I found myself sympathizing most with Doctor Impossible. All he wanted was world domination--is that so much to ask?! Perhaps it was just the way Grossman had him narrate his chapters, but I found Doctor Impossible an entertaining character. Moreover, through him, Grossman explores the psyche of a comic-book-style supervillain: why he chose villainy instead of heroism and how this affects his ego and his plans. There's something to be said for having two-dimensional instead of three-dimensional characters--a well-rounded, morally-ambiguous villain is great, but sometimes snarling and nefarious evil-doers can be just as entertaining (for half the price!).

By contrast, the heroine half of this dynamic duo of narrators falls short of the mark. We're supposed to feel sympathy for Fatale, who chose to become a cyborg only because she was mortally wounded in a horrific traffic accident. There's a twist toward the end of the book where we learn more about Fatale's origins, but it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on the story other than a couple of throwaway lines; Lily's secret origin, on the other hand, actually drives the plot behind the scenes and leads us inexorably to the climax. I really enjoyed Lily and wondered what it would be like to have her as a narrator instead of Fatale. Then again, that would have made it hard to conceal her true origin from us (which I'm not going to reveal because I liked the twist).

Ultimately, the climax was disappointing compared to the rest of the book. However, this may be a problem with the genre itself (especially when writing from the perspective of the villain) rather than Grossman's overall style. You can't just have Doctor Impossible win, after all; as much as the reader might sympathize with him, he's still the bad guy. I just never really felt like there came a moment where he could possibly win, not even when he put the bad guys in their cages. And I think that in order for a story to truly transcend from "good" to "great," that moment has to exist, even if only for an infinitesmial time. Because that's the best moment of the book: you know the villain can't win, but it looks like, however impossible it may be, that he will win!

The fact that Doctor Impossible was outnumbered from the start and his reliance on a MacGuffin reduced the drama during the climax. This only worsens when Grossman begins trying to use the MacGuffin to explain away the entire plot, including giving a purpose to Elphin, the last fairy left behind on Earth by Titania for some great duty, which turns out to be tossing the MacGuffin into the ocean.

That's a marked departure from the early part of the book, where Grossman establishes a slowly-rising sense of suspense as Doctor Impossible escapes from prison and begins plotting his One World Domination Plan to Rule Them All. He trounces the heroes when they manage to stumble upon him in public; the heroes, of course, are busy squabbling among themselves and chasing uninformative leads while Doctor Impossible diligently pursues his plan for global conquest. Grossman depicts a nice dystopian world where being s superhero isn't all it's cracked up to be. A comparison, in this respect, to [b:Watchmen|472331|Watchmen|Alan Moore|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327866860s/472331.jpg|4358649] is on the tip of my tongue, but I don't know how to do it without insulting Watchmen....

Soon I Will Be Invincible is a supervillain story. It's got all the hallmarks: the megalomania, the bickering superheroes, and of course, the unwieldy doomsday plans. Doctor Impossible is a somewhat sympathetic, if a bit loquacious, character. Grossman's writing style is relaxed and witty. It's a good read, but don't go into it expecting too much.

I am so behind on my Angry Robot subscription. It’s bad, guys. I read Empire State 3 years ago, and The Age Atomic came out half a year later. I barely remember the first book—no, that’s a lie; I had entirely forgotten the first book. I remembered exactly none of the characters when Adam Christopher reintroduced them here. But the vague memories that I stir up from reading my review suggest that these two books are fairly disjoint.

If Empire State was a noir mystery built into a pocket universe, The Age Atomic is nukepunk baked into a thriller crust. Rad Bradley teams up with Jennifer Jones, who has spunk, and they tangle with some humans-turned-robots, and bad things happen. Meanwhile, in the New York side of things, Nimrod tries to figure out why a Doc Manhattan wannabe, Evelyn McHale, wants to destroy the universe.

So it goes.

Whereas Empire State had a fairly deep mystery to drive it, the sequel lacks that energy. Despite the literal chill enveloping the Empire State, most of the urgency in this plot comes from the main characters running away from bad guys. Don’t get me wrong—that’s a great way to add a sense of urgency. But the plot, meanwhile, plods along in the background.

I never cared strongly about any of the characters or their problems. For one thing, even though Jennifer’s motive for slumming it with people like Rad is so she can find her brother, we don’t learn much about her beyond that. Similarly, aside from a few sentences to remind us of his backstory, Rad remains opaque. The character development here is underwhelming, at best.

I guess the most impressive part of The Age Atomic is the surfeit of wise-cracking crazy anachronistic atomic-powered robots. And that is cool. But it’s cool in the way sugary kids’ breakfast cereal is cool: it tastes good and fills you up but is bad for you and leaves you hungrier in an hour. There are so many fascinating ideas here, sure. Yet they all feel like echoes of ideas that have shown up everywhere else already and been explored more deeply by those authors. Ghosts and transdimensional fissures and robots and nuclear madmen? I shouldn’t be yawning, but the way these ideas burst at the seams of The Age Atomic means Christopher can’t spend much time on many of them.

I powered through this like one of Christopher’s robot creations: single-minded but disinterestedly. To say this is a bad book oversimplifies things. It’s not what I consider a good read, but it’s more like one of those movies where the writer/director has tried to do something cool and you’re just not into it. In my previous review I commended Christopher for taking risks even if they don’t pay off, and I’ll echo that comment here. The Age Atomic is not for me, and maybe Christopher himself is not the writer for me. But I’m open to trying him again, later down the line, and seeing if that changes.

I love the idea of superhero fiction. I don't actually read that much, mostly because it comes in the form of comics and graphic novels. I don't have anything against those. They're just not my typical jam.

The sudden trend towards writing about superheroes in the novel form is a boon to me, then, because the novel is my jam. (I'm a little pessimistic about the shelf life of the novel as a form in the digital age, but that's another story.) In particular, in this translation of superheroes from pens and ink to the primarily written word, some writers are deconstructing the tropes of the superhero genre. Instead of writing stories that embrace the conventional attributes of the superhero and their role in the plot, these writers question what it means to be a superhero and explore the ramifications of a world in which people with superpowers exist and actually fight crime. In short, many superhero novels take a realist approach to the genre, something I find intriguing.

I wouldn't go so far as to call Seven Wonders realist, but it certainly has echoes of this approach. The superheroes in this novel age (for the most part), and there are physical consequences to their powers (except for those heroes powered by magic). However, Adam Christopher definitely questions the idea that superheroes are always a force for good and supervillains are always a force for evil. He casts doubt on the moral superiority of superheroes and questions whether great power, while conferring great responsibility, should also confer great privilege.

San Ventura is a distorted twin to the Metropolis of DC comics. In fact, it is part of a larger world in which superheroes are (or were) common and super-teams triumphed over almost all the supervillains. It's the Silver Age now, with the Cowl the only supervillain left worth fighting. Instead of every hero coming together to take him down, however, they seem content to retire and let the Seven Wonders team keep him contained in San Ventura. Oddly enough, only a few citizens in San Ventura have much of a problem with this. As the Cowl readies his latest devious machination, the Seven Wonders watch but do not interfere, his sidekick schemes, and some very motivated detectives with chips on their shoulder attempt to intervene.

Christopher carefully portrays most of the superheroes as the Other, as something not fully human. He never refers to them by their real, secret identity names; they are always “Aurora” and “Bluebell”. Only as the Cowl loses the last of his powers does his name revert; in the reverse direction, as Tony gains superpowers and begins crafting his superhero persona, Christopher gradually refers to him less and less by his civilian name and more often as the Justiciar.

Similarly, we get the sense that the superheroes have a slightly different idea of morality than civilians have. Although the Seven Wonders have a rigid “do not kill” rule, they seem content to stand back and let the Cowl run rampant through San Ventura, killing bystanders, provided he doesn’t step too far out of line. As the story unfolds, Christopher shows how the heroes make choices that increasingly isolate and distance them from the ordinary range of human emotion and ethics. This is true of all of them: Aurora, the leader, makes increasingly complicated schemes; Bluebell uses her mental powers to rearrange the memories of officers sworn to serve and protect merely to serve the Seven Wonders’ own ends; SMART’s logic processors go into overdrive and turn it against its own colleagues; Tony slowly loses his grip on reality as his newfound powers make him feel invincible.

Tony’s arc is one of the two emotional poles of this story and what helps to make the novel so compelling. It’s a lot of fun following Tony on his origin-story journey, watching as he discovers each successive power and its limitations and consequences. And it’s not just the powers, it’s the psychological consequences as well. Fearing discovery by the Seven Wonders, he and his girlfriend work on his powers in secret. It’s a similar but not identical situation to that of Superpowers; in this case, Tony is alone in his acquisition of powers. I could have read an entire novel about Tony’s journey alone.

But that’s not all Christopher gives us. He also explores the same journey in reverse: the dreaded Cowl is losing his powers (hmm, could that be related?—Christopher enjoys leaving clues for the attentive reader to unmask). His story is a race against time to acquire the equipment and information he needs for his final, nefarious plot. Christopher alternatively asks us to sympathize with or disparage the Cowl, once again preferring to paint these people as morally ambiguous rather than comic-book good or evil.

This is all very satisfying, and in these respects, Seven Wonders succeeds as a superhero novel. However, as with Empire State, I still have issues with Christopher’s characterization. It has indubitably improved, but there is still a way to go. This isn’t all down to Christopher, though. I feel like there is something inherently challenging about characterizing superheroes. The sheer profusion of names, aliases, and litany of powers and abilities creates a jargon all on its own.

Still, there are a lot of developments that seem to come out of left field. Christopher does an admirable amount of foreshadowing, but the meandering direction of the plot means our heroes spend a lot of pages going from place to place and talking about how they will deal with the threat rather than actually dealing with it. For a book about superheroes, the number of pages actually portraying superpowered battles is disappointingly small. I had a good handle on the plot for the first half of the book, but as it went on, I felt that handle slipping away.

Seven Wonders, like Christopher’s first venture, is an ambitious book set in an interesting world. It starts off strong but fizzles towards the end. It’s definitely worth reading, for it is both entertaining and thoughtful in its treatment of superhero tropes. Yet it ultimately doesn’t quite achieve the lofty goals it sets for itself.

I was kind of excited about Superpowers when I first added it to my to-read list, way back in the day. When I borrowed it from the library, that ardour of anticipation had cooled, and I braced myself for apathy or outright dislike. Superhero fiction just seems like a disappointing genre for the novel these days. It’s not that the superhero novels I’ve been reading are bad. No, it’s worse—they are bland. Soon I Will Be Invincible had an exciting premise and perspective but fizzled; although Empire State had a tighter plot but still struggled with its characterization. And that’s what it comes down to, it seems. So much of this superhero fiction seems to stumble after the superpowered part of the story.

So I’m happy to report that David J. Schwartz avoids this pitfall with Superpowers. Though I have plenty to critique, I really enjoyed the characters in this one. They are complex; they change; and they are more than just their superpowers. As I was reading, I could feel my scepticism melting away and my cynicism slowly lifting. I began to permit myself to enjoy the book for what it was. In addition to these success, Schwartz attempts to probe some of the deeper and more meaningful implications of superheroes within our society. He includes a predictable—and therefore reassuring—narrative structure to achieve this.

Each chapter has a date. The first chapter is “Sunday, May 19, 2001.” The book does not stop at the end of August. From the beginning, Schwartz signals a deliberate choice to set this book around a major, terrible event in recent world history. After every few chapters, we get a short commentary from the book’s “editor”, a conspiracy-theory–prone student who knows the five superpowered main characters (dubbed the “All Stars” by the media) and eventually unearths their secret. He presents Superpowers as a fictionalized recounting, based on interviews with one of the members of the team, of the All Stars’ formation and decline. Though Hatch occasionally reminds us of his agenda, he largely remains an uninvolved narrator/editor.

I understand but don’t share the dissatisfaction that some might feel over Schwartz’s choice of time period. The other significant factor in any is the place: Superpowers takes place in Madison, Wisconsin—not New York. Had Schwartz set it in the latter city, this would have been a very different book; the All Stars would have been more directly involved in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. By setting it farther from the scenes of the destruction, Schwartz is able to distance his superheroes—who remain aggressively local and “small-time” throughout the novel—from the specifics of the event even as he hitches his star to the mood it creates. In so doing, he can examine the paradoxes of society’s attitude towards superheroes as well as the psychological effect of their powers and heroics on the characters themselves.

It’s possible to do all that without reference to September 11, of course. However, that event offers a touchstone that will be familiar to most readers. It will forever be a part of our discourse about superheroes—what does it mean to be a superhero, an American superhero, in the post-9/11 world? How has this changed the American attitude towards superheroes like Superman? And if you were one of five college students who suddenly found themselves with powers, and 9/11 happened, how would that affect your nascent self-image as a superhero?

Through his ensemble cast, Schwartz looks at different aspects of the way superpowers alter his characters’ identities. Harriet, the reporter, the interviewer, can be come invisible. Caroline, after years of supporting herself because of an irresponsible mother, feels the freedom of flight. Mary Beth, whose parents died in an automobile accident, is super-strong and invulnerable. Jason finds his super-speed invigorating. Charlie is cursed with the ability to read minds, but he manages eventually to make the best of it. (I’m just summarizing here. It gets deeper than this, but I don’t want to bog down by digressing and analyzing each character.)

The All Stars confine themselves to fighting crime within Madison, making waves with the local police and media but not really achieving a national profile. At first the police engage in some sabre-rattling, but for the most part they don’t pursue the All Stars’ identity with anything approaching diligence. The only cop remotely interested in unmasking them happens to be Harriet’s father. Later, after 9/11 as well as an unrelated incident in which the All Stars created some collateral human damage, Harriet’s father feels the pressure from his superiors to crack the case. Schwartz both creates a good amount of tension but also allows the plot to develop and advance, so it never gets stale.

Superpowers lacks one of the major defining traits of superhero fiction: a supervillain. The fictitious editor of the book acknowledges this. And it makes sense given what it seems what Schwartz is trying to do. The emphasis on the internal conflicts that result from these superpowers—and, to some extent, conflicts among the group or with family members—would be overshadowed by an external nemesis. However, the lack of a supervillain means that Schwartz has to work harder to provide our heroes with actionable threats—instead of just more angst. In this respect, I’m not as convinced he succeeds.

I was really getting into the book by the time it hit September 11. As I said above, I liked their reactions to it. Unfortunately, the book starts to fizzle from there. The various members of the All Stars start to go their separate ways. Caroline is searching for her mother in New York following the destruction of the Twin Towers. Jack is dealing with the adverse effects of his superspeed. Charlie has another breakdown. I’m extremely disappointed by the handling of Mary Beth’s conflict. Earlier in the book, just prior to the September 11 attacks, Schwartz shoehorns in a Muslim character like some kind of afterthought. It’s clumsy and contrived. All this happens at once, but with no sense of direction and no satisfying conclusion, the climax and denouement are both quite disappointing.

The choice of title is a curious one as well. Superpowers isn’t really about the superpowers these people receive. Schwartz provides no explanation, no origin story beyond “we all got drunk at a ragin’ party and woke up with powers”, and then he throws that lack of an explanation in our faces like a challenge. The origin story is a pivotal moment in every superhero’s life. We get no explanation for why these people are special. This undermines the extensive attempts to use their superpowers to talk about their psychology and their identity (which is a shame, because I quite liked that aspect of the book!).

Schwartz takes the “ordinary people suddenly have abilities” story and dresses it up in fancy new clothes. He sets it during an interesting period of recent history, and he does a good job using this preparation to explore how superpowers change people. Despite its problems, I still enjoyed Superpowers. However, it has plenty of rough edges that I suspect would make those less charitable groan and gripe.

Reading Iron Sunrise has been a long time in coming, ever since I read Singularity Sky. I finally got around to ordering a copy and dug into it when I realized I needed a good science fiction read. As usual, Charles Stross delivers on all sorts of quixotic ideas that I love in my science fiction. I like the posthuman parts of Iron Sunrise even better than its predecessor, and its action scenes are definitely superior. My criticisms of it are similar to the ones I levelled at Singularity Sky too.

Though technically a sequel to Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise can be read standalone. They share two main characters, so the only real spoiler is that these characters survive the first book. Otherwise, no knowledge of the original book is required to understand or enjoy this adventure. Stross explains once again the premise of this universe: a human-created AI from the future, the Eschaton, relocates 90% of Earth’s population some time in the twenty-first century. Fast forward three hundred years, and Earth and these relocated worlds have recovered (but diverged) and humanity is now flourishing on any number of worlds connected by superluminal travel. However, the Eschaton rigorously polices any attempts to turn that superluminal capability into time travel—causality violations are harshly dealt with.

The title of the book refers to exactly such a violation. Someone uses a weapon to destroy the sun orbited by a human world called Moscow. The sun explodes, creating the “Iron Sunrise” that releases a deadly radiation shockwave. This precipitates any number of events that eventually become relevant to the story, from the evacuation of Wednesday from Old Newfie to the fleet of slower-than-light vessels that threaten New Dresden. But the bottom line is that a causality violation weapon happened … and the Eschaton didn’t stop it. That’s bad news (for someone).

This book features a shifting and large cast of characters. Wednesday is the first main character we meet and, in my opinion, probably the coolest. She is young and inexperienced, and this shows. But I like her grit; I like that she questions whether Herman has her best interests at heart even as she uses the information and training he provides her. I like that she makes mistakes and isn’t a whiz-kid who is always one step ahead of the bad guys. Finally, I like that when Stross kills off certain people close to her, she does not just shrug and get on with her life; instead, her grief becomes a major plot point towards the end of the book.

Rachel Mansour, also featured in Singularity Sky, is the other most prominent protagonist. I like Rachel too, though I find her voice in this narrative flatter than Wednesday’s. There is something about the combination of her practised indignation and her self-confidence that rings false to me—or at least, it feels too familiar, like Rachel is just another one of those hyper-capable science fiction heroes we see too often in these stories. That being said, I appreciate how Stross portrays her reluctance to get back into “the game”, so to speak. Rachel is a very capable person, but she also has desires beyond being a soldier or fixer for this UN body.

(I was also not down with the scene near the beginning of Rachel’s appearance where she has to use sexual, seductive-type techniques to help defuse a bomb. It’s dumb and sexist, and worse, it’s dumb and sexist in a book that is otherwise full of smart and diverse female characters, protagonists and antagonists. And I suppose Stross is trying to play it as a commentary on the weaknesses of the patriarchy and the way smart women can exploit those, but I still don’t like it.)

I could continue talking about the half-dozen other named characters who get narrative time, but I don’t think I will. Iron Sunrise introduces almost too many characters, in my opinion—at least, I feel like parts of it are very extraneous indeed. In the end, I guess it kind of all comes together; I certainly like how the minor problem Rachel is facing at the very beginning turns into something linked to the larger ReMastered threat, suggesting a much richer story at work in the background. However, this 400 page book took much longer to read than I anticipated, and I blame some of that on how the number of main characters dilutes the intensity of the storytelling.

There are two complementary aspects of this book that make it good for me. First, there are the obvious science-fictional, posthuman elements. I’m labelling this book a “space opera” even though, technically, I don’t think it really falls under that genre—though it could if it wanted to. It has the setting of a space opera if not the story elements. It isn’t just the “big idea” stuff, like blowing up suns or time-travelling AIs. It’s the small things: the communication rings that people use, the smart-fabric that allows them to change fashion so quickly, etc. Stross is really good at imagining not just the technology that will take us to other stars but the ways in which faster and more miniature computing is changing our daily lives. Despite being written over ten years ago now and the fast pace of technological development, Iron Sunrise doesn’t yet feel outdated or obsolete, nor will it likely be in the foreseeable future.

Coupled to the technology, though, is the thriller plot. Because that’s basically what this novel becomes in the third act: the good guys are all aboard a FTL liner with the bad guys, who pre-emptively hijack it, and shit goes down. It’s tense and exciting; there is a lot of disguising and doubletalk and backstabbing and double-crossing! The best thing is, most of what happens could easily have been written as a thriller set in the present day. But I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much then. Stross takes the plot, dresses it in the trappings and tropes of science fiction, and makes it more interesting. I’m reminded a little bit here of The Expanse, which does something similar with political intrigue. Science fiction is useful as a tool for social commentary (of which Iron Sunrise has some, albeit in fairly non-subtle ways), but it is also a fantastic vehicle for breathing new life into old or often-used plots.

Having read a lot of Stross’ work now, I can safely say this is neither among his best nor his worst efforts. I like it, and I think people who have never read one of his novels before will like it. At the same time, I’d also caution that this isn’t representative of all his novels. If anything, Iron Sunrise reminds me how versatile Stross is. While it shares a certain fascination with economics and the wider picture of stochastic changes to complex systems, it is markedly different from his Laundry Files series, for example, or his near-future Scottish crime novels. It will go on my Stross shelf, but it’s probably not the first Stross I’ll re-read.

These “Chronicles” special volumes are always a delight. Visser is the story of Visser One, aka Edriss 562, whose host body is also Marco’s mom. Visser One is on trial by the Council of Thirteen, the ultimate governing body of the Yeerks, subject only to the whims of the Yeerk Emperor, whose identity is known only to the council members. Visser Three is prosecuting the trial, and his rivalry with Visser One is a major source of conflict in this book. Visser One must tell the story of how she discovered Earth’s existence and made preparations for the Yeerk invasion—meanwhile, Marco and the Animorphs might be her only hope of getting out of this trial alive.

There is so much to love about this book!

First, we get unprecedented exposure to internal Yeerk politics. Up until this point, all we really knew about the Yeerks was that they have an “empire” with military positions including vissers, sub-vissers, etc. We knew that Vissers One and Three have a long-standing rivalry over how to handle the invasion of Earth. Visser One sheds more light on this in her story, and through her, Applegate reveals the schism within the empire: all Yeerks want Earth, but how to get it remains up in the air. Visser Three is pressing for an all-out invasion, to conquer humanity by force. This puts the reader in the awkward position of sympathizing with Visser One’s point of view, because even if she is arguing for the invasion of Earth, she is at least keeping it on the down-low. At one point, Marco briefly muses whether all-out warfare wouldn’t be a bad thing—at least the Animorphs would not have to hide, then. (Ugh, so much foreshadowing!) Yet Visser One points out that this would cause an immense death toll. Hence, the complexity of this problem should not be understated.

Given that this book is from her point of view, Visser One appearing as more sympathetic probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. Nevertheless, I don’t think we had a grasp on how close Visser One is to turning traitor. She pretty much admits in this book to falling in love with humanity, to forming some kind of weird marriage alliance with her first host, her host’s husband, and the Yeerk controlling him. And she would do anything to protect the human children that she had with her host/host’s husband, even though they will never know her. Remember that, owing to how Yeerks are born in pools, they do not have any sense of “family” in the human sense of the word. Latent in this revelation, then, is the idea that humanity’s cultures and values are somehow infectious, even viral. Visser One arrives on Earth and “goes human”, as they put it.

Visser gives Applegate an opportunity to fill us in on the history of how Yeerks found Earth and the invasion began. This is essentially the purpose of the Chronicles series: The Andalite Chronicles showed us how Elfangor’s involvement changed the war between the Yeerks and Andalites forever; The Hork-Bajir Chronicles showed us how the Yeerks got their formidable warrior hosts. Now we get to learn about why Visser One created the Sharing, how she first implemented it, and what her ultimate plans were. Along the way, Applegate comments on what she perceives are both the strengths and weaknesses of humanity.

I also love that we get some time with Eva, Marco’s mom. It’s heartbreaking but heroic of her to volunteer to continue hosting Visser One because to escape would be too suspicious. While there is clearly no love lost between Eva and Visser One, or Marco and Visser One, there are nuances here to the relationship that helps belie the buffoonish depiction of other characters, like Visser Three. (To be fair, I feel like this latter portrayal can mostly be chalked up to Visser One’s unreliable narration—Visser Three might be more hot-tempered and less competent than her, but he clearly hasn’t bungled the invasion yet.)

As always, Animorphs is a series deceptively complex given its often juvenile branding and marketing. Visser is just another example of that.

My reviews of Animorphs:
← #36: The Mutation | #37 The Weakness →

Who doesn’t like a good controversy in their popular science books? What’s a philosophical theory about the nature of the universe if it doesn’t ruffle some feathers? No one wants to write a book and then have everyone turn around and shrug at you. That doesn’t sell! So it’s not really surprising that Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality is a controversial book by a somewhat controversial physicist. I received this as a Christmas gift a few years ago, and that was the first I’ve heard of Max Tegmark. Since then he has popped up a few times here or there, and now I’ve finally made time to read this long and detailed treatise on the current state of physics and Tegmark’s personal conception of, well, reality.

I don’t actually find it all that controversial, per se—though I should clarify that I’m a mathematician by training, and not a physicist, so maybe the way Tegmark presents these ideas is more insulting or seems more radical when one is a physicist. That being said, I’m also not saying I agree with Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH), because, despite probably being a mathematical realist, Platonism itself strangely makes me uncomfortable….

Oh boy, I think I’ve already used too many strange terms! This review is probably going to get pretty heady and philosophical at some point, much like Our Mathematical Universe does. So let me spend the first part here just discussing the book, its structure and writing, etc., in a more general way, to give you an idea of whether or not it is of interest to you before you read my whole review. I’ll get to my thoughts about Tegmark’s specific claims later.

Firstly, regardless of any reservations I might have, I still recommend this book. This is a really well-written and approachable popular science work. Tegmark’s style is really accessible—despite going heavy on scientific and mathematical terminology, he is careful to proceed in a systematic way. This is not a book you want to be reading just before bed, maybe, or during a busy commute—it took me pretty much a week, albeit a busy week, to work my way through it. Nevertheless, I think it is a worthwhile use of one’s time.

Tegmark first impressed me with a table at the end of Chapter 1 called “How to read this book”. He lists every chapter of the book, along with three columns: Science-curious reader, hard-core reader of popular science, and physicist. Each column lists the chapters that reader would be best to read/skip—i.e., the science-curious reader should read the entire book; the hard-core reader can skip several of the earlier chapters because they presumably will have seen these explanations before; and the physicist can skip all but the controversial chapters (Tegmark also labels each chapter as “mainstream”, “controversial”, or “extremely controversial”). I love this approach and hope more popular science authors use it. Now, I, of course, ignored these suggestions and read the whole book anyway, because I wanted to see how Tegmark explained the Big Bang, inflation, etc. Yet I confess I skimmed some parts and felt better about it because I knew it was sanctioned.

One reason I’ll recommend this book is simply because Tegmark’s explanations for the origins of our universe, as currently understood by “mainstream” cosmology, are really lucid. He clarified several aspects of the Big Bang and inflation that, until now, I not only did not understand but didn’t realize I didn’t understand. He didn’t just improve my comprehension: he actually showed me parts of my comprehension of these theories that were inaccurate. I am not a physicist by training by any stretch of the imagination (I only took physics up to Grade 12 in high school, and they don’t even get into relativity by then, let alone QM); all of this knowledge is entirely autodidactic, and hence it isn’t surprising a lot if it is inaccurately understood. But I think I’ve plateaued a lot lately because I was having trouble finding explanations that were calibrated for my knowledge level: either the explanations get too technical and lose me, or else I just end up reading the same ground-floor “hey have you heard of this thing called the double-slit experiment?” stories over and over again, which isn’t fun either.

In particular, I really enjoyed Chapter 5, in which Tegmark explains inflation and why it is necessary to account for problems with the Big Bang theory. The idea of the Big Bang itself is now probably within the realm of general public knowledge, assuming a half-decent education (and regardless of whether one “accepts” the theory or prefers creationist nonsense). Yet there are probably as many misconceptions about this theory as there are explanations of it in popular science books, and once any two non-cosmologists start talking about it, we inevitably run into quasi-philosophical walls. Tegmark very clearly presents what the theory actually says; why it is compelling given the evidence; the problems with the theory without inflation and why inflation itself solves those problems.

Tegmark refers a lot to data gathered by several satellites and ground-based microwave telescopes that have observed the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation (CBMR). He himself worked quite a bit on many of these projects, or with the data from these projects, to help sharpen and analyze this evidence. And this is another reason I enjoyed and recommend Our Mathematical Universe: Tegmark provides a great perspective on how science is done. From conferences to international projects poring over satellite data to writing and publishing papers, Tegmark shows us the act of physics research as much as the end result. He shows us how individual physicists’ opinions of theories will evolve over time. He shows us how people have different specializations, which in turn lead to different predilections and levels of knowledge about parts of physics. It’s really fascinating, and it’s an aspect to the discourse around science that I wish more media would cover.

So the first 6 or 7 chapters of this book are excellent, and I recommend reading at least those. After Chapter 8, Tegmark introduces the more “controversial” content. As I said above, I don’t see it as controversial so much as a bundle of claims that are either uninteresting because they are obvious or unappealing because they are largely unintelligible. Now we arrive at the part of the review that gets technical.

Let me refer you to Scott Aaronson’s review. He is a computer scientist and much more well-versed in this stuff than I am, so his review goes into more depth behind the mathematical/physics claims that Tegmark makes. I found myself largely nodding along and agreeing with most of Aaronson’s opinions there.

You might think that I, as a mathematically-inclined person, might seize upon the idea presented here. Tegmark’s MUH says not only that we can describe the universe using mathematics (a notion almost axiomatic to our physics) but that all of our physical reality itself is literally mathematical. That is, our entire subjective human experiences are simply the consequence of certain facets of a certain mathematical structure within a superset of structures, the entirety of which comprise the Level IV multiverse, i.e., the sum total of all existence and anything that could ever possibly exist.

It’s tempting. And yet….

Years ago I read The Grand Design. This was back in my university days, mind, when I was high on philosophy classes of all kinds and armed much more to purpose for these kinds of throw-downs. Nowadays, my memory of the differences between ontological and epistemological arguments requiring jogging from Wikipedia, I’m not so sure I’m up to the task. Yet one idea has stayed with me from Hawking and Mlodinow’s book: that of model-dependent realism. They proposed that the reason we are having so much trouble finding a “theory of everything” to unify the physics of the big (relativity) and the physics of the small (QM) is because no such theory exists. Rather, different theories are required depending on the situation one is trying to model. It is an intriguing idea, one I hadn’t really encountered in a science book before. And I really liked how it short-circuited many anti-realist objections to scientific realism.

Tegmark appears to move in the opposite direction. He backs the ToE horse (which is fine) by insisting that the ToE is reality. And then he kind of dodges the question of whether that means we will ever actually find a ToE (because if we did, wouldn’t that mean we just have … reality?).

That’s what I mean about the MUH being uninteresting and unintelligible. He starts off by talking about how the movement of time is an illusion, all very much standard stuff depending on how you define spacetime, etc. Yawn. When we get into the more “controversial” material, his argument just sort of breaks down. He starts making a whole bunch of probabilistic paradox arguments, like quantum suicide, the doomsday argument, etc.—the kind of thought experiments that are fun to put into a first-year philosophy textbook but that have little connection to, you know, reality. These thought experiments rely explicitly on making assumptions to make up for our near-total lack of knowledge about a situation. The whole point is that, as we acquire more certain knowledge, we are in a better position to see if we are indeed a representative sample or if, perhaps however improbably, we are not.

Tegmark’s MUH is also, despite his claims to the contrary, completely untestable/unfalsifiable. He insists that we will uncover evidence and create theories which logically imply the MUH, and that’s just silly. The MUH is untestable because we currently have no alternative to mathematics as a way of describing physical theories of reality. It is unfalsifiable, because even if we can get past the testing problem, how will we know if we’ve discovered a physical law or property that violates the MUH? Almost by definition, the MUH can take nearly any observational evidence and somehow fit into its framework. Tegmark claims that if the MUH is false, then we will one day run up against an insurmountable “wall” in physics beyond which our knowledge of reality can progress no further, since our mathematics will no longer be able to express reality. I disagree. I think model-dependent realism would be an effective way to counteract such a wall: maybe to progress, all we need do is abandon the search for a ToE and instead create theories of everything.

The last half of Our Mathematical Universe is a wild ride of philosophy of mathematics and science. I loved reading it. I found parts of it very convincing, but I don’t think those parts (combined with the other parts) necessarily add up to the whole that Tegmark calls the Level IV multiverse, the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. I think he is incredibly enthusiastic about this idea and has clearly spent a lot of time thinking on it—which is great. I loved that I got a chance to read it. But I don’t think his arguments are as sound as he thinks they are. I say this not from a physicist’s position (because I’m not one) nor even a mathematician/logician (because, let’s face it, my memory of higher math dims with each passing day) but as the target demographic for this book, the hard-core popular science reader who is looking for a new hit to bring on that theoretical physics high. It’s a nice try, Tegmark, and you almost had me going.

Disclaimer: I won this in a Goodreads First Reads Giveaway. Loves me the free books.

There is really no question about it: adolescents and superpowers just go well together. After all, teenagers just want to be normal, and superheroes often just want to be normal. Can you guess what a teenager with superpowers wants?

Kelly Oram does not break any new ground with Being Jamie Baker, which hews very closely to all of its tropes. Oram none-too-subtly uses Jamie's superpowers to parallel the social awkwardness of high school. From page 3 onward, we are reminded that Jamie Baker is a "freak," both because she is a social outcast, an "ice queen," and because she . . . well, she has superpowers. So when the hottest, nicest guy in school starts courting her, Jamie has to decide whether to reject him and remain the ice queen or embrace him—which, if done literally, may end up killing him. However, in a nice inversion of the "bad boy, nice girl" trope, we have the "nice boy, bad girl" attraction going on—Jamie is not exactly rebellious, but she is antisocial, and she does have a lot of baggage. Her eventual catharsis with respect to this last point is the true highlight of this novel instead of her climactic attempt to rescue Ryan from the clutch of a mad scientist (I kid you not).

Being Jamie Baker is amazing if only because it brings back memories of my childhood, which has mostly dissolved into a faded blur of colour and Lego. This book reminds me a good deal of The Secret World of Alex Mack, a show I recall watching when I was very young. In both cases, you've got a teenage girl who gains powers as a result of a chemical spill. She discovers that having superpowers is not all it's cracked up to be, especially because it makes having a "normal" high school life practically impossible. Also, she must conceal her powers at all costs, lest shady government or business interests cut her up.

Again, obvious allegory for adolescent self-discovery happening here. But having taken all these tools out of the box, how does Oram use them to construct a compelling story? There are three major plots here: Jamie's relationship with Ryan, Jamie's need to reconcile herself with having powers (including the fear of discovery), and Jamie's desire to be accepted in the society of Rocklin High. Each of these plots works well with the other two separately, but all three never really come together as one.

Jamie's relationship with Ryan is annoying. Firstly, Ryan's self-assuredness did not endear me to him. His constant attempts to push past Jamie's barriers are supposed to show that he cares, yet they mostly make him a jerk. Secondly, Jamie's not that much better in this area. She vacillates between, "I can't be with him; I might kill him!" to "I want him. Want now." And every time she overhears Ryan laughing about her to his Popular friends, it never occurs to her to think that he's just pretending. She immediately decides he's a jerk and she hates him. I know that these fluctuations of affection are the hallmark of a hormonal teenage girl, but in fiction they need to be married to useful developments in plot. And that does happen sometimes; for instance, Jamie is understandably taken aback when a kiss with Ryan results in supercharging her powers, glowing eyes, and a lightning blast that knocks over a tree.

Even less successful, however, is the superhero story in this superhero story. A reporter, whose articles about Jamie's accident prompted her family to move in the first place, has re-entered Jamie's life. This time he claims her only hope is to go public with her powers before the evil Visticorp decides to capture her. The final twist turns out to be the identity of a former Visticorp employee who has essentially gone rogue because Visticorp didn't believe him about Jamie. He kidnaps Ryan on the night of the Big Football Game, luring Jamie up to the deserted high school for a creepy confession about how he will "keep her safe."

I was waiting for this moment forever. I mean, that's the expected payoff when the hero reveals his or her secret identity to a loved one. The problem was that, for the first part of the book, there was no sign of any supervillain or nemesis of that calibre. (Carter, the reporter, doesn't count. He's an idiot.) In general, Being Jamie Baker's pacing is so abysmally slow that when this payoff finally arrives, it is more a relief than a gratification. The villain, once he is revealed, is unimposing to the point of being laughable. There is no suspense and very little tension as Jamie goes about rescuing Ryan and disabling the villain. About the best thing that comes from the climax is Jamie's own confrontation with her moral event horizon (guess the outcome of that one).

But that's not plot; that's characterization. Despite my reservations about the story, Oram really impressed me with her portrayal of Jamie's voice. In particular, the following exchange is hilarious. Jamie has just beat the bad guy, and now Carter has shown up with her parents, who just finished planting evidence in the villain's home that frames him as a stalker:

"What things did you leave there?" I demanded, trying to make myself calm down.

"Oh, just your old pompoms, your crown, and a pair of your panties," my mom said. She shrugged as if it were no big deal and then smiled wickedly. "I stuck those under his pillow."

"Mom!" I gasped.

"Linda!" my dad yelled, every bit as horrified. The blood had drained from his face at the word "panties."

"What?" Mom snapped. "That's exactly the kind of thing a creepy stalker would take."

"Ugh! At least tell me they weren't any of my nice silk Victoria's Secret ones."

"The little black ones with the lace," Mom admitted guiltily.

"Mom!"

Jamie's repeated protestations of "Mom!" feel so accurate, as does her embarrassment (not to mention her father's!) of this discussion about planting her panties at some guy's apartment. With Jamie, Ryan, Mike, Paige, et al., Oram duplicates the diction of adolescents, with "like" inserted in all the right places. I'm less convinced of the veracity of the parents' voices (does anyone really say, "I'm putting my foot down" these days?) but that's a minor quibble.

Beyond voice, many of the secondary characters, although not as well-developed, are less stock than I expected. For example, Mike Driscoll is Ryan's crony and not a nice guy at all. He's harsh to Jamie, and his attitude toward women in general is, at best, macho-ly misogynistic. Yet when Carter first darkens Jamie's door (by which I mean he shows up at Rocklin High), he is the first one to intervene. It is an act of solidarity with the ice queen that leaves both her and the reader a little bewildered, and I love that.

Then there is Jamie's back story, including her origin story and the true fate of her late boyfriend, Derek. Oram does not focus on this too much, probably wisely, choosing instead to reveal only salient portions. Once the whole story is out, you realize Jamie really is messed up and not just overdramatic (I had to admit I had some doubts until that point). This makes her confrontation with the villain much more fulfilling than it otherwise would be. We can understand on a visceral level, if not a literal one, how tempted Jamie is to use her powers to remove this person. As I mentioned above, it's not a very tense moment, because the outcome is predictable. However, it demonstrates how far Jamie has come from the beginning of the story, where she's an aloof ice queen trying to ignore her powers as much as possible.

There is really no question about it: adolescents and superpowers just go well together. Being Jamie Baker has some problems with plot and pacing that threaten to consign it to mediocrity. Jamie's voice, and Oram's characterization, rescues it—mostly.

Second Review: January 26, 2016

Wow, did I ever write more concise reviews in 2008!

In that spirit, I don’t have much to add after this second reading. I’m teaching this to my Grade 12 English class of adult Aboriginal learners. We spend a lot of time reading texts by/about Indigenous people and issues, such as Indian Horse. I wanted to expose them to a slice of Canadian identity (Francophone culture) they haven’t encountered before. In doing so, we can compare that experience to the experience of Indigenous identities, and we can talk about stereotypes. As many of my students have experience with the issues in this book, it also helps them identify with the characters’ struggles. I’m pleased with how hooked they are on the book. (We haven’t finished reading it in class yet!)

What did I pay attention to this time? Baby’s yearning for a mother figure feels much more pronounced.

I also appreciate how, even though O’Neill writes Baby’s narration with a precocious vocabulary, she makes it clear that Baby’s emotional maturity is far behind her intellectual maturity. Baby is an academically advanced person, but she can still be as petulant and childish as any twelve-year-old.

Whereas in my first reading I was captivated by the characters, this time I also paid attention to the way the system fails both Baby and Jules. In the past seven years I’ve come to understand how systemic problems, and lack of privilege, affect individuals and manoeuvre them into situations that give them few good options. That is very much the case here, as we see when Baby goes to a correctional facility for little more than having the temerity to experiment with drugs and have a negligent parent.

Once again, the juxtaposition between Baby’s relationship with Alphonse and her budding attraction to Xavier broke my heart. I wanted to cry as her facade of normalcy shattered around her and Xavier learned who she was. Lullabies for Little Criminals reminds us, over and over, of how we judge and are judged by others, and how these judgements influence us.

Definitely a powerful novel, one which is not diminished on subsequent readings.

First Review: July 30, 2008

About two hundred pages into the book, I suddenly realized that this story was breaking my heart.

It's sneaky. You don't know you're getting attached to Baby, the main character, until it's too late. You don't realize you're emotionally invested in her, that you want to see her make the right decisions that lift her out of the morally ambiguous streets and propel her to a successful, happy life. So when events push her into doing the opposite, it's terrible.

The theme that resonates with me most is that childhood is the most precious innocence we have. Baby makes several philosophical remarks about childhood, how society encourages us to grow up too fast--and the fact that we can't go back afterward. We're stuck as adults. As an 18-year-old, I've reached the legal age for adulthood. I'm venturing into that scary world of responsibility; no one treats me as a child anymore. I have the advantage of never experiencing Baby's hardships, yet I still feel confused at times. Everyone probably does, which is why this book captures your heart.

Baby has no mother, and her father is not much of a father figure. She is a person of remarkable natural integrity and morals nonetheless, but as the book progresses, these morals get twisted further and further out of focus as she tries to deal with growing up while her father slips further away from reality. She goes through several phases of friendship, attempting to fit in at school, hanging out with other kids at a community centre, hanging out with a more dangerous social misfit than her, her first boyfriend ... and being seduced by a pimp.

It was the contrast of those last two relationships that broke my heart. Baby, fast approaching the nadir of her pre-adolescent life, succumbs to the advances of the neighbourhood pimp. You think, "Okay, this can't get any worse. Yeah, she's with a pimp, but she'll get out of it. She'll find a way out." Then she meets a boy her age and falls for him, and suddenly it is that much worse. Baby is torn between two worlds, two different lifestyles. She tries to push each away in turn, but both stick to her and try to claim her.

The ending is open. It does not neatly wrap up Baby's life in an epilogue, tell us that she went on to live happily-ever after. If it had, that would cheat the book of its significance. I won't spoil it, but I will say it is positive.

Trying to do the right thing is hard enough when you know what "the right thing" is. When you don't even know that, and you're a thirteen-year-old girl without the advice of a parent to guide her, life is much, much harder.

Finally caught up on this series, thanks to the magic of ordering stuff online and reading these relatively short novels back to back. The Brimstone Deception starts the day after The Dragon Conspiracy concludes. With such tight timing, it’s no coincidence that emotions and tensions continue to run high. Lisa Shearin advances Mac’s storyline even as she drops some more bombshells about the world of The SPI Files in general.

Already the plot of this book feels fresher than the previous two. Because of course if you have a direct line to Hell the first thing you’re going to do is synthesize a street drug from brimstone. I love the nuance that this plot brings to the book. Shearin brings in new characters with unique abilities and positions, such as Bert the necromancer, Marty the demonologist, and Fred the half-elf/half-human NYPD officer. And we get to learn a lot more about Rake Danescu, the sexy goblin who is, at the moment, the top contender on the short list of Mac’s love interests.

As I mentioned in the previous review, I’m happy with the way that Mac and Ian’s relationship has become more platonic, allowing each to pursue their own romances on the side. Romance takes a backseat in general here, however, and that’s fine too. While Mac acknowledges her attraction to Rake, and her discomfort with the opaqueness of her motives, she has far bigger problems at the moment. That’s a healthy stance to take. I’m hoping to see more emphasis on Mac’s work/life balance as the series progresses.

In place of romance, Shearin serves up a healthy dose of supernatural politics. We get a much richer glimpse into how SPI fits into the wider supernatural scene. SPI is clearly Vivienne Sagadraco’s show, and while it has international reach, I’m curious to find out if there are any competing outfits. It’s clear that as powerful as Sagadraco might be, the goblins, elves, et al have influence that make them formidable if crossed. Urban fantasy often features some of the best political intrigue I’ve come across in my fiction, with allegiances and loyalties falling across species and supernatural lines.

Also, The Brimstone Deception confirms, fairly blatantly, something that The Dragon Conspiracy hinted at: The SPI Files and Raine Benares series take place in the same universe! I tried googling about this for more information, but maybe I just don’t know the right fan sites. But this is a a huge deal for me, because it opens up the possibility of a Mac/Raine team-up. I am totally down for that.

That being said, Shearin does a great job balancing longtime fans like me with new readers ignorant of the backstory of the Seven Kingdoms. So while there are nice little references and a character crossover that’s rewarding for Raine Benares readers, if you’re literally just picking up this book and have never read any of Shearin’s other novels, you won’t in any way be lost.

And on a more serious note, while I’m happy about the potential for crossovers, I hope Shearin continues to exhibit the restraint she has thus far shown in keeping the two series mostly separate. Sitting down to write these reviews over the past week, I realize that I keep comparing these books to the Raine books—and these ones keep coming up short. Which isn’t their fault! I think that urge will continue to diminish as the series comes into its own.

Speaking of which, the intimations of bigger and better story arcs continue here. Once again we have a direct reference to the face-shifting ghoul terrorizing Ian. (According to the Goodreads series list, the next book is The Ghoul Vendetta, so I’m guessing we’ll soon get some pay-off on that arc!) And as Mac’s powers continue to grow, it’s being implied that she is catching the attention of beings that normally don’t bat an eye in Earth’s direction. I wonder what else is going to come out of the woodwork over the next couple of books!

Mac continues to get better as a protagonist with each book. I’m starting to feel more comfortable with her now. However, the exposition overload that front-loaded The Grendel Affair creeps back in here. It’s a case, sometimes, of wanting to show the research—but then, I’m reminded that Mac is a journalist by training, so maybe all this showing off is Shearin making Mac’s voice authentic….

*narrows eyes* You win this one, Shearin!

The Brimstone Deception is a lovely addition to The SPI Files. I wouldn’t recommend reading it first, just because it happens so soon after the previous book, but if you did happen to pick this up at the bookstore, you wouldn’t be too lost. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the way Shearin balances action sequences and literal visits to Hell (well, pocket dimensions and anterooms thereof) with questions of trust among the main characters, investigations into drug lords and kingpins, and concerns over whether Mac will have any wardrobe left by the end of this series.

The SPI Files is slowly but surely carving out a place for itself in urban fantasy with its acerbic but decidedly upbeat approach to magic and monsters. Against the larger, grittier backdrop of the genre, this series is a nice change of pace.

I was going to criticize the covers and complain about how they’re all different poses of Mac and Ian waving weapons around … but then again, The Dresden Files books have monotonously featured Harry Dresden on the cover for at least the last nine books—so I guess I won’t throw any stones. Plus, it’s nice that the covers acknowledge Mac and Ian’s partnership. Ian has Mac’s back in this book—hopefully in The Ghoul Vendetta we’ll see a little more vulnerability in him and Mac will really have a chance to shine.

My reviews of The SPI Files:
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