Gosh, somehow I thought it was only a year since I read The Warrior’s Tale, but it has actually been two?? How time flies in this pandemic.

I was in a minor reading slump the week following Untamed, so when I went back to reading I wanted something I knew I could get through, something unchallenging. Kingdoms of the Night fits these criteria. As I have remarked in my previous reviews of this series, these are not exactly your most original or thought-provoking fantasy novels. In his introductions, Allan Cole makes it clear that he and Chris Bunch set out to replicate their science-fiction success in the fantasy genre in a practical, nearly formulaic way. It’s very similar to how David Eddings has approached writing fantasy, starting with his Belgariad series—and since the Belgariad was my gateway into fantasy, I suppose I have a soft spot for these kinds of books. Indeed, my vague memory of The Warrior’s Return, the next and final book of this quartet, is what motivated me to go back and re-read these.

In this installment, Amalric Antero returns as the narrator. He’s an old guy and definitely no longer interested in sex unless you magically rejuvenate him and dangle the sexy granddaughter of his one-time protégé, Janos Greycloak, in front of him … and what are the odds … what’s that? That’s exactly what happens? Oh. OK then.

Amalric and the new Greycloak set off on an adventure to find the real Far Kingdoms, because the one that he and the old Greycloak found in the first novel were but a poor reflection, much like what C.S. Lewis pulled with Narnia. What ensues is very much your typical hero’s journey adventure narrative, complete with a series of obstacles to overcome, a literal demonic villain, and heroism aplenty for all our major and minor characters alike.

I want to say this is better than either of the first two books, that Cole and Bunch have improved, but honestly … it’s more of the same. If anything, The Far Kingdoms had more heft to it because Amalric faced more internal conflict and character development. In this book, as a fully formed adventurer, he is much more confident in himself—but he doesn’t really have to struggle with his inner demons, just the outer ones, and they aren’t as scary. As much as Cole and Bunch try to add depth to their world through spiritual aspects of the study of magic, the characters don’t live up to these aspirations. Most of them are flat, one dimensional, and even the main characters like Amalric are two dimensional at best.

Now, there are some redeeming qualities. Once again, this book features at least a whiff of queerness (though, sadly, the explicitly gay character is killed off page before we even meet him). I say this only to remark on it as a book from the late 1990s including such views.

Also, while the plot is formulaic and predictable, I would hardly call it plodding or pedestrian. I like to think of books like this as B-movies. I’m not going to heap praise on it, but if it’s on TV one afternoon I would watch it (or stream it if I’m in the mood for something mindless). That’s what Kingdoms of the Night provides, exactly what I was looking for: a simple fantasy story with a happy ending that I didn’t have to think too much about.

I’m not mad about it.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

A few chapters into Untamed, Glennon Doyle opened one of her essays with, “I have a son and two daughters, until they tell me otherwise.” Just like that, I knew I was safe reading this book. There is an acceptance of the reader here that I found quite powerful. It isn’t just that Doyle is sharing a lot about her past, her traumas, her hopes, her mistakes, her triumphs. It’s that she is willing to take the time to make us feel welcome in these pages.

Also, props to her and her publisher for the one-word title with no subtitle. That’s a power move.

I first heard of Doyle when she was a guest on Justin Baldoni’s Man Enough podcast. She shared a story, also in this essay collection, about a time that her kids had friends over. She asked if anyone wanted something to eat: all the boys said yes, right away; the girls looked at each other as if trying to figure out a collective answer, and then one of them responded in the negative. Doyle claims this demonstrates a difference between how we socialize boys and girls—the former look within, the latter look to each other when making decisions. It’s an interesting idea vaguely reminiscent of Eugenia Cheng’s ideas of ingressive and congressive behaviours. Anyway, I was intrigued enough by what Doyle had to say that I bought Untamed, bolstered by my bestie’s positive words about it as well.

I was not let down.

There’s a lot about Doyle’s life that I can’t identify with. She was raised in a relatively conservative Christian upbringing, which led to her marrying her boyfriend when she discovered she was pregnant, having three kids with him, before finally divorcing him at forty and falling in love and marrying a woman. This story unfolds in bits and pieces, not always in order, in Untamed. But as the title of the book implies, Doyle’s thesis is far more general than these specific experiences might imply: often, in our lives, we feel like we have to follow a script. We have to do what is expected of us. We are, Doyle says, tamed. Her journey, then, was one of untaming herself, or as she puts it:

 

OK, that got me.

 I’ve told this story before on my blog, but basically, when I was wrestling two years ago with the prospect I might be transgender, I was awake in bed one Sunday night, turning it over in my head. “Ok, if I’m a girl, what would my name be?” I asked myself. Then I did what Doyle describes in this essay: I went deep into myself and knew. The name Kara just felt right to me in a way that was indisputable.

But beyond that, Doyle’s idea of being caged by her life until she decided to start living it on her own terms resonated so much with my experience of transition. I spent the first thirty years of my life being told at every turn by our society that I was male—and that this came with certain expectations. To be transgender—and to transition—is ultimately an act of untaming oneself. It’s a declaration that you will not let society dictate your identity any more. It certainly would have been easier for everyone if I hadn’t come out. That’s the message our transphobic society, sometimes with the help of hefty legal sanctions, is trying to foist upon trans people, particularly trans youth. Yet, as I said last year, I have never been happier than I have been since deciding to transition. Because now I am living my life on my terms.

So even though Doyle and I don’t share many experiences, her words felt true for me. Even though I’m not a parent, her thoughts on raising kids made me think a lot about how I interact with young people and the impressions I want to leave. Even though I’m not in a romantic partnership, her thoughts on how to love her partner—while also loving herself—made me think a lot about the friendships in my life that provide me the support and succour we often associate with romantic relationships. At every turn, Doyle’s writing had something in it for me to discover, muse about, and ultimately take into my heart.

I read this book in a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago—and then I had a bad week, during which I read nothing, before finally picking up a crappy fantasy novel (on purpose) the week after that. But I’m glad that if I had to enter a brief reading pause, Untamed was the book the preceded it. Even now I can feel the fire in my belly that Doyle’s words lit as I read it. If, like me, you are a white woman, you will probably come away feeling like you want to push back against cisheteropatriarchy—at least I hope so. I won’t claim to speak about how women of colour might read this book—Doyle acknowledges she has made missteps when it comes to being antiracist, and since I don’t know much about her public platform beyond this book, I’m not sure I can comment.

So even though I greatly enjoyed this book and, four months into 2022, it’s the best non-fiction book of the year for me so far, I won’t say this is universal. But there is power here. Perhaps the best moment in the book is when Doyle reminds us to “feel it all.” She’s referring to all our emotions, even the ones we usually consider negative. She’s reminding us it’s OK not to be OK, that we can’t be happy all the time, even if that’s the grift society pushes on to us. It’s a sentiment I have long tried to express to my ride or die as she navigates difficult and emotionally tumultuous changes in her life.

In a world where women are so often told we are not enough in so many ways, Untamed unapologetically calls out this bullshit and reminds us that we are enough—but we have to start playing by our rules instead of the rigged playbook we grew up with.

Oh, and she’s funny too.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Something about the description of this book made me give it a chance even though I’ve been turned off generation ship stories lately. Perhaps it was the fact that the story is confined to a single generation, rather than attempting to span the multiple generations of the ship’s journey. Adam Oyebanji uses the setting to tell an interesting story of political intrigue and cover-ups, mystery, and some intense action. While there are parts that don’t quite cohere into the whole, overall, it’s a pretty good yarn.

 Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

 Braking Day takes place just as the Archimedes and its two sister ships near their destination of Tau Ceti. Ravinder (Ravi) Macleod is training to be an engineering officer, but his family name is already a strike against him. While dealing with this prejudice, Ravi also starts to notice that not all is right with the Archimedes. Certain things don’t add up—but why? Is this sabotage by the BonVoyers—a protest group that doesn’t want the fleet to colonize an alien world, extirpating its indigenous life? Or is there something even more sinister afoot, something that has perhaps been hidden from Ravi and the rest of his generation?

I can’t go into too many details here without immediately getting into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say, I predicted the twist that happens halfway through the novel, and the final reveal was a little disappointing. Nevertheless, I appreciate how Oyebanji takes the time to construct credible, competing belief systems stemming from the history on Earth—namely, how some people embraced implants (hence becoming cyborgs) while rejecting artificial intelligences, and others did the opposite. Everything that happens, and the cold war situation that drives the largest conflict of this story, makes sense from a narrative perspective, and I appreciate that.

I also liked that Oyebanji took the time to discuss the ethics around humanity spreading out among the stars. Do we have the right to displace indigenous life on another world simply so we can colonize it and make our mark? The fact that there are different perspectives on this from characters in the novel allows the reader to grapple with the complexity. While there is a twinge of dystopia here—Ravi is often struggling to afford the water rations to do things like shower, and it’s clear that the closed-loop system of the fleet is nearing its end of life—this novel is ultimately optimistic about the chances of a generation ship succeeding in its journey. I love how Oyebanji portrays the society that has sprung up on these three vessels, along with Ravi’s critiques of it.

Despite my disappointment with some parts of the reveal, I don’t want to be too harsh, because Braking Day kept me reading. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I couldn’t put it down. Nevertheless, I really wanted to find out the solutions to the various mysteries that Ravi had started to unravel.

On that note, without spoiling, let me praise this book for wrapping up those mysteries by the end. This could easily be the start of a series, but if it is not, it works fine as a standalone novel as well. There are enough dangling plot threads to start a new story—either with the same characters or perhaps their descendants—but the questions raised in this book get answered. This is a delicate balance to achieve, and Oyebanji nails it.

Overall, I would characterize this novel as fun, fraught with danger, and fulfilling in its promises to the reader.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Well, turns out the destination is Canada, which isn’t quite the same as anywhere but certainly has enough range to come close.

Sara Barnard sneakily published this novel last year and didn’t tell me! Barnard’s young adult novels are inevitably, heartbreakingly poignant. Her most recent that I had read, Fierce Fragile Hearts, left an indelible mark upon my soul for the way that I, as an aromantic and asexual person, felt seen by Barnard’s careful, honest portrayal of friendship as equal to romantic love. Even now just reading that review from 2019 makes me ache thinking about how much of a revelation that book felt like for me.

So naturally, I was excited to read Destination Anywhere. While it didn’t grab me the same as Fierce Fragile Hearts did, I also didn’t have that expectation. I just wanted a good story with some meaning behind it, and that’s exactly what I got.

Peyton King has no friends. For a brief, shining year in sixth form, she thought she might have found some. That didn’t work out. So now this seventeen-year-old has bought a plane ticket with her dad’s credit card and flown across the world to Vancouver, Canada, where she plans to see the whole country (lol). With no plan and very little concept of how big Canada is, Peyton sets out on her grand adventures, interrupted only by flashback chapters here and there that tell us the story of how we got to now.

In case you all don’t know this about me, my most relevant identity for this review is that I am Canadian. So it was a lot of fun to see Barnard portray my country to her primarily British audience. According to her acknowledgements, she lived in Canada (in British Columbia) for a time, and I’m not surprised. Now, I actually have never been to BC—I live in a big but small town called Thunder Bay, Ontario, which Peyton bypasses on her journey east. But based on my lived experience as a Canadian, I can say that Barnard does a pretty good job at capturing what parts of our country she portrays!

Of course, Peyton isn’t running to Canada so much as away from the mess she perceives to be her life. I love the flashback story structure Barnard uses here. Each chapter unfolds a vignette from Peyton’s past yet leaves us wanting more before pulling us back to the present. Unlike some novels, however, the present-day chapters are just as compelling. Peyton falls in with a good group of older people who shepherd her and act as faithful friends—and maybe a love interest, I’m not telling. It’s sweet and could be saccharine were it not for the realistic way Barnard portrays Peyton’s social anxiety. This trip is not a panacea; the book does not end with everything in Peyton’s life OK again (or perhaps for the first time). And certainly Peyton gets lucky with her group of travelling companions; I wouldn’t recommend this book for another seventeen-year-old with wanderlust because I’m not sure they would be so lucky as Peyton is.

But quite a bit of this book spoke to me despite my adolescence differing greatly from Peyton’s. I had friends in high school and university. That being said, I can identify with Peyton’s disconnection from her friend group and anxiety, later, about making new friends. There is a universality to Barnard’s characterization that means, I suspect, many readers will resonate with at least parts of Peyton’s story, whether it’s the reactions of her parents (and brother) to her sudden trip or Peyton’s subsequent interactions with her former friends. In any event, I was reminded of what I adore so much about Barnard’s novels: the easy pacing, the way that even the more static characters are sketched with such care, and the gentle heartache that emanates from our protagonist.

Destination Anywhere is a book about the pain of growing up, the pain of not being understood, and the fear of not finding your people. It is loud and bold but also subtle and sensitive. I devoured it in two days not just because it’s an easy read but because it kept my attention (and maybe even made me want to see more of my own country). Though far from my favourite of Barnard’s work, I’m happy I took the time to catch up, and I’m very excited for her upcoming novel, Something Certain, Maybe!

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

There is a story going around about Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time wherein his publisher told him that each equation included in his book would halve the book’s sales. Consequently, Hawking chose to include only Einstein’s equation from special relativity, E=mc^2. The book was beyond successful for any book about theoretical physics in its day (and I quite liked it when I read it, especially the special illustrated edition). Michael Dine has gone a similar route. This Way to the Universe bills itself as “comprehensible to anyone with a high-school level education, with almost no equations.” It mostly lives up to this expectation, though there are a few moments in the weeds. It’s not so much that this book really got me thinking about physics knowledge, but as a teacher I really started thinking about physics education, as well as physics as a discipline.

Thanks to NetGalley and Dutton Books for the eARC.

Dine eschews the chronological development of physics that is par for the course in these types of books. Though his treatment of the subject is loosely chronological, as it should be, he has chosen to focus more topically—he starts off, for example, talking about relativity before jumping back to provide some context with Newton. But as he dives into the world of quantum mechanics, he is never afraid to bring us forward a little bit to talk about new developments before taking us back to an earlier time as we move along to the next mystery. That might sound confusing, the way I explained it, but I assure you that it helps the reader understand connections between ideas that were developed decades apart and, when presented chronologically, feel disconnected.

As Dine explains how our thinking about the universe has changed, I pondered the audience for this book. This Way to the Universe is not a textbook per se—it’s not teaching physics. But it is also not quite a popular science book in the way I am used to; as the title aptly captures, Dine is taking us on a tour, as if he has invited us into a physics department for the day and we’re meeting all the principal players. It made me think about the fact that (from my limited recollection of high school physics at least—I never took it in university) it would be nice if we made physics students (perhaps all science students) read more narrative accounts of their discipline. Fewer textbooks and more contexts.

I particularly enjoyed that Dine was carefully aware of the legacy of sexism and colonialism in physics. He lauds Marie Curie and Emmy Noether while also pointing out how structural misogyny made their lives and careers more difficult, and he doesn’t hesitate to mention ongoing experiences of sexism with more recent women who have contributed to the field.

On a broader note, Dine does an excellent job of emphasizing the collaborative nature of science. This goes back to the topical approach he takes, which allows him to show how future theorists and experimenters built upon the theories and experiments of previous scientists. Though the usual suspects show up, Dine mentions more obscure people who nonetheless made significant contributions to the field. He helps paint the picture of physics as a discipline that advances more often through small contributions from a large number of people rather than brilliant theories spun by a couple of geniuses—those exist, but they are not the heartbeat of the field.

Finally, I respect that while Dine has certain biases and favourites when it comes to the frontrunners for a grand unified theory, he does his best to present an unbiased take on those candidates. Too often I read books where a physicist’s opinion is basically “my theory is the best and the other theories suck,” and I understand the need to be confident in one’s horse to get grant funding, but that’s not what I need as a layperson reading your book. I don’t want you to tell me that string theory is “almost there” and we just need another decade. Dine is honest about the limitations of our current theories and experiments, describes what is happening right now at the bleeding edge of physics, and makes it clear that there is still a lot we don’t know—but, excitingly, we have some inklings of how we might find out.

I come to this book steeped in general knowledge of physics from countless such books before this one. The more I learn, the more I am convinced I do not understand modern physics and possible cannot, not because I am not smart enough, but because I am too lazy to devote the time. Nevertheless, I appreciate Dine and others who take the time to try to explain their work as simply as possible to interested people like me, because it is valuable and important, and I might never understand it, but I am glad there are people out there who do. Or, as Dine puts it, understand parts of it.

I don’t think this is the best book to start your modern physics journey with. It is comprehensible to someone with a high-school education, yes, but if it has been a while since you learned about electromagnetism and atoms, you might want a more basic refresher before you dive into this book. Make it your second or third popular physics book, and you might be on the right track. But this is definitely a contender worth considering for its even writing, great treatment of the discipline as a whole, and careful explanations of what we know and what we don’t.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

As I reflected in my recent review of Children of Time, I’m not really in the mood for grimdark science fiction these days. I get that humanity is facing yet another existential crisis, this time thanks to climate change, and that this makes authors eager to write about us evacuating the planet and whatnot. But I just find it so bleak, and I yearn for hope. So when I first heard about Arkhangelsk by Elizabeth H. Bonesteel, I was very apprehensive. Nevertheless, I received an eARC from House Panther Publishing and NetGalley, and I gave it a shot. I’m really glad I kept an open mind, because Arkhangelsk pleasantly surprised me. This is not a book about bleakness. Much like Tchaikovsky’s novel, this is a book about hope.

An isolated outpost of humanity subsists, barely, on an icy world. The survivors of the great ship Arkhangelsk, these people have largely forgotten their past, clinging only to the knowledge that they fled an Earth ravaged by war and conflicting politics. Life is hardscrabble, but it is a life. Nevertheless, Anya is the Chief Peace Officer, and she is determined to get to the bottom of the latest in a long string of disappearances of women from the town. Then her world is torn asunder when another ship from Earth arrives in orbit. Suddenly, they are no longer alone.

This book starts as a murder mystery before taking a hard left turn and then slowly wending back into mystery territory and I am here for it. Bonesteel’s writing style honestly doesn’t do a lot for me, but her plotting is so careful and compelling that it was easy for me to read this book in big gulps.

The relationship between Anya and Maddie, the captain of the starship that arrives, is probably the most significant aspect of the book for me. The ups and downs feel very realistic considering the stresses that occur throughout the story, and I appreciate how Bonesteel plays the attraction between these characters as ambiguous. One can read it as romantic if one wants, but of course, your resident aromantic book reviewer always prefers to headcanon that it is platonic or queerplatonic instead. Anya and Maddie nevertheless have some kind of bond, yet the friction between them becomes an interesting and useful part of the story.

Some aspects of the plot, and the characters behind them, are fairly despicable. I like that Bonesteel is able to make these characters’ motivations very clear and understandable to us—they aren’t moustache-twirling villains even if that is how I feel about what they are up to. But the main enemy, in almost all senses, is time. The antagonists are working against the depredations of time on their genomes and bodies, and the arrival of new people from Earth heralds a new race against the clock, as it is only a matter of time before more ships arrive.

I also appreciate how the book highlights the irreplaceable importance of community and interdependence. This outpost cannot ultimately survive on its own, as much as many of its members would like to think so. Neither can the exiles. Nor can Maddie’s ship. The reconnection with Earth is terrifying in a cultural sense, for these people are rightly worried about what might happen to their fragile society as more and more people with strange ideas arrive. Yet the message is clear: we are stronger together. I, for one, find that heartening.

Arkhangelsk is what I might call a medley of a novel. It has several plots tightly curled together, mysteries and friendships and betrayals and a wistful admission that space travel is ultimately lonely yet perhaps … necessary. Bonesteel surpasses my expectations in a subgenre that often disappoints me with its unimaginative nihilistic view on humanity’s prospects. Instead, she elevates the challenges of this setting into a story that persuades me of its worthiness, and I don’t mind that one bit.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Let me begin by saying that everyone who says this book’s illustrations and layout are beautiful is absolutely right. As a print book, I suspect this would be gorgeous. I received an eARC from NetGalley and MIT Press, and it was a little harder to read on my phone screen, but that isn’t why I didn’t finish Rewilding. Rather, as beautiful and perhaps comprehensive a review of this subject as it is, I found Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe’s writing style incompatible with how I like my popular science books.

I first came upon the concept of rewilding when I read How to Clone a Mammoth last year. Beth Shapiro provided a great overview of the state of the ancient DNA field, and she mentioned many of the rewilding experiments that this book covers in more detail. I think it’s a fascinating and perhaps worthwhile enterprise; I want to be clear that I’m not objecting to this book based on its authors’ ideas (so far as I got through reading them). Instead, I didn’t appreciate their voice here.

When I read a science book, I’m happy for the authors to inject their own thoughts, opinions, and personality into their writing. However, I want them to be able to separate those biases from how they present the science itself. Jepson and Blythe don’t do that here.

Here’s an early example that raised my hackles: they present the overkill hypothesis as a settled fact within the scientific community. They laud Paul Martin as a visionary, a “time traveller” who has “the imagination and command of facts to think across eras and continents.” When they touch on “resistance to the overkill theory” they say, “In retrospect, it is interesting to ask why there was so much resistance to the overkill hypothesis” and then go on to say it was inexorably logical and blame conservation movements in the 1980s. Ok.

Look, I am not a scientist. I don’t even have a particularly deep knowledge of this subject as a layperson. But I can use Google, and I do have some sweet critical thinking skills, and literally the first result when I google “overkill hypothesis” is this meta-analysis from 2018. It concludes that the overkill hypothesis enjoys excellent support among ecologists, like Jepson and Blythe, but remains controversial among archaeologists, and it points to a breakdown in communication between these disciplines as a result for the discrepancy. Note that I’m not saying Jepson and Blythe are wrong to champion the overkill hypothesis—I just take issue with how they present it as more settled than it is, and how their anemic attempt at presenting “both sides” criticism makes it seem like critics are unreasonable or biased while they are not.

As I continued reading, I encountered more writing that left me on edge. Chapter 4 begins to talk about the rewilding experiments of past decades and says, “A few of these scientists had the combination of vision, boldness, powers of persuasion, and opportunity to try out new approaches….” When Jepson and Blythe describe the Oostvaardersplassen experiment, they say, “Frans Vera is someone with a genius for looking at things differently and assembling disparate forms of evidence to develop, test, and articulate new ideas. He is also fearless when it comes to challenging mainstream thinking….” I cannot stand this level of aggrandizement in a popular science book!

It is one thing to laud the accomplishments of scientists. Praise Marie Curie all you want for her contributions to theories of radioactivity in the face of institutional sexism. By all means, tell me that Vera did some good ecological research into rewilding. But stop trying to paint individual scientists as mavericks who challenge a system that is somehow otherwise going to hold back scientific progress. Sure, I am open to critiquing the conservatism within science—but that’s not the same thing as saying, “this person is a visionary!!1111.”

So I stopped reading after that. Your mileage may vary. As I said at the beginning, the illustrations and layout of this book are great—props to whatever designers worked on it. There is bound to be a lot of good, accurate, useful information to be learned here when it comes to environmental history, ecology, and the subject of rewilding in particular. Nevertheless, I personally could not stomach the biased writing any longer, and rather than trudge through the remaining seventy pages or so, I decided to call it a day.

I’m not panning the book to the point of saying don’t read it, but I hope that my review provides some perspective as you go into it.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

My best friend Rebecca gave this to me thinking it would be right up my alley—and she was correct. I read it while on a plane to visit her in Montréal, and we had some great conversations about Oona Out of Order. There are some obvious comparisons here, particularly to Slaughterhouse-Five. It also reminded me quite a bit of one of the most affecting novels I have ever read, My Real Children. Yet I also think Margarita Montimore has written a book that stands on its own.

Oona, much like Billy Pilgrim from the aforementioned Vonnegut, has become unstuck in time. But her parade through her personal timeline is a bit more orderly than Billy’s: Oona reliably hops at midnight on New Year’s, which also happens to be her birthday. This happens first when she is turning 19, on New Year’s 1982. Oona usually arrives in her new year to a note that the previous year’s self—who, more often than not, is a future self—has left for her. One of the challenges Oona’s selves struggle with is how much to divulge about each upcoming year. Say too little and acclimating can be awkward; say too much and spoilers make it difficult to enjoy the year ahead. Throughout, Oona wrestles with whether or not her fate is fixed, along with a host of other questions that arise when one lives life non-linearly.

For me, I think the central philosophical question raised by this book is simply this: would I choose to live my life out of order? Oona, of course,

doesn’t get a choice, nor do we learn why this happens to her.

At times she laments her non-linear life; at other times she admits there are advantages. I think we can all see why. This book came out in February 2020, so of course Montimore had no idea about the pandemic that would soon flip upside down all our lives. Would I want to be able to skip those two years, knowing eventually I would have to come back to them later?

Similarly, I have a friend who is going through a very tough time in her personal life, and her professional aspirations have taken her far away from me. I know that in the years to come we will be closer, or at least travelling to spend time together will become easier, and that she will have healed. It’s tempting, the possibility of fast-forwarding to that future, even if this present must come round again.

Nevertheless, the more I mulled over this question, the more my answer became no.

My conclusion, I told Rebecca, was that experiencing linear time is a gift. While I don’t believe in a deity who created us, if such an entity or force exists, I credit it with the wisdom to fix us in time as well as space. I don’t envy the sense of fate that accompanies four-dimensional existence. Even if my future is pre-determined and my free will illusory, as some theories of modern physics suggest, I like that I don’t know what will happen, that I can at least act as if I have free will.

Montimore seems to agree with me. Oona is a willful and impulsive protagonist; she frequently reads her past year’s letter with impatience and disbelief before vociferously swearing not to follow her own advice. I’ll let you guess how that works out. While this aspect of Oona’s personality can be a frustrating quality to a main character, it also makes her a very interesting one. After all, how boring would the book be if Oona simply accepted her mode of living, settled down, made a lot of money from knowing parts of the future, and nothing bad happened to her?

Probably the most interesting sequence in the book occurs when Oona’s jump brings her to the year immediately prior the one she had just lived. She knows, therefore, that the man she meets this year she will marry—and subsequently divorce. Should she try to avoid meeting him, then? Is that even possible? Is it desirable? Imagine going into a deeply committed relationship knowing it is doomed to fail.

I like how Montimore reminds us that we can find happiness in the moment, and that we can find happiness in extended periods prior to a dark time. That is, essentially, what life is—for there is no getting out of it alive, and yes, the end always comes for everyone eventually, even Oona.

Now, scrutinizing the themes of Oona Out of Order is harder than it looks, for the book is almost fiendishly reluctant to lead us towards concrete conclusions. This is most evident in the ending. I was curious to see how many years Montimore would recount before inevitably having to wrap things up in a bow because of the linear limitations of a novel’s page count. Although I’m dissatisfied with the ending, let me offer up a disclaimer as well: I’m not sure there is a satisfactory way to end this book. I don’t think there is a neat bow that can be placed upon this story without ultimately making it too trite or contrived. This is one of those stories where the telling is far more interesting than the resolution.

Still, there is a part of me out there that wonders what an older, more lived Oona must feel as she discovers that she never hops past a certain year. If she lives the year of her death, is that it? Or does she die, only to wake up on New Year’s of another year of her past? As you can see, there are many questions this book poses yet does not answer.

In the end, it’s tempting to judge Montimore for distilling down Oona’s life to a love story, as she jumps back to the wonderful year in Europe she will have with the soon-to-be-deceased father of her child. Yet I think that’s a shallow reading of a very deep statement. For the book, up until that point, makes it clear that Oona lives and loves again beyond Dale.

For her return to him to be the culmination of the story is not a return to her OTP, then, but a reward, in a way—to Oona, yes, but to the reader, who has long known that this moment must come yet never got to experience it. Montimore ends the book for us on the happiest of notes, for as I expressed above, there are darker questions lurking within this fantastical setup.

Oona Out of Order is therefore a rich and complex piece of storytelling. It is science fiction that will doubtless masquerade as chick lit, which I am fine with, because chick lit is actually a damn good and complex genre in its own right—but for those of you who come to this book disdaining SF, I would urge you to stop and reconsider, for these are the books that truly power this genre. Beyond rocket ships and blasters, it’s the stories that ask us to consider the uniqueness of the human condition that truly propel us forward.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

New trilogy from one half of the James S.A. Corey duo? Definitely interested. Disclaimer: I don’t think I read beyond Leviathan Wakes in The Expanse series, but maybe I’ll go back one day. For now, though, let’s talk about Age of Ash. Abraham sets us up to expect heists, recrimination, and plenty of intrigue. I would say that this book mostly delivers, though I could see how there is room for disappointment depending on the type of expectations one goes in with.

Thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for the eARC!

Kithamar is a city on the river. It was a meeting place, though now the two major ethnicities live mostly peaceably side by side. Ruled by a prince (the term is gender neutral in Kithamar), the city has its share of the poor and disadvantaged. Alys and Sammish both fall into this category. They grew up in Longhill, the poorest district. After Alys’s brother Darro dies mysteriously, Alys vows to discover who killed him and why. This leads her down a dangerous path, putting her in the employ of a man and a woman from Green Hill—the richest district—and stretching her morals to their limits. Meanwhile, Sammish’s unrequited love for Alys forces her to confront the dark currents that threaten to sweep up Alys in their wake. And the city of Kithamar does not slumber—it is completely, personally awake.

It took me a while to get into Age of Ash (and a while longer to finish it, but for once that was entirely scheduling and nothing to do with the book!). The plot is a rather slow burn, and Abraham’s writing style is heavy on description. As a result, I was well over a fifth of the way into the book before I started seeing the bigger picture—but what a picture it is.

The main plot might be the least interesting part, and it is still very good. I won’t go into much detail so as to avoid spoilers. Suffice it to say, there is a dark secret at the heart of the city and its leadership. But the people who maintain this secret have enemies who want to see them fall. Abraham implies that these people aren’t very good, but it’s also unclear if their fall would really be all that better than the system that currently exists.

To be honest, though, I cared way more about what was happening to Alys and Sammish. The book starts off with Alys as the viewpoint protagonist. But she becomes an increasingly unsympathetic character, and Sammish more sympathetic, as the story goes on. This is a brilliant piece of storytelling on Abraham’s part. Alys’s obsession with holding on to the memory of her brother at first threatens to mould her into her brother—yet as Sammish points out later in the book, Alys actually goes much further. The changes are subtle and gradual enough that we can see Alys leaving behind her Longhill roots. We can also see her relationship with Sammish faltering.

Never even friends, more colleagues, Alys and Sammish’s relationship is strained for most of this book. Again, I find myself praising Abraham’s decisions here. What could have been a very simple unrequited love story turns into something more nuanced. As Alys grows distant and more cutthroat, Sammish at first tries to convince herself that she doesn’t care. In reality, she cares quite a bit. And so their relationship goes through ups and downs as each learns more about the secret of Kithamar in their own time and own ways. I like that these two are at odds more than they are aligned, and that the book gradually pivots from being wholly Alys’s story to including Sammish too—I think a good argument might be made that Sammish is more the protagonist than Alys even.

So much epic fantasy focuses on the princes of realms. He is present here, kind of, but the book is actually about the most invisible members of Kithamar society. That, too, is not new to fantasy at all—yet Abraham writes it in a way that feels very refreshing. Having read Age of Ash, I feel satiated, like I just had a full and delicious meal. I’m not exactly hungry for the next book, but I would read it just to see where Abraham goes with this world next.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Did you know that I host a Buffy rewatch podcast, Prophecy Girls? So when this book came up on NetGalley, I jumped at getting an eARC—and I was also fortunate enough that Hachette sent review copies to myself and my podcast co-host for us to promote on our show. And what an easy book to promote: Evan Ross Katz’s writing is at turns informative, funny, and poignant. He combines his obvious love for Buffy with the interview access he has as a celebrity columnist to cover the show’s cultural impact and legacy—kind of like what Stephanie and I try to do on our podcast, but in book form!

The book loosely follows a chronological structure, discussing first the movie and the genesis of the TV series, before moving swiftly through each season. There is also a chapter dedicated specifically to Joss Whedon and the allegations of abuse against him from Buffy cast members and others he has worked with since, along with a chapter about the musical episode, one that focuses on Sarah Michelle Gellar and her approach to playing Buffy, etc. The chapters are all fairly long and very comprehensive. The book as a whole never really coheres into a single message (beyond, perhaps, “I love Buffy”). Yet that doesn’t matter—I just took the book as a series of loosely connected essays, and it works well that way.

Katz’s writing is on the extreme end of conversational. There’s a plethora of parentheticals, lots of personal connections to his own gay love of Buffy, and puns and jokes galore. This is probably my least favourite aspect of the book, but that might be a result of my personal bias towards more academic analysis anyway. Which is all to say that, unlike a lot of the “Buffy studies” books out there, this one is not one of those. It does have some serious thought behind it; it isn’t all light and fluffy. But the style and tone throughout are that of a gossip columnist, to good effect.

Skeptical fans might question whether this book is necessary, whether it’s really just a money grab—and I would say no. Yes, there’s so much Buffy lore out there on the Internet from two and a half decades of interviews, message board posts, convention chats, etc. Many of the stories you hear Katz repeat here will be familiar to you, from the famous origin of Buffy as the subverted cheerleader trope to the show’s network move from WB to UPN for its final two seasons. But there was plenty that was new to me—and I will admit I’m not particularly plugged into the behind-the-scenes lore, but there are also plenty of new interviews that Katz did with the cast and crew. For example, there’s an uncomfortable and hilarious moment where Katz presses Nicholas Brendon to say one nice thing about David Boreanaz.

Similarly, I know many are struggling to re-evaluate Buffy in light of the allegations around Joss Whedon. Steph and I plan to add our thoughts to this conversation in a bonus episode in the coming months. I really like how Katz handles it here. First, of course, he foregrounds what people like Charisma Carpenter and Ray Fisher actually said about Whedon’s behaviour—he prints Carpenter’s statement in full. Second, he covers multiple perspectives, quoting both fans who are more willing to separate Whedon from the show as well as others who feel like that isn’t possible. Indeed, perhaps one of the strongest arguments for the necessity of this book is that it clearly lays out what has been happening with Whedon and these allegations over the past five years—unless you’ve been paying close attention, especially on Instagram, you have probably missed some of it. Buffy fans who want to get caught up on these troubling allegations will benefit from how Katz explains it all here.

At the end of the day, it shouldn’t come as a surprise though that this book wishes to firmly enshrine Buffy as one of the all-time great television series—and why shouldn’t it? I doubt that people who have never watched the series will enjoy Into Every Generation a Slayer Is Born. New viewers, if they don’t mind some spoilers, might find that this book helps them love the series even more as they start their journey. Nevertheless, the audience here is obviously the legion of Buffy fans hungry for new content twenty-five years later. That includes me.

Informative? Yes. Makes you cry at certain points? Yes—bring tissues. Thoughtful? Also yes. It’s tempting to call this a “love letter to Buffy,” but that description of a book so clichéd these days, and it doesn’t really capture what Katz is doing here. Yes, he loves Buffy, but he’s really trying to understand why we love Buffy, and why we still love it twenty-five years and an entire wave of feminism later. If you’re wondering that … well, you’ll have to read the book to find out.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.