I have been remiss in my Temeraire reading. I am way behind now, and with the series ending, it is time to catch up. (I say this, but I don’t actually own the next books and have no intention of buying them in the near future, because I have a ton of other stuff to catch up on. Hah. We’ll see how that goes.) Naomi Novik has always managed to keep the series fresh by sending Temeraire and Laurence off to new and interesting locations. From the coast of Great Britain to China to the heart of Africa, this alternative history series isn’t just about fighting the Napoleonic War. Its scope has grown so much, as have its characters.

In Tongues of Serpents, the sixth book, Novik sends Laurence and Temeraire to Australia—then a fledgling penal colony. The arduous journey has taken months, and when they arrive, they find that the British-appointed governor has been overthrown. Oops. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Laurence and Temeraire would soon find themselves embroiled in a power struggle, but Novik soon has them penetrating the arid interior of the continent, on the track of a stolen dragon egg. Oh, and Rankin is back!

I’ll come right out and say that I didn’t enjoy this book as much as previous Temeraire books. For me, it’s just lacking most of the things I love about this series. There is very little political intrigue—oh, on the surface it looks like there should be, what with the rebellion and the larger backdrop of China’s trading gambit. Unfortunately, Temeraire and Laurence don’t really engage in this and struggle with it in the same way that they have engaged in the past. They more stumble from one crisis to the next, with very little in the way of a plan of attack. It’s not a proactive novel.

This is particularly true of the middle, and largest, portion of the book, which is essentially a protracted trek through the interior of Australia. What I thought would be the first act, to be concluded with the two of them returning to Sydney and carrying on with a bigger plot, stretched out for nearly the whole novel. Now, chasing a stolen dragon egg could have been great, mind you. But when the biggest threats seem to be dehydration and quicksand, I just start to wonder why Temeraire and Laurence have to be around at all. I mean, yes, Temeraire’s injury to his throat temporary depriving him of the divine wind was a nice touch—but there is precious little dragon combat, or dragon anything (except complaining) that I just don’t see what makes this a Temeraire book, save for the main characters.

The newest and exciting developments, like the way the Chinese are training serpents to deliver goods across vast distances, are very much underplayed in my opinion. Instead, Novik focuses far too much on the nebulous possibilities of what will happen after this book is over, after Riley returns to England, Granby leaves, Temeraire and Laurence are stuck in Australia with Rankin, etc. And those are all great things to think about—but could we finish the book first?

It’s not all bad. The banter between dragons is excellent; once more, Novik manages to give each dragon such a unique personality while still sharing among themselves certain inhuman outlooks. I just love the slightly hypocritical way Temeraire judges the other dragons (and then often admits, if only to himself, that he harbours similar thoughts). There are three new dragons in this one, and each is interesting (and irksome) in their own way. Moreover, I appreciate that Novik wants to give Laurence and Temeraire a hard time. As much as this is a moral zenith for them, it is obviously a career nadir. It wouldn’t be right, from a pathos point of view, if they rocked up to Australia and suddenly life was grand again. I guess the quicksand is kind of there for a reason.

So I wouldn’t pronounce this a bad book or even a stinker, but it’s definitely near the bottom of my ranking for this series. I think fans like myself will enjoy parts of it well enough. Yet if a newcomer were to pick this up, I’m not sure they would be so enamoured. Tongues of Serpents just seems to lack that magic that makes the series so brilliant. It doesn’t feel Temeraire-y enough, and I could see someone less familiar with the backstory, less able to comprehend the callbacks, shrugging and wondering what all the fuss is about.

My reviews of Temeraire:
← Victory of Eagles | Crucible of Gold →

My major complaint about Warcross is that it was just over too soon. I guess that’s what happens, however, when you read a book in one day because you can’t put it down. Marie Lu’s story of a teenage hacker-turned-bounty-hunter at the end of her rope getting hired by the world’s richest game designer on the eve of the game’s annual championships is simply enthralling.

Before I continue to gush about the story, though, we need to pause for just a moment and appreciate this cover by Cream3D and Theresa Evangelista, because it is 💯. I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy the cover for the cover’s sake. The colours, the use of dimension, the play on the “cross” in Warcross—I love covers that don’t feature people and do cool things with the title, and this ticks both those boxes. It is phenomenal, and even if this book were complete garbage, this cover alone deserves all the awards.

Anyway.

Warcross reminds me a lot of William Gibson—but more so the Blue Ant trilogy than Sprawl. Despite the obvious resemblance the Warcross experience has with cyberspace, it’s more that Hideo and Emika’s relationship—at least at first—reminds me of Hubertus and Cayce. The enigmatic, enormously wealthy patron who is just ahead of the curve hires a young and savvy woman who knows exactly how to do what he needs done. Like Gibson, Lu anticipates how a revolutionary interactive technology might alter not just one facet of society (gaming) but all of our society. It’s not exactly extrapolation, but it is a good, hard look into the ways in which we take up new digital technologies to make our lives easier.

I’m having trouble putting my finger on exactly what it is about this book that got me hooked so quickly. It might be Emika’s incorrigibility. She has gone through a lot in her short life, yet she isn’t bitter. There are times when she might verge on Mary Sueishness, but I think Lu largely avoids this. Emika makes enough mistakes, and it’s clear, especially by the end, that she isn’t going to “save the day”. It might also be the adrenaline-infused pacing of Warcross: literally never a dull moment here. I don’t know if Lu wrote it this way or if an editor took a laser-powered axe to these chapters, but this thing is impressively lean. If it doesn’t advance the plot, it isn’t on the page. The exposition is exquisitely balanced.

The eponymous game and its environment is also stunning. And I say this as someone who doesn’t visualize when reading, so I really have no idea what it looks like. But the description makes this sound like some kind of VR Overwatch, which I think is enough for most people to go on. When you have a story heavily based around sporting scenes like we have here, sometimes I lose track of what’s going on (I’m sorry: I could never really grok the Quidditch action in Harry Potter). But this reminded me a little of Ender’s Game. Maybe it helped that Emika always had ulterior missions while in the game.

I wish I could give Warcross five stars, because I really did love it that much. Alas, the ending disappointed me ever so slightly. Firstly, it was super predictable. I figured out who Zero was fairly early on. That alone wouldn’t be a dealbreaker. Secondly, the revelations around the NeuroLink were also predictable. The moment Emika explained how it worked, way back at the beginning of the book, I put it down for a moment and swallowed, because I knew exactly where this was going, and it’s the thing about brain–computer interfaces that most freaks me out. If we get them working in my lifetime, I’m definitely going to be the dinosaur who refuses to put one into his brain. (The difficulty, of course, is that if we introduce them via wearables like the glasses here, then maybe I won’t even realize it until it’s too late.) Finally, the secondary characters could have used some more development. This is a minor quibble—Lu makes some attempts at this—but that leanness I mentioned earlier cuts both ways, and sometimes it felt like it was just all-Emika’s story, all the time.

If anything, I quite respect Lu’s decisions around the ending, and in particular, the way it changes things between Emika and Hideo. Their romance felt like the weakest and least welcome subplot in this book, and for a large portion, I was just kind of wishing it wasn’t happening—it felt so contrived. I’m shipping Emika/Hammie. Nevertheless, I admit that the romance makes a tragic kind of sense given the revelations at the end.

As this is apparently the first in a series, Lu has positioned the characters for an intriguing second act. I’ll be there for it. Critiques aside, Warcross was such a blast that I made extra time in my day to finish it all immediately. I just didn’t want to leave this universe of Lu’s. I wanted to watch Emika be a smart hacker, a brilliant coder, a cool-headed gamer, and a savvy super-spy. This is an exhilarating and exciting journey, and it’s one I’d highly recommend to anyone who enjoys books about virtual reality, gaming competitions, or girls who code (to kick ass).

Not actually my cup of tea, The Future of War: A History is a massive data dump and analysis of what we used to think about the future of warfare. Lawrence Freedman has clearly Done the Research, and I have to hand it to him: there’s compelling stuff here. Thanks to NetGalley and Public Affairs for the eARC.

I love the premise of this book. It kind of merges my passion for literature and my mild interest in history. It is very easy for us to interpret the actions of people in the past through our hindsight and our own cultural lenses. Freedman reminds us what any good historian tries to remember: people in the past had a very different conception of the world, and as such, their motivations might be hard to unravel if they didn’t write them down. To us, the multitudinous causes of World War I and the line connecting it to World War II seem obvious. To someone living in 1920 or 1930, not so much. To us, the outcome of the Cold War and its influence around the world is just a matter of fact now—to someone living in 1950 or 1960, with the spectres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still lingering in recent memory, it’s a very different story.

Freedman’s survey of the literature is thoughtful, perceptive, detailed, and critical. He intersperses the literature between arguments for an overall thesis—which basically seems to be that, following the end of the Cold War, we’ve reached a point where it is increasingly difficult to predict the “future” of war, simply because we have yet to settle on a redefinition of the word.

One part of the book that really jumped out at me is where Freedman explains the intense efforts put into statistical analysis of wars. In particular, he describes late-twentieth-century attempts to compile casualty databases. He points out all the assumptions that necessarily went into this work, since it is difficult to define what war is, how long it lasts, or what counts as a “death” or “injury” attributable to the war. As such, while these sources of information are invaluable for discussing war and the related politics, they are also flawed and biased. Freedman reminds us that methodology in these situations is so tricky—it’s not a matter of getting it right, but of understanding that there is no one right way to collect and interpret the data.

I also really enjoyed the first part of The Future of War, where Freedman analyzes what people were writing prior to and then following the First World War. I liked the glimpse at war fiction, from people like Wells and others whose names aren’t quite as well known today. And it’s interesting how Freedman draws connections between fiction and its influence on the population, as well as politicians. Later on, he recapitulates this by recounting President Reagan’s reaction to Tom Clancy’s first novels.

The last part of the book was less interesting, for a few reasons. By this point, I was getting fatigued. This is a long book, and more to the point, it is incredibly dense and detailed and technical. A student of history will find this a useful resource; the casual reader, like myself, might start feeling bogged down. Also, the incredibly globalized nature of warfare in the 1990s, the sheer number of internecine affairs, means that Freedman has to cover a lot of ground in comparably few pages. Like, entire books have and can be written about small parts of each of these conflicts. So it all starts to feel overwhelming, but rushed.

None of this is Freedman’s fault in particular. The Future of War is quite well-written and informative. It is a little drier and less engaging than I typically want my non-fiction to be, but I can’t really hold that against it. I’m just not quite the target audience. History buffs, though, particularly those who want to learn more about how we used to think about war, might have more patience and inclination to really dive deep into this.

Back in my day, we didn’t have the YouTubes or the social medias, just good ol’ fashioned Angelfire and GeoCities….

Tash Hearts Tolstoy is a fun, quirky comedy about an eponymous protagonist (Tash, not Tolstoy) whose webseries goes viral overnight. While she deals with how this affects her life and her aspirations, she has to navigate the upheavals in her family and friendships as a result of her sister going to college, her parents expecting another child, and her best friends going through their own traumas. Kathryn Ormsbee’s story is genuine and occasionally moving, but it shies away from fulling engaging with many of the issues it brings up, from Tash’s asexuality to the intricacies of managing a webseries.

Trigger warnings in this book for acemisia and also dealing with a family member who has cancer. I’ll discuss the former later on but don’t really comment much on the latter.

Most of the positives of Tash Hearts Tolstoy come from how other characters interact with Tash. I enjoyed Tash’s relationship with Jack a lot. It’s nice to see best friendships where the two friends have frequent, minor conflicts sparked by their differences in personality. Life isn’t always a dichotomy of smooth sailing or big, blow-out fights—sometimes there’s just friction, especially if you’re collaborating on a project. Even though Tash is an unreliable narrator, Ormsbee injects enough self-awareness into her that we have an understanding of when she is being a little unreasonable, or when Jack is, or both. Tash and Jack’s interactions are definitely a highlight of the book for me.

The whole thing between Tash and Paul is … I don’t know. Trite, at best? I’m so conflicted about the whole “boy and girl are super-best-friends-since-basically-birth but then boy falls for girl and pines for her in secret for years and only springs it on her at the last moment” trope. I get that it’s a trope for a reason, in that it actually happens, but I just wish we could see more stories that avert it and show platonic friendship without any such tension. Still, I actually like the resolution here. As with so much of the book, it felt very rushed, but I like that Ormsbee at least seems to leave the door open to Tash and Paul figuring out what a relationship means for them without shackling themselves to the definitions and labels foisted upon them by society.

I guess that brings me to Tash’s representation as a “romantic” (alloromantic) asexual person. I share her sexuality (but am aromantic) and can understand her confusion to an extent (though I feel more confused about what romantic attraction is than sexual attraction). Having come to this identity in a slightly different way from Tash, it’s difficult for me to comment on that part of the portrayal. I hope that someone closer in age to Tash who is similarly questioning their identity will find something they recognize in here.

Basically, Tash Hearts Tolstoy has adequate representation of asexuality, but its portrayal is overly simplistic. Ormsbee could have taken more risks and developed a much richer narrative of exploring this identity. Instead, whether as a result of her writing or merely a hesitation to not screw it up, she hews closely to surface-level issues, such as sex-repulsion and confronting acemisia, without really exploring either issue in depth or confronting related ideas.

Tash seems to be sex-averse or sex-repulsed (but not touch-averse), and it is important to note that “not interested in sex” or “not getting the big deal about sex” are not synonymous with asexuality. I don’t think you even need to necessarily throw all these terms at a reader. But aside from Tash remarking once or twice about how complex she realized this is from her research, the book seems very unwilling to examine asexuality as anything other than what Tash happens to be experiencing. While I think Ormsbee does eventually make it clear that this asexuality is about attraction, there is a layer of nuance missing from the story. This is even more apparent in how Ormsbee handles the Thom–Tash subplot.

It was inevitable, of course, that Thom would be a massive asshat. Tash Hearts Tolstoy follows a very clear story arc, and it was never going to end with Tash and Thom hooking up (romantically, sexually, or otherwise) and BFFing into the sunset. And everything that Thom says to Tash is something that many asexual people hear when they come out. But that’s kind of the problem: in a single, short exchange, Ormsbee transforms Thom from a potentially interesting character into a mouthpiece for extremely stereotypical comments. Suddenly he’s just another “hater” for Tash to get over rather than any real source of conflict. I appreciate what Ormsbee is attempting to do here—i.e., demonstrate how asexual people are so often gaslit and then push back against it—but the attempt ultimately feels quite shallow.

It’s as if Ormsbee did her research, like Tash did, and sketched out an “asexual coming-of-age” story arc from “discovers the definition on the Internet” to “best friend awkwardly hits on you” to “romantic crush denies your sexuality is a thing”. But the execution is so rushed—Tash barely has time to mention how she researched asexuality before we’re off to another part of the story—it’s as if Ormsbee thinks all she has to do is hit each of these requisite stops on the train through Acetown and her book is going to be ace-ok. It doesn’t work that way. This isn’t bad rep, but it’s rep that doesn’t actually engage with the issues asexual people face.

There is a clumsiness to Tash Hearts Tolstoy, and it isn’t just in the portrayal of Tash’s sexuality. I had trouble getting into the book, because Tash’s voice didn’t resonate with me. The way she spoke to us read like an older person emulating a younger person. I’m not sure if someone closer in age to Tash would agree, of course; maybe Ormsbee nailed it and I’m just the olds now—part of the problem is that, at 28, I use a lot of the same slang as Tash but in a slightly different way, as Internet language drift is a fast-paced and capricious god. Beyond that, though, I think it’s largely a consequence of the challenge Ormsbee has set for herself in telling this story of overnight YouTube fame, which is to explain it in a way that doesn’t feel heavyhanded to the audience that understands but make it intelligible enough to someone who doesn’t inhale YouTube.

Although I love the way Ormsbee portrays Tash and Jack’s webseries production as this very committed, professional endeavour from them and their cast and crew, there is just so much more she could have explored when it comes to YouTube. As with Tash’s asexuality, she really only scratches the surface here.

Despite my reservations, I have to admit that Tash Hearts Tolstoy made me feel some feels. Not the Tash/Thom scene, god no, but two scenes in particular stand out in my mind.

First: Tash and Klaudie’s sobering heart-to-heart after the former picks up her drunk sister and they spend the rest of the night at their grandparents’ graves. The sibling relationship, and Tash’s disappointment over not being as close to her sister as she wants to be, is quite good here. This scene serves as an excellent climax to that subplot while not becoming melodramatic: Ormsbee’s lampshading makes it clear that this didn’t magically “fix” Tash and Klaudie, but maybe it gave each of them some perspective.

Second: Tash and George’s conversation following the Thom debacle. It’s a classic case of not imagining others as complexly as you should. Tash spends the entire story writing off George as a generic prick, whereas instead, as she comments to him, he has an entire “philosophy of prickishness”. Ormsbee writes George’s surprise role as an emotional support with a deftness and compassion that left me tearing up a little.

There’s something good here, mixed up in a lot that I found more mediocre. I wish I could say Tash Hearts Tolstoy is this amazing book about an asexual webseries-producing teenager trying to figure out her life after high school and whether or not she’s crushing. But it’s a little too predictable for me, a little too trite, and not quite as deep as I want my fiction, YA or otherwise, to be.

First of all, let’s be clear: Norse mythology is hella cool.

In his introduction to Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman echoes what draws me to it. Like him, I was entranced by the stories of the Norse gods from an early age. I remember vividly my elementary school library having this big, thick book on Norse mythology full of illustrations. When I went through my mythology phase, I tolerated the Greek gods and occasionally talked to the Egyptians, but Norse mythology was what really got me obsessed. The tragic nature of these gods’ stories, and the built-in ending of Ragnarok, just left me hooked. When I rediscovered my love of fantasy many years later, I think the preferences I developed from reading those first stories really influenced the way I read fantasy.

So Odin, Thor, Loki, and I are old friends. When I heard Gaiman had retold some of these stories, almost “from scratch”, if you will, by consulting some of the closest stuff we have to source material, I was intrigued. I’ll inhale pretty much anything Gaiman writes, so this book was a no-brainer.

Norse Mythology has the curious quality of probably appealing even to people who eschew Gaiman’s other works as well as Gaiman fans like myself. It’s not quite a departure from his style—there’s still traces of Gaiman in this—but he has layered another style atop his own. It’s as if the narrator is telling these stories orally to the audience, with a certain stilted cadence reminiscent of Ye Olde Times but never strong enough to become distracting.

The stories flow into one another, discrete yet inseparable. This isn’t an anthology, nor is it a novel. (Trust Gaiman to write books that don’t fit easily into my shelves here on Goodreads.) You can safely read this one story at a time, over a long time, or virtually all at once. And you could dip into it at different intervals, but like a music album, there’s a more cohesive meaning when you read it from beginning to end.

There’s little I have to say that’s critical of this book, but it still didn’t wow me the way I want a five-star book to do. Mostly I think I’m just used to reading stories with far more developed characters. While I understand why Gaiman doesn’t flesh out his gods more than he does, it’s just not as satisfying. If anything this just makes me want to read American Gods or Anansi Boys again—Mr. Wednesday was Odin personified, and therefore even more interesting. I think, in striving for technical perfection, Gaiman almost doesn’t infuse this book with enough of a soul. (There are some pretty good moments, that being said. I think he nails the self-destructive qualities of Loki perfectly.)

Norse Mythology is the kind of book you should buy for that friend who “doesn’t like that fantasy stuff” but likes myths and legends. Or maybe someone who watched the Marvel Thor movies one too many times and needs a lesson in where Thor’s really from. This is not the most beautiful, or thought-provoking, or moving of Gaiman’s works. But it was a nice way to pass a few evenings, and really, that’s sometimes all you need from a book.

The Helmacrons, first seen in #24: The Suspicion make their second appearance in Animorphs. This time, the Animorphs voluntarily shrink themselves to extract the Helmacrons from Marco. Hilarity(?) ensues.

My feelings for this book are similar to my feelings for The Suspicion. If I were to make a list of the “essential” Animorphs novels to read, The Journey wouldn’t be on it. The B-story, in which Marco must retrieve a camera that might contain images of the Animorphs de-morphing, is under-developed (no pun intended). The few scenes that ghostwriter Emily Costello deigns to actually give it do little to create any real tension. The plot basically exists to give Marco something “dangerous” to be doing while the other Animorphs cruise through his digestive tract.

The Journey reminds me of that episode of The Magic School Bus where everyone tours Arnold’s digestive system. However, this story lacks some of that show’s charm. The best part is almost certainly just imagining what it would be like to morph into something like a shark in order to swim through a bloodstream rather than an ocean. And while I know that kids often like things adults find annoying (such as the Helmacrons), I have to wonder if at this point in the series many of the readers might be old enough to find these tiny, grating aliens as annoying as I do.

Misgivings about the B-story aside, this book and story are extremely competent in terms of their use of Animorphs tropes. We get into the story fairly quickly after yet another in media res battle opening. But that’s the thing—I feel like everything, from the opening to the Helmacrons to the dilemmas, is something we’ve seen before in other Animorphs books. I don’t mind standalone stories as a general rule, but I at least want them to give me something new. The Journey feels like someone gave Costello a grab bag of “generic Animorphs story elements” and said, “Pick 5 and go to town.”

With no new morphs, though, no real Yeerk threat, and little in the ways of moral dilemma beyond “Marco should avoid morphing because problems”, The Journey lacks any element strong enough to make it impressive.

Next time, fortunately, we have a definite moral dilemma as the Yeerk Peace Movement asks for the Animorphs’ help….

My reviews of Animorphs:
← #41: The Familiar

Animorphs has become so dark! I feel like a broken record, like I say this every review, but wow. The Familiar opens up, as several other recent books have done, in the middle of a big, chaotic battle. The Animorphs have inflicted damage on the Yeerk troops, but the latter are practically inexhaustible, while the former are six adrenaline-fuelled-but-scared kids. And as the tide of the battle turns against them, they start losing limbs. And guts. It’s shocking for the explicitness of its imagery: this is not a series for children anymore; this is definitely YA.

In many ways, The Familiar recapitulates a lot of the themes that have been building and already touched upon in previous books. The Animorphs are starting to tire. They are lapsing into almost caricatures of their respective roles and ideologies. While some of this is ghostwriter syndrome, mostly it’s that they are starting to suffer from the stress of being the only six people on the planet who are fighting back against an invading alien force. The pressure must be intense. So Rachel becomes more and more unfocused and aggressive. Cassie becomes more and more moralistic and interested in non-violence. And Jake—who has always expressed discomfort over his leadership position—once again hints that he’s done with trying to be the leader of this group.

So something happens.

It’s never really made clear, actually, what or who sends Jake into this alternative timeline/universe/microcosm/dream where it’s ten years later and he’s a planetary engineer on an Earth totally controlled by Yeerks. He and the Animorphs advance theories, but we never learn the truth. Maybe we would have if Applegate had ever continued the series. As it is, we can only speculate.

The ghostwriter, Ellen Geroux, does a fantastic job balancing Jake’s confusion over his transposition with the pacing of the plot. We quickly get into the thick of it, with future!Cassie revealed to be a grizzled, cynical warrior who is fine with raining destruction down on the planet if it means denying the Yeerks a Kandrona-shining moon. I love how Jake is just so flabbergasted by Cassie’s change. One has to keep in mind that he’s still a (15?)-year-old kid, and the idea that you might be a very different person in your twenties is hard enough for a normal teenager to grok (I know it was for me).

The Familiar is one of the books that elevates Animorphs and belies the appearance as a pulpy escapist series for kids one might first see when learning there’s like 50 books published in such close succession. Like #22: The Solution and other such sublime entries before it, The Familiar shows us that Applegate did not come to play. Despite the length restrictions of the ordinary Animorphs books (this story could easily have been Chronicles-length), Applegate is writing serious science fiction. It just happens to be serious science fiction pitched to teens and young adults (which, when you think about it, is where a lot of science fiction started off).

This story asks us to wrestle with so many deep questions. Would we sacrifice our friend for the “greater good”? At what point do the ends stop justifying the means, if ever? And is it OK to change one’s opinions on these questions over time—because this definitely isn’t the first time these questions have surfaced in the series. It’s almost as if you don’t get to put your philosophy to bed once you’ve confronted it a single time; you have to keep reaffirming your commitment to your values time and again as the world throws more and more adversity your way.

The ending is very postmodern, refusing to explicitly reveal whether Jake saves the world or saves the girl. I think it’s pretty effectively telegraphed, however, that he chooses to save Cassie. Firstly, the voice’s comment immediately afterwards suggests it wasn’t expecting that choice; usually, this is a signal that aliens are surprised when humans choose love/emotion over pragmatism. Secondly, the book concludes with Jake calling Cassie to see if she’s all right. Because he’s in love with her and he wouldn’t ever sacrifice her ever asdfkjlghafdklj

Anyway. Just a couple of strong feelings about these books.

Next time, the Helmacrons are back for some honey-I-shrunk-the-animorphs fun.

My reviews of Animorphs:
← Megamorphs #4: Back to Before | #42: The Journey →

Mmm, nearly 600 pages of comfort food.

Going to make a few assumptions here, namely, that you have read the first two books in this omnibus series, and so you’ll be fine with me spoiling those books (but not this one). If that isn’t true, you might want to stop reading now.

Similarly, since you have read the first two books, I’m not going to spend any time explaining or justifying why this series is something you should read. If you have stuck with Charles Stross this far, then you’re probably in this for the long haul. If you read book 2 and were like, “I’m done,” then book 3 is not going to change your mind.

The Traders’ War was notable in that, as the title implies, it’s about conflicts within the Clan itself. Miriam finds herself on the knife’s edge of a schism between conservative and liberal factions, with her uncle Angbard trying to sort out the mess and avoid all-out war. With all the unfortunate events that happen, as a kind of series, if you will, Miriam’s status now as the expectant mother of the heir to the Gruinmarkt throne, with Angbard suffering a stroke and the Clan under attack from all sides, leaves her in a tricky position. But it’s also a position she can exploit. The Revolution Trade is all about the old Ferengi Rule of Acquisition: the riskier the road, the greater the profit.

This book, more than the other two, reminds me of the what-if political extrapolation games Stross used to play back on his blog, back in the days before the Singularities of Brexit and Trump. Economics still has a role in this story, insofar as it is a motivation for regime changes. However, we are in full-on alternative history mode now. Whereas the earlier stories made references to 2003-era Bush and Cheney, Stross goes one further here. Cheney actually shows up on page, and certain things happen that irrevocably sever this timeline from the one we inhabit. Go big or go home.

Stross’ willingness to take these risks, and to keep having everything go pear-shaped for his characters, shattering their Plans C through H, is what makes The Revolution Trade so enjoyable for me. It’s entirely possible to tell this story in a more straightforward, more predictable, more linear route. That would result in an enjoyable, entertaining story with a lot of good science-fictional thinking to it. But Stross isn’t going to settle for that, oh no—he’s risking it all. He’s gambling on the fact that we can tolerate his trademark tangents and infodumps because they add so much more depth and richness to this experience. And I totally can. (If you can’t, refer to my third paragraph, where I kindly show you the door.)

I didn’t always agree with parts of Stross’ scenarios. At one point he describes how Congress unanimously does something, just because of a terrorist 9/11-style event that scares them into not wanting to look weak on security. I get where he’s going, and maybe that’s really what could have happened in 2003. It’s just hard, these days, to imagine Congress doing much unanimously. I’d put money on there being at least one person, if not several, refusing to vote in favour of something on “principles” even if it really were the best thing for the country (which these measures, in the story, were not). Yet these differences of opinion between Stross and myself are minor.

More important than the political backdrop, though, is what happens to all our favourite characters!

Miriam is a hard one in this book. I feel like we see less of her, as we follow a few other characters too. And while she certainly has agency, she doesn’t necessarily do as much in this book as she did previously. She is a co-conspirator rather than a solo or free agent, if you will.

Brill and the related cadre of Clan characters return too. I really enjoy her, and she’s in fine form in this book. The same goes for characters like Huw or Olga, each of whom adds something special to the story. If you actually sit down and count them, Stross’ named cast must number in the hundreds by now, so it’s nice how he deploys certain characters in very predictable ways to help us keep track of the story.

Mike and related American characters are back. Of all the characters in this instalment, Mike might be the one who experiences the most dramatic growth. I’ll confess I was never a huge fan of Mike from the beginning. I recognize his importance in the story, and it’s not that he’s a bad guy or anything—but he just feels a little bland, you know? Stross does his best to differentiate his characters; he’s really good at their diction, at laying on accents, etc. But at the end of the day, the moment he shoves exposition into their mouths, they all start sounding the same. Mike is a little too generic-goody-guy for me.

As the title implies, The Revolution Trade introduces even more game-changing elements. Stross further explores the idea that there are more than just the three worlds. He alters the balance of power in all three worlds in multiple ways. Virtually every chapter introduces a new twist or a new development, and it’s a gloriously energetic experience. Despite the length and density of this intricately-plotted story, Stross ultimately makes sure that we aren’t ever bored, that our eyes don’t glaze over as a result of all the economical, political, or historical speculating he runs past us.

Stross wraps up this story in the sense that he has exhausted the best avenues for storytelling. By this I mean, he has brought the series to a climax, and everywhere from here just leads towards more and more tying-up of loose ends. I’m very excited that the sequel series, Empire Games, starts in 2020, seventeen years on. I think the time jump will be enough to inject some new life into the story, let Stross distance himself from some of these details, and add whole new dimensions to the plots he leaves fallow here. The Revolution Trade isn’t necessarily what I call a satisfying conclusion, but it’s definitely a fun and exciting third book in a trilogy that is the beginning of something much larger, and, knowing Stross, even weirder.

My reviews of The Merchant Princes omnibus:
← The Traders’ War

First of all, can we agree that it should be “95” or “ninety-five” but never “ninetyfive”, like WTF.

Distinctly weird hyphenation aside, 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation, is a thoughtful examination of one of those well-celebrated yet mythologized moments in history. Peter Marshall uses the stories surrounding Luther’s apocryphal posting of the 95 theses to examine the character of the Reformation in Luther’s time, his legacy and effects on the Reformation, and the enduring nature of the thesis-posting as a watershed moment in European politics and religion. The intricate differences between and among the Catholic church and various Protestant denominations provide no end of fascination for me (I have lost many an hour to the very detailed Wikipedia articles on these topics—seriously, that stuff is complex). As such, when this book showed up on NetGalley, it immediately caught my eye. Thanks to NetGalley and Oxford University Press for making it available.

Prior to reading this, I had little knowledge of Martin Luther or his 95 theses beyond vague recollections of something in a Grade 12 history class (and even then I think we spent more time on Giordano Bruno). I knew that Luther had played a significant role in the early Reformation, and that he had written his 95 theses, and I had heard the story of him nailing them to the church wall. I was unaware of the larger context, or the way in which this story has been magnified and repeated even though the event itself might not have happened.

Marshall himself takes the stance that Luther almost certainly did not nail his theses to the Wittenberg church(es) on October 31. However, he also pushes back against the idea that the thesis-posting is as unimportant a detail as, say, the apple that didn’t fall on Newton’s head. He argues that the theses may have been posted on church doors at some point in the following month, because—and this I did not know—posting stuff you wanted to argue about on church doors was the Hot New Thing back in Luther’s day, kind of a post-Renaissance version of shouting into the abyss that is Twitter. Marshall concludes from his examination of the story around this story that the mythologizing of the thesis-posting tells us so much about the early Reformation.

This is the kind of history book I do quite enjoy. Rather than simply retelling history to me in a way that claims to be objective, Marshall examines it, as if under a microscope. He pulls it this way and that, asking contradictory what-ifs and then pursuing lines of inquiry to their logical conclusions. He points out where contemporary writers may have been mistaken, or deliberately conflated things. He reminds us that translations are fallible, and especially back in that time, for many people a single translation would be their only way to read and understand a text. As such, those translations might propagate unintentional errors across entire generations. Marshall reminds us that history is not this static thing left here for historians to lecture about; it is a dynamic series of snapshots, some of which lie or are too grainy to make out, and we are constantly re-interpreting it.

Marshall points out that whether or not Luther posted the theses to the church door on October 31 matters. If Luther did this, it was much more an act of deliberate rebellion against the Church than if he simply posted (as in mailed) the theses to his bishop for approval to publish them. Indeed, like everyone else who hasn’t actually read the theses and made a study of what Luther was arguing, I wasn’t aware how Luther began his journey as a reformer from a conciliatory position. At first he’s all, “Well, the pope isn’t that bad; it’s these local corrupt officials who are misusing indulgences!” and it isn’t until years later, after the usual song-and-dance of persecution and excommunication, that Luther actually changes his tune and declares the pope anathema.

At some points, the depth of Marshall’s inquiry goes beyond my tastes as a lay person. I’m increasingly finding this is the case with the university press publications I grab from NetGalley. That’s not a criticism of them, because obviously I’m not the target audience here. But I always like to mention it, in case you are also not in the target audience; you should know what you’re getting into. 1517 is among the more accessible works I’ve read lately in this format. Nevertheless, this book’s topic is very specialized. Although Marshall brings up more points of general history and talks about the Reformation in general during parts of the book, he (rightly) focuses tightly on Luther’s light-cone.

So, if you’re looking for a book specifically about Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the posting of the 95 theses, you came to the right place. If you want a more general history of the Reformation, or a more narrative presentation of the subject matter, you might be disappointed. 1517 is scholarly but not stupefying, informative but not imposing.

I am always on the lookout for new and interesting takes on urban fantasy. I enjoy urban fantasy set in our world, where the supernatural are either covert or living openly, but there is something so good about made-up cities and their cultures. Radiant, Karina Sumner-Smith’s first book in a trilogy about the Towers, is a prime example of this. She creates a world where magic is as commonplace as technology is for us—but the protagonist, Xhea, can’t access it. This premise alone isn’t all that original, but when you toss in Xhea’s ability to see and interact with ghosts, you get closer to an amazing story.

Radiant opens with Xhea temporarily severing the tether that attaches a ghost to a person she’s haunting. But this is no ordinary ghost. Shai is the eponymous Radiant, and without going into spoilers, let’s just say that makes her very valuable to the upper class citizens of the floating Towers. Down in the muck of the Lower City, Xhea couldn’t care less, and she resolves to help keep Shai away from them and free Shai, if possible. There is much more at stake, of course. So Xhea finds herself a fugitive from multiple Towers, ghostly Shai in tow, as her own strange magic, so different from everyone else’s, finally starts to assert itself.

I loved Xhea’s characterization from the start, though I didn’t necessarily love Xhea herself, if that makes sense. Sumner-Smith portrays Xhea as a very exhausted teenager: she has literally been fighting for her survival every day of her life, ever since she ran away from the skyscraper that would have indentured her, discovered her darkness, and used it to their advantage. Her attitude is very consistent with this. A lot of her behaviour is reactive rather than proactive—she doesn’t really care about the larger political implications of what she’s doing, or what will happen in the short- or long-terms if she is successful. She’s just acting, because to stand still is to die.

Similarly, Sumner-Smith lays out the workings of this world with clarity and a minimum of exposition. The Lower City comes alive as Xhea and Shai duck, dodge, and dive through it. It’s a bustling marketplace of people just trying to get by, while far above them, these glimmering edifices hang in the sky like judgmental, inaccessible palaces. Citizens occasionally deign to descend from the Towers, in magical elevators, to purchase items from the Lower City’s markets, or make their own sales. But by and large, the Towers have their own politics, their own culture, their own problems—all of which I hope to learn more about in future books. Sumner-Smith presents a great example of a divided, polarized society that is almost allegorical for what’s happening in our own time without making the allegory too on-the-nose like some young-adult dystopian novels.

Radiant loses some of its lustre simply because I think we spend too much time with Xhea and a few other characters. Although she interacts with a small number of allies, and confronts a small number of antagonists, we never really get to know many other characters. Shai is about the only other one who receives any development. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a book, but I tend to prefer books with ensemble casts or, if we have a single, strong central protagonist, then a wider set of characters with whom they interact. Despite the awesome scope hinted at in this book, Xhea’s world is such a narrow slice of it that the novel feels constrained as a result.

The plot itself is also fairly simple. I enjoyed reading this book, and the last fifty pages really pick up and turn into a satisfying, action-packed climax. Yet for the middle third of the book, I vacillated between mild interest and mild boredom, much as Xhea’s status vacillates between mild safety and mild danger. If there had been even just a little bit more, just one more layer to the mystery, something else for Xhea to investigate or do, then perhaps that would have been enough to keep me interested.

I don’t mean to damn with faint praise: Radiant is breathtaking for its originality and its writing. It’s a strong book—and that’s precisely why I’m trying to articulate why I didn’t love it. These are the books that are interesting, the ones you know are good yet don’t quite become favourites.