It has been almost exactly two years since I gave Zenn Scarlett a rather mediocre review. In fact, I almost didn’t bother reading Under Nameless Stars. I’m glad I gave it a chance though! Although I don’t remember much about the first book, this sequel feels punchier, faster-paced, and more interesting than that one.

This book picks up where the first left off, so spoilers for the first book but no spoilers for Under Nameless Stars.

Zenn has stowed away aboard a passenger liner bound for another star system. She thinks her dad is on board, or at least, an alien who kidnapped her dad is on board. Joining her are her rikkaset Katie and her “friend” (frenemy?) Liam. Zenn soon picks up some other allies, notably a dolphin in a walking suit named Jules Vancouver. Along the way, they discover that the mystery of the vanishing Indra is directly related to the disappearance of Zenn’s father, and they are all in much, much more danger than they could have imagined.

The higher stakes here definitely helped improve my opinion of Christian Schoon’s writing. Almost from the beginning, Zenn is so far out of her depth it isn’t even funny—but she makes just enough of an ally, with just the right amount of honesty, to pull things off just long enough. Schoon might stretch disbelief, but only a little. Zenn’s deception doesn’t survive long, but it doesn’t have to—because by that point, the rest of the plot has been blown wide open. Basically, Schoon never keeps the situation the same long enough for me to get bored, and I appreciate that.

I also enjoyed the creativity demonstrated in the various ways that alien life-forms are imagined not just as existing but as playing integral roles in spaceflight. From the faster-than-light–enabling Indra to smaller species used as guards or surveillance, Schoon’s vision of a sci-fi future is far more organic and diverse than your typical space opera, which usually falls into a hard, nanotech-driven, heavy metal vision of the future. Given that this book seems to be aimed at the younger end of the young adult audience, this creativity and imagination is really something I want to applaud.

Unfortunately, Under Nameless Stars doesn’t quite make me go, “Ooooooh.” As much as I enjoyed it, and as cool as the creatures are, this book shares with it some of the critiques I gave Zenn Scarlett. Namely, Schoon might think big in his worldbuilding, but the depths of his plots and even some of his characters could use more work. The entire Indra conspiracy is fairly obvious in its orchestration, and the whole resolution is somewhat uninteresting. After making the stakes so high they are literally astronomical in scope, Schoon doesn’t quite deliver the pay-off I’d like. And even the set-up is somewhat washed out by the focus on avoiding capture from the enemy that only gets introduced midway through the book.

Basically, Under Nameless Stars is a step up from the first book. Everything has improved for sure. We still have a ways to go before I’m ready to shout about Schoon though. The writing is “more than OK” but needs a little something extra. It’s a shame Strange Chemistry folded, because it’s the kind of imprint that is perfect for new writers who already have what it takes to write good novels but still have some growing to do.

Last year, Sara Barnard dazzled me with Beautiful Broken Things. Now, thanks to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan, I got my digital hands on an eARC for the sequel: Fierce Fragile Hearts is narrated by Suzanne and tells the story of what happens to her months after the conclusion of Beautiful Broken Things. This book is just as good, if not better than, the first one. Every time I didn’t think it could get any better, any time I thought Barnard had made me care the maximum I could possibly care … I turned the page and there was something new to cry about.

Suzanne has turned 18 and will officially leave care to become an independent adult, yikes! After time in a group home and group therapy, she is more … together. Yet she is still nervous about returning to Brighton and reconnecting with Caddy and Rosie, who will soon be leaving for their respective universities. Suzanne, on the other hand, her schooling interrupted by her mental health issues, isn’t sure yet what she wants to do for further education or a career. First she has to adjust to living on her own—and accept, maybe, that living on your own doesn’t mean doing everything on your own.

Trigger warnings in this book for discussions of child abuse and neglect, discussions of suicide attempts, and anxiety.

Although I haven’t been through the same experiences that have shaped Suzanne, there was definitely a lot about this book that really resonated for me—not just in Suzanne’s character but the others as well. Early in, as she is getting settled in to her new place and reconnecting, Suzanne reflects at how she feels undeserving of her friends:

Caddy beams at me, as happy as if I’d just complimented her personally, and I think, for the millionth time, how much I don’t deserve her. No one’s ever believed in me like she does, and she kept on doing it, even when I gave her no reason to. She emailed me every single week for the entire time I lived in Southampton, even when I didn’t reply. (And to be honest, I usually didn’t.)

Usually I’m the Caddy in this situation. I’ve got a facility for words and a need to make my friends feel good by saying nice things to them. Some of my friends just … don’t respond, though. And with some of them, fine, I’m going to try a little less next time … that’s how friendships go. But what Caddy knows and Suzanne isn’t letting herself admit is that sometimes you have those friendships which are worth the effort. I have one friend in particular who seldom replies to my texts (but makes up for it in myriad other ways), and I’m sure sometimes she feels the way Suzanne does here. So after reading this passage, that was what I texted her in my morning message to her the next morning: it doesn’t matter if you think you deserve me or not; I think you deserve me, so there.

We don’t always get to choose whether people want to help us.

And then soon after Suzanne reflects: “What I really wanted was to be the kind of person who had friends like that. I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything.” And, wow, do I ever feel that big mood. I was just reflecting on a similar feeling in a podcast episode with my friend Rebecca. I confessed to her, tried to articulate this feeling I had had in previous years of our friendship, watching her be her gregarious self and go out to bars, etc.—things I don’t do. It wasn’t that I wanted to do those things. It was that I wanted to be the person who did those things, which I think is a separate thing entirely. Much like Suzanne, I had to do the work of learning to love myself for who I am and who I might become, not who I thought I should be.

I also love how Barnard handles Suzanne’s relationships. There are her friendships with Caddy and Rosie, of course. These are fraught with complexity in the best possible way, particularly when Caddy and Suzanne have a minor falling out. And it’s a thing, but it isn’t a thing—it isn’t an all-consuming plot point or a dramatic, end-of-the-world fight like you might get in some books. Rosie makes the point: best friends have these problems sometimes, but they will get over it. That doesn’t stop me from identifying hard with the way Suzanne is so anxious and concerned about what’s happening, because she has clung so hard to these friendships and is so worried about what happens if they slip away.

Suzanne also befriends a much older woman, Dilys. In addition to the pleasure of seeing an intergenerational friendship of this type, Dilys can be read as aromantic/asexual:

There have been women I’ve loved very dearly, but in friendship. There have been men I’ve loved like that too. All very platonic, you see. I never felt like I needed anything more than that.

That’s about as close as you can get without using the words on the page (which obviously would have been preferable), and we’re 11% of the way through the book at this point and I’m just like … yes. Yes, thank you for normalizing this by just making it part of a minor character’s backstory and not a whole Thing.

Immediately after that, Suzanne asks if Dilys was lonely as a result, and Dilys’ reply is … exquisite:

Yes, sometimes, but what you have to understand is, relationships aren’t a shield against loneliness. Not romantic ones, that is. One of my dearest friends was unhappy in her marriage for many years; that’s a type of loneliness…. I get lonely now, yes. That comes with being old.

It’s moments like this, passages like that, when I feel so seen, as a nearly-thirty aro ace person who has no desire to date or have a partner. I get lonely sometimes, but isn’t from being alone, it’s just from being human. And it’s really nice to see that acknowledged.

Lest you think Barnard is merely throwing me a bone before pivoting full bore into a romance subplot, allow me to reassure you, dear review reader, that is not the case. Fierce Fragile Hearts indeed has a love interest, and there is indeed an element of romance going on here. Barnard has to walk a fine line between portraying how Suzanne’s trauma has influenced her wariness about romance and misrepresenting trauma and abuse victims as being “unlovable.” This is not an easy thing to do, and as someone who hasn’t had these experiences, it’s not in my lane to comment on it. What I will say, though, is that I love how Barnard tries to defuse and subvert the idea that a romantic partner (particularly a man dating a woman) will somehow “fix” someone:

He hesitates, then nods. “I want to make you happy,” he says. “I want to be the one who makes it right.”

“You can’t,” I say. “And that’s a terrible foundation for a relationship, anyway.”

“I know,” he says. “But I want it anyway.”

It would be so easy to write a story where the love interest swoops in and saves the day, lifts Suzanne up, shows her how amazing she is through his eyes, and somehow restores her to a fuller version of herself. And that is … not realistic. We all deserve love—but we don’t all necessarily need or want romantic love—and sometimes these fairytale narratives proliferate to the point of being harmful. Barnard’s subversion is so direct, pointed, and honest that it’s beautiful.

To drive it home, in case you still weren’t getting it, Barnard drops one more on us near the end of the book:

Let me tell you, anyone who thinks romantic love is the pinnacle of human emotion has never had a friend who looked at them like she looked at me. Love might burn the brightest fires, but fires burn out. Friendship is warm and steady, constant. It keeps me alive.

Review reader, I made the mistake of finishing this book during my half hour of lunch at work and … yeah, I was crying by this point. I was crying for the whole ending, the overall poignancy of the conclusion—but if I hadn’t been crying already, the above moment would have pushed me over the edge. (I tried to keep it together because there was someone else in the room and I didn’t want to freak her out, but I’m pretty sure she noticed and was just playing it cool.) I’m crying now as I write about this. That quotation is my everything. I have never had a romantic partner, never dated, never wanted that. But I love my friends so deeply, and especially in the past few years, I have found certain friends who are my “everything,” as Suzanne says.

There’s so much more to talk about in Fierce Fragile Hearts, of course. Everything involved in Suzanne learning to live on her own. Her relationships with her family. The way that she grows demonstrably from beginning to end of the book—I think this ending is perfect and am tempted to quote the final lines to you, but I think I’ll leave that for you to discover on your own. Just as I’ll leave discussions of these other elements to people who feel like they can be more coherent about them, since at the moment I’m starting to feel like I just want to go into a corner and babble more about how much I loved this book.

Fierce Fragile Hearts is honest but never brutal. It’s raw but never cruel. It has moments of profound sadness yet also moments of incredible happiness and hope. In short, Barnard gives us a microcosm of our existence and a reminder that our lives will never achieve some mythical state of perfection. We are, all of us, going to have fuck ups and difficulties and moments of abject misery—but we can get past those. We can ask for help. We have friends who are looking out for us. We are not alone.

This is a beautiful book.

I’ve had Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari’s later book, sitting in a box waiting to be read for a couple of years now (because that’s how I roll). My bestie Amanda recently purchased Sapiens on the strength of several recommendations, with someone even suggesting she could use it as a university course textbook. However, she is neck-deep in writing a PhD thesis right now, so I’m subbing in! I do loves me some world history … just not this one.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind attempts to chart the development of the human species as it spreads around the world and transforms the world through science, technology, exploration, and war. Harari begins with prehistory and the emergence and survival of Homo sapiens as the sole remaining Homo species on the planet. From there he leads us through ancient history and towards more modern history, all the while ruminating upon how various cultural developments (such as religion, writing, and capitalism) might have been the killer apps of each period. At the end of the book, he allows himself the luxury of speculating where the human species might be heading in the future.

All of this sounds great on the surface, and I definitely see why people would find this book fascinating and enjoyable. Had I read this, say, 7 to 10 years ago, back in my more impressionable university days, maybe I would have been one of them (I used to think Jared Diamond had interesting things to say; what can I say, I was naive). As it is, Sapiens is just making me want to re-read A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I haven’t read in years. I respect that Bill Bryson, who does not have a histor doctorate, doesn’t disguise the fact that his book is basically pop history. Because don’t let the references in the end notes fool you: that’s what Sapiens is too.

At one point, Harari writes, “As the twenty-first century unfolds, nationalism is fast losing ground.” This, from a book originally written in 2011 but updated in 2014, is … puzzling. I’m pretty sure that even as far back as 5 years ago people were sounding the alarm about the rise of nationalism. And now … well, sigh, now where we are.

So, yeah, Sapiens seems a little short-sighted at times?

Also there are lots of diagrams that look like the author created them with Word’s Shape Art on a rainy afternoon when he had nothing better to do.

Such quipping critiques aside, though, really, Sapiens just made me uneasy the whole time I was reading it. A great deal of what Harari says sounds reasonable and interesting. I learned a lot while reading this book, which is why I think many people enjoyed and are endorsing it. Harari is a compelling writer in the sense of how he structures and lays out each chapter. Yet that’s entirely my issue: I feel like I was being lulled into a false sense of security only to have questionable, pseudo-philosophical premises slipped into my brain when I wasn’t paying attention.

For a book with a fair amount of scholarship apparently behind it (given the endnotes), Harari doesn’t ever seem interested in engaging with specific scholars. He prefers to say, “scholars agree” or “some scholars say,” as he addresses various theories. Lining up these broad attributions with specific scholars is an exercise best left with the reader, I guess? Anyway, it’s difficult for the average reader to really understand how well-grounded Harari’s ideas are, except of course if you just take Harari at his word, which is exactly what he wants you to do.

Harari tries to play the eminent rationalist who presents his analysis and arguments without the hindsight fallacy (which he talks about explicitly) or personal bias.

Here’s the thing though: you can’t be unbiased and objective about history. Literally you can’t. If you were, it would be the most boring thing, and also the most useless thing, because if you’re trying to tell a brief history, you’re going to have to cut some things out. And what you cut out reveals your biases, really. So I would much prefer if someone is upfront about their biases and about the perspective they’re using when they look at history. Harari is pretending to a neutrality he cannot have and which would be useless anyway.

Here’s what I’ve unravelled in my reading. Harari likes empires, but not imperialism per se. He thinks empires are the most natural, stable form of human governance, because why else are there so many of them? (Is this not the hindsight fallacy?) He laments how various empires have interacted in ways that might not be so good for Indigenous peoples, but he points out that this just how it goes. And now we’re all one global society anyway, so … yay? Capitalism is great because money is a liquid asset but the peak capitalism of the 20th century is troubling. Overall, Harari just seems quite impressed by how we’ve managed to spread around the world and make fire and Twinkies. (He does not actually mention Twinkies; it’s called subtext, people.)

Just before embarking on a look at the Scientific Revolution, Harari ends a chapter with a particularly egregious passage which is too lengthy for me to want to transcribe here. But basically it’s a shrug of the shoulders and an attempt to say that no one really knows why anything happens in history, and conceivably it all could have turned out differently. Oh, and western Europe had “no important role in history” prior to the Scientific Revolution.

For the most part, Harari actually acknowledges that various Indigenous peoples around the world often had civilizations of equal, if not greater, cultural and technological sophistication than the European invaders who showed up during the so-called Age of Discovery. Nevertheless, I feel like Harari’s viewpoint remains mired within a Western, colonial lens. Specifically, Harari is obsessed with “progress” as a metric by which we measure the success of our species. He doesn’t assign a morality to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires, of course, because that Is Not Done these days—yet he basically shrugs and says that the Spanish won because … progress. More broadly, Homo sapiens won out over other hominins because … progress?

You can fight me on this but maybe it’s worth acknowledging that even if you personally believe we should be striving for more inventions, more discoveries, etc., that’s not necessarily what every person or every culture wants. The Inca Empire didn’t invent the wheel, of course—and had the Spanish never shown up and the Inca went on for further millennia without wheels, would that be so bad? Colonizers always fall back on the idea that, whatever losses of life happen during the actual conquest period, everything is better now because … progress, brought to you, naturally, by your colonial overlords.

At the end of the day, I’m not giving this book 1 star because it’s still a fairly interesting read, at least until I started getting fed up with it towards the end. Sapiens has a lot of little moments that leave me nodding—I’m definitely receptive to some of what Harari is saying. Overall, however, his style of argument and the way he draws overly broad conclusions leaves me, as a sometime-scholar and occasional academic, quite uneasy. As I’ve told my friend, I’m sure there are way better books to use as textbooks in a course on sustainability.

Do you know what’s happening in Darfur right now? Because I definitely don’t—Darfur Diaries is about events from 2004, and in the 15 years that have elapsed, the situation has continued to change. So why read a book that is so out of date? Firstly, I bought this book somewhat less than recently—not in 2006, of course, but maybe 5 years ago. Secondly, the subject is still interesting and important enough to merit reading this book. Darfur and so many other regions in African countries is experiencing humanitarian crises that are the result of colonialism. It’s important we learn about and understand these situations so we can work towards decolonization.

This book is a behind-the-scenes account of a team of three Americans who visit Darfur to film a documentary about the situation. All three have experience related to international human rights issues, whether it’s filming, policy, etc. As they learn about the developing situation in Sudan and speak to Sudanese refugees and immigrants, they resolve to do something to make the American public more conscious of what’s happening there. The spectre of what happened in Rwanda hangs over them. The team travels into Darfur via Chad, entering the part of the region controlled by the Sudanese Liberation Army. They interview displaced people whose villages have been bombed and destroyed by the government and/or the Janjaweed militia backed by the government.

What Marlowe, Bain, and Shapiro try to convey is the deeply personal cost that these types of situations carry. They don’t interview officials. They interview people on the ground, ordinary people like you or me who were just trying to live their lives. People who have already put up with decades of civil war and instability. People who just want to get on with it.

As a teacher, I read about how in the refugee camps people with any teaching experience volunteer their days to try to teach children with inadequate resources. Here I am in Canada and complaining when my SMART board won’t work properly—I don’t just have it easy; I have it incredibly easy compared to these people. Yet they are so dedicated: time and again, from the youngest to the oldest, we hear them explain how keeping up with their children’s education is paramount.

This is emphasized when the team finally sits down with their guide, Dero. He’s a young man who walked to a nearby village as a child and stayed there for six months at a time, returning home only when he ran out of food, to sleep at a school and learn as best he could. For a time he organized and ran school in part of his village, until they were displaced again. He shares his aspirations to become a teacher, and then hopefully study further to become a doctor or some other occupation desperately needed by his people.

And he echoes what so many of the other interviewees say. That they bear no ill will to the soldiers who are committing these crimes. They don’t necessarily seek vengeance or retaliation (though a few do)—they want harmony, not strife. The filmmaking team always asks if their subjects have any message for American children back home. It’s usually the same: hello; we are the same as you; we hope you are well; we hope this does not happen to you.

“Heartbreaking” isn’t quite the right word here. It’s eye-opening in a tender, compelling way. Too often we see refugees depicted as these massive groups. Even in sympathetic portrayals, even when a few are interviewed, we reduce them to huddled masses. The individualized nature of these interviews is quite interesting. I also really enjoyed hearing, towards the end, how much the team realized they misunderstood or didn’t catch when they were present in Darfur, owing to the interpreters they used. And I have a lot of respect for how the team went into this crisis and worked hard to convey the voices of the people they interviewed, without editorializing. (Note: I haven’t watched the documentary itself. This is not a review of the documentary, just of this book.)

There are like two or three forewords/prefaces to Darfur DIaries. And while Marlowe explains why it was difficult to decide how much context to put into the documentary, I wish there had been more context in this book. I’m vaguely familiar with the colonial history, but not necessarily in that specific region of Africa, and we don’t want to make assumptions that every area of Africa has similar colonial experiences. One thing I learned is just how many different tribal nations call Darfur and nearby areas of Chad and Sudan their home—and indeed, where the name Darfur comes from.

Darfur Diaries is not mind-blowing. It offers no solutions or hope for the crisis as it unfolded in 2004. It doesn’t do much “new” for this genre of chronicling issues of genocide and displacement. Yet it serves its purpose well. It’s informative. It’s honest. It’s open and raw and sensitive without being sentimental or stereotypical.

It sounds like, from my cursory reading, that the situation in Darfur continues to be tragic and painful its inhabitants. Yet Darfur has largely fallen off our radar here in Canada and the West, as far as the news cycle goes. It’s impossible for us to care about everything all of the time, and we have a lot to care about right now, I know. I just wish that didn’t mean so many people losing their lives, livelihoods, and more.

Nancy Kress has fast become one of my favourite science fiction authors. Like most authors I’m a fan of, her works don’t always make it on my favourites list, but they always make me think. Kress often explores how technology affects humanity’s relationship with nature and our own biology. She continues to play with these themes in After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall while adding in an ineffable alien menace and the paradoxes of time travel.

The title explains the structure: this story takes place across three times. In 2035, 26 humans survive in an artificial Shell, protected from the inhospitable Earth. They believe the Earth was ruined (and they were saved) by aliens they call Tesslies. With most of the children and adults too damaged by radiation to produce healthy offspring, the Tesslies have furnished them with machinery that allows them to travel back in time. Since adults can’t go through the portals, however, teenagers like Peter have to go on these Grabs, which seem to occur at random intervals and send them to stores or houses. In the stores, they grab as many supplies as they can before their allotted ten minutes expire. In the houses, they look for the one thing the Shell desperately needs: fresh blood, in the form of babies they can raise as their own.

In 2013/2014, a mathematician has noticed a pattern to a string of FBI kidnappings. She constructs an algorithm for the agency, hoping she can predict when the next kidnapping might occur. Her algorithm is never quite accurate enough, and eventually she leaves the investigation. It’s not until the very end, when Julie is most desperate, that she finally manages to perfect the program and ambush a time-traveller.

Meanwhile, Kress provides omniscient glimpses at mysterious mutations in bacteria and earthquakes beneath the sea floor. The implication is that these events are related, perhaps even artificial, and combine somehow to cause the eponymous Fall. McAllister and the other surviving adults in the Shell have taught Peter and the others that the Tesslies are responsible for both the Fall and the Shell. However, there’s no clear evidence for this, and as Peter learns by the end, it’s possible that humans themselves caused this to happen.

I'll return to that in a moment, but first I need to talk about the post-apocalyptic future Kress has created. I love the idea of the Shell and the way she has implemented it. Granted, it seems like even 26 healthy individuals would be hard-pressed to preserve humanity without some serious genetic issues developing. Nevertheless, they give it the old college try. Kress conveys the desperation and isolation that must develop in this community, when its children are damaged, some of them deformed and sick, and its adults are slowly dying off one-by-one.

The loss of knowledge and experiences is particularly striking. Peter has learned, thanks to his rudimentary education, about things like stars, atoms, and planets. But he has no conception of television or photography. On one Grab, he manages to steal a digital photo frame, and he sits for hours just watching the three pre-loaded promotional pictures, fascinated by this magic. It’s a small thing, but it allows Kress to show us how quickly we can lose something when we don’t have it in front of us: one generation can forget what moving pictures are like if we lose the ability to screen them. Life in the Shell is a bizarre mixture of roughing it, complete with farming, and scavenging, through the unpredictable and dangerous Grabs. There’s very little in the way of culture, leisure, and therefore, I wonder, what of civilization?

It’s not up to Kress to make a realistic attempt at preserving civilization though. That would be the Tesslies’ responsibility; hence, perhaps Kress also means to show that their grand plan (experiment?) is doomed to failure. The ending is ambiguous. Although the Shell dissolves at the end, leaving the survivors on a rehabilitated planet with all they supposedly need to start over, Kress does not provide any closure. Perhaps they succeed; perhaps they die again. The “after the fall” portion of the book is a reminder that there aren’t really endings (aside, maybe, from extinction), just new epochs.

I really like the premise of the story, and I think Kress handles time travel very well. Normally, it bothers me when authors take a “meanwhile, in the past” approach to time travel—that is, treating the past and present/future as if they are happening concurrently. There is usually little reason for this. In this case, however, Kress makes it clear that the time travellers have no control over the Grabs. Either the Tesslies or their machinery determine when the Grabs open for them and the time period to which the Grabs send them. These times/destinations are not random, because Julie recognizes a pattern and exploits her algorithm to eventually meet Pete. Kress never explains if the Tesslies have created this pattern deliberately for some reason, or if it is merely a byproduct of time travel. In general, there is a distinct lack of exposition. We never meet the Tesslies—not truly—and we never learn their motives, beyond what the survivors speculate. We never learn why, if they are interested in helping humans, they don’t use time travel to fix the past (perhaps it’s just not possible). Kress puts the reader in the position of the survivors: full of questions, short of answers. This could have been frustrating, so it’s a testament to her skill that she manages to create a story engaging enough to make you forget your relative ignorance of what’s going on.

The theory behind the Fall that the survivors eventually embrace does not sit well with me. Though they long assume the Tesslies were responsible for humanity’s destruction, Peter’s encounter with Julie suggests humanity is responsible. Eventually they raise the idea of the Gaia hypothesis, that the Earth is itself a living organism created by the interdependency of all the organisms inhabiting it. According to this hypothesis, the Earth is a deliberately self-regulating system. It’s intriguing, but it also feels out of place. The “during the fall” chapters that explain what is happening beneath Julie’s nose present the earthquakes and bacterial mutations as apparently random. And if they aren’t, it seems like a stretch that the Earth can “choose” to wipe out humanity for the greater good. Maybe I’m just not thinking of the system in abstract enough terms—but if that’s the case, I would have liked Kress to put more effort into persuading me.

If Kress has latched on to the Gaia hypothesis as a way to challenge how humanity is stewarding the Earth, then I can still agree with After the Fall’s themes, even if I’m not particularly fond of how Kress establishes it. Sustainability has put in an appearance in many of her other works. Here, Kress emphasizes how humans, despite all our advances in technology, are still at the mercy of nature and natural disasters. (She does cheat a little. Yellowstone and the tsunami from the Canary Islands earthquake do a number on the United States, but she has to cheat and use a resulting nuclear launch to trigger the global apocalypse.) If the Tesslies hadn’t stepped in, humanity would likely have gone extinct. I like it when science fiction encourages us to consider the ecological implications of trends in society.

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall has all the hallmarks I have come to expect from a Kress story. It’s clean, compelling, and its characters have a good balance of vices and virtues. The amount of thought she has put into constructing her futures and the scenarios that have brought them about is obvious from the detail and structure of the book. All this contributes to a fulfilling story, and even if I can’t endorse every aspect, it still deserves that Hugo nomination. This is one for any fan of Kress to check out, and if you are new, this would be a fine place to start.

People love to joke about being addicted to their devices. Yet addiction and dependency, as serious medical issues, have specific definitions. There’s a lot of debate right now about whether one actually develops addictions to the Internet, or to the use of one’s phone—and if so, what do we do about it in a society that not only rewards but often requires the use of these tools? Wired establishes an addiction to such communications and entertainment technology beyond the shadow of a doubt, then it tries to demonstrate the harm that such an addiction can cause. After reading it, I find myself in the position of enjoying Caytlyn Brooke’s storytelling but hating her writing. Thanks to NetGalley and BHC Press for this eARC.

Maggie Stone, along with her roommate, Sarah, and her brother, Andy, attends the launch of the “Vertix H2,” a revolutionary new augmented reality replacement for one’s phone. Tapping directly into the brain stem, the Vertix can pretty much manipulate your mind. Unlike more sinister science fiction novels, however, this isn’t the prelude to an authoritarian power grab. Rather, Maggie finds herself wrapped up in the virtual worlds available through the Vertix. When she’s connected, she is on top of the world. When she is disconnected, she becomes physically sick. As Maggie’s dependency on the Vertix becomes desperate, she struggles to maintain a grip on reality and everything else around her.

Pretty much from page 1, Brooke’s prose proved too purple for my liking. She doesn’t like to pass up any opportunity for an adjective, or even to repeat that adjective later. Maggie’s hair is almost always “auburn,” Sarah’s hips are “curvy hips,” etc. It’s not that Brooke’s writing is bad; I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her style so much as it’s just not for me. If I were her editor, I’d be leaving some stern comments on the manuscript! At first it grated on me, and then I tried to screen it out and dig into the story. I was also worried it was going to prejudice me against the story itself. I worried I was being hypercritical of Brooke’s characterization, of the way Maggie interacts with Sarah and Andy at the Vertix launch, or the way Maggie interacts with Jeremy and, later, Marco. Sometimes, when you find yourself vehemently disliking an author’s style, it’s hard to separate stylistic issues from storytelling issues.

I was also a little confused by Maggie’s employment. She has recently become a full literary agent at a place called Red Leaf Literary, which seems to imply she works for a literary agency. Yet later in the novel, her boss refers to Red Leaf as a “publishing house,” and indeed, a lot of the work featured seems to be closer to what a publisher does—Red Leaf has a marketing department, and Maggie sits in on marketing meetings about cover designs and marketing strategy. She even pitches a cover design of her own for a book. From my admittedly cursory knowledge of the distinction between literary agents and publishers, it seems to me like these aren’t things most agents do. (I know that literary agents’ specific duties vary from agency to agency, but all in all, this just strikes me as weird.) Finally, Brooke keeps portraying Maggie as having time to read manuscripts on the job, whereas it’s my understanding from my Twitter friends in publishing that such a luxury hardly ever manifests in real life!

But I digress.

As Maggie’s life spirals out of her control, the stakes get higher, and Brooke does a fairly good job portraying Maggie’s gradual surrender to her dependency. Again, just as I’m not a literary agent, I’m not an addict or former addict myself, so it’s hard for me to comment on how “accurate” the depiction is—but it certainly tries to go deep. The Maggie at the beginning of the book is very different from the Maggie in the middle or the end, and the transformation is gradual and spiky, with plenty of moments where it feels like if Maggie tried just a little bit harder she might have changed her fate. Of course, that’s the problem with dependency—it isn’t always about willpower.

If anything, I kind of wish Brooke went even further. Here’s an example of what I mean: at one point, there’s a throwaway remark by an observer about how susceptibility to Vertix addiction appears to be genetic. This explains, then, why both Andy and Maggie become addicted but Sarah doesn’t. Yet beyond that one line and these two characters’ addictions themselves, Brooke never really revisits this idea. Indeed, we’re meant to infer that Wired people are a bit of a miniature epidemic, yet we never really get to see the scope of the issue. Even in the epilogue we never get a sense of how much society has been rocked by this new drug.

The ending is also a bit of a letdown. Not the climax or falling action, mind you—those were great. Perhaps my favourite aspect of Wired is the extent to which Brooke has Maggie’s dependency drive her to more and more destructive or self-destructive behaviour. She doesn’t let up, and it’s very moving. Yet Brooke decides to skip the whole recovery part and move right to the redemptive moment. The ending is ambiguously hopeful, leaving us to wonder if Maggie has indeed got her life back on track. (And it appears she is never convicted for murdering Paul—or if she was, perhaps found not responsible, given her mental state, since she only ends up spending a few years in prison—the details are frustratingly vague.) There’s nothing wrong with any of this per se, but it makes the epilogue feel less weighty. A flimsy bit of postscript—if you chopped it off, the novel’s entire tenor suddenly changes.

Science fiction has a long history of exploring addiction and dependency issues through fictional drugs and the technology that enables them. Wired is a kind of calorie-light alternative to heavier cyberpunk fare that isn’t afraid to explore the links between biotechnology and addiction in greater detail. As a result, Wired’s contribution to this legacy is pretty good, but not great. Brooke creates a convincing, detailed, solid portrayal of how one might develop a technological addiction. Yet there is untapped potential here for so much more to this story.

I enjoy reading stories about demonic possession—particularly stuff that departs from the more conventional ones set in our world—and Smoke & Summons approaches possession from a different angle indeed. Charlie Holmberg’s story is about someone who has been victimized and enslaved trying to escape her captor even as she discovers she might be part of a much bigger plot. Set against the backdrop of a somewhat authoritarian and isolationist state, there’s more going on in this novel than meets the eye. Thanks to NetGalley and 47North for the eARC.

Sandis Gwenwig thinks she has lost almost everyone she cares about. She’s a vessel for a powerful spirit—or numina—named Ireth. This isn’t a good thing. It’s heretical, for one. And it’s also a result of being pretty much enslaved by an occult-obsessed criminal named Kazen. At his command, Sandis transforms into a flaming horse that will do his bidding. And the one day, she goes on the run. She falls in with an unlikely ally, Rone, who has his own problems. The two of them try to evade Kazen and his minions, and Sandis desperately seeks the sole living relative she thinks she has. Yet the city of Dresberg is not so easy to get lost in….

This book was pretty captivating, not going to lie. I read it over the course of two days and there were moments I didn’t want to put it down. I don’t want to exaggerate this (because on balance I’d say this book is good but not great), but if you are in the mood for a thriller-type, elude-capture fantasy, Smoke & Summons might give you the goods. If you’re looking more for a fantasy story where the hero masters their abilities and exploits them against their former captors, then I would look elsewhere.

That’s actually probably the most disappointing facet of this book, and it’s where I’ll start before I get into what I liked. Basically, there is something going on between Sandis and Ireth. Vessels aren’t supposed to remember what happens when they are possessed. Yet Sandis occasionally does, and she feels like Ireth is trying to communicate with her. Then, in the middle of the book, she desperately tries summoning Ireth into herself—and it works, kind of. It’s a pretty intense and badass scene. Yet Holmberg doesn’t delve much further into this. Then the book ends on a massive cliffhanger, and I’m not happy about that.

Smoke & Summons is a bit like an episode of Doctor Who: it’s fairly evenly split between exposition and running, with a lot of exposition mixed up with running, and the infrequent confrontation with foes. This works well for a TV show like Doctor Who. For the first book in a trilogy, it’s less enticing for me, especially when paired with the cliffhanger ending. The confrontation with Kazen at the end doesn’t really feel like a resolution in any sense of the word. I already requested the sequel on NetGalley, so I’m going to read it—and probably enjoy it—but I’m going to be a little grumpy about this for a bit.

Grump-mode aside, here’s what I think Holmberg gets right.

First, the romance—or lack thereof. I mean, there’s obviously some tension between Sandis and Rone—and that’s why I’m really pleased Holmberg doesn’t take it any further, at least not right now. They’ll probably end up together by the end of the books, unless Rone does something silly like sacrifice himself for her (roll eyes here). For now, though, I can entertain the happy delusion that their relationship will remain platonic, and that would be enough for me. Indeed, I like how they leave things off at the end of the book, the way their relationship appears to be damaged quite irreparably as a result of Rone’s actions. Although what he does is awful, Holmberg clearly still wants us to sympathize with him, and I do—to an extent.

Second, Sandis is a very determined protagonist. It’s tempting to dismiss her because she never does much with the power inherent in her, nor does she seem to have much of an idea of what to do to find her elusive relative. Yet I’m OK with that. The whole focus of this novel is on being a fugitive and how stressful this is. Moreover, it’s important to recognize that Sandis has spent the last five years or so of her life enslaved and at the mercy of an abuser. She has worked hard to keep her head down and not be defiant so as to avoid punishment. Running is somewhat out of character for her, and it is taking her a lot of time to adjust to these new challenges. What matters more is that she remains so steadfast in her goals despite the obstacles arrayed in her path.

Ultimately, Holmberg succeeds in making me care about this story and what’s happening beyond it. (There’s clearly a wider, more sociopolitical plot here, one in which Sandis is embroiled against her will, and I want to know more about it.) Smoke & Summons uses a lot of the very familiar tropes of fantasy, from the way Dresberg is laid out to the ever-present corrupt fantasy police and the pseudo-papal religious figure of the Celestial. Yet it also jazzes up or refreshes some tropes; I like how Holmberg approaches the whole summoning thing. There are parts of the story that drag, and I like said above, I’m grumpy about the ending. But that’s how it goes.

Third review, March 5, 2019.

Has it really been nearly 9 years since I re-read this? No. But I guess it has. A Short History of Nearly Everything is one of those formative books that has stuck with me for a long, long time.

I have little to add to this review. I thought I had lots to say, but re-reading my review from 2010 below … I already said it there. I was going to talk about Bryson’s repetitive phrasing, praise how he explains how much we don’t know, and remark on how good this book is at just … luxuriating in the knowledge we have.

I will add that I think this book, by and large, holds up even 15 years on. Our scientific knowledge certainly has advanced since then. Some of the mysteries that Bryson mentions here have been solved—while others have deepened. Moreover, reading this now with a more critical eye than I did in 2010, I’ll acknowledge there’s a pinch of Western gaze going on here. At one point, in the last chapter, Bryson comments how it was such a shame that the Chinese were grinding up bones for medicines instead of studying the bones to learn more about our past. Hello, casual racism. It might seem like I’m nitpicking now, especially considering how Bryson wryly highlights the racism and sexism of our past, but that’s exactly why I don’t want to let him slide on something like that.

That being said, for the most part this book remains just so damn energizing. It inspires me to think big, to think about and marvel at the incredible world we inhabit. I honestly haven’t craved any of Bryson’s other works—I liked one, didn’t like the other, and have a few more on my to-read list but can’t be bothered to jump on them. But there’s something about the way he writes about this stuff, about this history of science, that just works for me. If it doesn’t work for you, I get it, this book will be a bit plodding and boring. But if it works for you … oh, wow, will it ever work for you.

Read Ben from 2010’s opinions to find out why!

Second reading review, May 7, 2010.

I cannot recommend this book enough. No word of hyperbole: this is a book that everyone should read. Bill Bryson takes the span of human existence and produced a popular history of science that's both accurate and moving. A Short History of Nearly Everything is a celebration of science, but it also evokes the sense of wonder about the universe that science makes available to us. And, almost inevitably, it underscores how much we still have yet to learn about our world.

Throughout history, one of the common arguments against the expansion of science has been something to the effect of "science removes the mystery" of the universe. Well, yes, that's kind of the point. But what opponents to scientific investigation usually mean to say, explicitly or not, is that because we know more about the universe, somehow that makes the universe less wonderful. Somehow a universe of quarks and gluons is less romantic than a universe powered by God. Thus, the argument goes, we shouldn't get too serious about this science stuff—it's depressing.

My response: Are you on crack?

I have just as much trouble fathoming how opponents of science find science depressing and nihilistic as they have trouble fathoming how I find science awesome. It seems self-evident to me that science is wonderful, that it is truly the most appropriate vehicle we have for appreciating our existence. But maybe that's just me, and obviously it's not everyone. So what A Short History of Nearly Everything does is level the playing field, extend the olive branch, if you will. Just as this review isn't an anti-religion diatribe, A Short History barely mentions religion. It doesn't talk about Galileo's persecution by the Church or the rise of creationism and intelligent design in the United States. Bryson and his book are above that. They reaffirm a sentiment I already have, and one I hope you share, either prior to or after reading this book.

Science is fucking awesome.

Sure, one can't understand every scientific concept that one comes across. But that's to be expected. Wave-particle duality is tricky stuff. Just as anyone can become a good handyman with some common sense and little experience, anyone can learn a little bit about quantum mechanics—but if you want to build a quantum house, you'll need many years of experience under your belt.

Even we amateurs, however, can appreciate how cool it is that, for example, our bodies are made of stardust. The heavier elements, of which we are mostly composed, were forged in the crucibles of supernovae light-years away. We're here because some star died for us, and all the atoms managed to travel to Planet Earth. We're here because the Sun pumps out photons that heat our atmosphere, so we don't freeze, and the ozone layer reflects some of the photons away, so we don't fry. Our existence is temporal and transitory and tentative. But we do exist. And regardless of one's stance toward religion, this simple fact is a miracle.

So science can give us miracles too. What Bryson does is take bits and pieces of science, put them in a historical context, and show us the miracles they contain. The result is an appreciation and a better understanding of how the world works.

This is a rather long book—my edition is over 400 pages—and I have to admit it took me a longer time to re-read it than I had anticipated. It's worth the time. Every section is informative and interesting. Although I have a soft spot for physics, the chapters on relativity and quantum mechanics aren't my favourite—perhaps because I've already learned about the concepts elsewhere, so it felt a little redundant. Instead, I really enjoyed reading about the rise of geology, chemistry, and taxonomy. From this book I've learned that fossilization is a risky business; there's way more species hiding everywhere on and underneath the planet than we'll probably ever find; and if I happen to still be alive in a few thousand years, I should probably get volcano insurance.

Even while educating us, Bryson emphasizes how much we don't know. Sometimes the media likes to portray science or scientific theories as "complete" when they are anything but. Perhaps here is where that niggling nihilism starts to rear its head for some people, for Bryson makes it clear that with some things, we probably just can't know, at least not in a timely fashion. On the macroscopic level, once we get out to about the range of Pluto, the distances are so vast as to be almost insurmountable. On the microscopic level, Planck and Heisenberg ensured there would always be a little uncertainty. But I'm OK with that. Preserves the mystery, after all. And provides yet more challenges.

Our ignorance also carries with it a sense of helplessness. We aren't very good at tracking near-Earth objects, for instance, which means if an asteroid does strike us sometime in the near future, we probably won't see it until it hits the atmosphere. Then it will be too late. And even if we did, we don't have the capability to destroy or divert it. Still, lifting the veil of ignorance on one's ignorance is essential to improving one's ability to think critically about science. Who knows: maybe A Short History will inspire some kid to go into astronomy or engineering and invent better asteroid detection equipment.

The upshot of this—as Bryson likes to put it, because his writing style is peppered with repeated phrases like this—is that Bryson presents both the good and the bad of science. As much as science is wonderful, it's also a human enterprise, and we humans are notoriously fallible instruments. Scientists are not immune—indeed, practically prone—to taking credit for another person's work; Bryson is quick to interject anecdotes about the personalities, quirks, and flaws of the persons of interest in the book.

On that note, I wish I kind of had some sort of fact-checking utility for this book. Of course there are references and a bibliography, and Bryson claims in the acknowledgements that various reputable experts have reviewed the material. As much as I love A Short History, however, it is popular science and prone to simplification. So take the anecdotal parts with a grain of salt—for example, contrary to what Bryson claims, NASA didn't destroy the plans for the Saturn V lander (the real problem is trying to find enough reliable vintage parts to construct the thing).

Overall the quality of A Short History of Nearly Everything is just so brilliant that I can't condemn Bryson for his enthusiasm. And I still have several adjectives left, so I can also say that this book is fabulous and stupendous, and you should definitely buy a copy or hold up your local library until it produces one. And if you don't have a local library, you should construct a doomsday device and hold the Earth hostage until such an edifice is constructed in a town near you. Got it? Good.

It's a book worth reading and a book worth remembering; A Short History of Nearly Everything is science and history wrapped in a nutshell of wonder.

First review.
I cannot recommend this book enough to people.

Bill Bryson manages to convey a technically detailed history of the planet while maintaining a readable, comprehensible writing style. His tone is engaging, and his tales are captivating--I particularly enjoyed the discussions on physics and on the development of archaeology and the theory of evolution.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is to books what Bill Nye the Science Guy is to television. This is a book for science lovers and a book for those who swore they'd never take a science class again. I'm a fairly intelligent person; I learned a lot from this book, but at the same time I was already at least acquainted with much of the material it presents. However, that did not stop me from having, "whoa!" moments throughout the book, moments of realization at how complex and wonderful our universe is--and how special it is that we, humans, can strive to understand such a phenomenon.

Kind of space-opera, kind of not? Off Planet intrigues me because it’s kind of about interstellar war, or at least the tricksy politics that can lead to an interstellar war, yet its main characters aren’t (with a few exceptions) soldiers or politicians. The protagonist is literally just trying to live her life, mind her own business, but others can’t have that. Aileen Erin crafts some fairly interesting and intense situations and brings a fair amount of creativity to the worlds she shows us here. Thanks to NetGalley and INscribe Digital for the eARC.

Maité Martinez is half-human, half-Aunare. This is dangerous while she still lives on Earth, which is essentially ruled by a single corporation, SpaceTech. Back when Maité was a kid, SpaceTech massacred Aunare who lived on its planets, and “halfers” are not welcome. So she hides who she is, biding her time until she can get herself and her mother off this planet. But when people from her past show up looking for her, because she happens to be the daughter of the second-most powerful Aunare, Maité’s fragile little life falls apart. Exiled to Abaddon, SpaceTech’s gruelling mining labour camp, Maité barely survives while she and her allies try to figure out if there is any way she can escape that place that doesn’t mean interstellar war.

Off Planet takes a little to get going. Even though Erin sets up the main conflict fairly early, the first act still feels somewhat long to me. Honestly, though? This is a rare instance where I’m comfortable saying you should hang in there: the climax is worth it, at least in my opinion. I was tearing up while Maité screamed, “Do it! Jump!” and was having flashbacks to Battlestar Galactica and Starbuck screaming, “WE’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!” Chills down my spine, the moment was just so intense. So, well done there, Erin: you create a sense of urgency and tension as we wonder who, if anyone, will survive the final battle. While the book kind of ends on a cliffhanger, it resolves enough loose ends to leave me satisfied.

I’m rather disappointed with the antagonists. We don’t actually meet too many of them. We briefly encounter Jason Murtagh in the most uncomfortable way, of course. Beyond that, all we really know about them comes from voices and proxies and what Maité’s friends tell us about them. They are the bad guys. They hate aliens/Aunare and just want to make war and money! It’s a fairly one-dimensional motivation, and while I find the idea of an interstellar corporate feudal hierarchy as compelling and believable as the next person living in the 21st century would … I need my villains to be a bit more fleshed out here.

The same could be said for Maité’s allies, to be honest. There aren’t that many shades of grey here—we get a few characters, like Matthew and Carl, who seem fairly neutral. But it seems like most of the people we encounter are either in Murtagh’s pocket or totally on Maité’s side (and deduce, fairly quickly, her terribly-kept secret). Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining that she has so many people who want to help her. I just wish we could see more characters who are grappling with the tension between helping her and being punished, or characters who start off well-disposed to her but then betray her for some reason.

People are complex, is what I’m saying. For the most part, though, the characters of Off Planet are not. Maité herself is probably a notable exception, thankfully. I like how Erin manages to endow Maité with sufficient agency despite her role as a pawn in this interstellar chess game. Maité displays an incredible amount of dignity and strength (though I’m annoyed by how often Declan and Lorne tell her this, and Declan sharing those videos without her consent crosses a line). Most importantly, I like that she is always looking for a solution instead of listening to those who are telling her to wait around until Declan or someone else can extract her. That’s my kind of protagonist!

Off Planet had some highs and lows for me. I’d rather a book that’s up and down in quality, however, than something that is just aggressively mediocre—and I can safely say that Off Planet isn’t that. Will I read the next book? Definitely maybe.

I picked this up from my library on a whim because it was on a display and I liked the description of the premise. I know nothing about Pretty Little Liars or Sara Shepard. The Amateurs has a great premise! Unfortunately, the writing, characterization, and even the plot fail to live up to the expectations I had.

Seneca Frazier has spent most of her first year of college on a message board called Case Not Closed. She and fellow amateurs ruminate upon and theorize about cold cases, of which her mother’s murder is one. Seneca takes a train to Dexby, Connecticut for spring break, where she meets IRL with another member of the board, Madison (Maddox) Wright, and together they plan to tackle the cold case of Helena Kelly. They are joined by Aerin, Helena’s younger sister; Maddy’s stepsister, Madison (it’s contrived); and a fellow Case Not Closed member, Brett. So we have a little Scooby gang of amateurs, I guess. And weird stuff keeps happening to try to discourage them from pursuing the case, but of course they have the pluck and determination to see it through.

Almost from the very beginning, the way that Shepard’s characters interact chafed. Seneca’s disappointment when she discovers Maddox isn’t what she was expecting is understandable, but Shepard seems determined to create misunderstanding after misunderstanding between them, all for the purpose of driving them closer for the inevitable romance. (Insert eye-rolling here.) Same with the way the whole gang kind of disintegrates around Seneca when she throws a little fit just before the climax. These interactions don’t flow that naturally from the characters’ personalities (because we never really dig that deep into them). Rather, they exist on the page because Shepard wants them there. This is particularly evident in some of the secondary interactions, such as Maddox and his coach/love interest Catherine: suddenly, for no reason other than the plot, Madison warns Maddox she is “psycho” and then Catherine is psycho, and that’s her defining trait for the rest of the book.

The mystery portion is so-so at best. Honestly, I kind of liked the twist at the end, but I wish it weren’t at the end—I wish it were a core plot point at the climax, and that Shepard wrapped up the entire storyline in this one book. (Maybe that’s just selfish of me, because I’m not going to read the sequel.) Everything I’ve read in this book suggests to me that Shepard is very skilled at creating these elaborate and twisted scenarios, but her writing leaves much to be desired, from my point of view.

For example—and this is a large part of why the mystery-solving fell flat for me—the way Shepard writes technology does not work for me at all. We’ll give the whole “message board” thing a pass in 2016; they aren’t as popular these days but even I still use a few. But it’s like every time Shepard mentions some element of technology, it’s a little … off. “Gchat”? Oddly specific. The way she describes someone taking out an iPhone and “tapping at the screen”, such a specific, physical description of an interaction that is extremely normal and well-known these days … it’s as if Shepard is writing for someone who has never used a touchscreen phone before. Similarly, the whole idea that the police wouldn’t have turned on Helena’s phone while investigating her disappearance, leaving 5 whole years to pass before these amateurs turn it on and receive a crucial, long-delayed voice mail? Ugh. I know the police aren’t always competent, but Helena was 17. She had a cell phone. That’s going to be the first thing they look for, and if they don’t find the actual device, they’re going to contact the carrier and look at their records. Honestly.

This book just falls flat for me in pretty much every way. It’s not that it’s all that bad or objectionable. It’s just flat, boring, dull, etc. You might love it, of course, and that’s on you—er, I mean, totally your valid opinion. But The Amateurs reads about as amateurish as its characters, which surprises me considering this author’s claims to fame … but oh well. There are many more mysteries out there to read.