I began this book wondering which Joe Haldeman I’d get. Would it be the author of the celebrated classic The Forever War? Or would it be the author of the ho-hum thriller Work Done for Hire? Turns out Forever Peace is a little bit of both.

This is a book that asks a simple philosophical question: is making war an essential part of human nature? As with most simple philosophical questions, the answer is complicated, and it’s a great question to ask as part of a science-fiction story. Haldeman sets his story on a near-future Earth, where the first world Allied countries we all know and love/hate are locked in a brutal, ongoing series of conflicts with the Ngumi, rebels who alternatively control or terrorize the so-called third world countries we all know and colonize. He posits a war fought by ordinary people drafted to become “mechanics” who “jack in” to soldierboys, aka remote-controlled killer robots. Along the way, protagonist Julian Class and his lover, Amelia Harding, discover that a physics experiment in orbit of Jupiter is a Very Bad Idea™, but that it should all be OK if they can just execute a secret conspiracy to make everyone in the world Love each other.

In other words, the first half of this book is a deep and compelling look at the horrors of 21st-century warfare and the second half is a psychedelic trip I would have expected from a Heinlein novel after someone ate the good mushrooms.

Let’s talk about that first half, since I really liked it. The whole killer robots controlled by former civilians is a mixture of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and something ripped from a William Gibson story. It was likely super prescient for 1997—scarily, perhaps, it feels old hat and … uh … contemporary in 2018, when we literally have remote-controlled killing drones. Maybe no one is jacking in yet, but you know that’s just a matter of time until we get the brain–computer interfaces improved. So Haldeman essentially anticipated some of the technological revolutions in warfare that have quite swiftly overtaken us.

The essential problem with this form of warfare, which Haldeman explores, is the psychological impact of having disposable soldiers. There is a physical and psychological toll on mechanics who experience loss of soldierboy units—strokes, heart attacks, and grief and PTSD are all possibilities for these people. So, on the individual level, this war is still most definitely hell. Yet there is a cynical view, communicated by some of the higher-ranking characters, that there will always be more mechanics. The army can just keep drafting mechanics, keep building soldierboys, and keep waging this war indefinitely. The Allies can just keep killing rebels, no need to ever consider peace, because that is asymmetric warfare for you. War has become a business and a state of mind, a social standby rather than a disruptive element. Again, in this respect I feel like reality has overtaken Haldeman’s extrapolation a lot more quickly than even he might have expected.

Haldeman employs an interesting dual-narrator structure. The story flits back and forth between Julian’s first-person perspective and a third-person omniscient narrator who follows both Julian as well as other characters. This allows us access both to Julian’s very visceral reactions to certain events as well as access to other characters, to things happening elsewhere, and to alternative reactions. Similarly, the story alternates between Julian’s time on-duty as a mechanic and his off-duty furloughs to the university where he works and his life with Amelia. For the first bit of the book these are very parallel narratives, and Haldeman effectively exploits this structure to show us how Julian compartmentalizes and reconciles his role as a soldier, on one hand, and an academic, on the other.

OK, I think I’m sufficiently prepared to talk about the second half of this book. Fair warning: it’s a trainwreck.

Remember when people were concerned that the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole that would sink into the core of the Earth and consume the whole planet? Well there’s an existential threat that is kind of like that, only if that were actually, you know, a thing that could happen. Haldeman kind of pulls that out of left field. And then there’s a revelation that if people stay jacked in with each other for longer than a week or two, they somehow develop so much shared empathy that they are much more peaceable, indeed, almost entirely non-violent. That, alone, would be an intriguing thing to explore. Instead, though, Haldeman decides to have Julian and Amelia pitch in with a group of characters to create a conspiracy to forcibly convert all of humanity into these pacifistic, jacked-in humans. It’s kind of like a dystopian plot except the dystopian conspiracy is coming from inside the house.

Look, I don’t even really care how silly the basic premise of making people more empathetic by jacking them together might or might not be. I’m willing to stipulate it, because it makes a small amount of sense, and it’s a really intriguing thought.

But there is only a very weak debate about the ethics around doing this in secret. One or two characters basically raise their hands and ask, “Wait, are you sure we get to make this decision for all of humanity?” and then get shot down because apparently everyone wants a jack installed in their brains.

Even putting aside the ethical questions that Haldeman brushes under the rug for the sake of story, I can’t get behind how silly this plot becomes. Forever Peace takes a turn from serious-minded war story to a loony, contrived thriller. Secret zealot assassins. Hiding out in Mexico. Pet army generals. It’s just … agh, I can’t even. Everyone took an Idiot Ball and strapped it to their backs and any respect or interest I had in any of these characters died a very loud, gargling death.

And then Haldeman waves his hand at ends the book with a “and we did the thing and everyone lived happily ever after” and I’m just not here for that. You declawed your own narrative, dude, and turned it into this limp, unappealing vegetable of a thing. I get that you’re trying to explore alternatives to war, and that in so doing you stumbled into a minefield of posthumanism and realized you were in too deep and so you backpedaled faster and farther than you have ever before only to decide that your only way out was through and boy wasn’t that a mistake. I just wish you had stopped and considered what the end result would be. Because … it’s this book.

Forever Peace is a weird hybrid of a book where the first part is incredible and the last part is just bad and that always makes rating things hard. I’m tempted to give it one star, honestly, because of how uneven it is. But I think two stars is more fitting, for me at least, just because I really was hooked on the first part of this book and did not want to put it down. I won’t let the last half’s disappointment diminish that.

As with The Speed of Dark, this was a birthday gift for my friend Rebecca. I like my original review, so here’s just a few new thoughts from this second reading.

Second review: Finished on February 6, 2018

This time around, I read Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution with a slightly more critical eye. I was trying to imagine how Rebecca might see it, curious about the things that will jump out at her. I underlined and annotated and asked questions, part of our ongoing conversations about feminism and gender and society.

I still really like the second chapter, “Lost Boys”, detailing Penny’s thoughts on how patriarchy sets men against women to obscure the fact that most men have very little power in society beyond their power over women. Over the past three years, as I’ve continued my journey of learning about feminism, my understanding and positionality has evolved from, “What is privilege?” to “How do I have privilege?” to “How can I use my privilege to dismantle patriarchy?” So lately I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my place, as a cis man, within feminism. And I pinpoint this chapter as the origin of some of my first thoughts along these lines. I have to think about how I can use my voice to help other men understand the privilege from which they benefit and create more space within mainstream society for other genders to speak and function without fear of reprisal.

Penny’s writing remains as unapologetic, incisive, and acerbic as ever. She has a great way with words. I can understand, though, some of the critiques others have levelled at this book. It definitely emphasizes the experiences of young, white, and often middle-class women; moreover, Penny’s style sometimes leads to generalizations made more for dramatic than rhetorical effect. As a result, I can see why some readers are going to look at parts of this book and think, “No, that’s not my experience with things.” Owing to my personal amount of privilege, however, it’s really hard for me to unpack and examine and critique that on my own—so I’ll leave that to others.

I’m still really fascinated by the empathy and compassion within this book. That isn’t to say that feminists need to be nice to men. But I think it’s worthwhile examining the ways in which intersectionality and other forces, like capitalism, affects everyone’s lives. Penny concludes that feminism has always been about liberating all genders from the straitjacket that rigid gender roles and expectations put on us—and I agree with that sentiment.

Unspeakable Things is an imperfect polemic. It’s gripping and biting in places, general in some, but overall I like the way Penny grapples with these issues.

First review: Finished on July 13, 2014

This book made me angry, and definitely a little uncomfortable. However, I’m not angry with the book or with Laurie Penny. I’m angry in the sense that she outlines in chapter 2, “Lost Boys,” when she says, “Anger is an entirely appropriate response to learning that you’re implicated in a system that oppresses women but the solution isn’t to direct that anger back at women.” I’m angry at the abuse and suffering women undergo in our society; I’m angry that as a man I’m expected to act in ways that, directly or indirectly, facilitate such suffering. And I’m uncomfortable because Penny discusses painful and, as the title promises, Unspeakable Things. This book is part-catharsis, part–rallying cry, and it’s entirely polemical and political in a brilliant way.

“This is a feminist book. It is not a cheery instruction manual for how to negotiate modern patriarchy, with a sassy wink and a thumbs-up.” From the very first page of the introduction, Penny lays her cards on the table and is absolutely clear about what to expect from Unspeakable Things. And so, from that first page, I found myself nodding along in agreement. I’ve taken a more active interest in gender issues for years now, so I’m relatively familiar with the concepts, the ideas, the jargon. Hence, I’m not going to claim that the average reader will have the same reaction to page one as I did. But that doesn’t matter, because the point of the book is that it gradually and carefully lays out an argument for why all of us—men, women, and other genders—need to talk about these things. It’s all there in the title: Penny’s concern is that there are people on both sides of these issues of sex and gender who are trying to shut the discussion down. There are certain things too sensitive, too sacred, that we just shouldn’t talk about them. We need to shut them away, maybe so we can “protect the children.” This silencing is implicit, codified in the way we socialize men and women through upbringing and schooling and media, as well as explicit, waged as attacks, physical and verbal, against women and their allies in print and digital media. In many ways, Unspeakable Things isn’t about defining or recapitulating particular notions of feminism so much as it is an exponent of free speech in a feminist way. This is a powerful and, for some people, scary idea. But Penny’s writing is more than equal to the challenge of being accessible while still avoiding the pitfalls of popular non-fiction. As she promises in the introduction, this is not one of those cheeky books written and published under the banner of new feminist success stories, guides and tell-alls about how to “have it all” in the world of work and childrearing. Rather, this is a frank polemic. As I said at the beginning, it is painful and discomfiting, and if it doesn’t stir you to anger, then you’re reading it wrong.

It would be ironic if I tried to describe what every reader, including women readers, would get from this book. I can’t even claim to speak for all men. But let me describe my reaction, as someone whose external appearance and performance of gender means I receive a great deal of privilege in this society. One reason that this book just works so well for me is how Penny seems to have made a conscious effort to address as diverse an audience as possible. In my case, I of course identified with that second chapter, in which she chronicles the detrimental effects of patriarchy on men. Penny systematically dismantles the argument that feminism is something that benefits only women. This is perhaps one of the most pernicious and pervasive myths about feminism that make many people, men and women, balk at discussing it or embracing it. But once again, Penny states it loudly and clearly for all to hear:

Feminism has never just been about liberating women from men, but about freeing every human being from the straitjacket of gender oppression. For the first time, men and boys as a whole are starting to realise how profoundly messed up masculinity is—and to ask how they might make it different.

In particular, Penny argues that patriarchy does not actually benefit many men, just those at the top. The oppression of women is, in part, a sop to men who actually have very little power otherwise—their power over women and children essentially there to compensate their relative powerlessness in other spheres of society. And she highlights the way media often portray men in hyper-masculine ways. It’s not just women who suffer at the hands of commercials, music, film, television. Men too find expectations thrust upon them as a consequence of their gender. Men, just like women, were bound by certain rituals of etiquette and unspoken codes of conduct (the difference being that men, unlike women, experienced more perks under this system) and were punished unduly for deviating. This has started to change recently—but the fact remains that some people seem terrified by the idea that some men don’t want to pursue women, don’t want to view them as objects, don’t want to act in macho and masculine ways. These same people are terrified by the idea that women are more than bodies, that they want autonomy over their lives, that they might want to act more like men—or, indeed, cleave to a very feminine identity without the baggage of the male gaze attached to such expression. This is where my anger enters the picture again: I’m normally an easygoing person, but the concept that some people would seek to circumscribe the rights and privileges of the rest of us in order to satisfy their own fucked up idea of “normality” is more than just messed up. It’s actually sickening, the extent to which people will hurt one another simply because they don’t conform to certain ideas about gender.

So in this way, I can empathise with the first chapter, “Fucked-Up Girls,” as well as the second one. I can’t know exactly what it’s like for women to experience the abuse and oppression, the pressure they endure in the face of countless signals from society about how they should behave around each other and around men. Yet I have some very good reasons for wanting to make the world a more equitable place, one where people of any gender have more equal privileges. There is a small but nonzero probability that one day I will reproduce, and that the child I have will identify as a woman. And though this merely possible future, I’m human enough to feel twinges of anger and sorrow that this child could find her life difficult and painful merely because she doesn’t conform to the allowable parameters of womanhood. On a more immediate note, I have a fair number of women friends. I care for them. So the idea that this is what they experience, whether it’s daily or occasionally or almost never at all, is unconscionable.

You have to be a pretty lousy person to want to perpetuate a system that actively harms half of humanity and subtly oppresses the other half.

So throughout the book, there was this undercurrent of anger mixed with genuine distress as I read. Penny has come much closer than many other feminist writers in helping me understand how some women feminists do call for more radical actions and imagine futures without men. Thanks to the Internet, women have so many ways of expressing this anger and sharing the stories of their oppression. And this anger is legitimate and painful, as it should be, and the proper response is not to shut it down or attempting to speak over it but instead to step back and acknowledge it. However, what makes Unspeakable Things all the more impressive is the way Penny balances this anger with a resilient empathy. As bleak as it might get, she always insists that there is a way forward in which all actors, women as well as allies, can benefit and work together for a better future. Amidst what is otherwise a somewhat stark view of the current state of women online and in the developed world, this hopeful message is a welcome beacon of light.

I’m not going to break this book down chapter-by-chapter, as much as I’d like to—this review is already getting long enough. But I do want to talk about the major themes of the last chapters. In particular, in “Cybersexism” Penny looks at how the Internet is influencing attitudes towards sex and sexuality. I spend a great deal of time online and am very invested in the Internet’s role in our world, so I found this fascinating. And in many ways, our attitudes towards sex and sexuality—and how and when we are permitted to discuss those things—are major artifacts of our gendered society.

Penny reviews how the Internet has been a boon and a bane for women’s self-expression, offering new spaces for speech while also throwing up the potential for anonymous trolls to come along and shame, silence, and threaten. She also mentions porn, and the conflicted and complicated relationship sex work in general has with feminism. Canada is currently in the process of attempting to recodify our criminal laws regarding sex work, and it’s difficult. It’s not something I know enough about to comment on in more detail, but I really enjoyed reading Penny’s thoughts on the subject.

Above all else, these chapters on love in the age of cyberspace showcase Penny’s anticapitalist approach to feminism. The Internet makes it that much easier for corporations to sell certain visions of sex and sexuality to people. They do this not because these visions are natural, normal, or just; they do this because they want to make money. Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” became a sensation last year, and like many songs, it’s catchy until you look at the lyrics. So it attracted a fair amount of criticism and no shortage of defenders, male and female. In response to accusations of sexism, these defenders asserted that Thicke’s song actually promotes the “liberation” of women’s sexuality, that he’s encouraging her to express herself in ways that are not necessarily traditional. Alas, this counterargument misses the point. It doesn’t matter that a man is singing a song about women being more proactive in their sexuality. This is still a song about a man telling a woman what type of sexual expression he wants to see from her, what behaviour on her part gratifies him. This is the trap into which we too often fall when discussing sex and media: even so-called “sex positive” campaigns are still pressing upon us a specific model of sexuality that we are expected to follow. We haven’t won as long as media continue to sell us specific versions of permissible sexual expression; we will have won when media acknowledges that any expression is as good as the next, that there is no one true way to act in order to be happy or successful. And of course, this is not compatible with capitalism, which relies on the propagation of uncertainty and materialistic desire in order to create profits.

This thread of anticapitalist sentiment is present throughout the entire book. As with her declaration that Unspeakable Things is a feminist book, Penny makes not apologies for this stance (nor should she). She recognizes, rather, that for feminism to succeed it must be political and radical and that we won’t have gender equity until we dismantle this system. I think feminists who fail to view intersectionality as crucial to their endeavour are shortsighted. Penny acknowledges the importance of race but doesn’t spend too much time speaking about it; from her personal experiences she declares herself more able to discuss the class-based inequities that reinforce gender inequity. And this, in turn, links back to what I said earlier about that resilient empathy. While Penny does not mince words as she chronicles the hurts of sexism and misogyny, she also offers hope. In addition to her call for more frank discussions about these things that we would rather sweep under the carpet, Penny calls for a more permissive society, one in which we are not so constrained in our actions by our sex, gender, race, class, or any other label we are saddled with. This single element, among all the other reasons I like this book, is its best feature.

I won’t hesitate to say that Unspeakable Things is one of the best books I’ve read this year and one of the best feminist books I’ve ever read. I’ve followed Penny on Twitter for a while now and enjoy her New Statesman posts, but it’s good to have a tangible object I can recommend or give as a gift. And I do recommend it. This is a book everyone should read. Hopefully it will make you thoughtful, and if it also makes you a little angry, then that’s a good thing too. Anger can stir one to action, and it’s through action that we can help dismantle the system that oppresses us and build a better world. Or, you know, not. More likely we’ll fail in the process of trying. But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. Sexism and misogyny might be the way the world is, but it is not the way the world should be.

I love it when a book leaves me feeling so deeply ambivalent. I mean, I would prefer it if I could just outright love Genesis, no ambivalence necessary. But I would rather ambivalence than apathy. Bernard Beckett has clearly put a lot of effort into crafting this deep, philosophical dialogue. It’s a beautifully constructed piece of literature.

But I also didn’t really like it that much.

Anaximander, or Anax as she is called, is taking her Exam for entrance into the Academy, the school/university/ruling body of this wonderful little island set in a post-apocalyptic world after humanity’s Fall, if you will. Anax tells the three Examiners about the life of Adam Forde, a disruptive element who lived near the beginning of the Republic. At first it seems like the story is about how Adam allowed a young woman trying to reach the Republic in a boat live instead of executing her on sight. Actually, though, this is a story about artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, and the capacity within ourselves to do violence—and what that means to be human.

Genesis is essentially an extended philosophical dialogue between Anax and the Examiners, with a story-within-the-story element where Anax is telling us about Adam’s life and his eventual, philosophical debates with an AI named Art. Immediately I was disappointed. I think some of my disappointment comes from what I expected, given the name and the cover copy—together, these just screamed “standard YA dystopia” in my head, and that’s what I was thinking about when I started reading. Never mind that the book kind of transcends that somewhat overdone setting.

When you get right down to it, though, reading a whole book—albeit a short one—about someone taking an oral exam is just … um, dull. Even with the story-in-a-story, there’s just too much stasis. Anax grows and changes very little throughout the book, and everyone except her and Adam (and maybe Art) are very vague, stock characters. Genesis wrestles with deep, thought-provoking questions—yet as a story, it’s actually very shallow. There is little enough plot here.

I really admire this moxie on Beckett’s part. And, as my recent re-read of Sophie’s World, or any number of my reviews of Doctorow or Stephenson works, will attest, I’m happy to read books that are more philosophy than they are well-executed stories. Still … when you get right down to it, the story is the thing. Genesis is a philosophical dialogue that is only barely dressed up as a story, and it doesn’t quite pass muster for me.

Even if I could set that aside, the philosophical elements didn’t stir up much thought from me either. Beckett really only skims the surface of these ideas. I don’t think this novel is actually very YA, so I don’t think that’s an excuse—and even if it were YA, I think teens can handle more than Beckett throws at us here. Adam’s conversations with a smarmy and self-satisfied Art are more grating than gratifying. The twist at the end is uninteresting, because there really is no consequence to it. As an arthouse style move, I suppose it’s supposed to put the cherry on top of the clever cake Beckett has just spent an hour unveiling for us.

In the end, Genesis reminds me why I love novels so much. It’s really easy, actually, to do what Beckett does here, and just carve out any semblance of plot or story. This might work better as some kind of small-cast play (tighten up the scenes, of course, add in a swordfight or two…). It’s much more difficult to take these kinds of deep ideas and then tell them through allegory. I think there is a lot of good, thoughtful stuff in this book, and I’m not sorry I gave it a shot. But it didn’t leave my jaw wide open or my mind blown to pieces. It’s just kind of … a book, with good parts and bad. I don’t want to diminish what Beckett manages to do here, but I’m also not that impressed.

Urban tales of grimdark faeries really appeal to me for whatever reason. I think it has something to do with the juxtaposition of modern sensibilities and skepticism with the sheer brutality of fae logic and deal-making. The Uncertain Places certainly creates the right atmosphere. Lisa Goldstein’s storytelling reminds me, in ways of Charles de Lint’s approach to mixing our world with the fantastic. However, I found the plot a little convoluted and the main characters uninteresting at best and terrible at worst. So while I enjoyed the book, it’s not something I’m going to be championing.

It’s the 1970s. Will Taylor and his friend Ben have avoided the draft and started dating some weird sisters in California. Turns out these sisters are part of a family that, way back in the day in Germany, made a faerie deal. The family is extraordinarily lucky, but this luck comes at a price for one of the women of the family. As Will gets drawn deeper into the family, he decides he wants to do something about this. And he does it in the most ham-fisted way.

I just hate Will so much. He has about as much personality as a rag that was once wet but has since dried out in that way that leaves it a little bit stiff. He stumbles through this story like a drunken bull in a china shop. From the moment he hears about this deal, he resolves to break it, thinking he’s doing the family this great favour. At no point does he ever seriously ask anyone in the family if this is what they want, nor does he ever seem to be cognizant that, as an outsider, it isn’t really his place to do this. And when people call him out, he gets irate—which is about the only time he really seems to show much emotion.

Basically, Will is not a great protagonist. I don’t care about him, don’t feel like he has much of a personality, and I am not on board with his hero complex.

I respect how Goldstein has Will get involved with the deal very early in the novel, and then the rest of the story revolves around the fallout of Will’s involvement. Yet this is my where my second critique comes into play: the pacing of this novel is … odd. Goldstein will spend chapters and chapters in a single year, then suddenly jump forward several years. Goldstein’s prose is great, but the way the story is organized made it a challenge to really follow what was happening. Mostly, though, I just blame Will. There’s just no plan, no momentum. The characters seem to react more than act, jerking from crisis to crisis.

I came away from this thinking that The Uncertain Places would have worked better for me as a short story or novelette. As a shorter piece, Will’s shortcomings would have been less of an issue. The plot would have been tighter (one would hope). Overall it would have been an interesting piece. Expanded into a novel, it has become an unruly mass of storytelling.

Also (and this isn’t the fault of the author at all, but I want to complain about it), this edition is only 237 pages, but the print is really small. Like this is not the usual print size I’m used to in a book. It made it much harder to read and stay immersed in the story, and I have no idea whose terrible idea it was to typeset the book this way.

I want to start by listing a few critiques of Nyxia, any one of which I can understand would make you like the book less. Then I’ll explain why, despite these issues, I still loved this book so much.

First, this is absolutely a “set up” novel. The entirety of the story takes place on the journey to Eden and then in orbit of the planet. The next book will presumably feature those who survived on Eden itself, attempting to mine Nyxia and no doubt discovering that the story fed to them by Babel about the Adamites is far more complicated. That being said, I don’t think this will come as a surprise to anyone who embarks on the book. I don’t feel like Reintgen pulled a fast one on me or anything.

Second, the formulaic “pitting kids against each other in a fight to the metaphorical death” might feel a little derivative or clichéd. I’d argue that Reintgen does it differently enough, and well enough, to get a pass (more on that in a bit). But at the end of the day, Nyxia is a story about teens competing at the behest of the evil monolithic corporation. So make of that what you will.

Third, although I’d argue that most of the characters end up with these interesting, diverse personality traits, it’s true that most of them don’t show much development. And Reintgen introduces an entire, parallel cast of characters in the last act (what a twist!) who, as a result, suffer a lack of page-time to grow into real people for us. So while it’s a pleasure to get to know Emmett and some of the others better, few them actually change much, and that’s a little frustrating.

Finally, I am so incensed about the big death in this. Like, shaking with rage. I know that this is probably the desired reaction, and I totally understand the significance of killing off this character. But … it just makes me sad that once again, romance gets prioritized over friendship. And I’m sure that’s not what Reintgen is trying to say here, but it’s an unavoidable consequence of the choice he made. Booo.

OK, having levelled these critiques, let’s go over why this book is such a wild ride.

Mainly, it’s Emmett. As our protagonist and narrator, he is the heart of this story. I love how we get to watch him struggle and develop his own moral backbone. He is such a real, flawed character. He’s not a natural leader, but he tries to step up when it’s necessary. He’s not the smartest, fastest, or best at anything. He has particular talents, and tries to develop them—he does want to win. But when Babel presents him with certain choices to attempt to shape him into their tool, he has to think good and hard about whether he wants to let that happen. There is such a strong core of morality here, and a clear message not just about choosing your path but thinking carefully about your chosen path.

Even though most of the other characters don’t seem to grow that much, Emmett grows by leaps and bounds. At the beginning of this book, he’s just in this to win and get the money. He wants to support his family and earn freedom. He’s suspicious of Babel but only in the way he’s suspicious of any big organization. As Nyxia unfolds and Babel puts Emmett and the others through the wringer, we see him mature. He starts to understand the stakes. And his suspicions of Babel turn into hard proof, into a more concrete form of distrust. He hardens—not in a bad way, not in a “loss of innocence” way, because I don’t think he ever had that illusion. Just in the way that kids turn into adults as they assume responsibility for their actions.

I particularly like how Emmett revises his opinions of certain characters, like Jaime, as he gets to know them. Similarly, these characters revise their opinions of him. The whole crew isn’t exactly buddy-buddy by the end—there’s still competition, and of course certain people are outright hostile towards Emmett and some of the others. But Reintgen has this excellent way of showing, rather than telling, the strange bonds developing among these teenagers. It’s great storytelling, and it just got me in the feels. Bilal and the cards.

And then they launch for Eden and … yeah. Man, this book is rough. Just when you think you’ve entered a light moment, boom, there goes another punch to the gut as Reintgen reminds you that this is not a game. The last few chapters of this book are so brutal and honest and … I just had to stay up late one night reading it until the end.

Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the eponymous novum, what it can do, or why Babel wants it. It’s a MacGuffin for the sake of the story. I appreciate that Reintgen tries to establish some rules for it, and I like how he foreshadows that there is a whole lot more going on with nyxia than we can possibly know at this point. Despite its use in the title, though, this is not and probably never will be the main focus of the story for me. I’m in this to see Emmett grow and change and make tough decisions.

Nyxia is hands-down one of the most exciting science-fiction stories, young adult or otherwise, I’ve read in a while. I’m thrilled it’s YA, because this is exactly the kind of thing that would have hooked me as a teen (as it has hooked me now, as a late twenty-something).

RIP, Kaya. You were literally the best, my favourite, and you were sacrificed on the altar of plot before we ever really got to know you. Your friendship with Emmett was my everything, and I will carry that platonic torch in my heart as I go into book 2.

Last year I reviewed A Tyranny of Petticoats, which came on my radar because I received it in a Book Mail box from Book Riot. When I saw The Radical Element on NetGalley, I wanted to see how the second volume of this anthology series compared. Thanks to NetGalley and Candlewick Press for the eARC! I adored this book for what it is, and while I didn’t love every story, it was a great end-of-the-week read.

The Radical Element is also edited by Jessica Spotswood, but you don’t need to have read A Tyranny of Petticoats to read this book. All of the short stories are self-contained and separate from the stories of the first book. The concept is much the same, however: the 12 stories herein are all about girls who are in some way “radical” for their time and place, and they typically follow a structure of the girl taking agency over her life and choosing, whether by striking out or striking back or some combination, to stand against society’s constraining expectations for her.

I’m not going to review each story individually, as I did last time. Honestly, the first few stories were OK but didn’t enthrall me. Part of that was just the settings—I have little interest in nineteenth century America, in the so-called “wild west” milieu, so those stories were already at a disadvantage with me. I know it had an effect, because I became much better-disposed towards the stories by the time we hit 1943. And I think the last story, “Take Me With U”, by Sara Farizan and set in 1984 Boston, was my favourite, both because of the time and the plot.

That being said, whatever your mileage on the various stories and their periods, the concept as a whole is well done here. By showcasing a different setting in each story, Spotswood reminds us that women have always fought. Women didn’t suddenly become scrappy, strong, liberation-minded people in the 1920s or 1930s or 1940s or whichever decade you personally want to stick a pin as the “start” of feminism or whatever. Women and girls have always fought for recognition, independence, autonomy, and we do them a disservice if we generalize our history to say, “Back in the ____, women had no power”. It is always, always more complicated than that.

In a similar vein, different stories feature different ways of fighting back. Some of the protagonists are physically combative; they defend themselves and use force, if necessary, to get their way. Some use wit, charm, or reasoning. Others find allies and escape, or simply slip away, an apologetic note all they leave as a trace of their presence. The Radical Element reminds us not to reduce “strong women” down to a single phrase or single idea. There are so many ways to be strong.

Also, this is a very diverse book, both in terms of its authors and its characters. There are Jewish, Mormon, Christian, and Muslim protagonists. There are white girls and Black girls and Mexican girls. There are abled and disabled girls. It’s a refreshing pantheon.

My critiques for the book aren’t really of the book itself, just areas where it doesn’t align with my own particular interests. Like I said above, not huge on some of the historical periods. Not huge on the focus on the United States (but again, that’s just the premise of the whole anthology, so I’m not here to criticize that). I really liked the one or two stories that include a little bit of magic in them, because I found that interesting. Magic always improves my historical fiction! Again, these are all just personal preferences, so if yours differ, you might love this book to bits. Or hate it entirely!

Still, if you at all are interested in 12 dynamic stories featuring 12 diverse girls in 12 different time periods in the United States, then really, you should give The Radical Element a shot. I want to see more books like this, more stories like these ones. Even if they aren’t always to my tastes, I know there are readers out there who will find these stories inspiring and entertaining. These are stories that should be told, and I am here for that.

Our science teachers do a remarkable job with what limited resources, time, and support they have in school today. However, one of the many areas in which public science education could be improved is the way in which we examine the hidden systems that power science itself, and the way these systems intersect with our society. Cell lines are a great example of this. We learn about biomedical research in school, about cells, about vaccines—but the actual processes and procedures behind this research and this science are often opaque to us. No one ever told me that laboratories around the world are using cells descended from a sample taken from Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman living in Baltimore, Maryland. And even when it does get mentioned, it’s often mentioned as an isolated anecdote, a “by the way, did you know…” type factoid rather than the opening of a much larger, deeper conversation on race and ethics and consent in the shadow of capitalism.

There’s just so much to talk about here, and Skloot does an excellent job unearthing details and presenting the story in a precise, scientific, and human way. This is the type of journalism I like to read.

Basically, there are two stories here. The first is the story of how Henrietta Lacks’ cells became the HeLa cell line used the world over. The second is the story of the Lacks family today and Skloot’s role in untangling the facts in Henrietta’s story. Ordinarily, when it comes to science history books, I’m not enthusiastic about the author inserting themselves into the narrative. I’m not here for “Rebecca Skloot, Super Sleuth”. In this particular case, however, I understand why Skloot feels the need to document how she went about this process.

At the surface level, of course, there is just fascinating biology here. Take some cells. Try to grow them in culture. It doesn’t work. Why doesn’t it work? Hell if we know. Maybe it’s impossible. Take some more cells. They’re cancerous. Wait, they’re growing. They’re growing a lot. Well, fuck. We seem to have an immortal cell line on our hands.

In this respect, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks chronicles the development of our understanding of cells in the twentieth century. It reminds us that science is this bizarre mix of years upon years of dedication and effort along with a whole lot of luck. Despite Skloot’s focus on Dr. George Gey as the discoverer/incubator of the HeLa cell line, she also makes it clear that even back then, science had already become a massive group undertaking. Were it not for George’s wife Margaret and Mary Kubicek and doubtless many other graduate students unnamed, there wouldn’t be a HeLa cell line as we know it. And of course, without Henrietta Lacks, none of this would have happened at all. Science is a collaborative endeavour—yet not everyone has equal awareness of their contribution, as Skloot points out.

This is the second layer to the book. Dig deeper, and we find that there is more going on here than just a story of awesome scientific discovery. Science is not neutral and is not objective because it is done by humans within our messy, biased society. Henrietta Lacks’ experience at Johns Hopkins exists within the context of a wider, white supremacist approach to science and medicine. We can argue whether or not individual people’s actions with Henrietta involved racism, but the fact remains that the Tuskegee experiments were happening contemporaneously. Medical research institutions in the United States, with the backing of the US government, valued Black lives less. Black people (and Indigenous people) have always been granted less, if any, bodily autonomy, particularly around areas like fertility. So it is striking, this fact that science owes this huge debt to a Black woman whose cervical cancer cells were used and grown without her knowledge or consent.

I think it’s really important that our science histories do not separate these questions of ethics from our retellings of great discoveries.

Then we come to the final layer, the framing narrative of Skloot becoming fascinated with Henrietta Lacks, deciding to write this book, and spending years tracking down Henrietta’s family, earning their trust, and doing research. This is probably the part of the book that is most questionable in terms of whether or not you’re going to enjoy it. Skloot herself acknowledges there is something uncomfortable about a white woman rocking up to write about a Black woman’s experiences at the hands of white doctors—yet that acknowledgement does not in and of itself dispel such discomfort. This is a distinctly different phenomenon from someone like Margot Shetterly writing about Black computers at NACA/NASA. I can’t help but wonder what this book could have been if a Black woman had written about Henrietta Lacks. And this is not to diminish Skloot’s work here—because it is fine work—but to point out the inherent irony of privilege that means she is the one to be telling Henrietta’s story.

It’s just messed up. Skloot shows us this impoverished, ignored part of the United States, and there are so many moments in this book that might break your heart. And that’s what a good book on science journalism should do. It shouldn’t be a dry rendition of the facts: it should make you feel for the humans whose stories are inextricably tied up to the science.

I like that Skloot presents the words of Deborah and the other Lackses as verbatim as possible, including their vernacular. One of the more chilling aspects of this book is how it’s clear that many of the people Skloot interviews have a very poor or basic understanding of biology and medicine. This is not their fault. This is the failure of the American education system. As someone privileged enough to have access to a fairly good education, it’s easy for me to forget that not everyone is so lucky. Would I understand everything a doctor said to me as they requested my consent to use my tissue samples? Probably not. But I would understand a lot more than Henrietta or any of her children would. And that’s sad and racist and unethical, and we need to do better. We don’t just need better ethics in science; we need better education. To that end, I think it’s interesting and laudable that Skloot helped found The Henrietta Lacks Foundation precisely to help fund the education of people who are related to people like Henrietta Lacks.

I highly recommend pairing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Cost of Defeating Disease. It covers similar topics, focusing more on vaccination, and features the life of Leonard Hayflick (who also shows up in this book). These are the science books we need in our lives.

Previously, on Ben’s reviews of THE SPI FILES…:

… the intimations of bigger and better story arcs continue here. Once again we have a direct reference to the face-shifting ghoul terrorizing Ian. (According to the Goodreads series list, the next book is The Ghoul Vendetta, so I’m guessing we’ll soon get some pay-off on that arc!)

…

I was going to criticize the covers and complain about how they’re all different poses of Mac and Ian waving weapons around …

…

Plus, it’s nice that the covers acknowledge Mac and Ian’s partnership. Ian has Mac’s back in this book—hopefully in The Ghoul Vendetta we’ll see a little more vulnerability in him and Mac will really have a chance to shine.

*fist pump* Called it.

Is this really the fourth book in this series? I can remember back when Lisa Shearin was turning out the second and third books in Raine’s series! It feels like just yesterday, but here we are … almost exactly one year since I rea dthe last book and well into the SPI Files and apparently a third series on the horizon. Coming upon Shearin when she was a new author and getting to read her books soon after their publication has been a delight, year after year, because she keeps delivering fun stories. The Ghoul Vendetta is no exception. Fans of the series will find what they want in this book, and newcomers won’t feel too lost (though I highly recommend picking up at least the first book!).

It’s June now, and Mac is on another date with Rake Danescu Dark Gobl—er, I mean, dark mage—er, I mean, he’s a goblin, OK? And he does dark magic, but he’s good, and he has the hots for Mac, and she has the hots for him, but things keep attacking them, and it’s just really inconvenient. And so they’re on a date, and things attack them! This turns out to be connected to a wider plot by Old Ones wanting to undo a curse by other Old Ones keeping them from dominating and terrorizing all other species on the planet. To make matters worse, Mac’s work partner, Ian, is intimately connected to this plot, which is masterminded by the face-shifting not-a-ghoul who has taunted Ian in various ways in the previous books.

The Ghoul Vendetta follows a pattern I’ve noticed (which may entirely be a product of my delusional, word-addled mind) of series arcs, at least for ongoing urban fantasy novels like this series, really picking up in the fourth book. That is to say, the first three books of a series might be good, even amazing, but they are often very contained. They lay the groundwork for future books, but they haven’t yet established enough of the characters’ baseline behaviour to really show them growing, changing, and responding to threats from their past or threats newfound. By the time book four comes round, enough pages have elapsed to make this possible. Shearin capitalizes on this opportunity. This book is all about Ian, his past, and it is definitely game-changing for him and his role in SPI.

There are so many good additions to the series lore here!

Vampires do not play a prominent role in the story per se, but they are on the periphery of everything, and Shearin gives us more information on how vampirism works in this world. The exposition is interesting but never overdone—it all relates the main plot. Moreover, Alain Moreau has a bigger role in this book, because he is subbing for Vivienne Sagadraco while she takes a vacation. I liked Moreau from previous books, but his smaller parts made it harder for me to get a read on him. He comes off as much more personable, less “creepy hypnotic vampire lawyer/line manager” than he has previously. Mac even gets to see him in jeans at one point!

With Ian out of commission for large swathes of the book, Mac’s dynamic changes significantly as well. The Ghoul Vendetta is much less about her and her powers/role as a seer. I like how Shearin puts Mac in physically dangerous situations and portrays her has a competent but not overly skilled fighter. Mac certainly seems to have more to do in this book, and although she isn’t necessarily the one who directly initiates something, she tends to be the driving force and instigator in most of the plot developments. Ian’s vulnerability here offers opportunities to affirm their mutual respect and trust for one another as partners.

The antagonists are also quite different from your average monster in an urban fantasy book. Shearin has really dug deep into a less popularly used mythology for some inspiration here, and it works extremely well. I love the way she presents the threat of these monsters: they are simultaneously brutish and overwhelming in their power yet constrained and cunning thanks to their leader (the face-shifting ghoul with a vendetta against Ian). They are also very different from the threats that SPI has dealt with up until this point. However, sometimes the “mystery” element felt flat. So many of the developments come from Ian and his investigation into his past. There are a few dead bodies, but there isn’t quite the same frenetic energy that the previous books have had with Mac and Ian racing around New York trying to stop the baddie. Even the field trip out to Bannerman’s Castle is relatively sedate.

Fortunately, the climax is pretty rewarding. Lots of fighting, an aerial sequence, and plenty of grandstanding from the villain—you know, the usual. I’m very pleased with the resolution and the way that Shearin deals with the immediate threat while letting other threads hang loose, ready to be picked up in later books. She could easily have had Ian just wipe away all the opposition with super-godlike powers or something, but her solution is much more nuanced. The book ends on a somewhat humorous note, reminding us that what might seem strange to mundanes like ourselves is actually just another day at the office for SPI agents. So it goes.

I apologize if this review is a bit vague; I wanted to avoid spoilers so that you can enjoy it as fresh as possible. The Ghoul Vendetta is exactly what I was hoping for from the next SPI Files book. I mean, at this point, I’d pretty much subscribe to Shearin’s series if that were an option.

My reviews of The SPI Files:
← The Brimstone Deception | The Myth Manifestation →

Yes, Gnomon is a behemoth of a book, one I am glad I saved for the beginning of March Break. Even then it took me several days to get through it. Nick Harkaway’s story is intricately layered and nested, and while I wasn’t sure about it at first, the more time I spent with it, the more I came to appreciate and enjoy its construction. Gnomon is a lot of things, and a simple summary won’t really cut it. Let me take you on my personal journey of understanding this book. If you read it, your journey might be quite different, and your mileage, of course, may vary.

We start with what seems like a mystery set in a near-future where the UK is even more of a surveillance society than it currently is. The System is an omnipresent AI built from a collection of self-correcting algorithms. The Witness is the System’s data collection/feedback component, i.e., it monitors what people do, investigates when crimes happen, and provides reports. Mielikki Neith is one of the human cogs in this machine. As an Inspector for the Witness, she goes anywhere that is necessary to collect information, process it with her meatbrain, and then integrate it with whatever else the Witness has gleaned from other sources. Neither the Witness nor the System are conscious, in any meaningful sense, though indeed one of the larger questions Harkaway would like us to ruminate upon is why we are so certain we’re conscious and the System is not.

So at first, the book seems like a story about mysteries in a surveillance state, and therefore, a polemic against such a dystopia. Neith is a believer in the System, yet signs point to someone tampering with what is supposedly tamper-proof. Had Harkaway stopped here, I think he could have a perfectly good sci-fi thriller on his hands. But, of course, he didn’t. Neith has to unpack the memories recorded during the interrogation of Diana Hunter. Hunter’s death during this interrogation is the central mystery. But the memories are really stories, stories of the lives of people who might never have existed. Are they merely Hunter’s attempts to resist interrogation by neural probe? Or is there more going on here?

Harkaway seems to be asking questions not just about how willing we are to tolerate invasive surveillance and a dearth of privacy but also how we feel about technology in general. This is my favourite quotation:

… it had almost nothing to do with computers, the modernity I was trying to understand. Computers were the bones, but imagination, ambition and possibility were the blood. These kids, they simply did not accept that the world as it is has any special gravity, any hold upon us. If something was wrong, if it was bad, then that something was to be fixed, not endured. Where my generation reached for philosophy and the virtue of suffering, they reached instead for science and technology and they actually did something about the beggar in the street, the woman in the wheelchair. They got on with it. It wasn’t that they had no sense of spirit or depth. Rather they reserved it for the truly wondrous, and for everything else they made tools.

The stories that Harkaway tells through Hunter’s counter-interrogation narratives are all about the ways in which we confront and use (or abuse) technology. The quotation above is from Berihun Bekele’s narrative. He is an old man learning new technology so he can apply his art to his granddaughter’s immersive video game project. That first sentence in particular gets at me, because I think it hits a truth easily overlooked by a lot of superficial analysis of technological progress these days. We talk about older generations having a hard time adapting to “computers”, but that isn’t the point. If anything, computers are old news. Computers are everywhere, and they are nowhere, in the sense that we almost don’t see them if we don’t look hard enough.

We might not have a comprehensive AI System yet, but in many ways we are close. I think a lot of us—of many generations—have this mental picture of the world as somehow being like it was in 1900, just with high speed Internet and digital cameras. Except it is nothing like that, because computers have literally infiltrated and changed every aspect of our lives. Modernity isn’t about computers. Modernity is about the thinking in a society where computers run things in the background.

This theme resounds throughout all of the narratives. Gnomon reminds me, in structure and style, of many things—Cloud Atlas, William Gibson, but above all else, Umberto Eco. This has the playfully meta-fictional awareness of Foucault’s Pendulum and the deeply unsettling mystery vibe of The Name of the Rose. Like Eco, Harkaway likes to play with language and semiotics, as evidenced by the way the title word weaves throughout the narratives, and certain phrases or motifs, like Fire Judges, Firespine, etc., repeat in different constructs. Like Eco, Harkaway seems to have consumed this vast gestalt of human history and philosophy and synthesized it into a fascinating, thought-provoking work of art.

Honestly, the ending was slightly disappointing. As the narratives collapse inwards on one another and we return to “reality”, Harkaway seems to shift the focus of the main story to the question of whether or not the System is a Good Thing and who, if anyone, should have the right to adjust it. In some ways, this seems to simplify the book more than I would like. Still, I respect the questions he is asking here. While he largely sidesteps the “all-powerful AI monitors and corrects the behaviour of society but, shock, turns out to be evil” trope, he does succeed in pointing out that any AI-powered attempt at demarchy is probably futile in the sense that, at some level, humans are going to screw it up. The only way to prevent that is to wrest power completely from humans (and then it isn’t really demarchy at all any more).

If you are a looking for a straightforward narrative here, whether it’s science fiction or mystery or crime or whatever, you will be disappointed. Gnomon demands that you sink your teeth into it, think on it, scrutinize it carefully. Do so, and you will hopefully be rewarded with a very thoughtful story. But if that isn’t your thing, or you’re not in the mood, I suspect you will be left quite frustrated, confused, or just bored. Gnomon lacks the humorous absurdism of Harkaway’s first two novels, The Gone-Away World and Angelmaker, which were probably my favourites for that reason. It shares a little more in common with Tigerman in the way Harkaway pulls from pop culture ideas and spins them out into serious social considerations. If anything, this novel confirms that every book Harkaway produces is going to be new and very different, an evolution, each one building on the last. While I wouldn’t call this my favourite, it was definitely an excellent vacation read, so fulfilling in its scope and themes.

Previously, on Animorphs…

The Animorphs have literally just succeeded in contacting the Andalite command. The Deception picks up with no time passing. The conversation goes about as poorly as you might expect. After the Animorphs narrowly escape with their lives, they discover that the former Visser Three is now Visser One (!!!!!) and there’s a new Visser Two in town who wants to fuck everyone up by starting a nuclear war.

So what do our plucky heroes do? That’s right: infiltrate a naval aircraft carrier out in the middle of the ocean.

This book has a lot of the hallmarks of the earliest Animorphs adventures. Notably, there is little in the way of a coherent plan here. Instead, the Animorphs fall back on their “roll with it” improv style of Yeerk-stomping. The difference between then and now is that the Animorphs have to compromise a lot more of their original tenets—like not morphing humans, at least non-consensually—in the name of fighting this war. The stakes are the highest, though, and I kind of can’t disagree with them … but emotionally, this is a tough book.

Everything is told from the point of view of Ax this time. His voice as a narrator has really matured over the series. Whereas he was once, “Lol, hey, silly humans, eating with holes on their face, cinnamon buns!” he is much more sobre, much more thoughtful and introspective. His faith in the righteousness of his own people has been shaken to its core by recent events. He is struggling to reconcile his identity as an Andalite with his allegiance to, and newfound appreciation for, humanity. That very allegiance allows him to go against the orders and initiate the eponymous deception of his prince, Jake, in order to do what he thinks is necessary. This book is all about Ax taking initiative, showing a backbone, and making tough decisions. And I am here for it.

I think it’s telling that Jake has basically given up asking Ax to lay off on addressing him as “prince”. As always, one of the joys of an Ax-narrated book is that we get to see the other Animorphs through his alien eyes. The other Animorphs, when describing each other, inevitably make excuses, editorialize—Ax doesn’t do that. He looks at each of Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Marco, and Tobias and he tells us exactly what he sees—because he doesn’t know any better. And it’s so honest, the way he looks up to Jake as a leader even as he shoulders responsibilities he thinks Jake shouldn’t have to undertake, the way he coldly appreciates Rachel’s warrior aptitude.

This book is a little brutal not just for the massive carnage and death-toll on an aircraft carrier, not just for the threat of a nuclear strike on an American city, not just for the moral dimensions, but simply for the realization that the Animorphs might not be able to win this one. They can always keep fighting, but the Yeerks have no chill, and the Yeerks will always be willing to go that one step further, stoop that one level lower. The very principles the Animorphs are fighting to preserve might be why they ultimately lose this war—and if that is not a terrifying but true commentary on war, I don’t know what is.

The Deception establishes that this war has reached a turning point. Next time, in The Resistance, the Animorphs have to decide if they need to go public with this war.

My reviews of Animorphs:
← #45: The Revelation | #47: The Resistance →