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tachyondecay
Sometimes I come across stories that are so well-written but also so safe and undemanding in their tropes and structures that I'm simultaneously enchanted and bored. Three is one such story. Immediately recognizable to anyone with even a passing knowledge of post-apocalyptic stories, it nonetheless has all the hallmarks of an exciting, well-paced, thoroughly plotted novel. Jay Posey has a talent for narrative, both in the sense of the twists and turns that keep you reading, as well as the little flourishes that add to the characters. Three is a post-apocalyptic road story in the vein of Mad Max, but it also reaches back and borrows from Greek tragedy and more cyberpunk dystopian worlds. The result, surprisingly, is not a mess; unfortunately, it also doesn't wow me.
Posey drops us into the story with little concern for exposition or background story, and this works really well. I think this is a good call in general--if your book opens with a monologue scrawl, why?--but sometimes, in attempting to execute it, authors just leave me too confused or not invested. Posey hits the balance perfectly; he drops terms, for example, that obviously mean something specific--like disconnected--without really explaining what they mean. You have to just keep reading, pick things up from context, while you accompany these characters on their journey. Far from being frustrating, the lack of exposition keeps the story streamlined and accessible.
It probably helps too, as I said above, that Posey leans heavily on all the tropes you'd expect in such a story. You've got your walled enclaves of "civilization" (such as it is) dotted across an unlivable hellscape. You've got the people in power, the people with power, and the people who want power. You've got your allies and support characters, your enemies and your minions, and of course, the "good guys", fighting the good fight with their cool guns and minor superpowers. You've got your badass action hero, your kickass action heroine, and your creepy child with powers neither he nor the other characters completely understand but which, of course, turn out to be very useful and plot-specific.
These tropes are all well-executed; this novel runs like a smoothly-oiled machine. It's a pleasure to read in that sense. Yet, perhaps for this very reason, the novel is a little boring. These tropes are all there is. Three is enjoyable but eminently predictable and safe.
And some of these tropes aren't all that positive, either. They could stand with some subversion. Take the trio of Three, Cass, and Wren, for instance. I don't mean to rag on Cass too much, because I genuinely like her character and, for the most part, the way that Posey portrays her. She's strong and competent but also clearly stressed by the ongoing peril she finds herself in. But at times she is reduced to the "mama bear protecting her cub", and motherhood becomes her overriding trait. She exists as the parental safety net for Wren, as a damsel in distress--and even though this damsel is capable of fighting back by herself, pairing her up with the very masculine and hyper-competent Three just makes for an extremely standard setup.
It would have been so much cooler if Three were a woman or nonbinary and he and Cass could have a queer thing going on (either platonic or romantic or ambiguous, doesn't matter). Or even if Posey had gender-swapped, making Three a woman bounty hunter and Cass a father on the run with his child.
I know there's a fine line between critiquing a book for missed opportunities and criticizing a book too harshly for not being an entirely different thing that you want. Still, I just feel like Three could have been awesome if Posey had taken more chances with the characters, settings, and plot elements.
I'm going to digress now into a more general rumination on post-apocalyptic fiction; my comments here don't necessarily apply to Three solely or even at all, but these thoughts occurred during and after reading this book.
It strikes me there is something very Eurocentric, Western, and fetishistic about most of our post-apocalyptic literature. That is to say, the stock vision of the "hellscape", if you will, is often something already experienced by people around the world. Broken cities separated by vast distances now difficult to traverse, roving gangs of thieves and ex-soldiers regurgitated by the latest in a cycle of strife and civil wars--these are not hypotheticals but are actualities for people who grow up in regions like Sudan and Darfur, in Syria now, etc. When we construct fictional post-apocalyptic worlds that resemble these locations, then, are we colonizing these spaces all over again? Are we engaging in a kind of literary crisis tourism? Is this our equivalent of nineteenth-century novelists writing escapist penny dreadfuls set in the "primitive and untamed wilds" of South America?
Three and other such stories with a Mad Max tone to them feature rugged protagonists fighting for survival against the eternally unjust world of their dystopia. In this way, post-apocalyptic fiction serves as a kind of morality play for the modern age: in this broken future, the individual can endure by being good and strong and fighting back against all odds. This is part of the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction despite its bleak and often devastating settings and events: if individuals can fight and endure even in such dangerous places, then we must be able to survive our 9 to 5s.
Post-apocalyptic fiction is a speculative attempt to recreate the frontier-like feeling of the Wild West, replete with science-fictional technologies and miracles of one's choosing. The core group of protagonists, as our heroes, receive the privilege of being individuals. They often square off against faceless enemies--hordes of zombies (or the Weir, here) or barbarian groups, real or mythological or fictional-but-loosely-based-on-real groups. But the whole conceit of the Wild West is very Eurocentric--it is itself a revisionist construct designed to legitimize settlement and manifest destiny. So when we recreate the Wild West in fictional futures, it's worth examining the elements of colonialist thinking that we drag along into those futures.
I don't know if any of that makes sense. And, as a I said a few paragraphs above, I'm not sure how much of this applies to Three specifically. Like I said, it just occurred to me, and I wanted to record these thoughts.
Posey drops us into the story with little concern for exposition or background story, and this works really well. I think this is a good call in general--if your book opens with a monologue scrawl, why?--but sometimes, in attempting to execute it, authors just leave me too confused or not invested. Posey hits the balance perfectly; he drops terms, for example, that obviously mean something specific--like disconnected--without really explaining what they mean. You have to just keep reading, pick things up from context, while you accompany these characters on their journey. Far from being frustrating, the lack of exposition keeps the story streamlined and accessible.
It probably helps too, as I said above, that Posey leans heavily on all the tropes you'd expect in such a story. You've got your walled enclaves of "civilization" (such as it is) dotted across an unlivable hellscape. You've got the people in power, the people with power, and the people who want power. You've got your allies and support characters, your enemies and your minions, and of course, the "good guys", fighting the good fight with their cool guns and minor superpowers. You've got your badass action hero, your kickass action heroine, and your creepy child with powers neither he nor the other characters completely understand but which, of course, turn out to be very useful and plot-specific.
These tropes are all well-executed; this novel runs like a smoothly-oiled machine. It's a pleasure to read in that sense. Yet, perhaps for this very reason, the novel is a little boring. These tropes are all there is. Three is enjoyable but eminently predictable and safe.
And some of these tropes aren't all that positive, either. They could stand with some subversion. Take the trio of Three, Cass, and Wren, for instance. I don't mean to rag on Cass too much, because I genuinely like her character and, for the most part, the way that Posey portrays her. She's strong and competent but also clearly stressed by the ongoing peril she finds herself in. But at times she is reduced to the "mama bear protecting her cub", and motherhood becomes her overriding trait. She exists as the parental safety net for Wren, as a damsel in distress--and even though this damsel is capable of fighting back by herself, pairing her up with the very masculine and hyper-competent Three just makes for an extremely standard setup.
It would have been so much cooler if Three were a woman or nonbinary and he and Cass could have a queer thing going on (either platonic or romantic or ambiguous, doesn't matter). Or even if Posey had gender-swapped, making Three a woman bounty hunter and Cass a father on the run with his child.
I know there's a fine line between critiquing a book for missed opportunities and criticizing a book too harshly for not being an entirely different thing that you want. Still, I just feel like Three could have been awesome if Posey had taken more chances with the characters, settings, and plot elements.
I'm going to digress now into a more general rumination on post-apocalyptic fiction; my comments here don't necessarily apply to Three solely or even at all, but these thoughts occurred during and after reading this book.
It strikes me there is something very Eurocentric, Western, and fetishistic about most of our post-apocalyptic literature. That is to say, the stock vision of the "hellscape", if you will, is often something already experienced by people around the world. Broken cities separated by vast distances now difficult to traverse, roving gangs of thieves and ex-soldiers regurgitated by the latest in a cycle of strife and civil wars--these are not hypotheticals but are actualities for people who grow up in regions like Sudan and Darfur, in Syria now, etc. When we construct fictional post-apocalyptic worlds that resemble these locations, then, are we colonizing these spaces all over again? Are we engaging in a kind of literary crisis tourism? Is this our equivalent of nineteenth-century novelists writing escapist penny dreadfuls set in the "primitive and untamed wilds" of South America?
Three and other such stories with a Mad Max tone to them feature rugged protagonists fighting for survival against the eternally unjust world of their dystopia. In this way, post-apocalyptic fiction serves as a kind of morality play for the modern age: in this broken future, the individual can endure by being good and strong and fighting back against all odds. This is part of the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction despite its bleak and often devastating settings and events: if individuals can fight and endure even in such dangerous places, then we must be able to survive our 9 to 5s.
Post-apocalyptic fiction is a speculative attempt to recreate the frontier-like feeling of the Wild West, replete with science-fictional technologies and miracles of one's choosing. The core group of protagonists, as our heroes, receive the privilege of being individuals. They often square off against faceless enemies--hordes of zombies (or the Weir, here) or barbarian groups, real or mythological or fictional-but-loosely-based-on-real groups. But the whole conceit of the Wild West is very Eurocentric--it is itself a revisionist construct designed to legitimize settlement and manifest destiny. So when we recreate the Wild West in fictional futures, it's worth examining the elements of colonialist thinking that we drag along into those futures.
I don't know if any of that makes sense. And, as a I said a few paragraphs above, I'm not sure how much of this applies to Three specifically. Like I said, it just occurred to me, and I wanted to record these thoughts.
I was really looking forward to finally digging into Between the World and Me. It seemed like the perfect type of summer reading: intellectually stimulating, yet short; intense in its topics and writing, yet luxurious in its prose. Ta-Nehisi Coates' conscious emulation of the structure and style of early twentieth century writers like James Baldwin (whom, to be fair, I haven't read) makes for a nice departure from more prosaic non-fiction. Epistolary as it is, Between the World and Me is a heartfelt and measured work.
As with my review of The Hate U Give, I'm going to lead off this review with some links to Black reviewers. These were much easier to find, and have received plenty of attention already, on Goodreads than Black reviews of THUG:
* J Beckett lavishes this book with praise, being able to identify with it and Coates' experiences on a very emotional level.
* Joshunda Sanders appreciates the central message of the book. However, she expresses some understandable discomfort with having Coates as the "recommended reading" Black voice in the States. When reading books like this, I like to seek out voices who have similar backgrounds but offer critique, because we need to remember that no group is a monolith.
* For that same reason, while it's very short, Michael Spikes' review explains how he was largely disappointed by Coates' prose and unconvinced that Coates' presentation of a Black experience in the States isn't one of great privilege.
* Although I disagree with much of Pascal's review in its particulars, I can understand his disappointment that Coates doesn't engage with racism more as a symptom/motivation for capitalism.
The issue of audience and Between the World and Me is an interesting one. Tressie McMillan Cottom, writing in The Atlantic, opines that this is a book meant for a white audience. And I can see how she gets that impression. Coates, however, has shown ambivalence over how much white people have picked up and lauded this book--which is to say, he loves that white people are reading the book and doesn't want them to stop, but he wishes that white people would stop making everything about, you know, how white people feel.
I can't help but discuss this book from a position of white privilege, of course; it's the only experience I have. Nevertheless, it's worthwhile to be mindful of the power relations within the sphere of literary criticism. Coates dampens the fervour I might feel for recommending this book to everyone by reminding us that he didn't set out to write some kind of guide to Blackness for white people. Similarly, as Sanders mentions in her review, linked above, it's dangerous to single out one voice and choose them as a symbol for the entire group's experiences. To do this is an act of erasure as pernicious as ignoring all such voices in the first place. Between the World and Me is a good book, maybe even a great book, and well worth reading and recommending--but it isn't all there is, and it isn't even necessarily a very comprehensive depiction of Coates' particular Black experience. Rather, it's a fragmentary rumination upon how his relation to Blackness has changed over time.
Coates is adamant in a thesis that grounds his Black experience as one of supremacy and control of Black bodies. He points out that, historically, it hasn’t been Black people who get to decide who is or isn’t “Black”—white people have created various definitions, rules, and tests, with the aim of defining whiteness through the exclusion of the other:
This domination and control over Black bodies became a foundation upon which the capitalist engine of nineteenth-century America was built. Coates’ winding and indulgent meditation on Blackness often circles back to this inextricable link between capitalism and anti-Black racism. In particular, he often engages with the paradox of wealthy Black people who come from privileged, educated backgrounds, who live in gated communities, who are police officers who shoot unarmed Black men. Coates observes that one does not have to be white to benefit from or perpetuate white supremacy.
I’m reminded, too, of Lawrence Hill’s discussions of how the state defined Blackness in Blood. The need to regulate and define racial categories only exists as a result of racism.
Throughout Between the World and Me, by the way, Coates dances around the label of “white”, preferring instead to talk of the “Dreamers”, that is, Americans who subscribe to the classic American Dream. He does this to emphasize that white people lack a shared heritage in the way Black people do, as well as to include non-white people who nevertheless benefit from white supremacy as a result of other aspects of social status. I’m mentioning this because it’s interesting, though to be honest I sometimes spend less time worrying about labels and more time interested in the arguments beneath them. Essentially, though, Coates argues that “White America” is and can only have been created by the exclusionary and racist practises that some states are now so assiduously scrubbing from their textbooks.
So in this way, too, Coates touches upon the deep denial that has seized the United States since at least the abolition of slavery. He remarks:
This paragraph really resonated with me, owing to the sometimes-unconscionable amount of time I spend on Twitter. There are a great deal many things I love about Twitter, but the arguments and debates had on this platform are seldom one of them. And Coates pinpoints exactly the problem when he calls this “the politics of personal exoneration”. Somehow we’ve reached a point in our discussions online where being called “racist” or told you’ve offended someone, or made a misstep, is somehow more traumatic, more damaging, than Black people being killed, Indigenous people going missing, etc. There is an irony, as many have observed, that the same people who like to throw around the term “snowflake” are the quickest and most vociferous to scream and kick when you tell them something they said or did might possibly be racist. “I am NOT A RACIST” they proclaim, as if the louder they shout it, the more true it could possibly be.
But sometimes it’s tempting to dismiss this behaviour as a consequence of social media, whereas social media merely allows it to be more widespread. As Coates observes time and again in this book, denial is a unifying and long-running theme amongst Dreamers. Because if one stops denying, one might have to deal with the inequitable society one lives in and one’s privilege in it.
I can’t ascribe Between the World and Me a single epithet like “eye-opening” or call it “required reading” as Toni Morrison does. Serendipity had it that I picked this book up at a time when I was very receptive to Coates’ style and his imitation of epistolary, confessional writing of a bygone era. I could spend some time complimenting Coates’ attention to detail in his writing, but I worry that verges on the problematic (praising a Black person for being “articulate”).
The main thing I take away from this book, as a white person (albeit a white person in Canada, where our issues with white supremacy are somewhat different, but no less harmful, than the States’), is the need for white people to engage in these conversations in good faith. It’s not on Coates and people like him to educate us. And it’s our responsibility not to get defensive when called out for things that we say or do that are, intentionally or unintentionally, problematic or racist. Between the World and Me is powerful because it is personal: Coates is sharing his deeply-held fears and hopes regarding his son’s life in a deeply racist society. Alone, you or I cannot single-handedly fix this. Racism is not confined to moustache-twirling caricatures who go around using the N-word. So we must look at this and face this as a systemic problem and start dismantling it, brick by brick.
As with my review of The Hate U Give, I'm going to lead off this review with some links to Black reviewers. These were much easier to find, and have received plenty of attention already, on Goodreads than Black reviews of THUG:
* J Beckett lavishes this book with praise, being able to identify with it and Coates' experiences on a very emotional level.
* Joshunda Sanders appreciates the central message of the book. However, she expresses some understandable discomfort with having Coates as the "recommended reading" Black voice in the States. When reading books like this, I like to seek out voices who have similar backgrounds but offer critique, because we need to remember that no group is a monolith.
* For that same reason, while it's very short, Michael Spikes' review explains how he was largely disappointed by Coates' prose and unconvinced that Coates' presentation of a Black experience in the States isn't one of great privilege.
* Although I disagree with much of Pascal's review in its particulars, I can understand his disappointment that Coates doesn't engage with racism more as a symptom/motivation for capitalism.
The issue of audience and Between the World and Me is an interesting one. Tressie McMillan Cottom, writing in The Atlantic, opines that this is a book meant for a white audience. And I can see how she gets that impression. Coates, however, has shown ambivalence over how much white people have picked up and lauded this book--which is to say, he loves that white people are reading the book and doesn't want them to stop, but he wishes that white people would stop making everything about, you know, how white people feel.
I can't help but discuss this book from a position of white privilege, of course; it's the only experience I have. Nevertheless, it's worthwhile to be mindful of the power relations within the sphere of literary criticism. Coates dampens the fervour I might feel for recommending this book to everyone by reminding us that he didn't set out to write some kind of guide to Blackness for white people. Similarly, as Sanders mentions in her review, linked above, it's dangerous to single out one voice and choose them as a symbol for the entire group's experiences. To do this is an act of erasure as pernicious as ignoring all such voices in the first place. Between the World and Me is a good book, maybe even a great book, and well worth reading and recommending--but it isn't all there is, and it isn't even necessarily a very comprehensive depiction of Coates' particular Black experience. Rather, it's a fragmentary rumination upon how his relation to Blackness has changed over time.
Coates is adamant in a thesis that grounds his Black experience as one of supremacy and control of Black bodies. He points out that, historically, it hasn’t been Black people who get to decide who is or isn’t “Black”—white people have created various definitions, rules, and tests, with the aim of defining whiteness through the exclusion of the other:
“White America” is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies. Sometimes the power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining). But however it appears, the power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief in being white, and without it, “white people” would cease to exist for want of reasons. (42)
This domination and control over Black bodies became a foundation upon which the capitalist engine of nineteenth-century America was built. Coates’ winding and indulgent meditation on Blackness often circles back to this inextricable link between capitalism and anti-Black racism. In particular, he often engages with the paradox of wealthy Black people who come from privileged, educated backgrounds, who live in gated communities, who are police officers who shoot unarmed Black men. Coates observes that one does not have to be white to benefit from or perpetuate white supremacy.
I’m reminded, too, of Lawrence Hill’s discussions of how the state defined Blackness in Blood. The need to regulate and define racial categories only exists as a result of racism.
Throughout Between the World and Me, by the way, Coates dances around the label of “white”, preferring instead to talk of the “Dreamers”, that is, Americans who subscribe to the classic American Dream. He does this to emphasize that white people lack a shared heritage in the way Black people do, as well as to include non-white people who nevertheless benefit from white supremacy as a result of other aspects of social status. I’m mentioning this because it’s interesting, though to be honest I sometimes spend less time worrying about labels and more time interested in the arguments beneath them. Essentially, though, Coates argues that “White America” is and can only have been created by the exclusionary and racist practises that some states are now so assiduously scrubbing from their textbooks.
So in this way, too, Coates touches upon the deep denial that has seized the United States since at least the abolition of slavery. He remarks:
Had I informed this woman that when she pushed my son, she was acting according to a tradition that held black bodies as lesser, her response would likely have been, “I am not a racist.” Or maybe not. But my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of personal exoneration.
This paragraph really resonated with me, owing to the sometimes-unconscionable amount of time I spend on Twitter. There are a great deal many things I love about Twitter, but the arguments and debates had on this platform are seldom one of them. And Coates pinpoints exactly the problem when he calls this “the politics of personal exoneration”. Somehow we’ve reached a point in our discussions online where being called “racist” or told you’ve offended someone, or made a misstep, is somehow more traumatic, more damaging, than Black people being killed, Indigenous people going missing, etc. There is an irony, as many have observed, that the same people who like to throw around the term “snowflake” are the quickest and most vociferous to scream and kick when you tell them something they said or did might possibly be racist. “I am NOT A RACIST” they proclaim, as if the louder they shout it, the more true it could possibly be.
But sometimes it’s tempting to dismiss this behaviour as a consequence of social media, whereas social media merely allows it to be more widespread. As Coates observes time and again in this book, denial is a unifying and long-running theme amongst Dreamers. Because if one stops denying, one might have to deal with the inequitable society one lives in and one’s privilege in it.
I can’t ascribe Between the World and Me a single epithet like “eye-opening” or call it “required reading” as Toni Morrison does. Serendipity had it that I picked this book up at a time when I was very receptive to Coates’ style and his imitation of epistolary, confessional writing of a bygone era. I could spend some time complimenting Coates’ attention to detail in his writing, but I worry that verges on the problematic (praising a Black person for being “articulate”).
The main thing I take away from this book, as a white person (albeit a white person in Canada, where our issues with white supremacy are somewhat different, but no less harmful, than the States’), is the need for white people to engage in these conversations in good faith. It’s not on Coates and people like him to educate us. And it’s our responsibility not to get defensive when called out for things that we say or do that are, intentionally or unintentionally, problematic or racist. Between the World and Me is powerful because it is personal: Coates is sharing his deeply-held fears and hopes regarding his son’s life in a deeply racist society. Alone, you or I cannot single-handedly fix this. Racism is not confined to moustache-twirling caricatures who go around using the N-word. So we must look at this and face this as a systemic problem and start dismantling it, brick by brick.
Wow did I write really long reviews back in the day! I was just reading back over some of my Nancy Kress reviews to remind myself what I thought of her other works. I went into a lot of detail with my Sleepless trilogy reviews. I guess that was the privilege of having more time in third-year university. Now I’m an adult, with a job, and a house for just over a week as of this writing. Ain’t nobody got time to review no books now.
First off, shout out to Subterranean Press for their usual high standard of production on The Best of Nancy Kress. I doubt I would have bought this if it were just an ordinary collection in a bookstore—I like Kress, but I don’t like her that much. But Subterranean Press only gives you the best. The endpapers on this thing have this cool quilted texture going on …
… but enough about the book; let’s talk about the book, shall we?
Nancy Kress is a writer with a lot of fascinating ideas. I’ve sometimes been critical of her characters and her plotting, but at the end of the day, she writes great science fiction. Her focus on near-future advances in medicine and biotechnology really intrigue me. Biology is the “squishy” science, and so, science fiction with biological nova often seems to be treated like softer SF than science fiction with flashy physics conceits. Nevertheless, sometimes Kress’ stories often seem like the hardest and most realistic science fiction out there.
I won’t go story-by-story here. A few general comments, first. I like the author afterwords. I prefer afterwords to forewords, because then I get to read the story without any preconceptions. Kress keeps her afterwords short, which is a mixed blessing. Some of the stories are self-evident. Others are provocative, and I could have sat down with her for a long conversation afterwards. Similarly, Kress nails it in her introduction when she says, “I think that stories are usually good in parts” and explains that “the stories in this book try to do different things”. The Best of Nancy Kress doesn’t mean that every story in this collection is amazing, for your particular definition of amazing; nor does it mean you will enjoy every single one (I certainly didn’t). But this is the best Nancy Kress has to offer (within the limitations of space), and boy, is it an impressive selection.
The collection opens with “And Wild For to Hold”, a story about stealing Anne Boleyn out of time. It is bonkers, in such a compassionate way. It’s time travel, yet it’s not; it’s a story of love and deceit; yet it’s not. I don’t actually know if I liked it (I get this a lot with time travel stories), but I was moved by it. Kress basically sits down and explains how Anne would react if she were kidnapped by “demons”, demonstrating, in the process, that it doesn’t matter whether you understand the technology around you: if you find the right fulcrum, you can still bend the world to your will.
I was surprised by how much I liked “Dancing on Air”, given that I’m not all that fascinated by ballet or professional dancing. Yet this is parallel to more commonly-discussed issues like doping in sports: as science improves our ability to enhance the abilities of athletes and performers, where do we start drawing lines? I love how Kress portrays the dog in this story, using simple sentence structures to remind us that his intelligence is limited compared to the human characters. It’s really well done.
“The Price of Oranges” is another good use of time travel, this case in the form of a stable wormhole (aka a time closet) to explore differences in generations.
I’d already read “Shiva in Shadow” elsewhere (don’t remember quite where), and it is just as good a second time around. I love the idea of a science mission to Sagittarius A* and the use of “analogues” to explore nearer to the black hole. Also, there’s a lot of commentary on gender roles going on, some of which I have mixed feelings about. As captain, Tirzah acts as both a surrogate mother and a sexual partner to Ajit and Kane. And Kress doesn’t seem to interrogate critically these dual expectations. The idea that women who sleep with men should also have to nurture them and “manage” their fragile egos seems to me to be a symptom of patriarchy rather than a clever response to it. Indeed, Kress is really good at diverse representations in her fiction, but some of her conceptions of gender feel very binary and biologically-determined. This comes up in many of her stories, not just this one.
Overall, The Best of Nancy Kress is a beautiful collection of Kress’ stories. It was a great thing to crack open in the summer, to delve into once or twice a day, time permitting. I wouldn’t say any of the stories particularly changed my appreciation for Kress, none of them stood out to me as a story that stopped me in my tracks. But the collection, as a whole, has reminded me how much I enjoy Kress’ ideas, and the time she puts into crafting believable societies that result from them.
First off, shout out to Subterranean Press for their usual high standard of production on The Best of Nancy Kress. I doubt I would have bought this if it were just an ordinary collection in a bookstore—I like Kress, but I don’t like her that much. But Subterranean Press only gives you the best. The endpapers on this thing have this cool quilted texture going on …
… but enough about the book; let’s talk about the book, shall we?
Nancy Kress is a writer with a lot of fascinating ideas. I’ve sometimes been critical of her characters and her plotting, but at the end of the day, she writes great science fiction. Her focus on near-future advances in medicine and biotechnology really intrigue me. Biology is the “squishy” science, and so, science fiction with biological nova often seems to be treated like softer SF than science fiction with flashy physics conceits. Nevertheless, sometimes Kress’ stories often seem like the hardest and most realistic science fiction out there.
I won’t go story-by-story here. A few general comments, first. I like the author afterwords. I prefer afterwords to forewords, because then I get to read the story without any preconceptions. Kress keeps her afterwords short, which is a mixed blessing. Some of the stories are self-evident. Others are provocative, and I could have sat down with her for a long conversation afterwards. Similarly, Kress nails it in her introduction when she says, “I think that stories are usually good in parts” and explains that “the stories in this book try to do different things”. The Best of Nancy Kress doesn’t mean that every story in this collection is amazing, for your particular definition of amazing; nor does it mean you will enjoy every single one (I certainly didn’t). But this is the best Nancy Kress has to offer (within the limitations of space), and boy, is it an impressive selection.
The collection opens with “And Wild For to Hold”, a story about stealing Anne Boleyn out of time. It is bonkers, in such a compassionate way. It’s time travel, yet it’s not; it’s a story of love and deceit; yet it’s not. I don’t actually know if I liked it (I get this a lot with time travel stories), but I was moved by it. Kress basically sits down and explains how Anne would react if she were kidnapped by “demons”, demonstrating, in the process, that it doesn’t matter whether you understand the technology around you: if you find the right fulcrum, you can still bend the world to your will.
I was surprised by how much I liked “Dancing on Air”, given that I’m not all that fascinated by ballet or professional dancing. Yet this is parallel to more commonly-discussed issues like doping in sports: as science improves our ability to enhance the abilities of athletes and performers, where do we start drawing lines? I love how Kress portrays the dog in this story, using simple sentence structures to remind us that his intelligence is limited compared to the human characters. It’s really well done.
“The Price of Oranges” is another good use of time travel, this case in the form of a stable wormhole (aka a time closet) to explore differences in generations.
I’d already read “Shiva in Shadow” elsewhere (don’t remember quite where), and it is just as good a second time around. I love the idea of a science mission to Sagittarius A* and the use of “analogues” to explore nearer to the black hole. Also, there’s a lot of commentary on gender roles going on, some of which I have mixed feelings about. As captain, Tirzah acts as both a surrogate mother and a sexual partner to Ajit and Kane. And Kress doesn’t seem to interrogate critically these dual expectations. The idea that women who sleep with men should also have to nurture them and “manage” their fragile egos seems to me to be a symptom of patriarchy rather than a clever response to it. Indeed, Kress is really good at diverse representations in her fiction, but some of her conceptions of gender feel very binary and biologically-determined. This comes up in many of her stories, not just this one.
Overall, The Best of Nancy Kress is a beautiful collection of Kress’ stories. It was a great thing to crack open in the summer, to delve into once or twice a day, time permitting. I wouldn’t say any of the stories particularly changed my appreciation for Kress, none of them stood out to me as a story that stopped me in my tracks. But the collection, as a whole, has reminded me how much I enjoy Kress’ ideas, and the time she puts into crafting believable societies that result from them.
A Fierce and Subtle Poison is based on, or at least owes some inspiration to, “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, a work of science fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne about a scientist’s daughter who becomes immune to poisonous plants but poisonous herself to others. Samantha Mabry transposes the setting to present-day Puerto Rico and ages down the cast a little; Lucas becomes a high school senior on the verge of college studies, spending one more summer in Puerto Rico at one of his father’s hotels. There he becomes ensnared in a mystery and conspiracy.
I really wish I could heap more praise upon this book. It has some neat ideas, but Mabry’s writing style does very little for me, and I didn’t much enjoy Lucas as a protagonist. The slow burn towards a recognizable antagonist means the first two-thirds of the novel is ponderous while the last third is a sometimes confusing rush downhill towards a somewhat unsatisfying denouement. In short, A Fierce and Subtle Poison has little that excited me a lot that left me wanting more.
Several reviews I’ve read praise Mabry’s “lush descriptions” of Puerto Rico, and I’m just … did I miss something? Or were they referring mostly to her descriptions of the plants, the weather, the general atmosphere of the island? Because one thing that I noticed right away about the narration is how spare it is. Reading this reminded me of watching a stage play with no extras: only the characters actually in a scene appeared to be present; Mabry’s Puerto Rico feels somewhat depopulated and lacking in a livelihood or intensity. I’m sure this isn’t the case by any means, but the way in which she has Lucas tells the story creates this effect for me.
There are times when it feels like the book is almost trying to do too much. This probably isn’t the case; there is probably the right amount of story here. Yet its organization just feels haphazard. Parts of it are like a modern-day fairytale, with Mabry emulating the Rappaccini storyline of discovery and infatuation between Lucas and Isabelle. Then parts of it are like a thriller, with Lucas a fugitive from an overzealous cop with an axe to grind (not to be confused with Axe Cop). And parts of it still are like a YA coming-of-age story with Lucas discovering he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life (surprise, surprise).
In the end, I just didn’t get much payoff from this. I finished the last page neither enthusiastic nor particularly upset by anything that had passed. I was sad for Marisol, sad that she had to be sacrificed so quickly to the altar of plot so another boy could learn how to become a man—not that I see Lucas actually learning or changing all that much.
A Fierce and Subtle Poison has an excellent title. But it’s messy and never quite hits its stride. There’s probably room in here for love, if that’s the kind of thing you like in your YA thrillers. I’m looking for something either more or less straightforward (if that makes sense)—something that at least makes up its mind about what it wants to be.
I really wish I could heap more praise upon this book. It has some neat ideas, but Mabry’s writing style does very little for me, and I didn’t much enjoy Lucas as a protagonist. The slow burn towards a recognizable antagonist means the first two-thirds of the novel is ponderous while the last third is a sometimes confusing rush downhill towards a somewhat unsatisfying denouement. In short, A Fierce and Subtle Poison has little that excited me a lot that left me wanting more.
Several reviews I’ve read praise Mabry’s “lush descriptions” of Puerto Rico, and I’m just … did I miss something? Or were they referring mostly to her descriptions of the plants, the weather, the general atmosphere of the island? Because one thing that I noticed right away about the narration is how spare it is. Reading this reminded me of watching a stage play with no extras: only the characters actually in a scene appeared to be present; Mabry’s Puerto Rico feels somewhat depopulated and lacking in a livelihood or intensity. I’m sure this isn’t the case by any means, but the way in which she has Lucas tells the story creates this effect for me.
There are times when it feels like the book is almost trying to do too much. This probably isn’t the case; there is probably the right amount of story here. Yet its organization just feels haphazard. Parts of it are like a modern-day fairytale, with Mabry emulating the Rappaccini storyline of discovery and infatuation between Lucas and Isabelle. Then parts of it are like a thriller, with Lucas a fugitive from an overzealous cop with an axe to grind (not to be confused with Axe Cop). And parts of it still are like a YA coming-of-age story with Lucas discovering he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life (surprise, surprise).
In the end, I just didn’t get much payoff from this. I finished the last page neither enthusiastic nor particularly upset by anything that had passed. I was sad for Marisol, sad that she had to be sacrificed so quickly to the altar of plot so another boy could learn how to become a man—not that I see Lucas actually learning or changing all that much.
A Fierce and Subtle Poison has an excellent title. But it’s messy and never quite hits its stride. There’s probably room in here for love, if that’s the kind of thing you like in your YA thrillers. I’m looking for something either more or less straightforward (if that makes sense)—something that at least makes up its mind about what it wants to be.
It has been over six years since I last read and reviewed an Austen novel, and nearly as long since I received A Brief Guide to Jane Austen: The Life and Times of the World’s Favourite Author as a birthday gift, along with another Austen biography-like book that I’ll review shortly. Charles Jennings tackles his task with four parts: the actual life of Austen, her novels, life in Regency England, and then life after Jane Austen. In so doing, Jennings hopes to leave the reader with an appreciation not just of Austen as a person or an author but as a moment within the continuum of history; Regency England influenced Austen, and she has in turn has influenced England.
Jennings and others will say that Austen is one of those authors people have strong opinions about. Yet I come to this book feeling rather … ehhhhh … about Austen. If you press me, I’ll come down in the camp that regards her as a wonderful author worthy of her classic status. Yet I stop short of being a “Janeite”. Austen’s books are good in the way that other books are good for me; I don’t regard them as peculiarly special.
Nevertheless, I concede that Austen is an interesting character in her own right, if only because so little is known of her life. This is true of the vast majority of people throughout recorded history; unless you were important or notable, few people bothered to write anything down about you. Austen was fortunate to exist in a time where there was an emerging middle class: her family was rich enough to educate her and support her without her having to work; however, she could very well have faded into obscurity were it not for a few people writing about her and stirring up interest decades after her death.
The first section, in which Jennings describes Austen’s life in a roughly chronological fashion, is competent enough. He tries to eschew delving into her writing, aside from noting when she was working on or publishing particular pieces, but sometimes he can’t help but quote from a particular book. In general, though, this section is a somewhat dry rendition of a life that—while perhaps not as without event as Henry Austen wanted us to believe in his posthumous biographical note—certainly lacked much in the way of drama.
The section on the novels felt similarly academic and much less edifying. Whereas the first section at least educated me about Austen’s life (which I knew little enough about), I’ve read most of her novels. I’m not sure someone would come to this book without having read at least one novel (probably Pride & Prejudice…)—maybe it would be useful in giving an overview so that people can decide which one to tackle next? I don’t know. It’s not bad; it just feels like it is neither brief enough for a newcomer nor in-depth enough for a dedicated fan.
The section on life in Regency England is by far the best, in my opinion. Most of us come to Austen’s novels with an anachronistic understanding of their time period. That isn’t our fault. Even the most faithful adaptations aren’t going to capture every nuance of life in Austen’s time. This is what I find so cool about reading works from eras removed from my own: life was just so different back then. People might have been the same, living and loving and lusting, etc.; but there were just so many unwritten rules that, unless one is a scholar of the period, one might never pick up on. Then there are things like the rules and ritual surrounding dancing—an oft-observed activity in Austen’s novels but one which she, understandably, never explains fully to her readers of the future. So, with this section, Jennings delivers a cornucopia of knowledge, much of which I lacked, and which is going to improve anyone’s experience with Austen’s novels.
The final section, really more of an epilogue chapter, “After Jane”, tries to sum up how our society has canonized her. Again, the limitations of length stymie Jennings, preventing any real analysis. It’s about the length of a university essay and reads a bit like one, with each paragraph moving on to a new topic, clearly in a hurry to cover as much of the breadth of the subject as possible before hitting the word limit. There are interesting facts here too, but the tour is such a whirlwind that readers will be excused if they miss them.
A Brief Guide to Jane Austen lives up to its name. Yet is Austen really someone who can be briefly explained? Jennings tries very hard to meet this challenge, and I don’t want to disparage this book unduly. It’s good; it’s factual. It’s just somewhat dry. So, as I mentioned earlier, I have trouble figuring out the best audience. Janeites will probably already be familiar with this book; less erudite readers aren’t going to find it as engaging. But, if you want to learn more about Jane Austen’s life, this book is a fair way to do so.
Jennings and others will say that Austen is one of those authors people have strong opinions about. Yet I come to this book feeling rather … ehhhhh … about Austen. If you press me, I’ll come down in the camp that regards her as a wonderful author worthy of her classic status. Yet I stop short of being a “Janeite”. Austen’s books are good in the way that other books are good for me; I don’t regard them as peculiarly special.
Nevertheless, I concede that Austen is an interesting character in her own right, if only because so little is known of her life. This is true of the vast majority of people throughout recorded history; unless you were important or notable, few people bothered to write anything down about you. Austen was fortunate to exist in a time where there was an emerging middle class: her family was rich enough to educate her and support her without her having to work; however, she could very well have faded into obscurity were it not for a few people writing about her and stirring up interest decades after her death.
The first section, in which Jennings describes Austen’s life in a roughly chronological fashion, is competent enough. He tries to eschew delving into her writing, aside from noting when she was working on or publishing particular pieces, but sometimes he can’t help but quote from a particular book. In general, though, this section is a somewhat dry rendition of a life that—while perhaps not as without event as Henry Austen wanted us to believe in his posthumous biographical note—certainly lacked much in the way of drama.
The section on the novels felt similarly academic and much less edifying. Whereas the first section at least educated me about Austen’s life (which I knew little enough about), I’ve read most of her novels. I’m not sure someone would come to this book without having read at least one novel (probably Pride & Prejudice…)—maybe it would be useful in giving an overview so that people can decide which one to tackle next? I don’t know. It’s not bad; it just feels like it is neither brief enough for a newcomer nor in-depth enough for a dedicated fan.
The section on life in Regency England is by far the best, in my opinion. Most of us come to Austen’s novels with an anachronistic understanding of their time period. That isn’t our fault. Even the most faithful adaptations aren’t going to capture every nuance of life in Austen’s time. This is what I find so cool about reading works from eras removed from my own: life was just so different back then. People might have been the same, living and loving and lusting, etc.; but there were just so many unwritten rules that, unless one is a scholar of the period, one might never pick up on. Then there are things like the rules and ritual surrounding dancing—an oft-observed activity in Austen’s novels but one which she, understandably, never explains fully to her readers of the future. So, with this section, Jennings delivers a cornucopia of knowledge, much of which I lacked, and which is going to improve anyone’s experience with Austen’s novels.
The final section, really more of an epilogue chapter, “After Jane”, tries to sum up how our society has canonized her. Again, the limitations of length stymie Jennings, preventing any real analysis. It’s about the length of a university essay and reads a bit like one, with each paragraph moving on to a new topic, clearly in a hurry to cover as much of the breadth of the subject as possible before hitting the word limit. There are interesting facts here too, but the tour is such a whirlwind that readers will be excused if they miss them.
A Brief Guide to Jane Austen lives up to its name. Yet is Austen really someone who can be briefly explained? Jennings tries very hard to meet this challenge, and I don’t want to disparage this book unduly. It’s good; it’s factual. It’s just somewhat dry. So, as I mentioned earlier, I have trouble figuring out the best audience. Janeites will probably already be familiar with this book; less erudite readers aren’t going to find it as engaging. But, if you want to learn more about Jane Austen’s life, this book is a fair way to do so.
This book has been on my to-read list for a while. So, like you do, when I saw the entire series on display in Chapters in paperback, I bought all of them despite having never read anything by Sarah J. Maas, secure in the knowledge that if I hated the first book, I could blame all of you, everyone on the Internet for leading me astray.
You are all safe.
This time.
Celaena Sardothien is a badass assassin, but prior to the start of Throne of Glass, she was caught and imprisoned in a forced labour camp. Against such odds she has survived long enough to be plucked from the camp by the Crown Prince of Adarlan. He chooses her to compete in a tournament-style competition among other convicts to become the next King’s Champion, i.e., the king’s own pet killer. While Celaena trains and competes, she calibrates herself to the political climate of the capital, and attempts to solve the mysterious, possibly supernatural killings of other Champion candidates.
Celaena intrigues me as a character. I’m not sure I like her that much. She is brash, and of course, there’s the whole “trained to kill in cold blood” aspect of her personality. I very much respect an author who can create an unlikable protagonist and make me enjoy their journey and their story, and that is the case here. I didn’t necessarily like Celaena as a person, but I cared what happened to her. I certainly didn’t want to see her sent back to Endovier, or killed, etc.
Whenever you have a character who is supposed to be legendary at their skill set, suddenly you have a problem. They have to be good enough on the page that they are worthy of the legend; yet you also need to create conflict and show their vulnerability. From the beginning, Maas walks this line very well. Celaena’s time in Endovier has weakened her, particularly from malnutrition, and Maas chronicles the road to recovery. She was a scary-good assassin prior to her imprisonment, but now she is somewhat reduced. Even as she recovers her strength and other skills, she finds herself deep in political intrigue and supernatural mysteries that are not necessarily things she has been trained to confront. Following Celaena’s recovery and watching her weigh the pros and cons of playing along with this stupid Champions contest versus fleeing and becoming a fugitive is one of the most interesting things about this book.
Maas also makes a very smart decision, one which would have been easy to overlook: she does not show us all the Tests the candidates undergo. It’s something like fourteen weeks of training/Tests leading up to the battles among the final four. Maas shows us one or two Tests, then they fade into the background, mentioned in various off hand ways while Celaena deals with things that are obviously more important. In books with this kind of plot structure (think Goblet of Fire), the temptation to have to show all of the competitions can be strong—and if they are truly relevant to the plot and character arcs, then there isn’t anything wrong. But Throne of Glass would have dragged on and on if Maas had done that.
Instead, we’re propelled into a world of darkness and shadows. The King of Adarlan has, while conquering the countries around him, attempted to stamp out magic everywhere. Someone or something knows how to use Wyrdmarks, though, to summon and sic demonic-like beings on Champion candidates. And this brings me back to Celaena’s characterization, and while I don’t like her personally, I really enjoy how Maas characterizes her.
Celaena is smart. She is street smart and book smart, and I like that Maas shows both aspects and also distinguishes between them. Celaena is equally at home killing someone with a sword or arrow as she is in a library, surrounded by books. In the same way that I have no frame of reference to relate to her experiences in Endovier or her attraction to various potential partners, her elation over entering the royal library is a scene I can really identify with. Celaena recognizes when to use physical methods to get what she wants and when to use her brain. There is no one tool or method that will get the job done.
Similarly, I love that Celaena is equally at home wearing functional, fight-ready attire or getting decked out in hair and makeup and corsets and dresses. All too often, the “strong woman” in fantasy books is idealized as a butch or non-femme character who wears pants and swears and eschews traditionally feminine attire and activities. It’s great that those characters exist, because butch and non-femme people deserve to see themselves portrayed in these roles—but femme people, or people like Celaena who find themselves enjoying all sorts of different types of clothing, need to see themselves too.
I also liked the positive female friendship between Celaena and Nehemia. It isn’t cloying or over the top but rather founded in a certain shared outsider status, not to mention the fact that both speak Ellywe. They each bring different knowledge and experiences to the table and respect each other, and while they occasionally discuss men, this book definitely passes the Bechdel test. I like that Nehemia aids Celaena, often in unseen ways, but that this doesn’t stop Celaena from questioning Nehemia’s motives while searching for answers to the murders.
As much as I liked the friendship, the romance part of the book did little for me. “Two men love her” the back of the book proudly proclaims, and it is immediately obvious which two men that would be. And the Crown Prince falling for a killer who hates his father and everything the monarchy stands for? Really? I get that star-crossed love is a popular story trope, and all that jazz, but that doesn’t stop it from seeming very contrived. If you like romance and want it in the books you read, then maybe you’ll like it here. For me, though, it seemed superfluous—you could have cropped out the romance elements here and still have a fine book.
I’m also not as thrilled by the antagonists here as I am by the protagonist. Cain, Perrington, and Kaltain just seem like fairly stock, flat attempts at injecting threats into the story. The exception, which surprised me, is Dorian’s father. During his first appearance he is a pretty clichéd Warlord of Toxic Masculinity type deal—but at the very end of the book, we learn he has a much deeper game. He’s much more involved in what is happening in Erilea and in the supernatural aspects of the story, and I really liked this glimpse. It leaves me even more excited to read the next book—I’m not picking it up right away, but obviously it’ll be sometime soon.
My reviews of the Throne of Glass series:
Crown of Midnight →
You are all safe.
This time.
Celaena Sardothien is a badass assassin, but prior to the start of Throne of Glass, she was caught and imprisoned in a forced labour camp. Against such odds she has survived long enough to be plucked from the camp by the Crown Prince of Adarlan. He chooses her to compete in a tournament-style competition among other convicts to become the next King’s Champion, i.e., the king’s own pet killer. While Celaena trains and competes, she calibrates herself to the political climate of the capital, and attempts to solve the mysterious, possibly supernatural killings of other Champion candidates.
Celaena intrigues me as a character. I’m not sure I like her that much. She is brash, and of course, there’s the whole “trained to kill in cold blood” aspect of her personality. I very much respect an author who can create an unlikable protagonist and make me enjoy their journey and their story, and that is the case here. I didn’t necessarily like Celaena as a person, but I cared what happened to her. I certainly didn’t want to see her sent back to Endovier, or killed, etc.
Whenever you have a character who is supposed to be legendary at their skill set, suddenly you have a problem. They have to be good enough on the page that they are worthy of the legend; yet you also need to create conflict and show their vulnerability. From the beginning, Maas walks this line very well. Celaena’s time in Endovier has weakened her, particularly from malnutrition, and Maas chronicles the road to recovery. She was a scary-good assassin prior to her imprisonment, but now she is somewhat reduced. Even as she recovers her strength and other skills, she finds herself deep in political intrigue and supernatural mysteries that are not necessarily things she has been trained to confront. Following Celaena’s recovery and watching her weigh the pros and cons of playing along with this stupid Champions contest versus fleeing and becoming a fugitive is one of the most interesting things about this book.
Maas also makes a very smart decision, one which would have been easy to overlook: she does not show us all the Tests the candidates undergo. It’s something like fourteen weeks of training/Tests leading up to the battles among the final four. Maas shows us one or two Tests, then they fade into the background, mentioned in various off hand ways while Celaena deals with things that are obviously more important. In books with this kind of plot structure (think Goblet of Fire), the temptation to have to show all of the competitions can be strong—and if they are truly relevant to the plot and character arcs, then there isn’t anything wrong. But Throne of Glass would have dragged on and on if Maas had done that.
Instead, we’re propelled into a world of darkness and shadows. The King of Adarlan has, while conquering the countries around him, attempted to stamp out magic everywhere. Someone or something knows how to use Wyrdmarks, though, to summon and sic demonic-like beings on Champion candidates. And this brings me back to Celaena’s characterization, and while I don’t like her personally, I really enjoy how Maas characterizes her.
Celaena is smart. She is street smart and book smart, and I like that Maas shows both aspects and also distinguishes between them. Celaena is equally at home killing someone with a sword or arrow as she is in a library, surrounded by books. In the same way that I have no frame of reference to relate to her experiences in Endovier or her attraction to various potential partners, her elation over entering the royal library is a scene I can really identify with. Celaena recognizes when to use physical methods to get what she wants and when to use her brain. There is no one tool or method that will get the job done.
Similarly, I love that Celaena is equally at home wearing functional, fight-ready attire or getting decked out in hair and makeup and corsets and dresses. All too often, the “strong woman” in fantasy books is idealized as a butch or non-femme character who wears pants and swears and eschews traditionally feminine attire and activities. It’s great that those characters exist, because butch and non-femme people deserve to see themselves portrayed in these roles—but femme people, or people like Celaena who find themselves enjoying all sorts of different types of clothing, need to see themselves too.
I also liked the positive female friendship between Celaena and Nehemia. It isn’t cloying or over the top but rather founded in a certain shared outsider status, not to mention the fact that both speak Ellywe. They each bring different knowledge and experiences to the table and respect each other, and while they occasionally discuss men, this book definitely passes the Bechdel test. I like that Nehemia aids Celaena, often in unseen ways, but that this doesn’t stop Celaena from questioning Nehemia’s motives while searching for answers to the murders.
As much as I liked the friendship, the romance part of the book did little for me. “Two men love her” the back of the book proudly proclaims, and it is immediately obvious which two men that would be. And the Crown Prince falling for a killer who hates his father and everything the monarchy stands for? Really? I get that star-crossed love is a popular story trope, and all that jazz, but that doesn’t stop it from seeming very contrived. If you like romance and want it in the books you read, then maybe you’ll like it here. For me, though, it seemed superfluous—you could have cropped out the romance elements here and still have a fine book.
I’m also not as thrilled by the antagonists here as I am by the protagonist. Cain, Perrington, and Kaltain just seem like fairly stock, flat attempts at injecting threats into the story. The exception, which surprised me, is Dorian’s father. During his first appearance he is a pretty clichéd Warlord of Toxic Masculinity type deal—but at the very end of the book, we learn he has a much deeper game. He’s much more involved in what is happening in Erilea and in the supernatural aspects of the story, and I really liked this glimpse. It leaves me even more excited to read the next book—I’m not picking it up right away, but obviously it’ll be sometime soon.
My reviews of the Throne of Glass series:
Crown of Midnight →
Yeah, my dad bought me two books about Jane Austen a few birthdays ago, and I figured I should read them back-to-back so I could compare them. The other was A Brief Guide to Jane Austen. This one, Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World is much less a biography or analysis of her individual novels and much more an examination of how Austen went from moderately successful author in her time to forgotten to skyrocketing fame within two hundred years. Claire Harman clearly lays out not just what it is about Austen’s works that make them so good and memorable but also the way history led to the optimal circumstances for Jane to take the world by storm.
I really like how this is laid out. There are the requisite biographical details, but the majority of the book concerns what happens to Austen’s reputation after her death. Harman delves into as much evidence as she can find, mostly from surviving letters of family, as well as any public notices or records from that time. This journey is pretty much chronological (with a fair amount of foreshadowing). Rather than attempt literary analysis as Jennings does in his Brief Guide, Harman is more concerned with how Austen’s novels were received historically.
This is something we don’t often stop and consider about our beloved authors. We kind of take it as given that these authors and their works were always highly regarded ever since publication. How often do you stop and wonder how Shakespeare was portrayed, talked about, and performed in the nineteenth century? Similarly, Austen’s rise in popularity is more complex than her present status might imply.
Harman provides a glimpse into the intimate writings of Austen’s surviving sister, Cassandra, who acts as a kind of executor and protector of Austen’s memory for the rest of her life. It isn’t until Cassandra and Austen’s brother, Henry, die that the more extended members of the Austen family start wondering if they should be more public in managing Austen’s memory. Much of what they do is reactionary—other people speculating about Austen’s life, sometimes in improper ways that rub against the increasingly moralistic Victorian attitudes of the day. So that’s how you get the things like James Edward Austen-Leigh’s somewhat exaggerated character sketch of his aunt.
From there, Harman shows us how subsequent generations write about Austen as those who knew her personally start to die. By the end of the nineteenth century, Austen’s fame is secured, but she has yet to reach the critical mass of cult followers. Harman chronicles the intense critical debates between those who see Austen as a fluffy romanticist and those who view her as a serious novelist deserving literary analysis and critique.
It’s in the early twentieth century that Austen-mania really takes off. Harman triangulates a few causes. She points out that English soldiers in the Great War found the bucolic sort of novels that Austen wrote quite reassuring in the trenches. Following the war, the advent of mass media in television and radio and some adaptations of Austen’s works helped her reach even wider audiences. The book concludes with the Austen renaissance of the 1990s and 2000s, thanks to the numerous British adaptations of Austen’s work creating a kind of shared zeitgeist perception of Austen’s Regency England.
Jane’s Fame is full of interesting facts, perspectives, and analysis. Sometimes Harman draws conclusions a little too easily for my tastes, making claims that her source material doesn’t always seem to back up. She seems out to dispel “myths” about Austen’s life, even though the counter-evidence she presents isn’t necessarily always more reliable or closed to interpretation. My point, simply put, is that no amount of scholarship is ever going to produce a definitive version of Austen’s story—too much has been lost, too much was never recorded. We will probably never know very well what she looked like. This can be frustrating, from a fan’s point of view. From a literary critic’s, I suppose it’s a fascinating puzzle.
To compare this to A Brief Guide to Jane Austen, I think this one has a more obvious audience. It’s longer, yes, but it doesn’t harp so much on the plot of Austen’s novels as it does their context. Anyone who has read Austen will be able to follow and perhaps enjoy this book—though it is definitely quite literary and academic in its style. In the case of both books, they aren’t necessarily something I would pick up myself—I’m just not that intrigued by Austen’s life—but they were good gifts, and I learned a lot from them. That’s about what you want from your rando non-fiction picks!
I really like how this is laid out. There are the requisite biographical details, but the majority of the book concerns what happens to Austen’s reputation after her death. Harman delves into as much evidence as she can find, mostly from surviving letters of family, as well as any public notices or records from that time. This journey is pretty much chronological (with a fair amount of foreshadowing). Rather than attempt literary analysis as Jennings does in his Brief Guide, Harman is more concerned with how Austen’s novels were received historically.
This is something we don’t often stop and consider about our beloved authors. We kind of take it as given that these authors and their works were always highly regarded ever since publication. How often do you stop and wonder how Shakespeare was portrayed, talked about, and performed in the nineteenth century? Similarly, Austen’s rise in popularity is more complex than her present status might imply.
Harman provides a glimpse into the intimate writings of Austen’s surviving sister, Cassandra, who acts as a kind of executor and protector of Austen’s memory for the rest of her life. It isn’t until Cassandra and Austen’s brother, Henry, die that the more extended members of the Austen family start wondering if they should be more public in managing Austen’s memory. Much of what they do is reactionary—other people speculating about Austen’s life, sometimes in improper ways that rub against the increasingly moralistic Victorian attitudes of the day. So that’s how you get the things like James Edward Austen-Leigh’s somewhat exaggerated character sketch of his aunt.
From there, Harman shows us how subsequent generations write about Austen as those who knew her personally start to die. By the end of the nineteenth century, Austen’s fame is secured, but she has yet to reach the critical mass of cult followers. Harman chronicles the intense critical debates between those who see Austen as a fluffy romanticist and those who view her as a serious novelist deserving literary analysis and critique.
It’s in the early twentieth century that Austen-mania really takes off. Harman triangulates a few causes. She points out that English soldiers in the Great War found the bucolic sort of novels that Austen wrote quite reassuring in the trenches. Following the war, the advent of mass media in television and radio and some adaptations of Austen’s works helped her reach even wider audiences. The book concludes with the Austen renaissance of the 1990s and 2000s, thanks to the numerous British adaptations of Austen’s work creating a kind of shared zeitgeist perception of Austen’s Regency England.
Jane’s Fame is full of interesting facts, perspectives, and analysis. Sometimes Harman draws conclusions a little too easily for my tastes, making claims that her source material doesn’t always seem to back up. She seems out to dispel “myths” about Austen’s life, even though the counter-evidence she presents isn’t necessarily always more reliable or closed to interpretation. My point, simply put, is that no amount of scholarship is ever going to produce a definitive version of Austen’s story—too much has been lost, too much was never recorded. We will probably never know very well what she looked like. This can be frustrating, from a fan’s point of view. From a literary critic’s, I suppose it’s a fascinating puzzle.
To compare this to A Brief Guide to Jane Austen, I think this one has a more obvious audience. It’s longer, yes, but it doesn’t harp so much on the plot of Austen’s novels as it does their context. Anyone who has read Austen will be able to follow and perhaps enjoy this book—though it is definitely quite literary and academic in its style. In the case of both books, they aren’t necessarily something I would pick up myself—I’m just not that intrigued by Austen’s life—but they were good gifts, and I learned a lot from them. That’s about what you want from your rando non-fiction picks!
Laurie Penny has been one of my favourite authors for a while now. Her incisive takes on how feminism can be more intersectional, more anti-capitalist, have continued to be on point as the United States and UK shamble towards their respective political armageddons (armagedda?). Penny’s Unspeakable Things is the feminist primer for my generation. So when I heard that she had a new book coming out, and that it was called Bitch Doctrine: Essays for Dissenting Adults, pre-ordering it was a no-brainer.
Let’s take a moment with the wordplay in that subtitle. Penny is big on consent, of course, so I love how she replaces the phrase “consenting adults” with “dissenting adults” and reminds us up front that her feminism is anti-establishment by definition. Penny’s writing is always sharp and unapologetic in its demands on its readers. In every essay, every piece in this book, Penny demands action. She has this to say in the introduction:
I love Penny’s writing so much, not just for the ideas it espouses but for the skill and care in its diction and style alone: Penny is a good writer, hands down, expressing her ideology so clearly. In many cases she can talk about horrible, uncomfortable things in beautiful ways. In that passage above, she writes with a passion, a zealous devotion born from an anger I can never know. And that’s what sets her apart from me. The privilege of my gender filters my experiences, so that when I write about feminism, I’m not subject to the same torrent of abuse that Penny and other women experience.
Penny is quick to point out, however, her own privilege:
This is an important acknowledgement even if it seems like Feminism 101 to anyone who reads a lot of this, because this is where white feminists get particularly tripped up. In our zeal for liberation we forget that there are people who have more skin (literally) or other, diverse perspectives in this fight. Penny isn’t perfect, and neither are the essays in this book. The idea that you’re going to be feminist without making any mistakes is as silly as thinking you’ll somehow make a championship NBA team without ever missing a shot.
Penny grounds her understanding of feminism in an anti-capitalist context. That is to say, the patriarchy exists because it’s a way for the dominant group of people to hold on to power:
(That’s why, when feminism became popular and trendy enough, companies started using it to market products—because they really don’t care what philosophy they espouse, as long as it sells.)
Lest you think Penny only targets the “traditional right” though, she has critiques for the “traditional left” too. Though her sympathies are undoubtedly socialist, Penny is quick to condemn those who yearn for the good ol’ people’s revolution:
Have I mentioned that, so far, I’ve only been quoting from the introduction?
Suffice it to say, I could quote at length from this book. So much of what Penny has to say here is relevant and topical. I’m writing this as the American media reels from white nationalists marching in Charlottesville and Trump’s completely inappropriate response to it. If you read Bitch Doctrine now you could be forgiven for thinking Penny was writing after those marches; so many of her essays link Trump to the rise of white nationalism and the clouds on the horizon. She isn’t prophetic, mind you—she just has her eyes open. Plenty of people were writing about this and talking about it in the years leading up to and following Trump’s election. It’s not for lack of trying; we didn’t listen.
Penny also has a great deal to say about women’s bodies, reproductive agency, and sexual violence. Most of the writing here is powerful, again both in terms of style and substance. She asks the reader to confront these problems not just as horrible from a moral point of view but as symptoms of a broken system:
This is the kind of passage that I would hope makes readers go, “Whoa” and makes heads explode. I was kind of already in this head-space, and even still, the succinctness with which Penny makes these connections is so powerful.
Penny is equally at home talking about Nazis, politics, and nerd culture. Her nerdy interests mean she can speak to this demographic as one of us rather than as an outsider looking in with anthropological distaste. Even as she critiques the ways nerd culture reinforces patriarchy, she does so with compassion:
(Requisite reference to the Mitchell & Webb “Are we the baddies?” sketch now.) That sentence is just so good; it’s such a perfect and nerdy way of capturing the immensity of the betrayal that our society pulls on good people with privilege.
If it’s not comforting to know you’re part of the Empire, then you’re not alone. There isn’t a lot of comfort in Bitch Doctrine. I would say, though, that there is a fair amount of hope. I don’t think Penny would be writing otherwise. And perhaps that’s why I love these essays so much: one can tell from her tone and style that Penny truly believes writing has the power to change the world. This is a powerful form of activism.
The essays collected herein were previously published elsewhere, so fellow fans of Penny might find them somewhat familiar. Although I think some have been expanded/revised, if you came here looking for a lot of new material, you might be disappointed. Similarly, although Penny and her editors have worked hard to curate a sensible collection, the end result is a little bit more scattershot than a more unified effort like Unspeakable Things. While this doesn’t detract from Bitch Doctrine’s quality as a feminist polemic, it’s just not my personal preference. Other people might be totally fine with it.
On a related note, another one of my few qualms about this book is that I wish the essays had dates on them. They’re grouped thematically rather than ordered chronologically, so as a result, some of the works feel fresh and topic, but others feel a little out of date given more recent political or cultural events. Context is important, and without dates, we lack some information here.
Overall, Bitch Doctrine is a nice compilation of a lot of Penny’s best work over the past few years. This isn’t the place to start if you’re on the fence about feminism, and people who read a lot of feminist work might not find a lot new here (lots of nodding and agreement, maybe some areas of disagreement over how Penny tries to be intersectional). On the whole, though, the success of this work lies in whether or not Penny’s particular brand of fire-and-snark is to your taste. It certainly is to mine.
Let’s take a moment with the wordplay in that subtitle. Penny is big on consent, of course, so I love how she replaces the phrase “consenting adults” with “dissenting adults” and reminds us up front that her feminism is anti-establishment by definition. Penny’s writing is always sharp and unapologetic in its demands on its readers. In every essay, every piece in this book, Penny demands action. She has this to say in the introduction:
The title is a provocation, but so is the rest of the book. How could it be otherwise? Anything any woman ever writes about politics is considered provocative, an invitation to dismissal and disgust and abuse, in much the same way that a short skirt is considered an invitation to sexual violence. That’s the point. I have learned through years of writing in public that if you are a woman and political, they will come for you whatever you say—so you may as well say what you really feel. If that makes me a bitch, I can live with that.
I love Penny’s writing so much, not just for the ideas it espouses but for the skill and care in its diction and style alone: Penny is a good writer, hands down, expressing her ideology so clearly. In many cases she can talk about horrible, uncomfortable things in beautiful ways. In that passage above, she writes with a passion, a zealous devotion born from an anger I can never know. And that’s what sets her apart from me. The privilege of my gender filters my experiences, so that when I write about feminism, I’m not subject to the same torrent of abuse that Penny and other women experience.
Penny is quick to point out, however, her own privilege:
I’m middle-class, white, well educated. I have less to lose by taking my own advice than others do. I have less to lose by seeking freedom than my mother did, and she had less to lose than her mother, although they both had far more to win. There is still a world to win.
I’m not writing as everygirl, because there is no such thing. The idea that any person could speak “for women” is cartoonish in its misunderstanding of what feminism is, what women are. (11)
This is an important acknowledgement even if it seems like Feminism 101 to anyone who reads a lot of this, because this is where white feminists get particularly tripped up. In our zeal for liberation we forget that there are people who have more skin (literally) or other, diverse perspectives in this fight. Penny isn’t perfect, and neither are the essays in this book. The idea that you’re going to be feminist without making any mistakes is as silly as thinking you’ll somehow make a championship NBA team without ever missing a shot.
Penny grounds her understanding of feminism in an anti-capitalist context. That is to say, the patriarchy exists because it’s a way for the dominant group of people to hold on to power:
All politics are identity politics, but some identities are more politicized than others … this is not a problem for the traditional left. It is a problem for the traditional right, which has pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy for centuries … a hierarchy of victimhood that diverts energy and anger away from the vested interests bankrolling the entire scheme. (4)
(That’s why, when feminism became popular and trendy enough, companies started using it to market products—because they really don’t care what philosophy they espouse, as long as it sells.)
Lest you think Penny only targets the “traditional right” though, she has critiques for the “traditional left” too. Though her sympathies are undoubtedly socialist, Penny is quick to condemn those who yearn for the good ol’ people’s revolution:
I’ve heard it said that for a progressive, equal society to come about, the one we have now has to collapse completely. I’ve heard this said almost overwhelmingly by men on the left who nurse guilty hard-ons over visions of dying in battle as martyrs. Civilisation, they say, needs to collapse completely before we can have the revolution we need. (17)
Have I mentioned that, so far, I’ve only been quoting from the introduction?
Suffice it to say, I could quote at length from this book. So much of what Penny has to say here is relevant and topical. I’m writing this as the American media reels from white nationalists marching in Charlottesville and Trump’s completely inappropriate response to it. If you read Bitch Doctrine now you could be forgiven for thinking Penny was writing after those marches; so many of her essays link Trump to the rise of white nationalism and the clouds on the horizon. She isn’t prophetic, mind you—she just has her eyes open. Plenty of people were writing about this and talking about it in the years leading up to and following Trump’s election. It’s not for lack of trying; we didn’t listen.
Penny also has a great deal to say about women’s bodies, reproductive agency, and sexual violence. Most of the writing here is powerful, again both in terms of style and substance. She asks the reader to confront these problems not just as horrible from a moral point of view but as symptoms of a broken system:
It’s all about controlling women’s bodies before, during and after pregnancy. Almost every ideological facet of our societies is geared towards that end—from product placement and public health advice to explicit laws forcing women to carry pregnancies to term and jailing them if they fail to deliver the healthy babies the state requires of them. (236)
This is the kind of passage that I would hope makes readers go, “Whoa” and makes heads explode. I was kind of already in this head-space, and even still, the succinctness with which Penny makes these connections is so powerful.
Penny is equally at home talking about Nazis, politics, and nerd culture. Her nerdy interests mean she can speak to this demographic as one of us rather than as an outsider looking in with anthropological distaste. Even as she critiques the ways nerd culture reinforces patriarchy, she does so with compassion:
Finding out that you’re not the Rebel Alliance, you’re actually part of the Empire and have been all along, is painful.
(Requisite reference to the Mitchell & Webb “Are we the baddies?” sketch now.) That sentence is just so good; it’s such a perfect and nerdy way of capturing the immensity of the betrayal that our society pulls on good people with privilege.
If it’s not comforting to know you’re part of the Empire, then you’re not alone. There isn’t a lot of comfort in Bitch Doctrine. I would say, though, that there is a fair amount of hope. I don’t think Penny would be writing otherwise. And perhaps that’s why I love these essays so much: one can tell from her tone and style that Penny truly believes writing has the power to change the world. This is a powerful form of activism.
The essays collected herein were previously published elsewhere, so fellow fans of Penny might find them somewhat familiar. Although I think some have been expanded/revised, if you came here looking for a lot of new material, you might be disappointed. Similarly, although Penny and her editors have worked hard to curate a sensible collection, the end result is a little bit more scattershot than a more unified effort like Unspeakable Things. While this doesn’t detract from Bitch Doctrine’s quality as a feminist polemic, it’s just not my personal preference. Other people might be totally fine with it.
On a related note, another one of my few qualms about this book is that I wish the essays had dates on them. They’re grouped thematically rather than ordered chronologically, so as a result, some of the works feel fresh and topic, but others feel a little out of date given more recent political or cultural events. Context is important, and without dates, we lack some information here.
Overall, Bitch Doctrine is a nice compilation of a lot of Penny’s best work over the past few years. This isn’t the place to start if you’re on the fence about feminism, and people who read a lot of feminist work might not find a lot new here (lots of nodding and agreement, maybe some areas of disagreement over how Penny tries to be intersectional). On the whole, though, the success of this work lies in whether or not Penny’s particular brand of fire-and-snark is to your taste. It certainly is to mine.
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Mask of Shadows was just some random fantasy novel I requested on NetGalley in exchange for a review, and then I started hearing all about it elsewhere. Linsey Miller’s debut novel features a genderfluid protagonist trying to become the next assassin to the queen. Sal is a thief and one of the few survivors of a massacre that wiped out almost all of their countrypeople. They view the assassin position as a chance to align themselves with the queen who ended that war and drove back the shadows—but by getting involved in nation-level politics, Sal might have bitten off more than they can chew.
One of the central elements of Mask of Shadows is a trope I really enjoy and one I’ve built into my own eternally-WIP fantasy novel: the story takes place after the Big Bad is vanquished. In this case, the Big Bad are the shadows that infiltrated this world. It’s about a decade since Marianna da Ignasi kicked the shadows out of the world by getting rid of all magic. That in and of itself might have been an epic story to tell, but for whatever reason, Miller didn’t choose to start there. Instead we start with Sal, embittered by the slaughter of their family and countrypeople by the shadows.
Sal’s spur-of-the-moment decision to try out for a role as royal assassin might seem strange to those of us who are just meeting them. As the book continues, though, and we learn more about Sal, it starts to make more sense. It’s as if Sal’s entire life since the destruction of Nicea has been an interim period, where Sal has been floating as this thief and highway robber, waiting for an opportunity to become involved in something bigger.
The assassin competition itself was OK. These types of stories, to be honest, seldom do much for me. The repetitive nature of having to eliminate the various members of the competition until only a few remain for the climax gets dull for me, fast. Miller does a lot to make it easier. In particular, the other members of the Left Hand are a delight. Similarly, their rules for the auditions make sense; I can actually imagine this type of assassin-audition setup working.
I’m a little ambivalent about how Sal goes in with almost no experience in this field and very few other skills and the Left Hand is basically all, “Yeah, we will train you at whatevs.” But I think that’s Miller trying to show us that this world has slightly different mores than the cookie-cutter fantasy we’re used to. There is a sense of compassion running through the social interactions in this story: almost all of the upper-class characters respect and treat servants well, and people in authority, like the Left Hand, generally want to level the playing field. This is, of course problematic in and of itself, as it is framed paradoxically within a feudal society wherein social mobility is very limited and imperfect. I’m willing to cut Miller some slack here—it’s hard to interrogate all these ideas in a single novel, especially when limited to one person’s perspective. I’m curious to see where this goes in subsequent novels.
Mask of Shadows is steeped in conflict, and not just the violent kind. Miller does a good job presenting people who are, on the face of things, reasonable people whose goals merely conflict with Sal’s. In some cases this leads to compromise; in other cases it is more … fatal. Similarly, we encounter situations where Miller invites us to disagree with Sal’s beliefs, goals, or actions. This is an imperfect protagonist. Sal’s drive and determination to become Opal and then to use the position as a way to enact revenge is powerful yet very unhealthy, and Miller does not hesitate to underscore this latter fact. I really appreciated the frank conversation between Sal and the Queen near the ending of the book and for the glimpse it offers us of Marianna da Ignasi’s character.
As I said earlier, these types of competition plots seldom interest me. This was true for this book—but I still had a really good time! I was so interested in what Sal would do next, in what mistake they would make or plot they would hatch. Overall the character development is very uneven: there are some twists and reveals that seemed mainly there for dramatic effect, and some of the characters are very flat. The same can be said for the worldbuilding. Miller errs on the side of less infodumping rather than more, and while that is the correct side of the line to be on, in my opinion, sometimes she veers a little too far away from giving us information that could deepen our understanding of this world. I don’t want to have to wait for a timeline in an appendix to give me that.
Critiquing the presentation of Sal’s genderfluidity isn’t in my lane. However, I did like that Sal’s gender identity is not a big deal in this book. There are a couple of instances of unintentional misgendering and at least one instance of intentional misgendering, but by and large, even the people who have a problem with Sal take care to use the correct pronouns and apologize when they mess up. Similarly, Miller includes numerous other queer characters. We even learn, near the end of the book, that one character is aromantic—she mentions it in passing (does not use the term), so it’s easy to miss, but it got me really excited. So, in general, I like how Miller handles the diversity of her characters by making it a foregone conclusion that they are everywhere instead of people who must be announced, discovered, or otherwise explained.
Mask of Shadows feels like a debut novel. The writing, particularly the characterization, is uneven. It recycles a lot of common fantasy tropes. Parts of it are clunky. At the same time, however, it tells a great story, has a satisfying arc to it, and it leaves me wanting more. Parts of it are brilliant. I’m curious to see where Sal goes from here, and whether their responsibilities will conflict with their personal goals.
One of the central elements of Mask of Shadows is a trope I really enjoy and one I’ve built into my own eternally-WIP fantasy novel: the story takes place after the Big Bad is vanquished. In this case, the Big Bad are the shadows that infiltrated this world. It’s about a decade since Marianna da Ignasi kicked the shadows out of the world by getting rid of all magic. That in and of itself might have been an epic story to tell, but for whatever reason, Miller didn’t choose to start there. Instead we start with Sal, embittered by the slaughter of their family and countrypeople by the shadows.
Sal’s spur-of-the-moment decision to try out for a role as royal assassin might seem strange to those of us who are just meeting them. As the book continues, though, and we learn more about Sal, it starts to make more sense. It’s as if Sal’s entire life since the destruction of Nicea has been an interim period, where Sal has been floating as this thief and highway robber, waiting for an opportunity to become involved in something bigger.
The assassin competition itself was OK. These types of stories, to be honest, seldom do much for me. The repetitive nature of having to eliminate the various members of the competition until only a few remain for the climax gets dull for me, fast. Miller does a lot to make it easier. In particular, the other members of the Left Hand are a delight. Similarly, their rules for the auditions make sense; I can actually imagine this type of assassin-audition setup working.
I’m a little ambivalent about how Sal goes in with almost no experience in this field and very few other skills and the Left Hand is basically all, “Yeah, we will train you at whatevs.” But I think that’s Miller trying to show us that this world has slightly different mores than the cookie-cutter fantasy we’re used to. There is a sense of compassion running through the social interactions in this story: almost all of the upper-class characters respect and treat servants well, and people in authority, like the Left Hand, generally want to level the playing field. This is, of course problematic in and of itself, as it is framed paradoxically within a feudal society wherein social mobility is very limited and imperfect. I’m willing to cut Miller some slack here—it’s hard to interrogate all these ideas in a single novel, especially when limited to one person’s perspective. I’m curious to see where this goes in subsequent novels.
Mask of Shadows is steeped in conflict, and not just the violent kind. Miller does a good job presenting people who are, on the face of things, reasonable people whose goals merely conflict with Sal’s. In some cases this leads to compromise; in other cases it is more … fatal. Similarly, we encounter situations where Miller invites us to disagree with Sal’s beliefs, goals, or actions. This is an imperfect protagonist. Sal’s drive and determination to become Opal and then to use the position as a way to enact revenge is powerful yet very unhealthy, and Miller does not hesitate to underscore this latter fact. I really appreciated the frank conversation between Sal and the Queen near the ending of the book and for the glimpse it offers us of Marianna da Ignasi’s character.
As I said earlier, these types of competition plots seldom interest me. This was true for this book—but I still had a really good time! I was so interested in what Sal would do next, in what mistake they would make or plot they would hatch. Overall the character development is very uneven: there are some twists and reveals that seemed mainly there for dramatic effect, and some of the characters are very flat. The same can be said for the worldbuilding. Miller errs on the side of less infodumping rather than more, and while that is the correct side of the line to be on, in my opinion, sometimes she veers a little too far away from giving us information that could deepen our understanding of this world. I don’t want to have to wait for a timeline in an appendix to give me that.
Critiquing the presentation of Sal’s genderfluidity isn’t in my lane. However, I did like that Sal’s gender identity is not a big deal in this book. There are a couple of instances of unintentional misgendering and at least one instance of intentional misgendering, but by and large, even the people who have a problem with Sal take care to use the correct pronouns and apologize when they mess up. Similarly, Miller includes numerous other queer characters. We even learn, near the end of the book, that one character is aromantic—she mentions it in passing (does not use the term), so it’s easy to miss, but it got me really excited. So, in general, I like how Miller handles the diversity of her characters by making it a foregone conclusion that they are everywhere instead of people who must be announced, discovered, or otherwise explained.
Mask of Shadows feels like a debut novel. The writing, particularly the characterization, is uneven. It recycles a lot of common fantasy tropes. Parts of it are clunky. At the same time, however, it tells a great story, has a satisfying arc to it, and it leaves me wanting more. Parts of it are brilliant. I’m curious to see where Sal goes from here, and whether their responsibilities will conflict with their personal goals.
The Science of Orphan Black: The Official Companion
Cosima Herter, Nina Nesseth, Casey Griffin, Graeme Manson
I’m not all that comfortable with our tendency these days to label or ask if a piece of media is “feminist”. I don’t think that’s the right way to be looking at or critiquing media. All media are ultimately creations of our society and therefore contain threads of the implicit biases within our society. Rather than trying to decide if something is or is not feminist, as a whole work, we should be critiquing it through a feminist lens.
But damn, if Orphan Black is not a feminist show, I don’t know what is.
As much as I could rave about this show, of course, this is a review rather of a companion book: The Science of Orphan Black. I saw this on NetGalley a few days after the series finale aired, and I had to request it, even though it had already been released. As it is, I’m probably going to buy a copy at some point—the final chapter and certain details in the e-ARC are blacked out, I assume because they contain spoilers for the last season—because this is a cool coffee-table-style tie-in book. In addition to the writing, it is gorgeously designed and features great photos and quotes from the show.
I’ve always liked how Orphan Black tries to stay as grounded with the science as possible for a show about adult human clones. Casey Griffin and Nina Nesseth obviously like it too, because they’ve done a fabulous job examining the various facets of the science of this show. They pick apart how the show approaches cloning, distinguishing between what’s science fiction and what’s science fact. They also examine the ethics of the science, both in the real world and in the way that Orphan Black treats with this topic. Overall, this is a very complete, well-rounded look at these parts of the series.
The book almost parallels the way the show’s awareness and depth of its approach to science develops over the seasons. Griffin and Nesseth begin by teaching us the basics of human cloning at a cellular level. They explain how scientists first went about cloning whole organisms, and why human cloning might be difficult (not to mention, you know, ethically problematic). They point out the missing pieces of the puzzle that weren’t available in the 1980s when Project Leda was up and running, conjecturing what the Duncans must have solved on their own in order to make human cloning successful back then.
From there, Griffin and Nesseth dig into the science surrounding clones. They talk nature versus nurture, heritable diseases, and explain how Leda and Castor lines can come from a single donor. I loved this last chapter, because while Cosima mentions a chimera onscreen, Griffin and Nesseth have the time to go into much more detail about how this works on a genetic level. The chapter on Rachel’s brain injury was also fascinating. Again, it’s lovely to learn how much the show got right, and the effort made by the showrunners, crew, and of course, Tatiana Maslany.
I was already giving mad kudos to Maslany, Manson, Fawcett, et al, and this book really just enhances my appreciation of everything they did to pull this off. They managed to take a show about women who are (more or less) genetically identical and present us with more than a handful of diverse, differentiated, interesting female characters. I’m not sure what it says about our society that one of the shows with the best representation of women on TV right now has them all played by the same actor … regardless, Griffin and Nesseth point out how, as the show goes on, it grapples with deeper and richer questions in science.
In this way, I think The Science of Orphan Black also helps readers understand how science is stratified. There’s very surface-level inquiry, like “how do I measure this, how do I microscope?” and then there are deeper questions, like “how do I introduce gene therapy into my germ-line cells??” Parallel to these run the ethical considerations. Is it a good idea to clone people? What are the legal ramifications for personhood? Although this book doesn’t engage deeply with these debates, it highlights where the show introduces them and also provides an historical background, such as when they talk about the origins of eugenics.
The book concludes with a transcript conversation between Manson and Cosima’s namesake, science consultant Cosima Herter. This provides so much insight into the genesis of Orphan Black and how Manson hammered out the direction and ethos for the show, with input from people like Herter.
The Science of Orphan Black is an insightful, well-written, must-read for anyone who is a fan of the show and its approaches to science. I miss the Clone Club already (though that series finale was one of the best I’ve ever seen), but it was nice to dip back into that universe, in a very scientific way.
But damn, if Orphan Black is not a feminist show, I don’t know what is.
As much as I could rave about this show, of course, this is a review rather of a companion book: The Science of Orphan Black. I saw this on NetGalley a few days after the series finale aired, and I had to request it, even though it had already been released. As it is, I’m probably going to buy a copy at some point—the final chapter and certain details in the e-ARC are blacked out, I assume because they contain spoilers for the last season—because this is a cool coffee-table-style tie-in book. In addition to the writing, it is gorgeously designed and features great photos and quotes from the show.
I’ve always liked how Orphan Black tries to stay as grounded with the science as possible for a show about adult human clones. Casey Griffin and Nina Nesseth obviously like it too, because they’ve done a fabulous job examining the various facets of the science of this show. They pick apart how the show approaches cloning, distinguishing between what’s science fiction and what’s science fact. They also examine the ethics of the science, both in the real world and in the way that Orphan Black treats with this topic. Overall, this is a very complete, well-rounded look at these parts of the series.
The book almost parallels the way the show’s awareness and depth of its approach to science develops over the seasons. Griffin and Nesseth begin by teaching us the basics of human cloning at a cellular level. They explain how scientists first went about cloning whole organisms, and why human cloning might be difficult (not to mention, you know, ethically problematic). They point out the missing pieces of the puzzle that weren’t available in the 1980s when Project Leda was up and running, conjecturing what the Duncans must have solved on their own in order to make human cloning successful back then.
From there, Griffin and Nesseth dig into the science surrounding clones. They talk nature versus nurture, heritable diseases, and explain how Leda and Castor lines can come from a single donor. I loved this last chapter, because while Cosima mentions a chimera onscreen, Griffin and Nesseth have the time to go into much more detail about how this works on a genetic level. The chapter on Rachel’s brain injury was also fascinating. Again, it’s lovely to learn how much the show got right, and the effort made by the showrunners, crew, and of course, Tatiana Maslany.
I was already giving mad kudos to Maslany, Manson, Fawcett, et al, and this book really just enhances my appreciation of everything they did to pull this off. They managed to take a show about women who are (more or less) genetically identical and present us with more than a handful of diverse, differentiated, interesting female characters. I’m not sure what it says about our society that one of the shows with the best representation of women on TV right now has them all played by the same actor … regardless, Griffin and Nesseth point out how, as the show goes on, it grapples with deeper and richer questions in science.
In this way, I think The Science of Orphan Black also helps readers understand how science is stratified. There’s very surface-level inquiry, like “how do I measure this, how do I microscope?” and then there are deeper questions, like “how do I introduce gene therapy into my germ-line cells??” Parallel to these run the ethical considerations. Is it a good idea to clone people? What are the legal ramifications for personhood? Although this book doesn’t engage deeply with these debates, it highlights where the show introduces them and also provides an historical background, such as when they talk about the origins of eugenics.
The book concludes with a transcript conversation between Manson and Cosima’s namesake, science consultant Cosima Herter. This provides so much insight into the genesis of Orphan Black and how Manson hammered out the direction and ethos for the show, with input from people like Herter.
The Science of Orphan Black is an insightful, well-written, must-read for anyone who is a fan of the show and its approaches to science. I miss the Clone Club already (though that series finale was one of the best I’ve ever seen), but it was nice to dip back into that universe, in a very scientific way.