A pleasure, as always, to revisit The SPI Files. Lisa Shearin always brings it—and by it I mean that combination of humour and serious situations in need of ass-kicking that results in delightful urban fantasy stories. The tone might be light, but the stakes are often high. This the kind of series you can easily devour over a week or two yet keep coming back to time and again.

Mac and Ian are back at it again, this time guarding the biggest supernatural convention of the century. The Myth Manifestation promises mayhem and chaos when the convention hotel, owned and operated by none other than Mac’s goblin love interest, Rake Danescu, is isolated by malevolent forces. As the eponymous manifested myths keep attacking guests, and with SPI’s agents cut off from contact with the outside world, it’s up to the team inside to figure out who is responsible, how they’re doing it, and how to stop them. The clock is ticking, because if they don’t get out of this, the balance of the supernatural world on Earth could be forever altered. Oh, and even if they do, the balance on another world might forever be altered.

I love how closely intertwined this series has become with Shearin’s Raine Benares series. What began as mere hints in the first book has blossomed, with events in the other series being referenced and having ramifications for events here. In this case, the growing instability in Raine’s world means problems for this one, specifically for the goblin and elf colonies here. And the antagonist in The Myth Manifestation really just wants to perfect a weapon that they could then deploy in Raine’s world. Oh noes!

The political intrigue here, the background, is my favourite part. I appreciate how Mac is so deeply involved in these high-stakes situations. Suddenly she has gone from being SPI’s newest hire to dating this shady goblin who is higher and higher up the goblin chain of command every time we see him, and now she’s working with him to achieve things that directly affect the power structure of his world. This is a very skilful way of making a “nobody” type protagonist important without just thrusting the mantle of Chosen One upon them.

Mac’s growth is really nice to see as well. The Myth Manifestation continues to highlight her inexperience in combat. She wields paint guns to mark targets, and she can get creative with her … weapons. But she still hasn’t become a badass fighter. I’m so interested to see how Shearing further develops this aspect of Mac’s character and whether by book 8 or 9 we’ll see Mac facing off more and more confidently and competently against physical foes.

Alas, after so much of the last book focusing on him, Ian seems to be a bit sidelined here. By that I mean he’s present, obviously, and he contributes—a little—but there’s relatively few scenes between Mac and Ian. It’s mostly Mac/Rake, or Mac poking around and consulting other characters, like Kenji. Ian gets a little page time but otherwise exists very much in a background, supporting role, which is not something I’m used to. Not sure how I feel about it, but I’m sure it’s an anomaly. Again, I really like that Shearin has the two series leads falling for other people instead of each other. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like my Mac/Ian banter!

There’s a decent amount of action in The Myth Manifestation, and creatively enough done considering the restricted setting. I guess if I have to single out any particular reason I didn’t like this quite as much as the previous instalments, it’s just that it feels a little less grand in scope. The setting, Ian’s diminished involvement, etc., all sort of make this a perfectly OK volume, but I’ve definitely had better SPI Files. Still, I’m no less excited for the next volume, and I’m looking forward to seeing what Shearin has cooked up next for Mac and Ian. (I don’t really care about Rake.)

My reviews of the SPI Files:
← The Ghoul Vendetta

Oof. Honestly, still trying to work out how I feel about this book, so this review might be a little rough. Radio Silence was one of the best books I will have read this year, hands down, even though it was like the second book I read this year. I recognize some of that Alice Oseman in Solitaire, but reading this after reading the incredible Radio Silence was a real letdown. This book feels like a debut novel hard.

Trigger warnings in this book for depictions of self-harm, eating disorders, and suicidal thoughts.

Solitaire is about Tori Spring, a Year 12 student who doesn’t really have any close friends. She spends most of her time keeping to herself, reading blogs and doing worse on her coursework than she should be. For someone so unfriended, though, Tori has no shortage of people in her orbit. Her nominal best friend, Becky, is more absorbed in the boy du jour and mostly interested in pushing Tori to be more outgoing. Her old best friend, Lucas, suddenly resurfaces after many years’ absence. Her new potential best friend, Michael Holden, is, like her, somewhat of a social outcast by choice, and their tumultuous interactions form the backbone of Tori’s character development. Meanwhile, an eponymous group keeps playing pranks on the school, and while Tori isn’t keen on investigating, Solitaire seems determined to amp up the pranks until she does.

Let’s start with a few things I liked! Tori’s stream of consciousness narration was jarring at first, but I grew to enjoy it. I can understand why a lot of readers, particularly teens, might enjoy the book for this reason: it is easy to get inside Tori’s head. And while some reviewers have accurately noted how Tori isn’t very likeable, it’s probably important to remember that a lot of readers don’t feel likeable themselves. I don’t really identify with Tori, nor do I think 17-year-old Ben would have identified with Tori, but there’s definitely elements of Tori I could identify with.

I also appreciate how Oseman includes several subplots dealing with things like bullying, eating disorders, etc. This feels very realistic, in that there are definitely people like Tori who don’t directly experience these issues yet are nevertheless involved in some way. While there needs to be more (always more) books that foreground each of these issues, including them in books that don’t focus solely on them is another way to discuss them, and to remind people that these are parts of everyday life, especially for teenagers.

Finally, the disintegration of Tori’s friendship with Becky is compelling in a trainwreck sort of way and feels, unfortunately, all too real. Whether or not we’ve lost friends in exactly this manner, I suspect most of us have felt the sting of a friendship attenuating, disintegrating, or evaporating under the pressures of time or distance or changes in each other’s personalities. Solitaire, for all its flaws, really does tap into real and valid sources of teenage angst. The tough thing about being a teenager is that you’re finally starting to feel adult feelings, yet you’re still treated like a child half the time, and so nothing seems to be accorded the significance it should.

OK. Deep breath.

I liked very little of the actual plot of this book.

I liked very little of Michael Holden.

I found the structure and pacing of this book incredibly off-putting, particularly towards the end, and the tone wildly inconsistent.

The first and third complaints kind of go together: Solitaire just feels messy. The first half of the book or so is about Tori and her friendships and her nascent friendship/not-friendship with Michael. It’s not until much later in the book that Solitaire actually figures heavily in the plot (and it’s kind of obvious who is behind Solitaire). I don’t think this is actually a bad decision on Oseman’s part, but it needs better character development to work more effectively. And that brings me to the problem of Michael….

Is Michael Holden a Manic Pixie Dream Boy? Oseman is certainly aware of the trope, referring to it at least once in the book. There are a few intriguing conversations where Tori and Michael each accuse the other of not being “real”, which I read as a kind of lampshading of the trope. Yet I’m not sure Michael actually qualifies. To Oseman’s credit, she does flesh him out and give him a little bit of depth (though does he have parents? I missed that part). And he makes it clear to Tori when she hurts him by treating their relationship flippantly or insincerely. So, no, I’m not ready to call Michael a MPDB—but he comes close. For one thing, he flounces through the book packed full of enough whimsy you could weaponize it.

Beyond the problem of Michael, many of the other characters undergo dramatic swings of characterization. I want to chalk some of this up to Tori being an unreliable narrator. For example, Becky’s turn towards the end of the book, revealing a side of her character we hadn’t seen up until that point, could be explained by Tori simply underestimating Becky as a consequence of their falling out. I’m willing to give Oseman the benefit of a doubt there. Overall, though, so many of the characters either fall flat for me (like the rambly Mr. Kent) or seem to materialize and dematerialize as needed (like Rita).

I’m just having a hard time pointing to any specific moment, character arc, or indeed plot element about Solitaire that I really liked. I can see aspects to Oseman’s writing that later become so good in Radio Silence. None of it really works for me here. The whole book is just trying so hard, and I have to give it credit for at least going all out in that sense—but it doesn’t work for me. It’s more dull than deep.

I’m seeing some other critical reviews pointing to Oseman’s age at the time of writing—seventeen—as the cause for these problems. Not sure what age has to do with it—seventeen-year-olds can write damn fine books. And a lot of my issues with Solitaire could have been fixed with some more editing. The issue seems more to be inexperience (independent of age) pushing my buttons, as a critically-minded reader, in exactly the right way to make me dislike the book. I really wanted to like Solitaire, and not just because I loved Radio Silence; I loved the premise of this book and love reading about introverts. Alas, it was not to be.

Oh dear God I want to kill Kvothe.

I don’t want him to die. I want to kill him.

I would like to excise him from this book. Could I possibly get a Kvothe-less version of The Wise Man’s Fear? Is that a thing? Would that work? It would hopefully be better than this.

I’m twitching, a little, because of course, back in my review of The Name of the Wind, I praised Kvothe:

It's easy to like Kvothe. I won't say it's inevitable, since I can also see some people disliking him. But he already scores points because he's not insufferably badass. There are only so many Magnificent Bastard masculine heroes I can take before I need a good dose of farmboy naivety. Kvothe falls somewhere in the middle, a happy medium between crazy-capable and powerless. He's clever--something he mentions several times--but far from infallible. He makes plenty of mistakes. He has an insatiable love for learning--something with which I can personally identify--and is totally clueless about women--again, something to which I can relate.

Now, this was fine in book 1. The problem is that by book 2, Kvothe begins to drift firmly towards that land of insufferable badassery that condemns him to Mary Sueness.

I appreciated that in the first book, Patrick Rothfuss set up a frame story that promised a tale of Kvothe’s daring exploits that could only end badly—namely, with Kvothe a failed and broken innkeeper in some piddly village during dark times. Sure, there are all these legends about Kvothe’s amazing powers, his ability to communicate with the Fae, his musical prowess … but that’s all they were, legends, exaggerations. Kvothe goes on and on in both books about how he intentionally started most of these rumours. So the appeal, then, of Kvothe’s narrative was getting to hear the actual story, the one where Kvothe more often than not fell flat on his face.

Trouble is, in The Wise Man’s Fear, those legends seem closer to reality than hyperbole. I think this Hulktastic review makes the point best:

KVOTHE IS BEST LUTE PLAYER, IS BEST SONG WRITER, IS BEST WEAPON-MAKER, IS BEST FIGHTER, IS BEST ACTOR, IS BEST INVESTIGATOR, IS BEST KILLER, IS BEST GIRL RESCUER, IS BEST MAGICIAN, IS BEST IS BEST IS BEST IS BEST! EVEN FAERIE ENCHANTRESS LOVE KVOTHE BECAUSE KVOTHE IS BEST FIRST-TIME LOVER IN ENTIRE HISTORY OF MADE-UP WORLD! HULK FROTH AT MOUTH WHEN THINKING ABOUT PERFECTION OF ALWAYS CLEVER KVOTHE!

Could not have put it better myself. Thanks, Hulk!

So we’ve gone from Kvothe being a screwed up street orphan who gets into the university, gets himself banned from the archives, and is barely getting by … to Kvothe being super-amazing at everything. Not that he would brag about it, mind you. It’s almost as if Rothfuss took all the various fantasy protagonists rattling around his head and amalgamated them into one super-protagonist. It would have been interesting to have a story about the best lute player, another story about the best fighter, etc. That’s how the fantasy genre tends to work—and the best writers can hold more than one of these characters in their heads at once and create a compelling ensemble cast, where the protagonists’ strengths complement one another. Rather than going that route, however, Rothfuss seems to be determined to make Kvothe fill the role of an entire ensemble cast, and this is a mistake. Not only does it make Kvothe annoying, but it devalues the other characters. At best they become less interesting; at worst they become one-dimensional.

Some reviewers have commented about this problem in relation to the women characters. It’s a valid criticism, but I would argue that it’s equally applicable to the men as well—both male and female supporting characters are poorly drawn here. They exist only in relation to how they can help or hinder Kvothe. Even when they are at their most interesting (such as Sim’s revelation that he can read Eld Vintic), it’s only so that they can somehow help Kvothe become more awesome. In other words, the other characters in this story aren’t people—they are props to help Kvothe be the best Kvothe ever.

You could chalk this up to the frame story and an unreliable narrator, but it happens within the outer story as well. Bast is literally a manipulative bastard Fae who is trying to force Kvothe to wake up and be awesome again. He has no other purpose.

The Wise Man’s Fear is actually about 17 novels in one—OK, maybe not 17, but definitely at least 7—nested like Russian dolls one inside the other. Kvothe leaves the university to go travelling, goes searching for bandits, gets distracted by the Fae … just when you think that the current story is going to end and we’ll return to the next story up the chain, a new story starts! And it’s fun and interesting and fascinating the first two or three times it happens, but then it just feels old.

It’s really a shame, too, because Rothfuss is just so damn good at creating settings and distinct aspects of cultures. For example, in Vintas the nobility exchange rings of different metals to signify different relationships. In Ademre, people speak sparingly and modify their speech with hand gestures. These kinds of touches, and Rothfuss’ willingness to explore them in great detail, are brilliant. This is exactly the kind of worldbuilding I’m looking for in a fantasy novel, and Rothfuss once again demonstrates he is a strong new voice in this respect.

The epic, quasi-medieval fantasy subgenre has taken a few knocks in the past decade or so. It’s difficult to write good stories that don’t feel all that derivative. And there are certain aspects of the subgenre and its conventions that can be problematic as well. Rothfuss largely manages to avoid these pitfalls to produce a splendid and refreshing fantasy story. Despite my utter and unapologetic change of mind about Kvothe, I still managed to enjoy reading this story. I can’t help it: there’s something about the way Rothfuss tells the story that picks me up and takes me on a journey, which is exactly what I want.

If you did not like The Name of the Wind but had hoped to pick up The Wise Man’s Fear anyway, then this book is not going to change your mind. In many respects the story is every bit as good, if not better, than the first book. Rothfuss gives himself a little more freedom to roam the vast world he has created. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way he slips the reins off Kvothe’s characterization, and our clever-but-fallible orphan protagonist from the first book transforms into an annoyingly modest Mary Sue. And the taste this leaves in my mouth is all the more bitter for knowing that this probably one of the best epic fantasy works of this decade.

My reviews of The Kingkiller Chronicle:
← The Name of the Wind

Ben is still split on this one, folks. Atom Land: A Guided Tour Through the Strange (And Impossibly Small) World of Particle Physics tries to teach us about … well, particle physics. Specifically, Jon Butterworth takes us on a tour of the different particles in the Standard Model of physics, explains the three fundamental forces that interact with them, and then expands our horizons by briefly touching on the frontiers of physics research. The subject matter is fascinating, and Butterworth’s presentation of it is generally pretty interesting. Yet the book itself never quite gels for me. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

The title of this book is literally the metaphor Butterworth uses throughout: he pitches this as a journey through the land of particle physics, starting at the Isle of Leptons and taking us all the way to the high-energy land of Bosonia on the eastern edge of the map. I’m so ambivalent about this metaphor. I think I mostly hate it, because it sounds so contrived. But there are parts that managed to get to me—and the little maps at the start of each section are cute! So your mileage may vary, and maybe this is the metaphor that finally helps you make sense of particle physics. Probably not though.

Butterworth promises early on that he won’t throw any equations at us. This is a fairly standard boilerplate promise in the popular physics book game these days. Atom Land adheres to the letter of this promise but not, I submit, it spirit: there are a few times when Butterworth basically writes in words the equivalent of an equation, and if that isn’t splitting hairs, I don’t know what is. I also don’t agree with this received wisdom that equations should be avoided at all costs. Sometimes equations are elegant, beautiful ways of demonstrating physics. You don’t need to understand or be able to manipulate them to appreciate how they bring together, for example, various forces. And in attempting to avoid the use of equations, Butterworth, like so many other authors of these books, ends up going through contortions or explaining things in a tortured way that ultimately make less sense (in my opinion).

Indeed, one of my major reservations about Atom Land is simply that I’m having a hard time pinning down the intended audience. The first part of the book spends a long time explaining how modern quantum physics understands the nature of a “particle” and wave-particle duality. Yet it isn’t long before Butterworth is throwing around terms that a lot of newbies won’t understand or be able to grasp the way he’s explaining them. Combined with the utter dearth of images and figures, aside from the maps that preface each section, and this makes for some uneven reading.

I will give Atom Land this bit of praise, though: Butterworth spends a lot of time explaining the weak force, and I definitely understand it a lot better than I did before reading this! In particular, he covers concepts like chirality and helicity, which either I’ve never seen mentioned before in any physics books, or I must have totally forgotten about them. Again, the level of his explanations occasionally seems uneven in complexity, but I think I got the gist of it. And it led to some fascinating insights into the weak force, the nature of antimatter, and why symmetry is so important to physics. Moreover, Butterworth often touches on the possibility of finding a “theory of everything” and makes important points each time why that isn’t really the right way to look at physics and science.

It occurred to me while I was reading that it must take a lot of confidence to write a popular physics book these days. There just seems to be so many out there—you must really think you’ve got what it takes, or got something others don’t, for your book to do something the other books haven’t. So, good on Butterworth for taking that leap and writing this book. It’s a decent book. But all it really did was make me want to re-read Knocking on Heaven’s Door, by Lisa Randall, which had an excellent and more concise explanation of the Standard Model—complete with a diagram!

Atom Land stays true to its conceit the entire way through, and Butterworth attempts to explain the fundamental forces of our universe in clear terms. I think he mostly succeeds, but his style doesn’t quite work for me, and there are parts of the book that seem inconsistent in tone and difficulty level. It’s all right, but it’s messy in places. Then again, I guess that’s physics these days.

Mike Heath is back at it again with that great cover art. Ugh. That angled title. Yes.

Yes yes yes yes yes.

Oh, and A.J. Hartley wrote a book that goes between these covers. It’s pretty good too.

What, you want more? OK, fine.

Firebrand is one of those sequels that comes out swinging, delivering more of what you loved about the first book without any of that messy “middle book” syndrome that so often afflicts trilogies/series. If anything, it’s more compelling, more interesting, more full of risky storytelling and themes. Although you can read and enjoy this book without reading Steeplejack, why would you deprive yourself of Ang’s origin story? And your appreciation for Firebrand is definitely going to be greater.

No longer a steeplejack, Ang is working on the down low for Josiah Willinghouse, Member of Parliament for the Brevard Party in Bar-Selehm. When a mysterious thief steals the plans for a top secret new weapon, Ang has to infiltrate an exclusive society club with a white supremacist lean in order to hobnob with the richy-rich people and uncover a conspiracy among Bar-Selehm’s high society. Meanwhile, refugees continue to pour into the city as a result of Bar-Selehm’s rival, Grappoli, continuing to prosecute its war against the tribes in the area. As this situation increases the tension and the turmoil in the city, Ang’s choices and her ability to uncover this plot might have a direct effect on the livelihoods and lives of so many of the city’s less privileged inhabitants.

It is so nice to return to Bar-Selehm. I loves me the great fictional fantasy cities, and this one is no exception. Hartley does a great job initiating us into the politics and demographics of the city and its neighbours without too much exposition. We quickly understand that this is about colonialist and imperialist ambitions, racism, and of course, capitalism. In other words, Hartley has produced a loose allegory for the politics of so many places in this world in a way that is relatable and understandable. I know this book gets labelled sometimes as young adult, and I’m not sure I agree with that, but I think that young adults who read this will (a) get the allegory and (b) enjoy the hell out of it. From the odious and white supremacist Richter to the exploitative Nathan Horrich, there are plenty of antagonists in Firebrand who resemble all too well high-profile figures in today’s politics.

Paired with this amazing setting is the equally exquisite protagonist, Anglet Sutonga. Firebrand burns brightly exactly because Ang is already so different from who she was in Steeplejack, and over the course of this book, she continues to grow and change. She reflects on this explicitly, observing how Madame Nahreem and others push her to become someone she isn’t. Whether it’s adopting the persona of Lady Ki Misrai to infiltrate Elitus (ugh, that name) or simply donning that “neutral mask” as she pursues her duties for Willinghouse, Ang is discovering that her old persona is no longer sufficient. This is not a bad thing. As we grow up, we realize how we have to change to tackle the new challenges that face us and achieve the goals we set for ourselves. Ang is no longer a steeplejack. She has set new goals for herself, like finding a way to provide education for her sister’s children. I love watching Ang become a more capable person, even as she deliberates with herself over exactly who she wants to become.

Hartley keeps all of this going at a good clip. I was a little worried when, about a third of the way into the book, Willinghouse suddenly brings Ang out into the countryside for a training montage. This proves to be a bit of a red herring, though, or a brief detour before Ang is back in Bar-Selehm to infiltrate Elitus. From there, matters move with alacrity, and it is not an exaggeration to say that for the last hundred or so pages I was loath to put this book down.

It’s unfortunate that some adults will pass this series by because it’s labelled/marketed as young adult. This is a book that adults and adolescents alike will enjoy.

The only thing that struck me as a bit odd was the whole thing with the Gargoyle. I kind of see what Hartley is doing with that, but not really? I just wish we had a little more to go on—not necessarily complete closure, if it’s going to be an important thread in book 3, but at least a little more to think about.

Firebrand has everything I want in a sequel. Full stop. Can’t wait for book 3!

My reviews of the Steeplejack series:
← Steeplejack

“And then … AND THEN … THEN THEY HAVE TO TURN INTO BEAVERS—fucking beavers!—to save the day. By building a DAM. Because they’re BEAVERS.”

Occasionally I like to imagine how a book might have been pitched if the pitch meeting involved lots of drinking. (Disclaimer: I have never been drunk. Maybe beavers are inherently sobering.)

The Resistance is such a weird instalment in the Animorphs series. On the one hand, the fate of the free Hork-Bajir colony is in the Animorphs’ hands, and in many ways, this marks the start of the proper, open war between the Yeerks and the resistance. On the other hand … beavers. And space hippie hikers. Oh, and an epistolary story-within-a-story of a Civil War ancestor of Jake’s.

Look, I’d probably get letters for this if anyone other than Julie read and cared about these Animorphs reviews, and I don’t mean to denigrate the proud and mighty beaver. It’s a great animal. And the Animorphs’ plan to dam the river in such a way as to flood out the invading Yeerk forces is extremely clever and a good example of “big picture” strategy in the larger battles they will now have to fight. Yet the way it’s played in The Resistance is quite comical, from the acquiring of the beaver DNA to the Animorphs teaming up with the two actual beavers. The humour is probably there to offset the grimdark atmosphere of this hopelessly outmatched battle that’s going to happen—still, these parts of the book feel like they belong much earlier in the series.

Similarly, Jake’s interactions with the hikers who eventually decide to join the resistance are both hilarious and bleak in their outlook. I love that the Animorphs have just decided, after the events of the previous book, to go, “Fuck it, we’re just going to talk to humans in morph if we have to”. Secrecy is starting to crumble. The cracks are starting to show. And with what eventually happens during the battle, this is kind of an early indication to Jake that his decisions are starting to have bigger and bigger consequences.

The whole Civil War subplot did nothing for me. Not a thing. Firstly—and there would be more letters about this, I’m sure—not into the Civil War. Canadian and actually a little bit disturbed by the American obsession with the Civil War. Like, I get that your country splitting asunder over slavery was a big dramatic thing, but the actual amount you focus on it sometimes seems unseemly. Secondly, this is a very interesting but utterly unprecedented plot device in Animorphs history. I’m reminded, once again, of a long-running TV series: once you get into the last few seasons, you start to experiment and play more with the format of the show, both because you can and also because you want to shake things up. Animorphs has never done something like this before. For me, though, the end effect is that it feels like The Resistance was half a novel, too short even for the lengths of these books, and so they decided to bolt on the Civil War story just to make it long enough to publish.

There’s a good and important story here in terms of our entry into the final arc of the series. Nevertheless, it is bogged down by unnecessary narrative flourishes and an indecisive commitment to the tone of humour (should it be black, glib, optimistic, cynical?). The Resistance is not a misstep by any means, but neither does it stick the landing.

Next time, we take a break from these usual adventures to bring you the final Chronicles story. We’ll finally learn the true history of the Ellimist (or at least, a history. Dude could just be lying to us). Stay tuned.

Letters complaining about my attitude towards beavers can be sent to:
Complaints Department, Ben’s Reviews
123 Ben How Could You Lane
Beaverton, ON
P7H 5J3

My reviews of Animorphs:
← #46: The Deception | The Ellimist Chronicles →

I must start somewhere, and where better to begin than with the title? Why is this called The Windup Girl? Although Emiko's actions have a significant effect on the plot, I never felt like the book was about her or that she was as special as the title implies. As a creation, Emiko is fascinating. She is a slave, obedience instilled at genetic and conditioned levels, beauty bred into her. Smaller pores make for flawlessly smooth skin, but in Thailand's climate they also make her prone to overheating. Her genes also dictate how she moves, with the stutter-stop motions that give her the moniker "windup girl" despite her biological nature. Abandoned in Thailand by her former Japanese owner, Emiko is abused and humiliated as a prostitute. Once she realizes she can have wants, she wants nothing more than to escape. Once she realizes she has the power to effect this, despite what her training and genes tell her, she becomes dangerous.

Simultaneously fragile and fearsome, Emiko is a wonderful creation. So it is a shame the book does not spend more time focusing on her transformation from subservient girl to wilful woman. There are so many characters in this book, so much else going on, that Emiko's development does not get as many pages at it deserves. On the other hand, a book focusing more on Emiko would be, admittedly, a very different book. So I shall focus on the book we have here.

I admire Emiko as a character—I think it's difficult not to admire her, because Bacigalupi has taken such a well-worn trope and integrated it into his genetic morality play. She is a lesson in biological determinism, a creature at the mercy of the genes her creators tailored to ensure her obedience—and a celebration of the ability to transcend one's genome, to become more than the sum of one's parts. Emiko is the human in the inhuman. As a symbol, she is very powerful. Perhaps that is why this is called The Windup Girl.

I could go through the rest of the cast and discuss each in turn. Bacigalupi's strength and weakness in this book is an ability to focus, in turn, on so many different characters. However, I will just single out the two other characters worthy of note for how they change over the course of the story: Hock Seng, Anderson's yellow card Chinese refugee; and Kanya, sidekick to Jaidee the Tiger and kickass morally-ambiguous protagonist in her own right.

Hock Seng annoyed me, especially toward the end, because he was always lamenting his misfortune and powerlessness. Yet he never gave up, despite it truly seeming at times like fate conspired against him. In Hock Seng, Bacigalupi shows us a man who has fallen so far that he has lost everything he cared about: his business, his family, and all of his property. Like Emiko, he is foreign to Thailand, a refugee seen by others as so much detritus. He tries so hard to rise again, but he never quite makes it—sometimes because of ill fortune, but sometimes because he is so used to remaining unobtrusive, to biding his time, that he does not seize opportunity when it presents itself. Hock Seng is a broken man constantly trying to mend himself.

Kanya annoyed me at first but grew on me in ways I did not expect. Bacigalupi pulls a bait-and-switch, setting up Jaidee to play a pivotal role in the coming conflict only to replace him with Kanya. She is as unprepared for this new responsibility as we are for her accession. Oh, and it doesn't help that she's a mole for Akkarat, the Minister of Trade and enemy of her band of merry White Shirt enforcers. And that was really the last piece of the puzzle that her character needed, something to elevate her above the "idealist fighter with a scarred childhood" to "conflicted fighter with a scarred childhood." Watching Kanya walk the line between her loyalties, and seeing how much fun Bacigalupi has putting her in ironic positions, is half the fun of reading The Windup Girl.

It's not that all the other characters are poorly written, but none of them resonated for me in the way Hock Seng and Kanya did. Some of them, like Anderson and Akkarat, just seemed to drive be there to drive forward the plot, mouthpieces for their respective ideologies. The latent conflict in The Windup Girl, mostly dormant until the climactic chapters, is between the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of the Environment. The former want to trade, naturally, while the latter want to protect Thailand from mutant pests and voracious strains of food created by too many decades of calorie company gene-ripping. Of course, what with recovering from a coup and all, Thailand's government sucks. So when Anderson, Akkarat, and everyone else who wants money, power, or money and power start stirring the pot, the situation becomes very ugly, very fast. Then Emiko murders someone, and all hell breaks loose.

Having had the fortune never to live in a war-torn city, I cannot attest to the verisimilitude of Bacigalupi's depictions of Kung Threp as the White Shirts go to war with Trade. It feels like a plausible portrayal to me. There are idealists on both sides, but for the most part the two sides consist of ordinary people swept up by an ideology. And those caught in the middle are confused, cynical, and misinformed—yet so apathetic, because they are so used to a corrupt regime. The radio can't be trusted, for it is in the control of one group or another; the officers who are supposed to arrest you for your contraband source of methane simply look the other way (for a price). There are laws and regulations, and then there is reality. There is authority and there are enforcers. The gulf between the two is vast, in our world and in this future Thailand.

Bacigalupi never quite explains how Thailand (or the world) arrives at this state, but that's OK. There are vague references to an Expansion and Contraction—implied, rather explicitly, to do with globalization and peak oil. Enough governments have collapsed that megacorporations run amuck with their own private armies. Genetic modification brought the ruin and now may hold the keys to saving humanity's staple crops—that or the highly-coveted seedbanks hidden around the world. Anderson's references to the disaster in Finland, where his company attempted to seize a seedbank only for its possessors to destroy it, set the tone for his time. In a world filled with environmental and economic collapse, we finally achieve a form of equality—just not on the highly-developed level those of us in developed nations all fantasize about. And, naturally, since these people are human beings and not robots or saints, in this world where everyone is equally screwed over, some are more screwed than others. There are some haves among the have-nots, and as Hock Seng can testify, one's status can change without warning or appeal.

That ultimate uncertainty of one's fate is one of the principal themes of The Windup Girl, and it is a harrowing lesson to learn. None of the characters really achieve what they want—and if they do, as it's implied for Emiko, it is not exactly what they were expecting. Rather than settling for a happy ending, a sad ending, or the depressingly postmodern choice of no ending, Bacigalupi delivers a . . . real ending. Not real in the sense of realistic, but real in the sense of being messy, both in terms of writing and narrative. Lumped in with the surreal invocation of kink springs, megodonts, and yes, airships, the ending is abrupt but not unwelcome.

I wish I could praise this book more. The more I consider its flaws, the less I consider them damning . . . yet I can't feel as enthusiastic about The Windup Girl as I desire. Maybe it's Bacigalupi's style, which is almost clinical and can at times interfere with connecting to his otherwise interesting characters. Maybe it's the plot, which only gets exciting after an interminable time humming, hawing, and generally dragging its heels toward the climax. Mostly, though, it's the disparate elements Bacigalupi combines to tell his story. In reviewing them—Emiko, Hock Seng, Kanya, Anderson and Akkarat's conflict, etc.—separately, I partition them. I can observe their individual features but not so much how they relate; those relationships, in my opinion, are the weakest links of The Windup Girl.

There is something to be said for easy books, books that do not challenge—or, if they challenge, do so only in a manner that is ultimately reassuring. We all crave confirmation and validation; fulfilling that craving once in a while is fine. By that same token, there is also a time and place for really hard books, books that challenge not only sensibility but ability, ability to comprehend or understand let alone believe. Often easy books get labelled "beach reads", but I think this conflates difficulty with complexity. Some hard books can be beach reads too, if only because they are as entertaining as they are thought-provoking. Thus, "hard" or "complex" is not always a synonym for "drudgery" or "boring."

Nevertheless, The Windup Girl—a complex book—did, at times, feel like a chore to read. Bacigalupi's style, as I mentioned above, could be slicker. The plot could be better. The characters, well, they're all right. The Windup Girl is a bunch of adequate narrative elements that come together to make a whole that is, like its eponymous character, more than the sum of its parts.

The Woken Gods has a wicked premise: what if the deities of various ancient mythologies were real entities, but at some point in time, for reasons lost to us, they were put asleep or fell asleep? What happens, then, if they wake up and return with a vengeance, and the only people who can stand against them are a shadowy secret society called the Society of the Sun that just happens to have made it its mission to collect relics and artifacts that can fight back?

In the middle of this epic landscape, Kyra Locke discovers that her father isn’t just a librarian for the Society. He’s a full-on operative, and her mother is the daughter of the Society’s director. When her father disappears, Kyra dives into a this world of secrets and myths to discover the truths hidden from her for so many years. In so doing, she uncovers a plot that stretches back to when the gods awoke five years ago, and if it comes to fruition, it could spell the end of humanity entirely….

So, yeah, Gwenda Bond has made sure the stakes are high. This is an intense novel, and there’s a lot of good, suspenseful moments in it. Bond provides no shortage of various antagonists and allies for Kyra, each of whom has their own quirks and quarrels. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but feel there were some things missing from this book, or just a little off, which it less enjoyable.

Mostly, I think it comes down to characterization, and a little bit of the narration. I can appreciate Kyra’s character: she doesn’t take shit from anyone, and when her dad tries to keep secrets from her and just tells her to skip town with a bunch of money, she decides to go after him instead. I can respect that. Yet there were times when she seems to make plans on the basis of very little information. She literally discovers this massive conspiracy and in the space of a few days tries to come up with a plan to stop it almost entirely single-handedly and with very little research, training, or preparation. Mix that in with some prophecy stuff I don’t want to spoil and you essentially arrive at a quasi–Chosen One situation, and that makes Kyra much less interesting.

Similarly, the supporting cast is unimpressive. There’s a half-hearted stab at a love triangle among Kyra and her two best friends, which is resolved kind of hurriedly at the end of the book. The two friends kind of recede into the narrative background for the middle acts, re-emerging when needed towards the end—yet there are occasionally shifts in perspective, chapters inserted that follow these characters, or others, in the third person, when Bond wants to show us something Kyra isn’t privy to. These seem to happen somewhat at random, though—obviously they aren’t without intention, but I’m not sure they really add much to the story.

Oz and Justin aren’t any more interesting either. Oz is an entirely-too-credulous and entirely-too-young-to-be-an-operative love interest for Kyra, but the romance, as with the aforementioned love triangle, seems to be more of an afterthought. He’s just generically attractive enough, apparently, but he’s mostly just there to play against Kyra, either as an ally or an obstacle. It’s rare that he gets much of a chance to show any agency of his own. Justin is supposed to be the more scholarly equivalent, and I do like that he takes against Kyra and still doesn’t like her at the end of the book, working with her rather out of necessity. That’s an interesting characterization choice.

(Also, at one point Justin says, of the timing of a ritual being midnight on the day of the June solstice, “That’s right at the exact moment of the solstice, when the sun is at its furthest point”. That’s … not how solstices work? The sentence is a little vague but seems to conflate the solstice with aphelion—not the same things—but I guess we could chalk this up to Justin being a little vague on how solstices work, or at least just bad at explaining them. Anyway.)

Everything about the gods in The Woken Gods is fascinating and fun, and I loved those scenes. Bond draws from a rich set of mythologies, referring to some of the more well-known gods, like Hermes and Set, but foregrounding some of the more obscure or less commonly referenced pantheons, like the Sumerian Enki and Nigerian Legba. Again, more interesting choices here.

I wish the human counterpart, the Society of the Sun, was more fleshed out. Bronson’s trip into the Locke family crypt and the little history lesson he gives Kyra provides us with some ideas. It’s just incredibly vague, the whole position of the Society in post-awakening society. Is it a paramilitary organization? An arm of government? It definitely isn’t secret anymore. We keep hearing about “operatives” and training, but there’s no real outline of the hierarchy. One might argue that none of these details are important to the plot at hand, that Bond is leaving out extraneous exposition, and I might be sympathetic to that. Yet I can’t help but feel like we’re missing enough to see this world working in a practical way, humans and gods at this awful, suspenseful detente.

That brings me to the plot, I guess. It’s … all right? Like I think I like it because it fits in the general mould of contemporary urban fantasy that plays with myths in this way. Think Tomb Raider (the movies): humans messing about with ancient artifacts and god-like powers to do something they really the hell shouldn’t, and it falls to a plucky protagonist to stop them. None of the themes or even the conflicts that The Woken Gods trades on are refreshingly original, but they’re done well enough that the story moves at a nice pace.

So I enjoyed reading this book, but when I reached the end, I just kind of shrugged. It’s all right. But I didn’t love the characters, and it feels pretty anticlimactic in places. It functions well enough as a standalone, which is appears to be. There are tantalizing threads left over for future books—but I’m not sure I’d actually want to read them.

Reading Beautiful Broken Things made me really want to re-read A Quiet Kind of Thunder. I don’t know—this one was just so good that I was reminded of how much I enjoyed the other, which I think is a much more heartwarming story than this one. And that’s not to say that this one is bad, but there are moods for things. Parts of this story made me cry. Parts of it made my heart soar. I’m not sure I was in the best mood to read it. But I did, and Sara Barnard once again dazzled me with her ability to write characters steeped in empathy and compassion.

Trigger warning in this book for discussions of physical and verbal abuse, anxiety, suicide.

In Beautiful Broken Things, Caddy and Rosie have been best friends going on a decade, despite attending different schools. As they start Year Eleven, a new girl, Suzanne, at Rosie’s school threatens to disrupt this dyad. Wary of Suzanne at first, Caddy finds herself warming to Suzanne more so than anyone realized. As Caddy learns more about Suzanne’s past trauma and positions herself as the caring, understanding, shoulder-to-cry-on type of friend, she finds herself drawn deeper into Suzanne’s ongoing struggles. Even as Rosie pulls back and her parents advise caution, Caddy throws more and more of herself into helping Suzanne. Thus, Barnard poses the question: how far can we go, how much can we really do, for beautiful, broken people?

The way this book starts, it seems like it’s mostly going to be about Caddy’s jealousy of Suzanne, and Caddy having to adjust to Rosie and Suzanne becoming so close. Instead, Caddy and Suzanne develop this friendship almost separately from Rosie, and it’s really fascinating. I think it’s notable that, at the beginning of the book, Caddy resolves to get a proper boyfriend, lose her virginity, and experience a “significant life event”. I’m not going to go into spoilery details here, but I just want to point out that the focus of this book is not romance. In this way, Barnard reminds us that sometimes life takes us in unexpected directions, if we let it, and often where we end up is never where we imagined we would be.

There are multiple places in this book that brought me to tears, but there is one moment above all others that really got to me. It’s actually early on, page 100 of my edition:

After a silence, Sarah reached for the gift bag I realized I was still holding. “I’ll tell her you came by as soon as she wakes up.”

“I could come right back if she wants me to,” I heard myself say.

A smile spread across her face. “You’re very sweet.”

“I just want to make it better,” I said, feeling helpless.

Sarah didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. I knew what she was thinking, because I was thinking it too. It looped in my head as I walked back home.

You can’t.

(Emphasis original.) I actually welled up a little with tears just transcribing this passage. Doesn’t it just perfectly summarize how I’m sure all of us feel, at least once in a while? We go through our lives, together, yet alone. We try to help each other. But as every parent discovers when their child is hurting or every friend knows when their friend is on the outs—sometimes it just isn’t enough. It just won’t fix things. It’s not you; it’s not your fault. But it’s painful nonetheless.

Caddy isn’t perfect, obviously, and she makes plenty of mistakes, both when it comes to talking to Suzanne and to Rosie. Yet she is trying so hard! There are a few notable moments where Barnard really shows us the struggle as she tries to make the right decisions, like when she’s taking Suzanne home from a party and has to deliberate whether or not to interrupt Rosie. I’ve never been in that particular situation, but I can totally empathize with having to make such decisions and having to take that kind of initiative.

I really like the portrayal of the parents (and Sarah) here. Caddy’s mother sounds a little insufferable and quite judgmental when it comes to Suzanne, for sure—but they also make some good points when it comes to Caddy’s own wellbeing. I think that’s an interesting choice on Barnard’s part, showing us these parents who are trying to be supportive but are ultimately putting their own daughter first.

On a wider level, Beautiful Broken Things reminds of us how much work we still need to do when it comes to dealing with mental health in our society. We need to get better at talking about it with each other. We also need more supports in place, for teenagers and for adults, who need mental health assistance—and for those in caregiver/support roles who provide that kind of assistance because they are friends or family. Beautiful Broken Things is interesting because Suzanne isn’t the main character; Caddy is. Suzanne has her own story, sure, but this is the story of how Caddy reacts to Suzanne’s story intersecting her own.

This book is beautiful and enchanting and a little bit haunting. It is a convincing portrait of a group of teen girls, the issues they have to deal with, and the ways in which this affects their parents and support networks. I think I might prefer A Quiet Kind of Thunder simply because it is, to me, a much happier novel. But this book is definitely moving and important.

It's 2016; can we stop pretending we don't judge books by their cover? Remix has amazing cover art—in particular, the way the back cover copy is arranged is a thing of beauty. Just look at it. If I hadn’t already wanted to read Remix after reading Non Pratt’s debut, Trouble, that back cover would change my mind.

I love that Remix is, at its core, about the best friendship between two girls. Yes, there is sex and romance and relationship drama. At the end of the day, though, this is about Kaz and Ruby. They are such distinctive people who nevertheless care deeply about each other, and even though one weekend at a music festival seems to drive them apart, their friendship is a resilient one. And I'm probably going to spend the rest of this review unpacking that last sentence, because that’s this novel in a nutshell.

Like Trouble, Remix features two narrators. This time the book also changes up the typeface with each narrator: Kaz is your standard serif; Ruby is a smooth, stream-of-consciousness sans-serif. I love this little extra degree of differentiation—regrettably, the fact that almost all books are ordinary serif means that Kaz’s typeface looks “normal” while Ruby’s is more extraordinary. In actuality, Pratt manages to portray both girls as interesting but individual voices. So really, when you read this book, you get two great protagonists for the price of one.

I could go into stereotypes to summarize their differences. Kaz is the sensible, no-nonsense, down-to-earth girl who doesn't see the boys flirting with her and has eyes only for the one guy she loves. Ruby is the wild child who doesn’t do great in school, likes having sex, and knows what she wants. Yet this type of classification is reductive, because each girl has elements of the other in her—Kaz has desires and yearnings she explores here, and Ruby must confront some of her emotional denial.

Although Remix emphasizes friendship, it’s not to the detriment of other important relationships. For example, Pratt illustrates how our interactions with parents influence us: Kaz’s mother is an encouraging, progressive role model when it comes to activities like sex, but she’s hopeless with cooking or home maintenance, forcing Kaz to step up and be more responsible than your average 16-year-old. In contrast, Ruby’s parents have high academic expectations for her that she never seems to meet; they are deliberately unseen and, aside from notes, unheard here, to emphasize their distance from their daughter.

And then, of course, there’s sex and dating. Or “going out with” as Ruby might put it, since she thinks dating is an icky word.

She has a point: dating has two connotations, one far more juvenile than what’s happening here (like you’re in Grade 7 and you have a “girlfriend”) and one far more adult. Another thing I love about Remix is that it holds no illusions about what teens are up to. Kaz and Ruby are 16, and they and their similarly-aged friends are drinking, sexing, and rock-n-rolling. They talk like teenagers, and they have the same flimsy but oh-so-confident worldviews that teenagers have.

The fun, if you will, in this book is watching Kaz and Ruby’s desires and decisions conflict and lead them to make bad choices. There’s an “oh no she didn’t” vibe to much of the story, with one or the other doing something in the heat of the moment that seems to propel the other one further away. Both realize it’s happening and realize it’s stupid, and Pratt perfectly captures that strong-headed teenage attitude that often prevents people (even well into adulthood) from simply stopping and saying, “We're being dumb.” I wanted things to work so badly for Kaz and Ruby, but it’s easy to see why it keeps going wrong. As I mentioned in my review of Trouble, my disinclination towards relationships and sex meant I didn’t experience this type of drama first-hand as a teenager—but I can definitely identify with making stupid decisions and arguments that just spiral further and further out of control.

As far as the sex goes, I just want to highlight a great, frank moment when Ruby recalls having bad sex. It’s awesome to see a YA book not just portraying teenagers having causal sex (like they do) but also acknowledge that it will often be bad sex (or at least, so I am given to understand) instead of fictionalizing sex into some kind of perfect expression of romantic compatibility. On a similar note, Ruby’s sexual attraction to Stu despite her complicated emotional feelings validates the idea that you can be attracted to someone physically but not emotionally, or vice versa.

As far as the relationships go, I want to highlight Lauren, Kaz’s ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. Pratt could easily have made Lauren a haughty bitch. Much to Ruby’s disappointment, Kaz actually likes Lauren. And while I found myself sympathizing quite a bit with Ruby’s disgust over the way Lauren acts, I have to agree with Kaz that Lauren is a good person—and that she deserves better than Tom! I appreciate this sympathetic portrayal of the “replacement” significant other.

The back of the book promises “zero chance of everything working out.” It delivers. It’s not a downer ending, though—quite the contrary. I loved the ending. But it reminds us that you can’t please everyone. Life is messy and is full of mistakes, and things we say or do in the heat of the moment are impossible to take back and difficult to remedy.

I also like how Remix feels very quotidian; it doesn’t pivot on a single, capital-I-Issue, like teenage pregnancy or rape or body shaming, etc. Don’t get me wrong: books that pivot on such issues are essential—but books that don’t are just as necessary. And Remix still has some heavy stuff in it, but it’s part of a larger, overall narrative.

Did I make a mistake reading Remix and Trouble only six months apart, with no idea when Pratt’s next novel is coming out? I don’t think so. We like to badger our favourite authors to finish their next work, because we are eager to read it, of course—but, you know, I actually have a ton of books to read. I’d rather Pratt takes her time polishing her next novel, even if it takes longer, and I will distract myself with other reads while I wait. Looking forward to whatever comes next, however, because so far it has been delightful.