Algorithms are increasingly an important part of our lives, yet even as more of us become aware of this, how much do we actually stop to consider what that means? How much do we stop to consider who is designing these algorithms and how they actually work? And why are we willing to give up so much control to them in the first place? Hello World is a short tour through the various ways in which algorithms intersect with human decision-making. It is neither comprehensive nor particularly in-depth. Nevertheless, through a few choice examples, Hannah Fry illustrates why this is an important topic and an issue we should think about more often and more deeply.

Fry has organized the book into 7 discrete chapters: Power, Data, Justice, Medicine, Cars, Crime, and Art. Each chapter explores the role of algorithms in these parts of our society. Fry intersperses explanations of various algorithms with anecdotes, many of which, as she notes about the now-infamous story of Target outing a teenager’s pregnancy, the reader might already have heard. I believe that one of Fry’s goals is to demonstrate for the reader how algorithms aren’t exotic animals confined to the zoo of a computer science lab. They have real-world applications and real-world effects.

It’s probably inevitable that I compare this to Weapons of Math Destruction, given the similarity of these two books. (Cathy O’Neil blurbed Hello World as well—very good job, marketing team!) Honestly, the subject matter of these two books is very similar, yet I’m not willing to say that one is better than the other. O’Neil writes from the perspective of a mathematician who spent a significant part of her career embedded in the financial sector; Fry is a mathematician who studies Big Data from as an academic career. Many of the concepts elucidated in Weapons of Math Destruction make an appearance here, and Fry often draws similar conclusions as O’Neil. Whereas O’Neil is mostly concerned with the negative effects of algorithms, however, I’d argue that Fry is more interested in raising our awareness about the complexity of these algorithms.

This is a math book at its finest—by which I mean it’s a math book with very few equations in it. Lay people often assume a good mathematics book needs a lot of formulas and numbers, and that’s not true. Math isn’t formulas (that’s engineering—sorry not sorry). Math is about developing a system for solving problems creatively. Fry breaks down what an algorithm is in simple terms, and I loved the chapters on Medicine and Cars, because Fry uses these to explain some great statistical concepts: false positives and negatives, in the former; and Bayesian inference, in the latter. So even though a lot of the anecdotes, specific algorithm examples, etc., were already familiar to me, I still enjoyed how Fry tackles these fundamental but often overlooked mathematical ideas. (As a fan of graph theory and decision math, I also liked the discussion of random forests.)

Fry spends a lot of time discussing how algorithms can get thing wrong. She points out (perhaps obviously) that algorithms will never have “human” judgment—algorithms can’t be empathetic or sympathetic. She illustrates how an algorithm is always going to be biased, so we should be less concerned with chasing after “objective” algorithms but instead focus on building algorithms that are more honest about their biases. The problem with machine learning is two-fold: it’s the data sets we feed in, but it’s also the fact that the decision-making that leads to the output is often opaque.

For all that Fry paints a dire picture, though, she presents a balanced viewpoint that also endorses algorithms as potentially beneficial and necessary. In the Medicine chapter, she points out that algorithmic recognition of diseases like breast cancer is going to make the healthcare system more efficient—as long as these tools are used in conjunction with human judgment, not as a replacement for it. These sentiments are echoed in every chapter, from her exploration of the justice system to her explication of driverless cars, repeated once more at the end of the book where she mentions Kasparov’s centaur chess. If Fry is correct, then perhaps our optimal future is a cyborg future: one in which algorithms enhance our decision-making and help defuse the fallibility of our human judgment, but where humans remain in control of the ultimate decision process and can audit the algorithm.

Hello World is a clear, easy to follow discussion of an extremely relevant topic in today’s society. If, like me, you’re well-read on this subject already, there isn’t a lot of new stuff in here—but I suspect you’ll probably find something. Even so, you’ll hopefully appreciate Fry’s talent for writing and explaining these ideas. As for anyone who has only recently become interested in this subject, you’ll not find many books that explain these ideas so well. Like I said above, this pairs nicely with Weapons of Math Destruction—read both!

The light versus the darkness. Heaven versus Hell. Good vs evil. It’s a timeless story, yet one with so many variations. Cracked is yet another take on this idea. Eliza Crewe tells an intense and urgent story of a hybrid caught between two worlds. Perhaps the most intriguing idea that Crewe brings to the table is the way the main character has to consume souls. Beyond that, there isn’t much here that I haven’t really seen before—but Cracked still manages to pull it all off with a fair bit of panache.

Our protagonist and narrator, Meda, is a 16-year-old half-demon. Her human mother was killed recently, and so now Meda is on her own. She controls her Hunger by killing only those who deserve it—but she isn’t really sure if that morality is strictly necessary. Then, in one night, Meda discovers that not only do full demons exist (and hate her), but Templars, agents of good who hunt and kill demons, also exist (and would hate her if they knew what she was). “Rescued” by Chi, Jo, and Uri, three teenaged Crusaders in training, Meda must hide her true nature from them. That might be harder than she hopes, though, because it seems like the demons know what she is, and now they are coming for her….

Meda is a great narrator. There’s a lot of telling rather than showing in this book, and that was jarring at first, but I appreciate how introspective Meda is. She considers why she feels the way she does, and she weighs her options. When she’s processing her feelings about Jo, or Chi, or how others are interacting with them, she doesn’t jump the gun and react with her gut instinct. So even though she is young and 16 and there are definitely some hormones involved, there’s also a great amount of self-awareness that balances out her character and makes her very well-rounded. I also appreciate how Crewe portrays the way Meda perceives her Hunger. Meda tries to abide by the morality her mother instilled in her as a child, yet her half-demon instincts mean that sometimes she isn’t too sure. It’s a little like a psychopath who knows she is psychopathic but tries to be a good person anyway.

Another bonus, for me at least, is that this story doesn’t prioritize romance. Meda is attracted to Chi, but she observes that he and Jo clearly have a long-running, mutual attraction. So there is a romantic subplot in this book, but it’s between two side characters instead of involving the protagonist. I like this! Moreover, Jo and Chi have meaningful, understandable reasons for not yet being together. Similarly, I like how the relationship between Meda and Jo evolves. At the beginning, Jo’s insta-dislike felt quite clichéd; I was apprehensive. Soon it became apparent, however, that Crewe started us at that point so she could develop the grudging respect that then turns into the seeds of a friendship. And that’s pretty cool.

Cracked loses my interest when it comes to the main plot, alas. First, there isn’t much of it. The book is a few notable action sequences strung together with exposition and some baling wire, much like an action movie. The fact that Crewe develops deep characters while doing this is an unexpected bonus, but the story itself is lacklustre and unimpressive. There is a somewhat generic “school” for gifted kids (this time because they are Crusaders by blood) and some super-powerful baddies, the demons, to serve as mostly faceless antagonists. We’re supposed to care because these are good guys and because Meda is in danger, but it’s all fairly rote. The villain seems to be doing this because he’s a) evil and b) Meda’s father. I guess I’d like a more original reason than “I’m evil, nyah!”

I can’t say I loved this book, but I can see why others would. There is some great character development here. The urban fantasy aspects are OK too. I just wish the story had been a bit more captivating, at least for me. Cracked, much like the action movies I’m reminded of, was a good enough popcorn fantasy diversion. It didn’t do more than that.

I’m hardline New Historicist when it comes to critiquing hip hop. Hip hop is neither revolutionary nor corporate. Hip hop is a tool, and like any tool it can be wielded for ends fair or foul. One can appreciate hip hop without context, but to truly understand hip hop one needs to delve behind the lyrics into the context of the rapper’s life. Jay-Z’s Decoded is a great example of this: reading through his lyrics alongside his contextual explanations of what’s happening is eye-opening for a white guy like me who is from a small Canadian town and hasn’t known any of the struggles Jay-Z has. Instead of dismissing something like hip hop as lacking any significant meaning, we should instead recognize that there is meaning, just meaning different from what we might comprehend given our experiences.

One of my first thoughts on reading this book? Wow, did Angie Thomas ever do a good job coming up with lyrics for Bri! The cover copy for On the Come Up explains that Thomas was once an aspiring rapper like Bri, and it shows in the lyrics she creates. There is nothing half-baked about the rhymes, about the potency of the words and how they flow. I’m very curious about how the audiobook of this sounds!

Hip hop and hip-hop culture pervade this book, obviously, and Thomas demonstrates both her deep affinity for and her deep knowledge of these things. You don’t need a deep understanding of them, however, to enjoy the book. Having only a middling understanding myself, it was like riding on the surface of a much deeper lake and occasionally getting to peer down through the clear water to the sand beneath: there is a lot going on here, a great conversation. Through Bri’s enthusiastic exploration of a potential rap career, Thomas examines how hip hop has evolved in the 21st century. Whereas someone like Jay-Z came of age in the 1980s projects of New York, Bri is 16 in 2018 in the fictional neighbourhood of Garden Heights. She’s posting her rap on Dat Cloud and sharing things on social media. It’s a different kind of game—yet in some ways, it isn’t.

There’s still the tension between being yourself and fronting a persona that will earn you a bigger reputation. As Bri gains notoriety, she faces pressure from all sides to answer one burning question: who are you? In this way, Thomas marries her love letter to hip hop with the ever-important motif in a YA novel of the demands that come from all directions for a teenager’s time, attention, and belief. Bri’s grandparents want her to be their idea of a Good Black Girl. Bri’s mother has other ideas, and her aunt still other ones. Supreme wants to be manager to a version of Bri who “plays the role” white consumers of hip hop will bankroll. And Bri’s friends have their own opinions of who Bri might be.

On the Come Up depicts the messiness of being a sixteen-year-old girl, a sixteen-year-old Black girl from a poor family, with near-heartbreaking depth and relief. Especially toward the end of the book, I was getting so many feelings; I kept having to put it down, to pause and reflect on what Bri was experiencing. She doesn’t always make the right decision—like any teenager, her view of the world is simultaneously somewhat myopic yet paradoxically far more open-minded than many adults’ views. Thomas illustrates how Bri can easily do the wrong thing for the right reasons, as well as the right thing for the wrong reasons. How she can mess up, badly, because she’s still just a kid in some ways yet also very nearly a young woman, and it’s that awful liminal existence of middle adolescence that is so terribly thrilling and frightening at the same time.

Reading this book is like standing on the edge of a nearly-broken mirror. At any moment it might shatter into a million pieces, fracturing Bri’s life into so many possible futures. She could go to college, get a degree, get a job, start a family. She could get involved in a criminal life, in gang colours and warfare. She could become a rapper, blow up into a huge success—or fizzle out and fall back on another job, another path. This is the core of On the Come Up’s personal narrative for Bri: we like to say that every young person is full of potential, but what that really means is that every young person is a life as yet unwritten. It’s a life that could be very many paths but will eventually be one particular path, and every day, every moment, the choices they make and we make contribute to the path they take.

Zooming out, then of course we see the wider social commentary Thomas wants us to consider. As I said earlier, this is definitely a love letter to hip hop. Bri lives and breathes for hip hop; for her, it is a tool of survival in a world that is vehemently misogynoir. Yet Thomas is not afraid to critique the media she loves, to offer up her analyses of where rap and hip hop need to step up, to acknowledge their flaws, to be better. The same goes for Bri herself, of course, and for the thorny way in which she navigates the problematic minefield of her medium of choice. On the Come Up tackles police brutality in the form of the over-policing of Black and brown bodies in our schools. Most saliently, Thomas juxtaposes public condemnation of Black gun ownership, stereotyped as gang violence, with public approval for white gun ownership, stereotyped as hunting and freedom. Indeed, almost every page of this book, every encounter Bri has with an authority figure, screams for us to remember that if she were a white girl, she would receive markedly different—and probably better—treatment.

This is apparently my 1500th review published to Goodreads. Cool. It’s entirely a coincidence that On the Come Up is that review, but I’m pleased that if I’m going to mark such an arbitrary, round number I’m doing it with such a notable book. Once again, I want to remark on the dearth of popular reviews here on Goodreads for this book by Black, and especially Black and female, reviewers. For a book that is literally about giving voice to young Black women, it’s unfortunate that these very same voices seem to be missing from the conversation around this book, at least on this platform.

It’s great that my fellow white reviewers are championing this book, of course! We must do this, and we must be careful about how we do it. You’re going to see some people experience discomfort at discussing this book, disclaim their disconnection from Bri’s experiences. I admit to feeling some discomfort myself: how do I critique something that I don’t know that much about? They’ll remark on how great a book this is for Black teenagers, how it’s fantastic to have this representation, to have a book Black teens can see themselves in. They will mean well. And yes, it is true that more representation is great.

Make no mistake: On the Come Up is definitely a book for everyone. If we position it and others like it as being “for Black readers” by dint of merely having a Black protagonist living in a predominantly Black neighbourhood, we’re positioning books with white protagonists as some kind of “default” experience. We Other Blackness once again. And I am much more uncomfortable doing that than I am discussing and dissecting a book that is certainly one possible depiction of a Black person’s experience in the United States. It’s true that I’m not in a great position to judge the veracity of Thomas’ use of hip hop, of her depiction of gang dynamics, and so on. But I also never went to an elite boarding school, nor have I ever lived in a conveniently-siloed dystopia that sorts me into a house on my 16th birthday—and we sure spend a lot of time opining on that.

On the Come Up is an emotionally-charged, deep, and moving book about family and friendship and trying to do what you love. It is a very long book, and there are moments when it drags. There are unresolved issues that I wish Thomas had resolved more, such as Bri and Pooh’s relationship, or what happens between Bri and Curtis. The ending in general is somewhat rushed, with everything getting wrapped up very quickly and sometimes off-handedly (but, to be fair, I was also rushing to finish the last 7 pages before I had to get back to my class, so that might be on me). Yet these issues seem so minor when set next to my enjoyment of and experience with this book. Thomas makes Bri come alive, and our world is a better place for having this story in it.

I love behind-the-scenes looks at industries that we don’t often think about. Whether you’re buying a game in the store or downloading it from Steam, chances are you aren’t that knowledgeable about what the game development industry is actually like. Oh, you might have read some horror stories on Reddit, heard some of the gossip going back and forth on gaming blogs. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made is about more than that, though. Jason Schreier digs deeper into the pressures and structures of the video game development industry. The question (which he never really gets to answer): is there is a less gruelling, less stressful way to create games and still be “successful”?

Schreier structures the book into 10 chapters, each one recounting the genesis of a specific video game. Each chapter also has a central lesson. In some chapters, he focuses on the internecine politics of the game dev studios and the publisher. In others, he examines how developer dynamics, the size of the teams involved, the pressure from fans, contribute to how smoothly a game is developed.

Chances are that if you play games you will have heard of some, if not most, of these titles, including Stardew Valley, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Diablo 3, and The Witcher 3. This book might be worth buying for the story behind one of these games—for all 10 stories, it feels like a steal. Although common threads run throughout every chapter—most notably the intense pressure to “crunch” near the end of the development schedule—Schreier makes sure that every game highlights specific and different ways in which the industry functions (or doesn’t function).

Likewise, although he frequently points to dysfunctional parts of game dev, he is also quick to celebrate the amazing parts of the industry too. Schreier shows a lot of respect for the work that devs put into a game. He is careful to include all members of game dev in this camp—not just the programmers, but the artists and writers and musicians and voice actors and others as well. More than anything, Schreier definitely underscores that (with some exceptions, like Stardew Valley and Shovel Knight), modern games are the result of intensely coordinated and talented teams of people bending their talents to a single, interactive experience.

In all of these ways, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels excels. The entire book is basically a series of narratives assembled from interviews Schreier has done with various people, some of whom are featured in the chapters. He is fairly transparent about when/how he got his information. Ultimately, though, the stories seem rather restricted to within the game dev industry itself. By this I mean, while he raises questions around, for example, the fairness of crunching, he never really looks beyond the game dev industry for opinions. It would have been nice to see him interview some sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, or other people who have studied this phenomenon or others. As it is, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels’ scope feels a little limited, a little too pixelated from zooming in too much.

This was a fun thing to read over the course of about two days, and I learned some interesting facts about some interesting games. Also, mad props to whoever put the Oxford comma into the title!

Shoutout to one of our secretaries at work, Deb, who lent this to me. I do so enjoy reading books that are among other people’s favourites. Even when I don’t enjoy them as much, or when I dislike them outright, it’s nice to try things recommended by friends. Fortunately, I did enjoy The Poisonwood Bible. Barbara Kingsolver’s thoughtful story of a missionary family in Belgian Congo on the cusp of its independence combines an interesting narrative structure with meaningful commentary on imperialism and zealotry. It’s a book that is compassionate in multiple ways without failing to critique the shallowness or inappropriateness of some views.

Nathan Price is a Baptist minister and uproots his family—his wife Orleanna and their four daughters—from Bethlehem, Georgia to Kilanga, a village in the Belgian Congo. It’s 1959, just before Independence. But the Prices don’t know that, of course, just like they don’t know what to expect when they arrive. As Nathan labours in vain to convert his flock to Christianity and accept baptism, each of the Price women struggles with their own issues. Overall, the Price family learns that, just because they are white people, they cannot bend Congo to their will. As the book accelerates its timeline and flies through the decades to see the Price daughters grow up and diverge, Kingsolver explores how the rampant interference by the United States and other up-and-coming Western powers meant that Congo, like so many African nations, never had a chance.

The Price women narrate different chapters of the book. Orleanna Price, the mother, tends to narrate prologues to each part of the novel from a perspective well after the main events. The daughters’ chapters have a similar epistolary feel, with very lengthy and dense paragraphs and a dearth of dialogue, but the perspective feels closer to the events that they describe, as if they were writing in their diaries then and there. Kingsolver adds another layer of literary complexity to the narrative by making each daughter’s voice extremely distinct. Rachel, the eldest, uses (or misuses) colloquialisms and expressions, as would be consistent with her inattention to writing skills; twins Leah and Adah, on the other hand, have deeper vocabularies but their own distinct personalities. Leah is introspective but quite religious, at least at first, whereas Adah, because of her disabilities, revels in the written word as if it were a playground, her only real form of self-expression. The youngest, Ruth May, often misuses words or phrases, communicating more complicated concepts in ways that her young mind has comprehended them.

In this way Kingsolver demonstrates a great deal of finesse when it comes to her literary style, of course. I feel a little sorry for the copyeditors who had to read through the chapters, especially Rachel’s, and walk the line between spotting real mistakes versus deliberate ones! To be honest, the style of this book is one of its greatest joys and also greatest headaches—this book took me about a week to read, despite being under 600 pages. It’s just very dense. Consider yourself duly warned!

On the other hand, the diversity of perspectives is what brings this story alive. In some ways, The Poisonwood Bible reminds me of Fall On Your Knees. Although that story had a more distant omniscient narrator, it follows the various daughters in similar ways, exposing the reader to different experiences and situations. Although all of the Price daughters are living in Kilanga with their family, the ways in which they absorb and grow from these experiences are mediated by their existing personality traits.

It’s fascinating to watch the slow-motion trainwreck of the Price family as it comes to a reckoning with the implacable nature of the African jungle. Kingsolver’s story of colonialist hubris begins and ends with the sin of pride. The Prices arrive in Kilanga believing they can civilize not only its inhabitants but nature itself, as we see at the beginning with Nathan’s ill-fated gardening. Although the trajectory of their mission is predictable, Kingsolver nevertheless introduces fascinating thoughts for us to ponder. In particular, pay close attention to the conversations between Leah and Anatole, as he explains why he interprets for Nathan despite not quite agreeing with Nathan’s philosophy or approach.

Nathan, notably, is not a narrator—yet I wouldn’t say his voice is absent. After all, his voice is literally law within the Price family, at least at the time of their arrival. We hear from him the most, as each daughter transcribes his words, whether she agrees or disagrees. Nathan is never absent from the narrative even if his thoughts don’t actually reach the page. This seems to be a choice by Kingsolver to mirror the experience of abuse victims: even though we are listening to their thoughts, the abuser is always in evidence because he dominates so much of their world. There is sympathy among the Price women for their fallible father, sure. Kingsolver portrays him with a certain amount of pathetic nature, for he was so certain in his mission that he doesn’t stop to consider that perhaps he is not the one who is supposed to convert everyone in Kilanga. Again, pride. Ultimately, though, Nathan is not the one we’re asked to mourn here.

Rather, Kingsolver has us consider how these few years utterly alter the course of these four girls’ lives. And this is where the book gets the most interesting, to me. After the Price women leave Kilanga and disperse, the narrative accelerates and we see them grow up. Rachel retains her vapid viewpoints, grafting a Southern sentimentality about race relations onto a mercenary attitude towards love. Leah, having fallen in love with Anatole, adapts as best she can to a country that will never truly accept her because of her skin colour. Adah starts to talk and experiences other physical improvements but is driven to study tropical diseases. Ruth May, of course, gets sacrificed on the altar of plot.

Ultimately, Kingsolver meditates upon the futility of white saviourism. By and large I’ve been trying to prioritize own-voices postcolonial fiction—there’s definitely something uncomfortable about a white person writing about an African setting, for sure. But I love how Kingsolver explores these topics in a way that reifies and celebrates the complexity of Congolese tribal societies. She does this on the small scale, through characters like Tata Ndu, whom the Prices at first believe to be a stereotype of a primitive village chief, only to eventually learn that he is much more adept at diplomacy and administering his village than they wanted to recognize. She does this on the large scale, with characters like Anatole and Leah observing how the Congolese adapt to the various regime changes they must endure. And even as Kingsolver affirms that neither Christianity nor capitalism are the solutions to Africa’s woes, she reminds us who is responsible—that is, nations like Belgium, France, the UK, and the US, nations that invaded an entire continent and arbitrarily parceled it into countries even as they enslaved its peoples.

The Poisonwood Bible is a thoughtful and very rich experience. I’m not a huge fan of the narration and style, to be honest—the book definitely dragged for me at points. Nevertheless, I’m glad I read it. It has me thinking about colonialism in some new ways … I tend to focus more on postcolonial India, and more recently, on present-day colonial North America, and sometimes I overlook the mid-twentieth-century race to independence for African nations. I should check out more books on this subject.

As with the first book, Smoke & Summons, I received a free eARC from NetGalley and publisher 47North. Like the first book, Myths & Mortals feels like original and competent urban fantasy. Charlie N. Holmberg adds more layers to the saga of Sandis Gwenwig, such as it is. However, this book does little to assuage my grumping from the first book. Another cliffhanger ending, and not all that much development of Sandis’ character either.

Spoilers for the first book but not for this one.

Sandis has successfully escaped Kazen, for now, although he has Rone’s amarinth and the 1-minute immortality it grants every 24 hours. Rone is trying to win his way back into Sandis’ good graces, but it’s not really taking. Sandis is too enamoured of her new uncle, Talbur—or at least, she is for a little bit, until she realizes how cold a man he can be. With nowhere else left to turn, Sandis finds herself throwing in with Rone again. Soon they’re trying to stop Kazen from summoning Kolossos again, with or without whatever allies they can find.

There are some betrayals you can’t come back from, and I’m partly of the mind that Rone’s is one of them. So I like how Holmberg handles Sandis’ reluctance to see Rone again or accept his help. It would have been so jarring if the book had started with Sandis flying back into Rone’s open arms the moment she realizes that Talbur is up to no good. As it is, being forced together by circumstance is believable and interesting. I’m not sure Rone really deserves Sandis’ forgiveness, but at least he’s trying to repent for what he did.

There are some new characters here, like Bastien, and more page time for characters we only really glimpsed in Smoke & Summons. However, these characters don’t receive much in the way of development. Even Bastien seems very stock. He has … some kind of thing with puns? Other than that, he’s a vessel and therefore a convenient plot device for Holmberg to hook Sandis up with Ireth again.

I think when I really stop and ponder why these books don’t excite me more, it has to come back to this problem of characterization. We get a few scenes here from Kazen’s limited third person perspective. While somewhat illuminating, these scenes also portray him as a madman bent on revenge—which he might very well be, at this point. The Angelic is the world’s worst father once again—but then we see him a second time, later in the book, with slightly different behaviour (not necessarily better) without much in the way of setup or prompting. Even the no-good Talbur, whom any reader will peg as a bad dude from the first page, is one-dimensional in that respect.

The whole concept of summoning demons—uh, numina—into vessels is great. From there, Holmberg branches out into similarly interesting lore and ideas. Even the plot itself, although somewhat basic, is stimulating. Alas, the characters just don’t work for me. This doesn’t change by the ending of Myths & Mortals. Once again, not a fan of the blatant cliffhanger ending—although I will say I at least liked this one a good deal.

There are things to like, perhaps even love, about these books. Will I read the third? A definite maybe on that one: whereas I hoped Myths & Mortals might surprise me by being much improved over the first book, it has instead mostly confirmed the mediocrity of this series. Enjoyable enough as a distraction, but I’m not sure I’ll be talking about them that much.

Yes, um, hi, it’s been three years since I last read and reviewed a Laundry Files novel. It has been a long time since I bought a Charles Stross book. Don’t worry; I bought this book and the next one, so while I won’t be reading it right away, three years will not go by. I have a lot of catching up to do!

In The Apocalypse Codex, Bob Howard is back … and has to go to training courses because he is being groomed for middle management. Fortunately for our reader’s brains, we don’t have to sit through 300 pages of Bob networking with other British civil servants. Rather, Bob soon gets tapped by another Laundry higher-up to manage some “external assets”—a witch and her mercenary sidekick. They need to investigate an evangelical church that is a little too cult-like to be true—might the pastor actually be trying to summon a chthonic entity when he really means to resurrect Jesus? Of course he might. This is the Laundry Files.

TL;DR if you’ve read this series before and want to know how this one stacks up: it’s good. It’s really good. More mythology, new characters (Persephone and Johnny are cool; Lockhart is OK), new perspectives even, and an intense thriller plot. All the stuff you’ve come to expect, in spades.

This is also probably a great entry point into the series if you haven’t been following along and don’t feel like going back and reading the first three books. Bob brings you up to speed pretty quickly, and while there are obviously references (and spoilers for) earlier novels, this adventure really has Bob off on something quite new, and the ending sets him up for a kind of lateral move within the Laundry hierarchy that promises more interesting adventures going forward. As usual, Stross isn’t afraid to shake things up and move the overall arc of the series forward.

Getting into this particular book now: the first third kind of drags. It isn’t just the exposition to induct us into the world … it takes a while for Bob to get out into the field and do his thing and then for the shit to hit the fan. This is also the first time, if I recall correctly, that Bob narrates stuff in third person that he didn’t experience. That isn’t a big deal, but it is an interesting change. For the most part, I enjoyed Persephone and Johnny. They were competent ciphers of characters without being annoyingly smarmy or smug about it.

Surprisingly, my favourite aspect of the book was the antagonist. Without going deeply into spoilers, let’s just say that I really like the way Stross portrays Schiller’s faith. I think there are lots of interesting shades between con artists and true believers, and Stross sort of hits on the right balance to give us an antagonist who is clearly deluded and deceived yet strangely honest too.

I can’t help but notice some parallels between Bob and Schiller as well. Oh, not in the sense that I think Bob is going to start a cult aimed at waking the Sleeper in the Pyramid … but The Apocalypse Codex is ultimately about loyalty to those in your care. Schiller has a duty of care to his congregation, one that he egregiously violates in the name of his faith. Bob has a duty of care to his external assets—or at least feels like he does—and Stross uses multiple opportunities to hammer home his point that Bob’s loyalty is itself more of an asset than a liability.

I feel like, as Stross ramps us up towards CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN (when/if ever that arrives), he is having us think more critically about the structure of the Laundry. We learn more about its American counterpart, the so-called Black Chamber, here as well, and how it seems to be run by or at least associated with more supernatural creatures than the Laundry. Stross is laying a lot of groundwork that I have faith will pay off in later books.

Really, of course, if you’re coming to this book you’re probably coming for Stross’ effortless exposition and clever allusions. No one would accuse Stross of giving up an opportunity to infodump, and The Apocalypse Codex is not exception. It’s smart, and it knows it’s smart, in that annoying kind of way—but it’s also punchy, and a little bit sweet (especially the bits between Bob and Moe), so in my opinion, Stross can get away with it.

My reviews of the Laundry Files:
← The Fuller Memorandum | The Rhesus Chart →

Having not read the graphic novels that started this series, I can’t compare them to Giant Days the novel. Nevertheless, the fingerprints of comic form are all over this book. By this I mean that Non Pratt manages to replicate the slight zaniness inherent in any comic universe, even one purporting to be as prosaic as a story about three people in university. This shouldn’t always work in the novel form (it’s why so many superhero novels fall flat for me), yet Pratt somehow nails it.

Susan, Daisy, and Esther are roommates in their first year of university and couldn’t be more different. Susan is cagey about her past and relentless in her investigations of any injustice. Daisy, homeschooled by her grandmother, is trying to get used to this whole new socializing thing. Esther is chronically unable to actually focus on school, preferring instead to dive into socializing—until she becomes obsessed with attempting to win over a friend who embodies, for her, the epitome of her Goth girl aesthetic. As each of our protagonists becomes embroiled in her own challenges at school, they experience moments of crisis and doubt in themselves and in their friendships with each other. Giant Days, as the title implies, is about the hugeness of striking out on one’s own as a new adult, and the importance of having people you can trust, even when they’re telling you things you don’t want to hear.

For those of us unfamiliar with the comics, the story starts slow and the characters will feel somewhat cookie-cutter at first. But if you keep reading you soon get thrown into some intense and interesting conflicts. Each of the characters struggles with things that are uniquely related to her own personality. Susan’s attempts to impose a contract on McGraw are just one more way in which she uses a cool and calm exterior and relentless ordering of the world around her to soothe her internal anxiety and self-doubt. Daisy’s overindulgence in clubs is perhaps the most transparent of the three’s dilemmas and maybe something that a lot of readers who went to university can recognize. Esther’s reverential attempts to befriend Goth Girl will also feel very familiar to anyone who has ever longed platonically after someone who barely gives them the time of day.

I want to talk about this last point first and comment more generally on how Giant Days is really a great story of friendship. There are only the smallest shades of romance in this book, present in the history and tension between Susan and McGraw, for instance. Beyond that, these relationships are platonic and diversely so. I’m not just talking about Susan/Esther/Daisy—Daisy’s whole involvement with Zoise is predicated upon the desire to be among friends (or family). Esther’s dynamic with Vetra and Ed Gemmel is, likewise, a wobbly top of friendship woes. As an aromantic and asexual reader who loves stories that highlight the importance and conflict of friendships, all of this really appeals to me. Indeed, this has been a common thread throughout my reading of Pratt’s works and one of the many reasons for which I adore, inhale, and sweat out through my pores every word.

Pratt doesn’t just get it (I hope, for all our sakes, that most of us just get it to some extent)—she gets how to write about friendships in a nuanced multiplicity of manners. Whereas something like Second Best Friend is a meditation on how projection can harm our friendships and aimed at a younger audience, Giant Days is about the scary world of new adult friendships. These aren’t people we’ve known all our lives and bonded with through thick and thin. They are usually brand new to us, and not only are we worried that we’ll screw something up and they won’t want to be friends with us, but we are busy figuring out who we are as adults. And through the differences in the three protagonists’ personalities, Pratt emphasizes that this experience is not limited to any particular type of person. We all go through these growing pains, in one way or another.

I feel both seen and personally attacked by the scenes depicting and critiquing Esther’s semantic shenanigans and how she complains to herself that she is rusty when it comes to academic doublespeak! (Just look at my lengthy, essay-style reviews from 2008ish into 2012 to see what I mean.) Pratt lampoons academia here, and the way it encourages young people to affect an air of knowledge that is largely unearned, and it is glorious. Esther’s desperation to impress Vetra prompts her to contort herself, socially, in ways she would find so unappealing if she were an outsider looking at herself—but how often can we realize that? Meanwhile, through some pretty sharp commentary via Susan, Pratt points out that Vetra herself, far from being a kind of stock character in this story, is another example of a type of character a young person often becomes in university in order to feel like they belong (or in this case, deliberately don’t belong—yay counterculture).

I should mention that my university experience was, for the most part, extremely different from Susan, Esther, and Daisy’s. I didn’t live in residence. It’s only now, well after university and now that I finally have fulfilling adult friendships, that I realize I was so impoverished during university. I had largely drifted away from high school friendships. There were people I knew, fellow students, with whom I forged some superficial let’s-meet-up-and-study type bonds. For the most part I just spent more time with slightly older coworkers at my job; it wasn’t until my last couple of years in university when I really fell in with some people I felt got me. I don’t regret how this unfolded—for one thing, for better or for worse it led to my life as it is now, and that life is pretty great, with some people whom I’m incredibly fond of. It’s just interesting, the different paths that we take, especially during those critical years of self-discovering at the commencement of adulthood and independent living.

If there are moments when Giant Days feels too over-the-top, too twee—like the ramifications of Daisy’s involvement with Zoise—then I’ll fall back on what I said at the beginning of this review: this is a comic book universe poured into prose form, and the regular rules maybe don’t apply so much. Realism is not a binary in literature but a spectrum, and Pratt is an expert at adjusting the realism dial until it is just so for the story she wants to tell. That’s why I keep coming back, for that perfect combination of offbeat, quirky situations yet deep and real human connections. This is what stories are for.

Just over a year ago I read What’s a Girl Gotta Do?, the last novel in the Spinster Club trilogy featuring teenagers Evie, Amber, and Lottie figuring out life, feminism, mental health, and the tricky transition into adulthood. Each of those three books examines slightly different facets of these motifs. Holly Bourne has proved herself, time and again, to be a sensitive, witty author whose writing finds the right tone to be edifying and also entertaining. With …And a Happy New Year? she provides a compelling coda to the Spinster Club’s journey, at least for this chapter of their lives.

Amber is throwing an illicit New Year’s party at her parents’ house while they are out of town for the holidays. Lottie is back in town from uni in London, and Evie is coming too. The three friends have been growing a little distant over the past few months, with Lottie away, Evie wrapped up in her relationship with Oli, and Amber trying to figure out what she wants—even if it means having to move to Rhode Island for school. As the clock counts down to midnight, the three girls cruise towards an inevitable collision of conflicting friendship goals. The result is an implosive mixture of tears and tender recriminations and a painful but optimistic reminder that it is possible to hold on to the things you hold most dear even as you are rocked and buffeted by the winds of change.

This is perhaps one of the best examples of a nearly totally character-driven novella I’ve read in a while. Bourne alternates among the perspectives of each of our three protagonists, allowing us to understand where they are coming from. The actual plot, the events of the book, are somewhat ancillary to the real focus, which is the Spinster Club friendship at the heart of all of this. Bourne has Amber, Evie, and Lottie confront a truth that we all eventually experience: as we grow up, sometimes we grow apart. The theme is a corollary simple and obvious yet no less sublime in presentation: just because we grow up doesn’t mean we have to grow apart.

As with the previous novels, it’s likely you’ll recognize little bits of yourself in each of these characters. Amber is reluctant to share her impending departure with the other two women. She’s nervous about what it signifies for their relationship, and understandably so. It can be so difficult to share news of that kind with one’s closest friends, especially if that news means you’re going to see them less.

Evie is feeling guilty on both ends: she feels guilty that she has been neglecting Amber and Lottie by spending more time with Oli, whose anxiety has confined him to his house; on the other hand, she feels guilty for leaving Oli just to go to this party. This story arc really resonated for me, and I can empathize with both Evie and Oli. I’m someone who sometimes pours too much of myself into a caregiver role with friends, and I really value narratives that remind you that you can’t be someone’s panacea. Similarly, I frequently fear I’m being an Oli—clingy, passively-aggressively texting my best friends when I know they are out living their lives just because I’m not out living mine. It isn’t quite the same as Oli’s experience, but I keep an eye out for similar behaviours. I love how the book represents Evie’s “bad thoughts” on the page, how Bourne references discussions Evie has had with her therapist and Oli’s therapist, how this whole arc underscores the dangers of codependency while remaining sympathetic to the fact that no one is perfect at any of this.

Lottie is perhaps the most adrift of the three women. I say this because, having been the most recent viewpoint character, she came across as so confident in the previous novel. Indeed, we learn that her project from What’s a Girl Gotta Do? catapulted her to enough notoriety that she is on the newspaper team for her school despite being a freshman. She doesn’t like her roommates, at all, and she feels miserable and abandoned by her two friends, neither of whom have visited her. In short, Lottie is having trouble adjusting to the new flow of life at uni, especially away from home. This is so normal and common, and while it’s not really within my experiences, I can totally sympathize with people who have felt this.

What makes …And a Happy New Year? so great, though, is the way that Bourne combines these three character arcs into a single, incredibly effective story. It’s difficult for me to describe briefly here in a review, but I think this is most evident in something Evie observes. We’ve previously learned that Amber believes Lottie’s distance from the group is because she is just so in love with London uni life she doesn’t have time for her two friends any more. Evie, on the other hand, seems to have sussed out something closer to the truth. In this way, Bourne reminds us how different friends are going to have differing perspectives on why we act the way we do, and those perspectives—influenced by their own personalities—will vary in accuracy over time. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this novella really captures the rich complexity of friendships—something that is sometimes lost in fiction, which has a tendency to flatten friendships for the sake of narrative efficiency.

Yesterday I watched, for the second time, a brilliant little indie flick called Almost Adults. Its 22-year-old protagonists are best friends. Like the Spinster Club, they are experiencing transitional times as they leave school again. They both make mistakes that strain their friendship, which is a little to co-dependent. Their behaviour strikes me, as an older viewer, as lamentably, familiarly immature—but that’s, of course, the nature of being a young adult. They navigate these issues for the very first time and have to learn and make mistakes along the way.

The Spinster Club trilogy and this coda novella is not a road map for avoiding the heartbreak and heartache of friendship conflict. It is, however, a striking work of modern fiction about friendships and feminism. It’s a series of novels about being brave, and about accepting help from others. I highly recommend all three novels, with …And a Happy New Year? as a perfect ending. And while Amber, Evie, and Lottie’s stories are over for now, Bourne has already shown herself more than capable of writing novels with older protagonists confronting the struggles important at their age.

My reviews of The Spinster Club:
← What’s a Girl Gotta Do?

Some books are meant to be sipped and savoured over the course of many days. You have to engage with them gradually, wade into them and wait for their temperature to feel comfortable against your mind. Other books demand to be devoured in a single sitting. I’ve determined that, for me, Holly Bourne’s books are the latter. Once I start reading them, I can’t put them down. I started What’s a Girl Gotta Do? on the Friday morning of my March Break, and I immediately knew that I wasn’t getting any work done until I had finished this.

The third book in Bourne’s Spinster Club trilogy, What’s a Girl Gotta Do? features Lottie. The most outspoken and bookishly feminist of the three girls, Lottie might actually be my favourite character—or at least, probably the one I can most identify with, given the vastly disparate life experiences between me and these three! I just love how loud Lottie is. I can imagine her voice in my head, the volume always a little louder than one might want in more intimate conversations, buoyed by Lottie’s sheer enthusiasm for feminism and social justice. She’s just awesome.

In this book, Lottie decides she has to embark on a special project. Named the Vagilante Project (vagina + vigilante) by Amber, the project entails Lottie calling out every instance of sexism she observes at least once. She will do this on camera, aided by Evie’s film peer, Will. When Lottie starts the project, she is fired up to be firing back. As the book continues and Lottie realizes how much labour she’s doing—and as her project gets attention and the trolls start coming out—Lottie starts having second thoughts.

What’s a Girl Gotta Do? is essentially about microaggressions (though that term is never mentioned by name) and how people who constantly call out and fight against microaggressions often experience activism burnout (this term is mentioned by name). This is why I love the Spinster Club trilogy: Bourne educates about different concepts in feminism and social justice while still telling an excellent story. Of course, the book educates different readers in different ways. Teen girls reading this with an interest in feminism might identify with Lottie or some or all of the other girls in the book. For me, watching Lottie learn as she tackles these problems, as her anger inspires her and then her constant dedication wears her out, helps me understand what women often experience, both online and offline, in a way I can’t directly access. As an older male reader, I have a lot of privilege that insulates me from the microaggressions that Lottie experiences (and I probably commit a fair number).

For that reason, the character of Will definitely resonated with me. Now, I never went so far as to declare myself an “equalitist” like Will does. I’ve always been pretty much feminist for as long as I’ve known the label. Yet I definitely understand Will’s misplaced confidence, shall we say, in rationality and calm or civil discourse. His smug, self-satisfied self-assurance that everything can be backed up with logic and facts infuriates Lottie to no end—as it should:

“I said,” he said louder, “there’s nothing wrong with being logical.”

“No, not always.” I paused. “But I don’t think you realize how upsetting it is when you feel someone’s devaluing your experience. Look how angry me, Evie and Amber get at you. Do you ever think why? Do you ever think how it must feel to have horrible things you’ve seen or experienced judged and questioned by someone? Like it’s our responsibility to convince you we’re not lying, rather than yours just to believe us?…”

I was a precociously intelligent, bookish male teen—logic and facts were my bread and butter, and I had enough privilege that I didn’t really understand, even as I was beginning to learn about feminism and gender inequity from an academic perspective, why that could be problematic. I had so much faith in rationality. So the journey that Will undergoes in this book definitely had elements that were familiar to me, even if we weren’t exactly in the same starting place. I also think it’s really clever, from a narrative point of view, for Bourne to pair Lottie with Will, both as her cameraperson and as a potential love interest.

As with the other Spinster Club books, What’s a Girl Gotta Do? is also funny. That’s another thing I love about Bourne’s writing. I like each of the three narrators of this series for different reasons, as I mentioned above, but they all have these great, distinctive voices. Bourne hasn’t written the same narrator with three different names; she has three characters with their own strengths and flaws. And while you don’t need to read the first two books to enjoy this one, if you have read the first two, you get these lovely little updates on what’s happening in Evie and Amber’s lives. Bourne has created this awesome microcosm of feminist teenagers growing up, and it’s excellent.

I’ve pondered since finishing this book which of the three is my favourite. Honestly, it’s hard to make that kind of determination. Each has its own strengths and focuses. Am I Normal Yet? is an amazing exploration of the toll that mental illness takes on one’s health and life. How Hard Can Love Be? features the effects of parents’ problems on their kids. And now What’s a Girl Gotta Do? ties together the nascent threads of feminism throughout the book to demonstrate how dismantling the patriarchy is both necessary and difficult. Really, all three of these books are essential. And I feel sorry for anyone who gives them a pass just because they’ve been labelled as young adult: sure, the protagonists are teenagers, but the education and the themes in here are really for everyone, whether you’ve just started college/sixth form or you’re a 28-year-old Canadian dude who teaches adults for a living.

My only regret is that I’m finished the series now (with the exception of the coda novella, and you can bet I’ll be devouring it soon). Fortunately, I’ve been lending each book to my friend Becky as I finish them, so at least I can look forward to hearing her opinions soon. And I have another Holly Bourne novel on my shelf waiting to be read, and and and she has two more novels coming out this year. So … yeah. I’m hooked, and so should you be.

My reviews of the Spinster Club:
← How Hard Can Love Be? | …And a Happy New Year? →