Philosophy of the mind has always been one of my favourite realms of philosophy. I love thinking about how we think. About why we think. Consciousness, sentience, intelligence—how did these traits evolve? How do they even work? Patrick House explores Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness (literally what it says on the tin) and tries to address these questions. As he admits in the introduction, he doesn’t have all the answers—none of us do—but he has a lot of fun mulling over some of the theories that are out there. However, I didn’t have as much fun reading this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing the eARC!

I’m not going to attempt to summarize the nineteen ways. Some of them are a little out there, a little difficult for me to conceptualize let alone express. Basically, each chapter is a different way of explaining or examining consciousness. In all of these chapters, House relates these ideas back to a single study, published in Nature, in which electric current applied to a teenage girl’s brain during surgery stimulated laughter. He tries to apply elements of the chapter’s theory or lens for viewing consciousness to the study to see what we might learn.

Something I loved from the beginning of this book is House’s enthusiasm for and wonder about consciousness. He states that neuroscience is at a stage right now similar to how physics was, say, four hundred years ago. I thought that was a really interesting and apt analogy. Despite all our scientific progress in the last century or so, we really have so far to go in our understanding of the brain—and I’m not talking about that myth that we only use ten percent of it! If you stop and think about it, as House points out in his introduction, it’s wild that non-living matter (amino acids) can somehow come together to form life, and that in turn, we are somehow conscious and actually give birth to other organisms that develop their own, distinct consciousness.

So in this respect, House does a great job at communicating his appreciation for diverse views on consciousness. Each chapter reads in some ways like a revelation, and I think many readers will appreciate how he unpacks these various ideas and challenges us to think about consciousness differently.

Unfortunately, I think my expectations for the book weren’t aligned with what this book actually is. I was hoping for a book that was grounded a bit more in scientific theories, whereas House gives us a lot of philosophy. While the theories House has chosen to present here are all grounded in some type of scientific research, this book is less about explaining the whys and hows of that research and more about describing the consequent theory in a very poetic way. Like I said, I don’t mind philosophy—it just isn’t what I was expecting here.

I don’t want to damn this book with faint praise, because I really do think there is an audience out there for it. This book just wasn’t right for me at this time.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Sometimes truth is more interesting than fiction. Sometimes fictionalizing the truth—books based on a true story, if you will—helps highlight true stories that have yet to receive their due. History is seldom boring. The Rose Code is that type of historical fiction. Set primarily in Bletchley Park during the Second World War, this book is not about the genius of Alan Turing or Dilly Knox. It’s about love and sex and betrayal. Kate Quinn follows three women who become close friends only to be torn apart. It’s a perfect, dramatic mix of spy thriller and romance.

Osla, Mab, and Beth are three very different Englishwomen. Osla, technically Canadian (the best kind of being Canadian), is high society yet determined to prove she is more than a “dizzy deb[utante].” Mab is working class yet determined to climb that social ladder. Beth is a village girl, raised sheltered and never allowed to flourish. All three of them end up working at Bletchley Park, helping in various ways to crack codes and translate German messages. As the war drags on, they face personal challenges. Meanwhile, Quinn feeds us chapters set in 1947, on the eve of the royal wedding of Elizabeth and Philip. One of the three women has ended up in an asylum, framed, and now she has appealed to the other two for help. But their friendship ended long ago, on D-Day. If they don’t reconcile, a spy who operated out of Bletchley Park might continue to walk free.

The differences among our three protagonists is key to the success of The Rose Code, at least for me. I love how Quinn gives each of them such distinct motivations, personalities, etc. Firstly, it helps reify the setting—though England remains very stratified, WWII certainly changed much in terms of social mobility, particularly for women and the nature of marriage. Secondly, it makes the falling out among Osla, Mab, and Beth that much more understandable and realistic. The actual reasons they each have for souring on the others seem a bit trivial—but isn’t that how it goes? Aren’t we all capable of undeserved or unexpected spitefulness, especially when emotions are running high?

This book just gave me so many feelings for these three. I related quite a bit to Beth. Though my childhood was much happier than hers, I share her mathematical inclinations. Quinn has clearly written her to be neurodivergent, possibly autistic. I love the character development that Beth undergoes as her work at Bletchley Park draws her out from the mask she built in her mother’s home. I also sympathized a lot with Mab and her fierce desire for independence. Osla was probably the character with whom I identify the least—so it is all the more impressive that Quinn had me caring for her and understanding her need not to be written off as a high-society bimbo.

The code-breaking setting of the story also feels quite real, thanks to the intense amount of research Quinn put into it. The chapters are tight, paced in such a way that I really didn’t want to put this book down. Quinn carefully balances historical events, up to and including the end of the war and Elizabeth’s wedding, with the need for smaller stakes and antagonists within the reach of our protagonists. The bad guy in this book is not particularly interesting, I grant you, but he’s sufficient for Osla, Mab, and Beth to grab on to as an enemy. The stakes here are less about losing a war and more about losing one’s friendship, perhaps one’s life…. (Lobotomies sound terrifying!)

In the hands of another author, The Rose Code easily could have become a huge mess. I didn’t know exactly what to expect going in, but I’m glad that I finally found my way back to Kate Quinn. This book has so many different entry points I can see it appealing to a broad variety of readers. It was a really pleasant way to say goodbye to the final days of my summer reading on my deck.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Four years ago feels almost like a lifetime for me, but that’s when Sara Barnard published Beautiful Broken Things and kicked off this loose trilogy. From Caddy to Suzanne to Rosie, we’ve come full circle. Now the three girls are on the cusp of womanhood, two of them university-bound, the other working a full-time job. Told from Rosie’s perspective, Something Certain, Maybe embraces the uncertainty inherent in youthful transitions and coming of age. It’s a story of slow, simmering upset and long-term, lingering emotions. Barnard is just so good at writing from the heart, and this novel is no exception.

Rosie Caron has made it, or so she thinks. The pharmacy program. A vocation. But her time at uni quickly descends into disappointing doldrums of unsympathetic housemates, difficult coursework and long hours of classes, and the gulf of distance from her best friends. Only Jade offers a bright light in all this: Jade, older and more confident in her queerness, her role in life, seemingly her everything. Rosie latches on to Jade like a romantic life preserver. Except not everything is OK in Rosie’s life—not her mum, not her friends, not her housemates, not even the once-bedrock certainty of her choice of career. Soon, things feel like they are all spinning out of control, and Rosie has to decide if she wants to confront the one constant amidst this upset: herself.

I get Rosie quite a bit. It has been several years since I spent time with her, Suzanne, and Caddy, but suddenly it feels like I’m back with friends. The way she wants to be part of a group but doesn’t really know how. The awkwardness she feels. The desire to have a plan. Oh, yeah. Not bi, myself, didn’t drink in university (don’t drink now)—but I get it.

Barnard is very good at deciding which events to highlight, which ones to mention in passing versus drawing out. Often, young adult and new adult books focus on telling grand coming-of-age stories, with pivotal scenes happening as the protagonist experiences a party, has a fight with her bestie, etc. Don’t get me wrong—such storytelling is immensely valuable. But I also find value in the big quiet that Barnard demonstrates here. The way Rosie just casually drinks and goes to these parties and gets her first girlfriend (go, girl). I though Jade’s initial erasure of Rosie’s bisexuality might be the sign of a biphobic subplot, but in reality this book is just a great big slice of queer acceptance.

No, the conflict here comes from the most mundane and ordinary moments of drama. A lot of it is manufactured by Rosie herself—not on purpose, of course, but in that unfortunate way we all have of making our lives harder on ourselves. As Rosie’s dissatisfaction turns into depression, she naturally responds with denial. Now, I’ve never experienced chronic depression myself, so I won’t comment on how accurate a portrayal this is—but it feels very real to me, because it feels so unremarkable. Rosie is living with a mental illness, just getting by, but every little hit is a little harder as a result. From conflicts with Suzanne and Caddy to spats with Jade and finally her mother’s issues, Rosie struggles more because she already has a great weight on her.

It’s really tough to admit to yourself that your plan isn’t what you wanted after all.

Another quirk? Throughout the entire story, Barnard throws us character after character who delivers compassion. At one point, Rosie meets with her adviser about finishing out her first year. Some books would make this character a mouthpiece for an unsympathetic university establishment—after all, the more cynical among us might point to all the examples of universities hearding students through like cash cows and not caring about their mental health. While there is truth to that systemic story, there are also people doing their best for students, like this adviser does for Rosie, and it’s heartening to see that.

The same goes for Rosie’s relationship with Jade. It gets rocky, of course, and I won’t reveal how it ends. But the best part of it is the gentleness throughout. It’s a healthy relationship, one in which they allow each other space to recover from arguments, then they talk it out. I loved seeing this portrayal.

You’ll notice that unlike my reviews of Beautiful Broken Things and Fierce Fragile Hearts, I haven’t quoted extensively while praising this book. Partly that’s because autumn and a new school year caught me unawares, and so I’m writing this review two weeks after finishing the book, oops. Partly it’s because, while I enjoyed this book a great deal, and I get Rosie, the book didn’t speak to as much as Fierce Fragile Hearts did. For one thing, the friendship elements were less in the foreground, and we all know that’s ultimately where my interests lie.

Nevertheless, Something Certain, Maybe is yet another solid novel from Sara Barnard and only reaffirms my desire to read everything she ever publishes. This is a comfy type of new-adult fiction that I love.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

What if you could take your feelings of sorrow, hurt, grief, loss, etc., and surrender them up? And if, in turn, the person to whom you surrendered these feelings could use them to nourish a beautiful, if capricious, garden? That’s what In the Shadow Garden explores. Liz Parker’s dark romance thriller, set in a small town in Kentucky, is about what we do with our worst memories. But it’s also about friendship, family, and who we let into our hearts. Parker’s ability to conjure up a perfect storm of emotions is impressive. However, unlike its eponymous garden, this novel didn’t end up bearing fruit for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Forever for the eARC!

Yarrow, Kentucky. Three founding families: the Haywoods, the Bonners, and the Bakers. Except you can really ignore the Bakers, because they don’t figure much into the plot. The Haywoods are witches—most of them—and able to help ease the feelings around trauma. The Bonners make bourbon, and their distillery has never been more successful—or lucrative for the town of Yarrow—than since the Haywood matriarch allowed them to grow “dark corn” from seeds from the Haywood shadow garden. But twenty years prior to the start of this book, something terrible happened. The entire town chose to forget that summer. And now, with the death of a Bonner, everything comes back to what happened in 1997.

I love the premise and the setting Parker creates here. There are some great seeds of conflict, from Addison’s inability to wield her family magic effectively to Irene’s attraction to a prodigal Bonner son. The family dynamics, both within and among the families of Yarrow, are well done. The dialogue between family members is crisp. There’s a lot about the atmosphere of this book that made me think of Gilmore Girls for some reason—I think largely because of the grown-up mother/daughter relationship between Irene and Addison. That’s about the highest praise I can offer!

Beyond that, however, there isn’t much I can say that I enjoyed. The mystery/thriller aspects of the novel are underdeveloped. Most of the plot is predictable, the villains obvious and their motives uncomplicated. Even the secret of Addison’s parentage is obvious from pretty much the first time her hair colour gets mentioned. There’s a single red herring that is only half-heartedly dangled in front of our faces before it is hastily resolved to make way for the romance, which is tepid. Now, that’s my cup of tea when it comes to romance—but I was hoping to recommend this to one or two of my friends who enjoy romance more than I do, and I don’t think I will, simply because there’s no steam here. We get told there’s an attraction between the two characters involved, but it’s wooden (or at least, doesn’t seem distinct from any of the other relationships in this story).

The magic aspects are somewhat better off yet still stop short of truly hooking me. I love the idea of the shadow garden and the description of the Haywoods’ magic. As a tea drinker, I approve of the number of cups of tea consumed by everyone in this book! (As someone who doesn’t drink alcohol, I was less interested in all the bourbon consumption, but you do you!) Again, Parker’s descriptive writing skill is not in question—how she spins that into a story, unfortunately, is less rewarding for me.

Really all I can say about this book is that it feels full of missed opportunity, a garden planted and tended to with love yet never fertilized in a way that would let it flourish. I wish I could have been more excited by this book, because it’s a great concept. Parker could have done so much with this story. But the characters are flat, the plot overly simple, and the narrative unremarkable.

This one is a pass from me.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Truly I wish I had got my act together to read the eARC I received from NetGalley and Wednesday Books well before publication day so that I could then reread the copy I pre-ordered from my indie bookstore! Alas, procrastination got the better of me, so I dipped into the ebook the weekend prior and then finished I’m the Girl in all its hardcover glory. I braced myself for devastation, and I was not disappointed. Courtney Summers just seems to be continually reaching new heights of her powers. If I sound like a fangirl, it’s because I am one!

Sixteen-year-old Georgia Avis lives in small town Ketchum. With her mother having passed not too long ago, Georgia is supported by her hard-working older brother. But she has aspirations of her own: she wants to become an Aspera girl. Aspera is the ritzy private retreat on the outskirts of town, and Georgia’s mother worked there—as a cleaner—before being fired in disgrace. Georgia’s brother wants nothing to do with Aspera. But the sudden and shocking murder of the thirteen-year-old daughter of a police officer—on the road that leads to Aspera, no less—throws everything into turmoil and doubt. Even as Georgia’s desires seem to be within reach, she has to decide if that is truly what she wants—or would she rather figure out what she has with Nora, and who killed Ashley?

At its most basic, I’m the Girl is technically a murder mystery. Nora and Georgia are allies—albeit reluctant ones at first—in solving the murder of Nora’s sister. Indeed, this was my first impression of the book from the marketing I saw. But please don’t be mistaken: this is not a cozy sapphic detective team-up. It is brutal and twisted and you are not going to feel comfortable reading it. It’s about the ephemeral and illusory nature of power in a misogynistic society that regards women as bodies more than people. Ashley’s murder is a part of that, of course, as is what Georgia experiences. But there’s a reason that Georgia is the sole narrator of this book.

Georgia is young. Sheltered, even. Her mother has gone to great lengths to protect her from the harshness of this world, but of course, Georgia resents her for this. I love how Summers subtly reinforces Georgia’s youthful inexperience. At various times throughout the book, Georgia will casually remark about how she doesn’t know or doesn’t understand something, whether it’s how to do something on the computer or the meaning of a word. Sometimes these confessions are solely to us, the readers; sometimes they are to people in her life. It’s a small thing, but it reminds us that everything we read in this book is being filtered through the mind of a sixteen-year-old girl from a small town. Lots of books are like this, of course, but what I mean when I highlight this fact is that Georgia is more conduit than character.

Indeed, this book at times feels like an arthouse film where the cinematography and scene structure matters more than the acting. If I have a criticism of I’m the Girl, it’s mainly that Georgia receives very little character development for a protagonist. She is stubbornly fixated on becoming an Aspera girl, even as the flags around her turn deeper and deeper shades of red. I bet that if I head over to the Goodreads reviews of this book, I’ll see—yep, there’s a bunch of 1-star reviews highlighting this flaw. And I get it! We all want to see an innocent protagonist who gets taken advantage of, victimized, abused, grow and challenge her abusers and somehow win. Summers is as stubborn as Georgia in refusing to give us that satisfaction. If you have read Sadie then you shouldn’t be surprised, though you are allowed to be disappointed.

But I don’t really even consider this a criticism on my part if I look at the book through that different artistic lens. Georgia is how Summers distills the theme of the book into a reasonably linear narrative. Georgia doesn’t change for most of the book because part of the point of I’m the Girl is that our world doesn’t change, at least not in this respect. Even after #MeToo and #TimesUp, even when a big man falls and ends up in prison for his crimes, the fundamental fabric of our society remains patriarchal. The players and pawns change but the game itself does not.

With this in mind, an ending that might feel frustrating and meaningless becomes, in many ways, the most uplifting part of the book. There is incredible power not just to the final line itself, but to how the book design actually supports its delivery. The line is its own final chapter, and the book is typeset in such a way that it appears on the verso, so you’re forced to turn the page before seeing it. The last thing you read, the penultimate line, is “I bring my hands to the necklace.” In that moment, everything Georgia has experienced hangs in the balance. The necklace is a metaphor for the life Georgia has been trying to build for herself, at only sixteen. What she does next is everything, is an indication of where Georgia will be going from here. So you have to pause. You have to take in the blank space at the end of the chapter, a yawning lacuna fraught with possibility, before turning the page to read that final line and learn Georgia’s fate—or at least, rather, get the barest of hints. It’s brilliant.

Summers has a well-deserved reputation for devastation, a reputation I have long agreed with in my reviews. Make no mistake: I’m the Girl is a devastating novel. As I said earlier, it’s brutal. There are graphic depictions of the body of a murdered girl and multiple scenes of rape. This is not a nice book to read; I didn’t particularly enjoy it. If you came here looking for a more straightforward thriller, I think you’ll be very disappointed. Similarly, though this book will inevitably be labelled as young adult thanks to its protagonist’s age, it is not. Not really. But the book’s refusal to conform to neat genre lines isn’t the book’s problem; it’s ours.

Indeed, you can dislike this book and criticize it for being a hot mess of an experiment—as long as you recognize that’s what it is. And that, I think, is what I am celebrating here as a Courtney Summers fangirl. A decade ago, Summers was writing relatively straightforward young adult narratives about how we fuck up the lives of high school girls. They were good, sometimes even great, and even then Summers demonstrated her power to plumb the depths of teenage angst. But her last three novels have, in my estimation, eclipsed her earlier works by dint of her willingness to play with story structure and character in a way that she did not or could not before. I can see how someone coming to this book as their first Summers experience, or coming to it hoping for a retread of any of her previous works, might feel let down. I can’t say that I feel that way, though, because all I feel is awe.

Despite Summers being the Queen of Devastation, and despite this novel being so unrelenting in its brutality, I feel compelled to conclude that this might be one of the more hopeful entries in Summers’ entire repetoire. Is that weird? Like, Sadie remains my far-and-away favourite simply for the indelible space that girl has set up in rent-free in my mind, but that book is also quite graphic and bleak in its telling and does not, in my opinion, offer even the smallest morsel of hope for a better future. I’m the Girl, on the other hand, grants us at least one moment of hoping for something more.

Our world doesn’t change, alas. Georgia’s story is too many girls’ stories. It shouldn’t be. One day, I hope, it isn’t. But until that time, novels like this bear witness to the fundamental flaws of our society. They refuse to glorify or excuse this violence, but they also don’t sanitize it. They refuse to let us look away. The powerful men at the centre of this story are truly heinous, yet they cannot operate with such impunity unless they are supported by people—including women—who manage to rationalize their complicity until they can still sleep at night. Because, yes, men do these awful things to women and girls. But the rest of us are the ones who keep letting them get away with it.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Sometimes being asexual (and in my case, aromantic) can feel very lonely, for reasons perhaps obvious but which I will elaborate on in a moment. In particular, it feels like we are usually an afterthought when it comes to research about queer people and sexuality. I know that’s not entirely the case, though, and am always looking to broaden my knowledge about those who study and write about asexuality. So of course I leaped at the chance to read Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown. Not only does it discuss the ways in which our society privileges allosexual people and pairings, but it also challenges some of my understandings as a white person, getting me to think about the intersections of racism and acephobia.

The book comprises twelve chapters (plus a foreword, introduction, and afterword). Each chapter explores a different dimension of compulsory sexuality, which is a term Brown uses to build on top of the more well-known compulsory heterosexuality, which is the idea that social pressures encourage and reward heterosexual expressions of love and desire and punishes those who deviate from that norm. In uplifting voices on the asexual spectrum and research into asexuality, Brown wants to emphasize that beyond compulsory heterosexuality, there is a wider idea that sex itself is a requirement for full admittance into the human experience. Hence, compulsory sexuality: moving the gatekeeping goalposts so that queer people are OK as long as they’re having sex with someone, but if you don’t actually care all that much about sex … well, that is just a bridge too far!

This privileging of sex as a determiner of identity has long bothered me, and I’m glad more people are calling it out. Your sexual orientation is whom you’re attracted to, not who you do, if you know what I mean. Yet even in queer spaces, the performance of sex and sexuality often become more important than the underlying attraction. Brown argues that this is inherently exclusionary of ace people:

 

This can be a touchy subject among queer rights activists, and understandably so. A great deal of the queerphobia lobbed our way these days comes in the form of accusations that we are predatory, as the recent co-opting of groomer by far-right activists demonstrates. I get why allosexual queer people are very invested in celebrating non-normative sex and sexuality in a healthy, sex-positive way. Yet I appreciate that Brown is unyielding on this point:

 

That is to say, the way our mainstream society oversexualizes/hypersexualizes queer people is an intentional form of controlling and minimizing our queerness as a political and personal identity. It is a radical act, therefore, to reposition our queerness along those axes—and in doing so, realigning allosexual queers and asexual queers.

 Brown’s unrelenting grounding of asexuality in the history and politics of queer liberation is refreshing. She makes it clear that we have always been here, always been a part of queer movements. It’s gratifying to see it all spelled out this way in black and white, for so often, asexual exclusion takes the form of asexual erasure. This is a book that is determined to make us feel seen.

Then we have the way Brown discusses how compulsory sexuality overlaps and interlocks with anti-Black racism, especially misogynoir, along with fatphobia. She relates well-known stereotypes of Black people, such as the Jezebel, Mammy, Mandingo, etc., to compulsory sexuality, demonstrating how white supremacy has long set up a correlation between hypersexualization and race (at least in the eyes of white people). Hence, Black asexual people face additional challenges that white asexual people like myself don’t because they also carry the burden of numerous racist stereotypes. Something I really like about Brown’s presentation of these ideas is the way she works them into every chapter, truly ensuring that this important element receives thorough examination instead of, say, a token chapter like it might be given in another scholar’s work.

Indeed, while I would have read this book even if it was solely about asexuality, the intersectional component is what truly got me excited. As a white person, it’s important to me that I understand not just the privilege I have in terms of how society treats me but also the ways in which our society has shaped my very thinking. Brown does not mince her words:

 

I’m being called out—and I appreciate it. I think this is one of the most pressing challenges that white queer activists face right now, i.e., acknowledging how we inadvertently work against the overall cause for liberation by refusing to acknowledge the presence of race and role of racism in our spaces. This book is a direct challenge to any claims on asexuality as a bulwark of whiteness and white supremacy. While we white asexuals might not be intentionally perpetuating those ideas, we have grown up with them and internalized them. So this book, in addition to validating us, will challenge us in the best possible ways.

 And Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is so validating! The older I get, the more that compulsory (hetero)sexuality bothers me. I used to think that I had escaped it, having grown out of the dating-heavy period of my twenties wherein all my peers seemed to be hooking up and then shacking up. I thought that once I reached the refuge of my thirties, I could start my inevitable evolution into the “cool spinster aunt,” the friend who would take your kids for a night when you wanted to fuck, the perpetual bachelorette sipping tea on her deck, ready when you called to vent about your partner. That was supposed to be my life!

But I am realizing that compulsory sexuality will continue to stalk me through my decades, evolving as I evolve yet ever present. Nowadays it’s the gentle but hollow caress of loneliness as I watch more of my peers pair off and embark on a new phase of their lives that I have opted out of. (Brown introduced me to chrononormativity, coined by Elizabeth Freeman, to identify this idea that our lives should unfold along a particular trajectory as determined by social and cultural norms.) I have no desire to have a partner of any kind, to have children of my own; I enjoy living by myself—yet I live within a society that is constantly telling me such a state is unnatural, pitiable at best and deviant at worst.

Please believe me, my allosexual readers, when I say that you don’t truly understand how much of our world is built upon this assumption that sex and sexual attraction are required and normative. You don’t. It isn’t just the idea that our society itself has become over-sexualized, the so-called “raunch culture” that other books I’ve read have tried to unpack. It goes so much deeper than that, intersecting, as Brown notes, with forces like white supremacy. For us asexuals, it’s a world that holds us at arm’s length, misunderstanding or mistrusting us.

But maybe if you read this book, you can get a glimpse into my world. Truly the most fulfilling part of this book for me is Brown’s unapologetic tone. Early on she calls out how we asexual writers often attach disclaimers and qualifiers to our statements: oh, some ace people masturbate; some of us choose to get married or even have sex; some of us might even enjoy sex! Partly we do this because the asexual spectrum is incredibly diverse, ranging from people who experience zero sexual attraction, like myself, to people whose attraction fluctuates based on factors ranging from time to connection to someone. But we also do this because of internalized acephobia and this idea that we need to make ourselves more palatable to allosexual readers, reassure you that we are actually Just Like You! Brown recoils from this, as do I (though I freely admit I am guilty of acceding to the pressure to do this in my blog posts), and it endeared me to her writing immediately.

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is not just a succinct and edifying work of Black asexual scholarship: it’s an unyielding assertion of the belongingess of asexuality in our society and sociology. Not only does this book make me feel seen, but it makes me feel valued and recognizes my humanity. It centres me in a way that many queer conversations do not, even when they are inclusive of me. If you have any interest in a more scholarly read about sex and sexuality in our cultures, you need to read this. I received an eARC via NetGalley and North Atlantic Books, but I’ve already ordered a copy from my indie bookstore.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Much like author Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell discusses in the preface to this book, I adore wearing dresses (and skirts, though I find them slightly more difficult because you then need the right top). She’s preaching to the choir when she talks about wearing them pretty much exclusively. For me as a trans woman, dresses are my way of embodying and expressing my femininity (they are not, of course, the only way to be feminine). I’ll talk more about that later in the review. For now, I’m happy that NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press provided the eARC! Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century is a thorough overview of how skirts and dresses have evolved in response to our changing society and cultures. I learned a lot, and it gave me a lot to think about.

This book is not for the fashion faint of heart! Now, it’s ok if you are a fashion neophyte like me! I don’t know much about fashion. I recognized a couple of the bigger names dropped here—Chanel, Dior, Versace, et al—but Chrisman-Campbell demonstrates why she is the fashion historian and I am not with the effortless way she elucidates connections among fashion designers, fashion houses, and various other parts of the industry. I added a great many words to my vocabulary as I read. So unless you too have studied fashion history already, be prepared to be immersed in a whirlwind of new ideas and concepts.

The book is structured into ten chapters, each of which is named after a particular garment: the delphos, the wrap dress, the little black dress, the mini skirt, etc. Upon this structure, Chrisman-Campbell layers and drapes and pins on the development of milestones in dress and skirt fashion. Though the chapters are arranged in a loosely chronological way, Chrisman-Campbell continually revisits important touchstones in history, such as the two world wars, to connect their dramatic reshaping of Western society to the particulars of the garment she’s discussing at the time. Hence, Chrisman-Campbell spends much of the wrap dress chapter commenting on Diane von Furstenberg’s iteration of it, she does trace its origins to the taxicab dress earlier in the century, created in response to women needing to get in and out of their dresses more easily and with fewer hands to assist.

It’s somewhat of a truism that the world wars, particularly the Second World War, upended the social order. For that reason, much of what Chrisman-Campbell has to say might feel at first glance very obvious. What makes Skirts so enduringly edifying, then, are the particular facts that she brings to bear in each moment. It’s one thing for an historian (or even a grandstanding layperson holding court at a dinner party) to make sweeping proclamations about how the Second World War liberalized clothing customs or whatever. It’s another thing entirely to drill down into the details and the nuance—the way that hemlines fluctuated over the decades, for example. Shorter hemlines were a response to rationing of fabric during the war, and longer hemlines took over afterwards as a sign of prosperity, only to rise again as fashion designers carved out a new category, teenager. As Chrisman-Campbell tracks these decade-by-decade, sometimes year-by-year, changes, she names names and even goes so far as to cite specific shows, catalogues, or photographs that incited new fashion. It’s so much more complicated than “shorter hemlines correlate to women’s liberation.” It’s a complex ecosystem of designers, celebrity models, advertising campaigns, parties, entertainment media, and yes, the economy.

As the subtitle of the book suggests, and as Chrisman-Campbell refines in her introduction when she traces the metonymy of skirt, ultimately she is trying to unpack the complicated way in which skirts and dresses are linked to each era’s concept of femininity and women’s bodies. Women’s dress has historically been a tool for exclusion, for titillation, or even for asserting power. The shifting nature of what is acceptable, when, and where reveals a lot about how our society polices women’s bodies. There’s also a need to be intersectional in this conversation, for Black women, fat women, and disabled women receive more scrutiny and censure than white, able-bodied, or thin women.

Ultimately, I’m not sure how successful Skirts is at having that intersectional conversation. That probably means it’s not as successful as it should be. To her credit, Chrisman-Campbell signals that she is aware of the need for this intersectionality and brings it up on occasion. She mentions the misogynoir that Serena Williams has faced on the tennis court over. Later, she touches upon the queering of fashion, from dancehall and Pose to male celebrities like Kurt Cobain and Harry Styles wearing dresses. All in all, I think Chrisman-Campbell tries to be inclusive, but she could do more to acknowledge how the fashion industry has historically been white and cisnormative—partly because fashion was, until the middle of the twentieth century, very much a rich person’s game as well.

That’s the other area in which I was expecting more from this book: commentary. Each chapter is very illustrative and comprehensive in tracing influences, developments, etc. Yet Chrisman-Campbell mostly saves her editorializing for the introduction and conclusion. I can understand the possible reasoning behind this writing decision, yet for a book that seems to aim broader than an academic audience, it doesn’t do much to establish Chrisman-Campbell’s voice, as a writer, throughout. Consequently, I was less excited in the reading of the book than I was by how much I had anticipated reading it!

I was drawn to Skirts because I was drawn to skirts. Well, mostly dresses. I came out as transgender two-and-a-half years ago. Part of my social transition has involved redefining my wardrobe in a way that authentically represents my gender. For me in particular—not, I want to stress, for all trans women—this means dresses. I really identified with what Chrisman-Campbell says about how comfortable they are, how easy it is to slip into one before you go about your day … I love dresses. Embracing the dress was a way of embracing the womanhood that had, until recently, eluded me. Replacing my old wardrobe with a new one full of dresses was a transcendent experience: gone were a couple of mix-and-match separate sweaters and jeans and dress pants (for work); in came the dresses in a riot of colours and patterns and prints, particularly polka dot. I love polka dot. Also, because I’m a knitter, I have now knit myself two skirts, projects which have once more helped me connect with and reaffirm my femininity.

So reading this book was, for me, an important way of connecting with traditions of femininity that are my heritage but were denied to me as a result of being assigned male at birth. When I put on a dress in the morning to go to work—whether it’s a comfy wrap, slinky sheathe, flowing midi, etc.—I’m joining a long tradition of women embracing not just fashion as it exists in this moment in time but echoes of fashions past. (In my particular case, I have quite a late ’50s/early ’60s vibe in a lot of my wardrobe aesthetic—I adored hearing about how tights took over in the 1960s as hemlines rose again.) In an era where we are, hopefully, all starting to become more aware of the harms of fast fashion, learning about the history of our clothing is as important as understanding the present state of the fashion industry.

Skirts is therefore one of those books I would recommend in this way: if the description sounds like it’s a book for you, then it’s going to be a book for you. It is exactly what it says on the tin.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Did you expect 2022 to be the Year of Tanya Huff for me? Neither did I! But when Into the Broken Lands became available on NetGalley from DAW, I couldn’t not request it. I picked up some of her earlier secondary-world fantasy (Sing the Four Quarters) from the used bookstore but haven’t read it yet, so my experience with Huff has been limited to her urban-fantasy offerings. So I leaped at this chance to read a different type of fantasy from a Canadian author whose storytelling I enjoy, even if her writing hasn’t always worked for me. I wanted to see what she was like in a different element, and I got my wish.

In a severe case of Aerith and Bob, Ryan is the Heir of Marsan, whether he likes it or not. He has travelled the Mage Road for its requisite twenty-eight days from Marsanport to Gateway, a town built atop ruins. There, he hopes to embark on a quest into the—wait for it—Broken—I said wait for it—into the Broken Lands. With me so far? He’s got your standard group of warriors, rogues, mages (but they’re called scholars because mages got a bad wrap after breaking said lands), and even a tank in the form of Nonee, aka “the weapon.” As Ryan quests for fire—er, fuel for a symbolic fire that burns back in Marsanport—death visits the party because Huff is a mean DM. Oh, and there are flashback chapters to when Ryan’s granduncle, Garrett, did this all sixty years ago.

If my summary sounds tongue-in-cheek, believe me when I say that I enjoyed this book and am teasing it with love simply because it is so easy to tease! I seem to be on a fantasy kick at the moment with a lot of new books that attempt to recreate or pay homage to classic fantasy. As I noted in my recent review of The Oleander Sword, the best of these books do so in a way that improves on diversity and storytelling and makes it the author’s own while preserving the tropes of classic fantasy that make it so addictive to a reader like myself. Huff’s worldbuilding and cultural elements are not as refreshing as Suri’s, but I think she still manages to strike a good balance.

This book feels like a D&D adventure or an old-school quest narrative. The in-and-out structure makes it easy to follow, if a tad linear for my tastes. Huff tries to offset this with a dash of parallelism in the form of the flashbacks to Garrett and Arianna. These offer a contrast to what Ryan’s party experiences in terms of differing setbacks and hardships but mainly serve to establish the throughline of Nonee’s increasing sense of self and agency, which is arguably the most important and interesting part of the book.

Nonee was designed, shaped in the womb by a mage, to be a weapon. She has supernatural strength, endurance, etc. Ever since Ryan’s ancestors fled the Broken Lands and founded Marsanport, she has been with them, a potent reminder of a past filled with now-forbidden magic. Is she a person though? Most of the scholars and nobility who had access to her in Marsanport would have said no. When Ryan arrives in Gateway, where Nonee has lived for the past sixty years, he probably would have said no based on all the stories he was told. But we know better, of course, and Ryan soon learns better, as does much of his party. The question Huff actually wants us to ponder is a little more interesting than the simple affirmation of personhood; she wants us to ask, “Who is Nonee if she isn’t just a weapon?”

As we ponder this, we’re treated to an adventure narrative featuring monsters, traps, and the madness of mages of a bygone era. Huff delivers all of this in her usual expressive style, along with banter and humour among her characters that is familiar to me from her Gale Women and Keeper novels. There’s a little less focus on sex in this book, which I enjoyed, but don’t worry, there’s still some good innuendo and a fair amount of queerness here as well. Huff is very good at writing characters who are believably flawed, people like Ryan who are only trying their best, or Lyelee, corrupted by her thirst for knowledge.

I like how Huff sets up the general antagonism towards magic and mages as a function of the history of this world. It would have been cool to learn more about cultures outside Marsanport, like Shurlia, and their attitudes towards magic—we get tantalizing glimpses, but that’s all. It’s unclear from the marketing whether this book is meant to be standalone or the beginning of a series—to its credit, it can function as either; like so many chameleon novels, however, that makes it somewhat of a letdown as both.

See, I enjoyed this book a great deal—I was always eager to pick it up again after I had put it down—and it lived up to my expectations for it. But it only lived up to my expectations; it never once was in danger of exceeding them. Ryan’s quest is perilous, and at times its intensity becomes engrossing. Yet the resolution is about what I expected to happen. The characters develop roughly along the trajectory I expected them to develop. Nonee’s emotional journey she undergoes as she grieves for Arianna while simultaneously developing a grudging respect and camaraderie for Ryan? Par for the course.

This is a book that does everything it sets out to do with all the exquisite skill that a writer of Huff’s experience and talent can muster. It is a serviceable fantasy novel that scratches my itch for more classic epic fantasy. But it doesn’t swing big, doesn’t take advantage of the potential of the world Huff has created.

Would I read a sequel if one is forthcoming? Yes, absolutely. Huff and the book have both earned that much. Yet I don’t find myself clamouring for such a sequel quite as much as I need from other series. Into the Broken Lands is a fun, fulfilling fantasy adventure—but it just leaves me wanting instead of wanting more.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Last year I reviewed The Jasmine Throne and concluded with “Will I read the sequel? Not sure yet.” Well, thanks to NetGalley and Orbit giving me access to the eARC, the answer proved to be yes! I’m pleased to report that The Oleander Sword improves upon much of what I already liked about Tasha Suri’s first novel in this trilogy.

We pick up some months following the end of the first novel: Malini is prosecuting her civil war against her brother for control of the empire of Parijat. In Ahiranya, her love interest, Priya, is working with temple sister and fellow elder Bhumika following Ahiranya’s secession from the empire. Initially separated, events conspire to bring Priya and Malini back together, while Emperor Chandra resolves to crush his rebellious sister. Rumblings of old gods renewed mean that a mortal war may be the least of everyone’s worries.

It has been a while since I have enjoyed a military fantasy novel as much as this—or to be more accurate, a fantasy novel that depicts nations at war. Suri focuses less here on the logistics of campaign than the relationships among characters. I’m not knocking bean-counting fantasy novels if that’s your thing, but it is increasingly not for me. Whether we’re talking the star-crossed romance between Malini and Priya or the battle of wills between Malini and her generals, Suri delivers an ever-shifting set of circumstances that always left me wanting more.

At the same time, Suri delves deeper into the mythology of this world, and this is why I marked my review as containing spoilers: the yaksa are fucking terrifying. They land perfectly in that uncanny valley between human and eldritch horror: just human-like enough to feel relatable, except there is something so off about their conduct. Suri captures this perfectly by having the returned yaksa literally wearing the bodies of former temple elders. The yaksa are the type of gods who see humans as uninteresting except as worshippers. Their chilling amorality is, to me, a thousand times worse than a malevolent deity, because there is so little to bargain with when it comes to yaksa. Either you serve them or they wipe you off the board.

So whereas the magic in The Jasmine Throne was interesting and fresh but underdeveloped, here it becomes its own subplot, takes on its own life. Priya and Bhumika’s powers, the rot, and a deeper story of how the yaksa came to this world—all of it comes together quite nicely. To make things even juicier, there are no heroes in the building: the people who drove the yaksa from this world long ago? They worship either a nameless god or deities who demand that women willingly throw themselves into a fire to ascend. So, that’s not a great choice either….

Indeed, “there are no good choices” might sum up the theme of The Oleander Sword quite nicely. This is a book about sacrifice, both willing and unwilling. It’s about second chances and grand mistakes, as well as incredible gambits that fail more often than they succeed. It’s a book about the cruelty of doing what is right instead of what is easy.

So much of this book feels like Suri read a lot of classic fantasy and then said, “OK, but let’s make it diverse and make it my own.” You’ve got your multiple POV characters. You’ve got your maligned heir to the throne attempting to take what’s hers backed by a prophecy. You’ve got your priesthoods and religions and various gods ranging from merely “burning women at the stake” to “transforming you into an Ent if you piss them off.” You’ve got your two main characters in love but of course they can’t be together because reasons.

Basically, The Oleander Sword is catnip for fantasy readers. If, like me, you read The Jasmine Throne but were on the fence, give the sequel a try. I love it when I take a chance on the second book in a series and it elevates my opinion of the series and the first book. Now I’m excited for book 3.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

High time I read more nineteenth-century fiction! This summer I tackled Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë’s first novel. I knew that I had read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall prior to the pandemic and my transition, but wow—I didn’t expect it to be five years ago! How time passes quickly. It’s difficult to compare these novels given that they are quite different in their goals. Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a superior work of fiction overall, but Agnes Grey has a lot of heart to its storytelling.

Our eponymous heroine is the daughter of a clergyman who, because of his failing health, can no longer support his wife and two daughters. As Agnes comes of age, her prospects for marriage are slight (the introduction to this edition explains that, during the time Brontë was writing, eligible women outnumbered eligible men in England by a considerable margin, causing somewhat of a crisis!). She fixes on being a governess so as to earn money for herself and her family. This is easier said than done, however. Even after Agnes obtains a situation, she finds her charges very difficult to wrangle. The novel relates, from Agnes’s perspective, her time with the Bloomfield and then the Murray families. As Agnes struggles to find the respect and fulfilment she believes due to her as a governess, she also observes the lives of those around her. In this way, Brontë creates a delicate portrait of a slice of English life in the early nineteenth century.

Let me tell you: this novel was giving me flashbacks to my own two years teaching English schoolchildren! Agnes complains about the intractability of two or three children—try thirty! Nevertheless, I found her a likeable protagonist especially with her flaws. A story of a super-governess might make for a good musical, but a governess who struggles to manage the children in her care makes for a far more interesting story.

It’s tempting to read into this book much of Brontë’s own experiences, and indeed, the introduction does just that. Brontë worked as a governess for a time. Much like Agnes, Anne was at times treated like the baby of the family. While some of these similarities are undeniable, I think it is also important to read the work as a far broader attempt to chronicle the experiences of a young Englishwoman of a certain social standing.

Much of the narration is incredibly descriptive in style: Agnes will spend the majority of a chapter painting us a picture of the faults of the children in her care or relating a specific event she witnessed. Despite this, Agnes also has a fair amount of agency in her story. When she realizes that she is more of an erstwhile companion to the Murray children than a true governess, she seems to relax and decides to make the most of the situation. This includes doing things like visiting elderly people in the village and salivating over the new curate, Mr. Weston. We get to witness Agnes’s disappointment at feeling of the same social standing (or nearly so) with her charges, yet she is treated as a servant.

The ending comes upon us suddenly and wraps things up rather neatly. This is another area wherein Brontë shows her relative inexperience as a writer. Yet she makes up for this in the quality of feeling she puts into Agnes Grey. This is a book about teenage and new adult angst. It’s about not fitting in, feeling adrift. There’s probably even an argument to be made that Agnes is neurodivergent, though it’s difficult to ascribe that to fictional characters from the nineteenth century. For all these reasons, I enjoyed this novel and would recommend it to Brontë fans or indeed anyone looking to get into early Victorian literature.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.