I enjoyed Storm Glass more than I thought I would when I first started. For whatever reason, I’m not aboard the young adult fantasy train right now, which is a shame, because there’s plenty of young adult fantasy I want to read, but I’m hesitant to go into it until I’m in the right mood! Still, I received this from NetGalley in exchange for a review, so a reading and a review it will get!

Imagine, if you will, a Regency England in which the rich live in floating manors and the poor live in the Fells, down below on the ground. Oh, and there are airships (obviously there are airships). This is the world Jeff Wheeler has us visit in Storm Glass. If you’re rich enough, you learn one of the four schools of Mysteries—Wind, War, Law, or Thought—which are kind of an arcane cross of magic and actual science. If you’re not rich, well, typically your parents are going to sell your deed (read: indentured servitude) and you’re not going to have any control over your destiny. So, you know, typical world with a fantasy twist.

Cettie has only ever known life in the Fells. Cettie can see ghosts. One day, her life changes forever: Vice Admiral Brant Fitzroy agrees to try to adopt her. From then on, Cettie will live in his floating manor of Fog Willows and want for noth—wait, sorry, no, that’s not right. Cettie tries to settle into Fog Willows, but there is an antagonist (the evil Mrs. Pullman), not to mention the whole of society frowning at Fitzroy’s scandalous eccentricity. Meanwhile, the other half of the narrative follows Sera Fitzempress, a second precocious 12-year-old, one who stands to inherit the empire if her father doesn’t get his way and who has a penchant for beneficence that will probably get her in trouble.

At the centre of this story, I suppose, is the premise that life is horribly unfair, and that once you realize this, you can do one of two things: you can lean into it, embrace the unfairness, and do your best to “get yours”; or, you can work to try to level the playing field, even if that makes things harder for you along the way. People who take the former tack are not necessarily “evil” but might be misguided; likewise, those who try for the latter aren’t inherently “good” but may have good intentions. Both Cettie and Sera must learn to navigate this unfair world and start making choices for themselves in terms of how they want to interact with it.

I think that’s where Storm Glass piqued my interest: agency. Cettie and Sera both have it, though Sera’s is severely curtailed in how she can exercise it. In both cases, however, the two protagonists are their own people. Plenty of characters tell Cettie what she should do, how she should think or behave—but she always resolves to do what she believes is right. I like that, even when it means she makes a mistake.

That’s where Storm Glass doesn’t quite come through for me, though: mistakes. Or maybe more accurately, just “the stakes”. Now, Wheeler threatens us with pretty high stakes, to be sure, for both girls. I love Mrs. Pullman as an antagonist: she is so delightfully convinced of her own rectitude that it doesn’t even cross her mind that what she is doing is wrong. I’m less enamoured with Sera’s father—he seems too one-dimensionally cruel. Both threaten their respective charges with harsh consequences. But just when the going gets tough, the climax of the book hits, and everything seems to wrap up too soon. I guess I was hoping for a bit more struggle, a bit more hardship, a need to be more clever.

Another dimension that didn’t bother me too much but might bother some people is the vagueness of the magic system here. The Mysteries refer both to knowledge that one learns in school as well as aptitude for various forms of magic. It’s largely based on force of will, it seems—Cettie is able to exercise some elements of it, despite having never been initiated into the Mysteries—but there isn’t much time spent on developing how this works any further. I actually like that Wheeler doesn’t bog down the book with a lot of exposition; we get precious little explanation of the political system, or the way the Mysteries work in conjunction with the rest of society—you have to do a lot of filling in between the lines. And I’m fine with that. Still, this attitude applied to the magic system means that we’re basically in a situation where magic can do whatever the plot needs (and maybe that’s why I’m dissatisfied with how the story resolves).

Overall, this is what I’d deem a competent fantasy novel. It ticks a lot of the right boxes. I enjoyed it, enjoyed the energy, liked the climax, stayed interested. It hasn’t stuck with me. I’m not sure I’d read a sequel. Your mileage, as always, will vary.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the swells of epic fantasy that it’s nice to take a break and come back down to earth with something a little more folk fantasy. The Boneshaker is set in 1914, in a Missouri town just near a crossroads—and we all know what happens there. Kate Milford, along with some fantastic illustrations by Andrea Offermann, spins us a yarn about a travelling medicine show, deals with the Devil, and the consequences of paving a road with good intentions.

Natalie Minks is 13 years old and a bit of a gearhead, thanks to the influence of her mechanically-inclined father. She’s also inquisitive, thoughtful, and sensitive. She has a bit of an impulsive temper too! When Dr. Jake Limberleg's Travelling Medicine Show arrive in Arcane, Natalie suspects something is awry—but nobody else seems to notice anything. So she takes it upon herself to investigate, and the real story is much more bizarre than even she would have conceived. In the end, Natalie finds herself up against demons and the Devil himself….

I was a little hesitant going into this one. It’s pitched a little younger than I tend to read, more towards middle grade readers. Nevertheless, I’m really glad that I gave The Boneshaker a shot. I love the atmosphere that Milford creates here. There are so many tantalizing hints at this magical world she has created, one where the Devil can manifest at any moment, angels and demons and other fantastical creatures walk among us, and automata are not necessarily just clockwork toys.

Natalie is a great protagonist. She is headstrong but also open to listening and learning from others—indeed, perhaps one of her most defining characteristics is how many questions she asks of people! She also likes to answer questions and to tell stories, a trait she appears to have inherited from her mother. Natalie really gets around the town, interacting with both children and adults, and she is the heart of this story. That being said, there were plenty of other characters I liked as well: Tom Guyot, of course; both of Natalie’s parents are interesting and not at all absent like we often see (frustratingly, in my opinion) in books like this; and Natalie's peers. Indeed, I confess that I liked Miranda Potter a lot. She might have been annoying to Natalie, but she sticks with Natalie and believes her when it matters most … and that speaks for a lot.

I can totally see The Boneshaker working as a 90-minute movie. As a book, its pacing is a little uneven—but the story here is really gripping, with these very intense moments that would work so well cinematically. (I’m thinking, for example, of the scene where Natalie hides in Limberleg’s wagon and witnesses what actually happens during his phrenology diagnostics). Milford and Offermann together weave and paint this rich tapestry of thoughts and words and pictures that really evoke a world similar to our own early 20th century, but with just a touch more of the uncanny. It gives me chills in all the right ways.

I really like the ending—not so much the climax, where Natalie confronts the Devil, because that part was predictable. I like the denouement, the way that the mood in the town has shifted subtly now that Natalie has assumed her birthright. There’s a moving conversation between her and her mom about her mom’s illness. And then the story closes with the conversation between Natalie and Jack, where Natalie finally nails that trick with confidence she learned from Tom. And I’m just all, “Damn, girl, this town is protected.”

The Boneshaker is fun but also dramatic. It has appropriately high stakes, good characterization … it feels like a rich, fantastical story. It isn’t perfect, particularly its pacing … there are parts that drag and parts that lag and parts that lurch forward like a wagon with a broken wheel. In the end, though, it’s a creative, compelling yarn that is very different from anything else I’ve read lately—and that I like very much indeed.

I am really ambivalent about Some Boys, y’all. (Pun intended!) I can see why this has garnered split opinions when it comes to reviews. Some people love it, some people hate it, and others, like me, are finding things both to love and to hate about the book. Patty Blount’s story of what happens after a young woman accuses one of her peers of rape is a roller coaster of emotions and a stinging indictment of how adults in positions of authority reinforce rape culture. At the same time, so much of this book, stylistically, did not work for me.

Trigger warning in this book, obviously, for discussions of sexual assault, slut-shaming/victim-blaming. The actual scene is not depicted graphically, but there’s mentions there, and Grace experiences some fairly intense panic attacks from the various micro- and not-so-micro-aggressions she endures.

Grace Collier is a social pariah after accusing her school’s lacrosse team captain, Zac, of rape. No one—not her friends, not the police, not her teachers—seems to put much credence to this claim. Even her divorced parents, while trying to be supportive, seem to be more intent on helping Grace “get through” the difficult aftermath of the assault rather than supporting her desire for justice. The girls she once thought of as friends now hurl epithets at her. And Grace constantly suffers from panic attacks. She is focused on finding a way to prove what Zac did to her. Then she is paired up, against her will, with Zac’s friend Ian to clean lockers over spring break. At first they want nothing to do with each other, but slowly they begin to bond, and there appears to be some kind of attraction between them. It’s not a smooth road, though, because Ian is torn between his loyalty to Zac and his growing belief that Grace is telling the truth.

This is where I kind of want to vomit. Actually, the tagline on the cover of the book—“Some boys go too far. Some boys will break your heart. But one boy can mend it.”—is what makes me want to vomit. But before I get into that, let’s examine some of the things I like about Some Boys.

Blount pulls no punches when it comes to depicting the ways rape culture enable and excuse the actions of rapists while blaming and marginalizing victims. Grace does everything right: her parents call the cops; she submits to the invasive physical tests that are required to collect evidence; she submits to the interrogation at the hands of police that requires her to relive her rape, to certify that she was not somehow “asking for it”, etc.; and, finally, when justice unsurprisingly does not happen, she keeps her head high and even returns to school. She is undefeated (and she does not need a boy to “mend” her … but more on that later, I swear). Despite doing everything right, Grace runs into the one problem that the rest of the world still thinks she did one thing wrong—namely, that she ended up in this situation in the first place.

The more overt attacks on Grace, such as Lindsay and Miranda constantly calling her a slut, keying her car or stealing the battery, and even physically attacking her, are brutal but less interesting to me than the ways in which other people, particularly authority figures, betray Grace. The teachers nominally act supportive and pretend to have zero tolerance for this shit, but they hide behind facades of “not taking sides” or, in the case of Coach Brill, soon discover they have little recourse beyond the limited power their position grants them. I think Blount demonstrates an important fact here occasionally overlooked in these discussions: sometimes, it’s difficult for people in positions of authority to actually exercise that authority in a helpful way. Brill wants to root out and punish the person who yelled “slut”, for example, but since he doesn’t know who did it, he has to rely on a team member to self-identify, regardless of their actual guilt. Hence, although it is important that adults and authority figures take more proactive measures to fight rape culture, real change has to happen through education and breaking down the toxic gender roles that create these situations in the first place.

Similarly, Grace’s parents are interesting. Grace’s mom seems to be trying so hard to help Grace. She answers Grace’s phone calls no matter what time it is, always offers support through Grace’s panic attacks, seems to be there for Grace. These are all laudable behaviours. Yet Grace’s mom, perhaps because she feels powerless to actually help, seems to just want Grace to “move on” and put this incident behind her. The same goes for Grace’s dad, who likewise can’t actually do much to change the situation and therefore channels his frustrations into other avenues, like criticizing the way Grace dresses.

So Some Boys has some interesting moments in the way it depicts rape culture. Why am I ambivalent?

Basically, Ian. And the idea that he is the panacea to Grace’s trauma.

To be clear, I’m not begrudging Grace her romance. Rape victims deserve romances and happy-ever-afterish endings as much as the next protagonist in a book, sure. My issue is with how Grace’s turning point is associated with the moment Ian says he believes her. Grace already had two women her age tell her they believe her, by the way, but no, Grace needs some dumb boy to believe her before she can get her mojo back. Apparently he has to swoop in, lift the video off Zac’s phone that might provide incriminating evidence, and be a hero for Grace. And then it’s all better?

I am over-simplifying, yes, and I know that Grace isn’t “all better” even given the positive ending of this book. But I’m just so disappointed that, after spending so much time establishing Grace as this independently-minded person, Blount has a boy “mend” her heart. It’s such a banal, clichéd ending that undermines the whole point of Grace’s journey!

And Ian is such a buffoon. Like, I get Blount wants to portray the perspective of an allocishet teenage boy and why, growing up in the culture he has, he is confused on issues of consent, etc. But seriously, Ian’s critical reasoning faculties could use an upgrade, because he’s about three sentences short of cavemen grunts of “ugh, girls pretty, me like pretty girls, why pretty girls no want sex times?” Yes, teenage boys can be horny, and yes, teenage boys can be mean shits to girls in an attempt to sleep with them. That is all true, and I actually like Zac’s characterization for that. Ian, on the other hand, just seems like he has trouble holding two ideas in his head for more than a few moments. I think Blount is trying to depict his personal journey of dismantling his incorrect ideas about consent, the way girls should dress, etc., and recognizing his own complicity. Unfortunately, this is done in a clumsy and heavy-handed way.

Even if it weren’t, I just can’t get behind the whole Grace/Ian dynamic. Your job as an ally or supportive friend is not to “fix” or fucking “mend” a person or that person’s heart after they have been raped. That literally isn’t a thing. Be there for them, be angry for them, fight for them, sure—but it is not on you to “fix” them. And this just really gets me because I know that this is not what Blount is trying to say. The last sentence of this novel is literally, “I didn’t break.” I think she’s trying to show us that Grace stayed strong throughout, and that Ian’s help is just this additional push that Grace needed to get to the place where she ends up. Alas, that’s not how it comes off to me.

Anyway, I’m still really ambivalent about Some Boys. If that seems odd considering the vitriolic criticism I just levelled, it’s only because I’m having trouble gauging how fair I’m being. I can’t help but think of other books I’ve read about rape culture that are just so much better—in my opinion, not just in their characterization and story but in the style of writing too. Maybe my issues are more with how this book tells Grace’s story, not what her story is, and people who like Blount’s style might not be as critical as I am. But if you want to read better tales about rape culture, check out Asking For It or All the Rage. The former, I’ll warn you, has more of a downer ending than Some Boys. The latter also has a romantic-type subplot similar to what happens between Grace and Ian here, but it’s much better executed—Leon is not there to “mend” Romy’s heart.

Some Boys aims high and makes a serious effort about a subject that needs more stories, so in that respect, I want to give it credit. I think that there are probably readers out there who will adore this book’s treatment of the subject. Certainly I’m not speaking from personal experience when I talk about the portrayal of these issues, and I don’t want to erase or invalidate the feelings of people for whom Grace or Ian’s stories resonated. Nevertheless, there is a lot about this book that just does not work for me.

After finishing Lost in Math, I decided it was time to dive into a pop physics book I’ve had sitting on my shelf for a while now. It’s pure coincidence that The Universe in the Rearview Mirror also happens to be about the predominance of symmetry in theoretical physics. In Dave Goldberg’s case, however, he isn’t arguing about the philosophy behind this approach. He’s totally on board, and he’s here to explain to laypeople what these symmetries are, how (we think) they work, and why they might provide clues about where to look next.

This is #notyourtypicalphysicsbook in that it avoids a lot of the standard approaches to taking the reader on an historical tour that develops physics, starting somewhere in the 19th century with Maxwell, on through the early 20th with Rutherford and Planck, and then through relativity and quantum mechanics courtesy Einstein and Schrödinger. That’s awesome, because I’m getting a little tired of that. Instead, Goldberg provides historical context but organizes the book around specific symmetries either observed or postulated. Within each chapter he develops the theoretical concepts required for each symmetry. I like this approach.

Goldberg’s writing is comfortable and intelligible. I fondly remember his “Ask a Physicist” column on io9. Goldberg isn’t just a good scientist (actually, I have neither the qualifications nor the data to judge whether or not he’s a good scientist—maybe he sucks as a scientist!), he knows how to write and communicate scientific concepts in a way that doesn’t bend your brain (too much). He includes little nods to more complicated concepts and ideas, so that those of us more familiar with these topics get some extra information, but he does it in a way that keeps the main part of his explanations accessible for all. Moreover, he frequently makes nerdy or geeky pop culture and science fiction references.

Plus, we get a whole chapter on Emmy Noether. She’s my girl. By which I mean, she’s a kickass mathematician who also happened to be a woman, which means she was never given the credit or recognition she deserved. Goldberg explains how Noether’s eponymous theorems, while obscure outside of physics, are the bedrock for a lot of discussions of symmetry within physics. Any book that champions Noether is a book I’m on board with.

Goldberg might not be as fed up as Sabine Hossenfelder when it comes to physicists’ obsession with symmetry elegance, or beauty in physical theories, but he evinces a healthy amount of skepticism when it comes to some of the concepts he discusses. He mentions when certain theories, like multiverses, are considered controversial within the community. He admits that he is a big fan of supersymmetry but that the most recent LHC data at the time of writing his book (since then the LHC has continued to let down the supersymmetry proponents). And although I wouldn’t go so far as to claim he proves why symmetries and elegance are useful for theorizing in physics, I think this book is probably a good case (for a layperson) for that camp.

Occasionally, Goldberg’s enthusiasm for an idea or an explanation runs away from him, and I found myself backtracking, trying to figure out if I had missed something that would make it all make sense. Similarly, while there are a great many illustrations and diagrams, some of which are helpful, many of them are just … there. With no caption, no reference within the text. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Universe in the Rearview Mirror manages to come across as a refreshing and unique explication of parts of theoretical physics without resorting to extremely controversial ideas. As someone who reads (and enjoys reading) a lot of pop physics books, this one felt new to me. As someone who enjoys math, but who also enjoys evangelizing about “the bigger picture”, Goldberg’s linking of these larger symmetries to the math and the theories the math codifies is really attractive. This book doesn’t just hit you over the head with relativity and wave-functions and uncertainty and say, “Trust us, lots of math, don’t worry about it.” I won’t pretend that you’ll understand everything Goldberg says (I certainly don’t), but you will come away from this book with a better grasp, somewhere, of how and why physicists proposed certain ideas.

Sometimes Twitter really, really comes through. I’m thinking, “I would love to read more works by Indigenous writers” and also “I would love to read some more science fiction and fantasy this summer” and the people I follow must have picked up on that because everyone was all, “You have got to read this.” Well, Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning lives up to the hype. It’s an intense, richly presented urban fantasy adventure that leaves me wanting more.

It’s the near future, and the Big Water has swallowed up most of the continent. The former Navajo Nation, or Dinétah as it is called here, is one of the few places to remain dry. With the coming of the Big Water and the beginning of the Sixth World, though, comes monsters—both human and otherwise. Maggie Hoskie has made a living for herself hunting and killing those monsters. As the story begins, Maggie stumbles onto something bad. To confront it, she reluctantly partners up with the grandson of a powerful medicine man (who is powerful in his own right). Together, Maggie and Kai pick up the trail of a witch who is making monsters. But along the way they find there’s a lot more than meets the eye, and it involves Coyote and other gods and figures of legend—including the immortal monsterslayer who trained Maggie before turning his back on her.

It’s true that Supernatural is a natural choice for comparing to Trail of Lightning, and I definitely feel that vibe. But as a somewhat more unlikely choice, I’m going to say that this book reminds me of Dark Angel, a much shorter-lived yet nevertheless poignant TV show. I think it’s largely two things: the post-apocalyptic atmosphere, and the irrepressible heroines. Maggie might not be a government transgenic experiment like Max, but like Max she has certain abilities that make her a stronger and better fighter—even if they occasionally terrify her. The cage match in this book also reminded me of the episode of Dark Angel where Max must do something similar. Maybe these all seem like superficial correspondences, but that’s what I thought of while following Maggie’s adventure.

I really respect the way that Roanhorse refuses to give us a straightforward or linear narrative. Every time it seems like Maggie is on to something, like we know the next piece of the puzzle, something happens to force a change in direction—either physically or psychologically. This can occasionally be frustrating for the reader, since of course, we often crave plots that satisfy us by connecting the dots. Yet it can also be rewarding, because this replicates the messiness of real life, and when handled properly like it is here, the story is richer and deeper in the telling. Roanhorse makes the mess work by using each interruption as an opportunity for us to learn more about Maggie (or Kai), either in something that they or another character reveal, or in their response to the changing situation. Trail of Lightning is not an exceptionally long book, yet I feel like I already got to know Maggie quite well.

While avoiding spoilers, I just want to say that I really like how the central antagonist is developed, revealed, and dealt with. It isn’t hard to unravel the mystery here, but it’s still nicely executed and results in a truly emotional moment for Maggie as she understand the magnitude of what’s happening all around her. Essentially, it’s the baddest of badass supervillain power moves to exploit the protagonist’s dogged perseverance, and that’s what happens here: Maggie not giving up is ultimately almost her undoing! It is such a cold moment, to realize how much you’ve been manipulated most of your life, and then to have to make such a difficult decision, in a crisis, to stave off further suffering.

It isn’t my lane to comment on how Roanhorse uses Diné legends and culture in this story. Suffice it to say, I’m pleased to see more stories by Indigenous writers, featuring Indigenous protagonists (especially Indigenous women) being published by mainstream presses. Often I see comments along the lines of, “Oh, the book is great on its own merits, regardless of the fact it’s #ownvoices or has an Indigenous protagonist or whatnot” … but that’s really not true. That’s whitewashing. The whole point is that Trail of Lightning works because of its Diné connections; they literally inspire and create the entire tapestry of this story. The whole point is that Indigenous voices and stories—whether they are traditional, historical, contemporary, SF, fantasy, or any combination thereof—deserve to be told. So, yes, this is a damn good story and a damn good story featuring an Indigenous protagonist—and these two things cannot be separated or evaluated distinctly.

I’m here for it, and I’m here for the sequel. There’s so much story right here to tell, and I’m excited for what sounds like the start of a brilliant urban fantasy series.

Charles Yu’s characters are not very happy.

I wasn’t enthusiastic reading Sorry Please Thank You: Stories, for I wasn’t much of a fan of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Nevertheless, I’d acquired this collection prior to reading that novel, from a library sale, so I wanted to give Yu a second chance. I don’t think there will be a third.

The stories in here aren’t particularly bad. They just don’t appeal to me. For one thing, as I mention at the top of this review, his characters are often these sad-sack men who are stuck in dead-end jobs (or lives) and chasing some kind of love interest. It’s … emotionally flaccid. Moreover, as much as I like meta-fiction and self-insert stuff, it shows up again and again here, and I’m just kind of over it now. Sure, some of the stories and narrative devices here are fun and fresh the way Yu uses them … but there is not a single story in this collection that made me go, “Whoa.”

Probably the only story that comes close is “Hero Absorbs Major Damage”. I like the conceits there, the way Yu uses the trope of self-aware game characters. It’s pretty fun (though it still hews too closely to some of the issues I identified above). Even that story, though, didn’t make me go “whoa”.

So overall … disappointed, for suresies. This is not a book I can recommend. It’s not something I’m telling you to avoid either, of course. But there’s just better ways for me to spend my afternoon than reading short story collections that don’t speak to me.

This was a birthday gift, along with A Criminal Magic, from my friend Amanda, and I’m just now getting to it—which, especially when it comes to my non-fiction backlog, isn’t actually that bad of a delay! Amanda was just getting to know me at the time, so she picked two books off my to-read list. I’m not sure why I had Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety on there in the first place (or why she chose it!). But if you want to be scared shitless by stuff that happened before you were born (at least in my case), then by all means, read this book.

Eric Schlosser has created a meticulously researched narrative about the development not just of nuclear weapons in the United States but of the bureaucratic and technological measures put in place to control them. Starting from the development of the first atomic bombs (you know the ones), he chronicles the inter-service rivalries as the Army, Air Force, and Navy jockeyed for the money and control over nuclear weapons. He explains how the thinking of politicians, generals, and their advisers about how to wage nuclear warfare against the Soviet Union evolved over the decades, often swinging back and forth between “total war” and “limited war” but without any real capability to ever effect such a switch. He examines the safety issues around these devices—and in particular, he weaves throughout the book an intense, close retelling of “the Damascus accident”, the 1980 explosion of a Titan II missile in its silo.

I’m very fascinated by the systems that affect our lives, so that’s likely why I was initially attracted to this book. I like learning about things that we don’t often know about, the little hidden edges and wrinkles to our history, like women computers, or the physical infrastructure of the Internet. Command and Control reminds us that nuclear weapons aren’t just these abstract bombs that live in a warehouse until the president decides to launch one. There is this whole, vast ecosystem entirely dedicated to maintaining these weapons, including some in a state of active alert and readiness, tipped on missiles poised to fire, either first or in response to an attack.

Maybe I should back up and position myself: I was born in 1989, just a few months before the Wall fell. I grew up blissfully innocent of the Cold War, of nuclear scares. I never really learned much about it in school, because our history classes always seemed to get up to World War II and then suddenly it was summer time, so everything after 1945 just kind of felt like a blur. I’ve pieced it together since then, but this is why I like reading books about the late twentieth century: to older people, obviously it feels like just part of their life, yet to me it’s just as inaccessible and unknowable as Tudor England.

Another bias, one that might not be so obvious, is that I have grown up embedded in a society where computers are small, fast, and most importantly, iterative. I was very young when we got a PC in our house for the first time, and I do remember dial-up Internet … but that soon became high-speed. I’m typing this on a laptop next to a desktop and to a mobile phone, with a tablet and an iPad gathering dust on the storage unit directly behind me … and then there’s the Chromecast and Raspberry Pi hooked up to the TV in the living room. I’m from the generation that just expects things to work, that is used to this invisible mesh of Wi-Fi and radio signals travelling around and through me so that all these devices work the way I want.

And what Command and Control must remind a younger person like myself is that, for the vast majority of the twentieth century, computers were not much in evidence in these systems. Yes, ENIAC and MANIAC were manifest from the very early days of the nuclear weapons program … yet they were not dominant. Whereas I now take it for granted that every room in a command centre would have a computer hooked up to a secure network or something, Schlosser talks about dumb switches and plane avionics that still work on vacuum tubes, because of course they would if they were built in the 1940s.

So I necessarily can’t tell you what you’ll think of this book if you’re older and you have lived through some of this history. Speaking for myself, as a young person, it’s a stark reminder that the systems that pervade our lives are often older and more obsolete than we care to think about. The idea that we are on the cusp of some AI Singularity seems laughable in the face of Schlosser’s descriptions of how difficult it is to coordinate all of these disparate systems.

As I read the book, my mood fluctuated between fascination and respect (for the people who put their lives on the line to manage these weapons) to horror, despair, and disgust. Just … the rhetoric of some of the people in this book, the reasons given for building so many weapons of mass destruction. I’ve never been “pro” nuke, but Command and Control has definitely solidified my “anti” nuke sentiments. There’s just no up-side to anyone having any nuclear weapons; deterrence is a joke philosophy; and nuclear weapons are not safe. If there is one takeaway from this book, it’s that the world avoided a nuclear war more on luck than any policy or procedure decisions. I’ve never actually watched all of Dr. Strangelove (sorry), but suddenly it doesn’t seem that far-fetched after what I’ve learned here.

At just over 600 pages, this book is definitely a doorstopper, and as you might expect, it occasionally reads like one. I don’t think one could successfully make a case that Schlosser’s work is not detailed enough. About 25% of this book is end material: notes, 28 pages of sources, and a hefty index (I do love me an index). This is a damned meticulous piece of work right here: respect. It took me a while to get through it, because the level of detail does not exactly invite skimming. There were times when I was a little tired of how deeply Schlosser dives into each person’s personal backstory … yet I recognize the tactic there, the way he is trying to remind us that all of the players in this decades-long enterprise are real people, with families and flaws, and that’s why nuclear weapons will always be flawed.

Command and Control is a little too specialized and long and detailed for me to say everyone should read this book. You need a certain amount of endurance and interest to read this book and get a lot out of it. And it is a very sobering read. I actually got a little emotional towards the end, as Schlosser details the aftermath of the Titan II explosion and what happened to some of the survivors … smh. Sad and angry, I am. But anyway, if these kinds of accounts fascinate you, if you want to learn more about the history of nuclear weapon development and deployment, you can’t go wrong with this one.

Sometimes the right kind of sad can help, even when you yourself are sad. I kept seeing this one bandied about on Twitter, and it turns out my library has a copy, so I was able to get to it sooner rather than later. I’m glad I did. The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a bittersweet book, definitely a coming-of-age story, about the eponymous character’s struggle with being a lesbian in a rural, conservative Christian town in Montana. Emily M. Danforth, born and raised in the same city in which this book is set, perfectly captures the atmosphere of this town, as well as nailing the voice of an awkward teenager’s rich internal life. This book is a smoothly calibrated ride with all the feels.

The core of this novel is how Cameron manages her relationships with people as she navigates her queer identity. Danforth exemplifies how “coming out” is not a one-time process. Cameron is out to some people and not others, sometimes not of her own volition. And in some cases the line is blurred, or there is denial involved. In Miles City, “lesbian” is a dirty word, and when Cameron’s straight-girl-crush outs her to everyone, that’s when the novel finally kicks into high gear as Cameron’s aunt sends her to the conversion therapy camp to “pray away the gay”, if you will.

That’s not to say that the first half of the novel is boring or unnecessary. On the contrary, I love the portrait Danforth presents here. In the very beginning, Cameron associates her first explorations of queerness with a friend with her parents’ untimely deaths, internalizing a guilt that hangs over her queer identity for her entire adolescence. As she grows up in Aunt Ruth’s household, she clings to the things that provide her with the most comfort: the movies she rents, her interactions with Lindsey in person and by letter, and later, her time with Coley. In every case, we watch Cameron struggle to reconcile her attraction to other women with the messaging she receives from nearly every adult, and many of her peers, in her life: this is bad; this is a sin; no one should want to be this way.

Whether or not you’ve ever felt that kind of hellfire-fuelled admonishment turned upon you, I don’t see how it’s possible not to sympathize with what Cameron goes through. Well before she was sent off to conversion therapy, my stomach was in knots. No one deserves to endure that. We make a lot of noise about wanting to protect children, but sometimes what we do “for their own good” ends up being even more harmful. And that’s one of the most prominent aspects of this book: there are no moustache-twisting villains here. Yes, the overt and covert homomisia is strong in this, of course. Yet everyone who speaks out against Cameron’s identity, everyone who tries to get her to convert to being straight, is convinced they are acting out of love for her. From Ruth to Pastor Rick, and even Lydia, everyone thinks they are doing good. There is no violent abuse here, no electroshock therapy or starvation. Yet that doesn’t make it excusable, because the emotional abuse is still there. As Cameron puts it to the school inspector who interviews her:

“Do you feel that you’ve been emotionally abused by the staff here?”

“Oh my God,” I said, throwing my hands in the air, feeling every bit as dramatic as I was acting. “I just told you all about it—the whole fucking purpose of this place is to make us hat ourselves so that we change. We’re supposed to hate who we are, despise it.”

I’m not here to rail against conversion therapy (I suspect that if you’re reading this review, or this book, you’re already against it, and if you aren’t, this isn’t going to convince you). I’m just trying to show that Danforth does a good job representing how, if you strip away the most overtly egregious parts of some of these conversion therapy camps, the kernel of the process—the very concept—remains abusive and harmful in the extreme. Cameron’s experience is not so much formative as it is torturous, and the moment she, Jane, and Adam set on escape, I fist-pumped and yelled, “Yes, Cameron! Escape! You go!”

I love the ending. I love the ambiguity, not knowing where Cameron goes, what she does next, what happens to her. You will not convince me she will not end up OK, though—because this is not that type of book. This is not a sad book, although it has moments of sadness—nor is this a happy book. It’s just honest. It’s realistic enough to hurt but not so brutal that it will tear you to shreds. Cameron Post escapes, and she lives on, and whether or not she gets a happily-ever-after isn’t the point: she gets to live. She gets to make mistakes, be as queer as she wants, with whomever she wants. That’s what I believe.

“We need more rep!” is a common refrain to hear from queer people and other marginalized groups, and I think The Miseducation of Cameron Post does a good job illustrating why. This is Cameron’s story, and her story alone, yet in the background Danforth provides glimpses of other queer stories. From Lindsey the Seattle-based lesbian to Cameron’s honourary aunt, Margot, to the various other kids with her at the conversion camp, we see the myriad intersections between queer identities, one’s location, and the attitudes of those who raise one. This is why we need more queer stories: because no queer story is everyone’s queer story, and while elements of this book might ring true to most lesbian or queer people, not all of it will for everyone.

I read this book while I was sad—or to be more precise, while I was low, because actually I was very happy but just overwhelmed with my emotions at the time. That meant it took me longer to get through this than I would like. And I was worried Cameron’s plight would be too much. Pleasantly surprised, then, to find out that it was different enough from my issues that I sympathized with her but not to the point of feeling too fragile after reading it. Sometimes, the best thing to do when you’re sad is to find a different kind of sad—because you’re going to feel what you’re going to feel, but maybe you can feel it in a different way.

Finally, I don’t think this is a young adult book in the sense that it will only appeal to young adults and those who enjoy reading YA as a market. I think this is a good novel, which happens to have a young adult protagonist but which adults of all ages can and should read.

Maybe I’m just reading these books in real-time—because it has been nearly 3 years since I read The Lives of Tao and about that amount of time has passed in between books. The Deaths of Tao is a worthy sequel, and arguably it’s better than the first book, though I’m not sure I’ll be as enthusiastic about it as I was in my review of The Lives of Tao. I love Wesley Chu’s creativity and enthusiasm, but I’m thinking his style and certain editorial decisions left me a little bored at times.

Roen Tan is still host to the Quasing named Tao. A gaseous alien entity from Quasar, Tao and his kind have literally shaped the course of human evolution and history from the very beginning. Their goal: to advance humanity to the point where they can build a ship that will help the stranded Quasings to return to their home planet. But the warring factions of Prophus and Genjix, the former of which has Tao as a member, have very different ideas about how to go about this. In the first book, Roen becomes acquainted with Tao, and he is transformed from fat IT nerd to deadly assassin and super-spy … sort of. In this book, Roen is separated from the love of his life and mother of his child, Jill, though still kind of obsessed with her. The Prophus are losing their secret war against the Genjix, who are nearing success at replicating the atmosphere of Quasar and thus creating the opportunity for Quasing reproduction. Even more nefarious schemes are afoot, but will the combination of political wrangling and espionage/infiltration be enough to put the Prophus back on top?

Spoilers for both the first book and this one.

I just really don’t like Roen, folx. I know that I lauded his development from unsympathetic to more confident person in the first book, but whatever … he wallows in self-pity here, is not remotely likeable, and he has spent the last year or so stalking his wife despite her making it very clear she wanted nothing to do with him … and yet somehow she ends up deciding she still loves him and so of course they end up together again asglkjgheigjkadgjkl

Sorry, I just need a moment …

There is certainly an appropriate way to do a narrative about a man and a woman separating and then deciding to reunite and parent their child together because they have (mostly) worked out their differences. This is not that appropriate way. I don’t care how much Roen loves Jill, how much he just wants her to be safe: following her all over the world and keeping tabs on her is creepy, not love, and it should not be an endearing discovery that causes Jill to decide maybe he isn’t such a bad guy after all.

Roen goes out of his way to be rude to basically everyone else, too, and argue with everyone and act like a hurt manbaby when he doesn’t get his way and people don’t immediately recognize that he is obviously DA BEST person suited for something. Again, maybe Chu is portraying him as unsympathetic deliberately, but I just don’t see that much growth from Roen. It’s obnoxious, and he is not a protagonist I want to be associated with.

Jill is a much better character, albeit with an arc marred by the whole Marco-sexual-tension-subplot, which I really didn’t need. I appreciate seeing elements of the story from the point of view of a political operative rather than a superspy. Jill’s wheeling-and-dealing reminded me of the cutthroat nature of House of Cards. It’s good times.

Strangely enjoyed the Enzo/Zoras chapters as well. I think it was just the fact that Enzo reminds me so much of Roen—so headstrong, so willing to argue with his Quasing—and how he’s basically this little baby who has been raised to believe he’s DA BEST and now that he’s out in the real world, suddenly things are hard, y’all. Though, to his credit, I suppose, he really does come close to neutralizing the Prophus as credible players and he successfully drives the ProGenesis project towards completion. Pretty good work.

Concerns with characterization aside, The Deaths of Tao just feels too long for what I got from it. I was excited for the first part; I trudged through the middle; I started thinking about skimming towards the end. Yes, the climax was compelling, as I watched Jill make the snap decision to out the Quasing to humanity. That alone has made me think I might read the third book—though maybe not in “real time” since it seems that even more years pass between books 2 and 3. Still, I’m not excited by this one.

What do you do when your friend Amanda gives you a $10 gift card for Chapters as part of a “pick me up” gift while she’s away?

You unwittingly go to Chapters the same week they have select books on 3 for $10 and you are WINNING AT LIFE, my friends. Radio Girls is the first of the three books I bought (with my iRewards discount, even after tax, the total came to just under $10—winning, I say!). Sarah-Jane Stratford’s fictional account of the real Hilda Matheson’s tenure at the fledgling BBC (told through the eyes of fictional Maisie Musgrave) impressed me and exceeded my expectations. The book caught my eye because I love interwar historical fiction; there is something so intriguing about the 1920s and that odd mixture of optimism in the shadow of fascism’s rise … plus, I have very little knowledge about the rise of radio. Stratford satisfies both of these desires, in spades, and on top of that delivers kickass feminist protagonists who don’t need no man.

The year is 1926. Maisie Musgrave is an American-raised Canadian who, estranged from her actor mother, has moved back to her father’s native Britain to pursue … well … anything; she feels British at heart. Maisie manages to get a secretarial position at the upstart British Broadcasting Company (soon to be renamed Corporation), where she is shared between the Director-General and the Director of Talks (lectures), who happens to be … yes … shocking … a woman, and a rather unconventional one at that. Thanks to Hilda Matheson’s influence (along with some other cracking young women, like fellow secretary Phyllida), Maisie’s ambitions and understanding soon burgeon beyond secretarial work. In addition to having to endure, and then push back, against the rampant sexism and classism within the BBC and British society in general, Maisie stumbles upon a fascist conspiracy to take over Britain’s leading newspapers and the BBC itself. Oh, and meanwhile, there are two romantic subplots, one of which is over very quickly (though it comes back towards the end) and the other of which forms the backbone of the espionage plot.

So, yeah … this is a historical spy thriller about women spies who produce radio too. And if it sounds from my plot summary like there’s a lot going on here, that’s because there is. Radio Girls impresses me not necessarily for the content itself but for the sheer skill with which Stratford manages to fit all these plot and story elements into 350ish pages. Plenty of books try to do romance and espionage and social justice, etc., but Stratford nails the perfect balance of all these things. The book clips along at an exciting pace, the years going by even as we get hit with great scene after great scene that develop the characters and drive the plot forward. Literally, never a dull moment.

Maisie Musgrave is an excellent protagonist. I like how she doesn’t start the book as a dyed-in-the-wool feminist. She’s certainly liberal and sympathetic to movements like women’s suffrage, but she has spent much of her adult life intentionally trying to distance herself from her mother’s bohemian actress ways. As a result, Maisie isn’t conservative by any means, but she is certainly eager to adhere to social conventions if only to fit in at her new job. It’s the influence of Hilda and Phyllida, along with Maisie’s open mind, and her experiences with the men in her life, that help her develop a better appreciation for being a radical.

Along the same lines, Stratford has quite a diverse cast of people in terms of their personalities and gender politics (I think the cast is predominantly abled and white, alas). Along with radical queer firebrands like Hilda, Vita Sackville-West, etc. (real characters) there are more conservative women—like Miss Shields—and men of varying sensibilities, from the stuffy Reith to the naive Cyril and the double-edged Simon. And many of these secondary characters change over the years covered in this book—albeit, not for the better!

Maybe it seems, at first blush, like a stretch that a secretary who rises in the ranks at the BBC might stumble on a fascist conspiracy and help take it down. Yet it’s incredibly entertaining … and while Stratford has certainly taken liberties with the historical record, she hews closely to the truth in some places. And while Maisie herself is as fictional as the plot she foils, similarly far-fetched plots really existed in Britain and other places (truth is stranger and all that jazz). So it isn’t that much of a stretch at all. Meanwhile, Stratford rightfully highlights the important work that many women did in the early days of radio and the BBC.

I’d pair Radio Girls with these two other titles about kickass women in history: Hidden Figures (if you want actual non-fiction) and Code Name Verity (if you want something YA). Shout-out too to the documentary Mercury 13!