As usual, I read the first in a series and then promptly don’t get around to the sequels. Fortunately, A Closed and Common Orbit is advertised as a “standalone sequel” and definitely fits that bill. You can read this without having read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (though why would you want to skip that?). Indeed, I had largely forgotten the events in that book that resulted in Lovelace’s embodiment and departure from her ship. So I kind of came to this book with fresh eyes. Nevertheless, Becky Chambers remains a delightful writer who embraces using science fiction to tell very human stories, even when her characters are alien.

The Lovelace AI that now has a stealth android body chooses the name Sidra. She accompanies Pepper to Port Coriol, a cosmopolitan planet where Pepper lives with an artist named Blue. The three of them form a kind of family unit, with Sidra living with Pepper and Blue and working, at least for now, with Pepper at her tech mod shop. Meanwhile, Sidra struggles to deal with the limitations and expectations of embodiment, from not being constantly connected to the linkings to making new friends. The story alternates chapters between Sidra’s new life and telling the backstory of Pepper, who was born Jane 23 on a planet that used genetically-engineered children for menial labour.

Almost immediately what I noticed about this book is the care Chambers puts into how she describes Sidra’s embodiment. When describing how Sidra moves, it’s never “I moved my arm.” It’s “I moved the kit’s arm.” Sidra sees her body as the kit, as something separate from her identity. This is an entirely understandable reaction, and I love how Chambers manifests it on the page for us. In the same way, some of the moments where Sidra tries embodied experiences—like eating or drinking—for the first time are gratifyingly amusing, but they are also always portrayed with a kind of sympathy as well. Sidra’s embodiment has humorous aspects to it, but she is never intended to be the butt of the story’s jokes.

The parallel story of Pepper’s past is equally as fascinating to me. Imagine growing up so completely isolated—when Jane 23 escapes from the factory where she works and lives, she is utterly alone except for the companionship of a somewhat limited shuttle AI. I love how Chambers describes their relationship and how it changes as Jane grows into a moody adolescent. The inclusion of the children’s sim that Jane can access (albeit only a single episode) is a really nice touch that helps define this world even more.

I know some readers are going to be disappointed that this book departs so cleanly from the characters of the first book. That’s valid. Nevertheless, I admire Chambers’s decision to do this. Sometimes the story you need to tell is disconnected from the story you were first telling. I honestly didn’t get too attached to any of the characters from the first book or to the overall story that was being told—as I described it in my review, it was like talking to a bunch of video game NPCs. If anything, the way this book focuses slightly more on Sidra (and then to some extent on Pepper) is an improvement.

Above all else, what I enjoyed about this book was the primacy of friendship. Chambers has created a world that is open and fluid in its embrace of sexuality and gender overall, and that is wonderful. This book, in turn, adds a layer to that with the friendships among Pepper, Blue, Sidra, and Tak. Chambers highlights the importance of consent even within a friendship, along with the importance of boundaries and the value of forgiveness. As an aromantic person, I truly appreciate adult books that focus on friendship and treat it with the same respect and importance that romance plays in some people’s lives.

I’ll finish with a note of frustration regarding the brevity of each chapter. Combined with the switch back and forth from Sidra to Jane 23’s stories, this made it very difficult to put down the book and go to bed! Each time the chapter finished, I would want to know what happens next, so I would have to read a chapter from the other narrative and then get into the next chapter from this one, only for it to be far too short … well, I guess this is a good problem to have.

Will I read the next book? Sure. But much like the name of this series, I find myself not in a rush—in the best possible way. I will come to the next book when I am ready for it, when I need it, not out of a sense of obligation or completeness. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here, from Chambers’s storytelling style, for readers like myself—to accept our wayfaring habits, to enjoy the journey of reading series haphazardly, rather than to push back and impose a sense of completionism that doesn’t end up serving us in any way.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This was a lot of fun in exactly the way I needed right now. Books about books and libraries are, of course, like catnip to a reader like me—yet at the same time, they can often be a letdown. Not so with The Invisible Library. Genevieve Cogman understands how to take the premise of an interdimensional library and wrap it up in enough mystery and intrigue to keep a story going.

Irene is a Librarian, and her job is to acquire books from alternative realities for the Library. Sometimes this means she is a spy and a thief, if the book is hard to come by. Hot on the heels of returning from a stressful mission, Irene gets saddled with an apprentice and sent on a dangerous mission to an alternative Victorian London with vampires, werewolves, and Fae. The book they’ve been sent to retrieve has already been stolen, and as Irene and her protégé Kai try to investigate, they get pulled deeper into this reality’s politics. Meanwhile, a clear but chilling warning from the Library alerts Irene to the presence of a dangerous nemesis—a former Librarian who turned his back on the Library and all it stands for.

I enjoyed pretty much every aspect of this book. It’s a page-turner, with excellent cliffhangers at the end of each chapter. Cogman balances exposition and narration, letting us in on just enough secrets of the Library without spending too much time showing us how proud she is of this multiverse of hers. Irene is a good protagonist: solid, reliable, sassy, but also fallible and prone to enough setbacks that she doesn’t becoming annoyingly invincible. Similarly, the character dynamics in this book are top notch: I loved how Irene navigates her professional relationship with Kai, and I also enjoyed the way that Vale grows in importance as the story progresses.

The plot went in directions I didn’t expect but which only enhanced the story. As I said in my introduction, I think that books with this kind of premise often fail to realize that an interdimensional library is in and of itself a setting, not a story. So it’s for the best that most of this takes place within a particular version of Victorian London (yes, there are airships, don’t fret), and aside from the beginning and ending of the story, the Library is more of an idea, an affiliation of Irene and Kai’s, than an actual place or power. While that might change in future books in this series, I think much of Cogman’s plotting decisions in this book make so much sense.

So all of this combines into what I would describe as a romp as the characters move through a series of set pieces—investigations, parties, runaway carriages, airship chases and whatnot—that culminate in quite a spectacular showdown with the Big Bad. I found the ending to be rather rushed—not just the battle itself, but the denouement of the story offers precious little resolution, just the promise of more fun for Irene (and, presumably, the reader) in the future. It isn’t quite a cliffhanger—you could read this book, and only this book, and have a satisfying adventure story—but it is most definitely a tease that the best is yet to come. How you feel about such an ending is dependent on you; sometimes it excites me, but in this case it actually cooled my flames a little.

Nevertheless, I don’t want to damn this book with faint praise! The Invisible Library is delightful. It absolutely lives up to its premise, from the very first page onwards. As long as you don’t expect it to be more than it promises, you are going to be very satisfied with this cute and clever read.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

When reading books like this, I often approach them from the point of view of my students. As a teacher, especially as a white teacher, it is important that I bring issues of race into my classroom. I seldom have the time or opportunity to use entire books. Still, you never know when a chapter or couple of pages might come in handy. In the case of Racism, Not Race, this book provided an impetus for me to tweak how I teach about race during my unit on media literacy and stereotypes. Mainly, I really appreciate Joseph L. Graves, Jr. and Alan H. Goodman's approach to explaining, consistently and repeatedly, that biological race is not a thing.

Thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the e-ARC review copy.

In the first chapters, Graves and Goodman examine the historical origins of race in European science and colonialism. They provide a very clear explanation of Blumenbach, Linnaeus, and all the other people involved in attempting to codify scientific, biologically-based races. They clearly connect this to the need by seventeenth century Europe to justify things like the enslavement of African people. They use modern genetics to debunk the existence of biological race and, along the way, disentangle related concepts like ancestry and geographic variation. The bottom line? Much like Emily Nagoski concluded in Come As You Are, there is more variation within a given population than between populations. That is to say, two people of European ancestry might be more genetically different from one another than from a third person of predominantly African ancestry! I particularly liked the point that the phenotypical markers we use to supposedly decide on someone’s race are arbitrary—that is, we often associate race with skin colour but not eye colour, even though both traits are ultimately genetic.

After exploring these concepts, Graves and Goodman devote the remainder of the book to asking specific questions about the social and medical implications of race as a social construct. For example, they explore how medicine tends to use race as a proxy for things like ancestry or other data points that are more difficult to pin down. They discuss hate crimes, police brutality, and environmental racism. They really cover a lot of ground here. The Q&A style sections will likely appeal to many people; I was rather indifferent to them. But I can’t knock how thorough this book is!

That being said, while Graves and Goodman might be great scientists and good communicators, I’m not sure they are great science communicators. Graves and Goodman write in a very accessible tone that would be great for beginners to antiracism. Yet when they talk science, their explanations tend to be very technical, and even someone like me with a fairly good layperson’s scientific background started to feel lost. So on the one hand, I really want to recommend this as a “starter” book for people who need these questions on race and racism answered—on the other hand, I’m hesitant simply because I think some of the jargony science explanations will turn those same people off this book. On the whole, I recommend this book but wanted to register this caveat.

Racism, Not Race is definitely the type of book we need. Pair it with So You Want to Talk About Race, which is a bit more of a personal and cultural spin on racism. Whatever your race, books like this help you unlearn internalized ideas that just aren’t true. And if you are white, like me, in particular they point out the ways in which our society functions to uphold whiteness—things we don’t see, or can ignore, because of our privilege. These books are necessary because, as Graves and Goodman point out, plenty of people these days are not intentionally being racist, yet racism still exists, and will always exist until we change and rebuild the systems that serve to exclude and oppress people we don’t consider to be white.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Sometimes a book sneaks up on you, so viciously quiet you don’t realize how much it has affected you until you reach the final pages. Light from Uncommon Stars starts strange before turning decidedly peculiar, yet somewhere along the way, it transubstantiates into something … pure. I don’t know how Ryka Aoki does it, but somehow, this book satisfied me more than any book in recent memory.

Shizuka Satomi is a renowned violin teacher, though no recordings of her own performances are in evidence. Nicknamed the Queen of Hell, Shizuka does, in fact, have a deal with a demon: deliver seven talented souls to Hell to free herself from its hold over her. Shizuka has but one soul left in the bargain, but she has dragged her heels finding her new student, and she is now entering her final year of her deal. Finally, Shizuka finds Katrina Nguyen: a trans runaway who loves gaming music but struggles with self-acceptance. Shizuka resolves to help Katrina blossom into the musician and woman she is meant to be—even if it means condemning her to Hell.

Oh, and there are aliens and spaceships too.

Yeah, that one threw me at first—but it’s the secret to the incredible richness of Light from Uncommon Stars. Somewhere deep inside this book is a perfectly serviceable story of a woman who made a demonic deal. If that were all this book was, if it was literally just the story of Shizuka and Katrina and nothing else, this would be a damn fine novel. Instead, though, Aoki weaves this story in and among a science fiction story of galactic malaise, as well as a smaller story of a female luthier who feels like she can never measure up to her late father’s patriarchal ideas of who can repair violins. And in blending genres with seamless grace, Aoki manages to amplify her themes in a profound harmony of voices that reaches beyond the page.

At its core, this is a story about belonging. Every subplot ultimately returns to this motif—from Katrina’s desire to find somewhere she belongs yet her urge to self-sabotage before someone else does it for her, to Lan’s obsession with the Stargate game and her donut shop, to Lucy’s struggle with her sense of self-worth as the female proprietor of Matia and Sons. This is a story about people struggling with imposter syndrome, about the gulf between how one perceives oneself versus how one is perceived, about the way the ground is always shifting beneath one’s feet.

I am not a musician. Music does occasionally speak to me (mostly in the voice of Taylor Swift), but aside from half-remembered piano lessons of my youth, I neither play nor particularly partake in music in the way many of these characters do—I suppose, in that sense, I am very similar to Lan. Yet Aoki’s way of portraying musical performance in writing did speak to me. The invocation of classical composers and careful descriptions of how the playing—not to mention repairing—of violins speaks of someone who not only loves music but embraces its technique. Aoki distills this down onto the page until one can’t help but embrace it too. Before I had even finished reading this book, I messaged a dear composer and musician friend of mine for her new address, because I knew she had to read this.

I am not an immigrant nor a refugee nor a child thereof. No one has hurled racist slurs at me. I don’t know what it is like to leave my home behind for a new life far away, or to return to one’s home decades later only to find the neighbourhood changed. Still, Aoki’s descriptions of how these Los Angeles neighbourhoods have fluctuated and flowed throughout the decades, how various immigrant populations have made these neighbourhoods their own, creates a picture of the city that we seldom get to see. Aoki mixes wry commentary on Asian stereotypes with a careful delineation of differences among Vietnamese, Cambodian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese culture, cuisine, music, language, etc.—again belying the simplistic narratives that often flatten and erase this beautiful diversity. Also, this book kept making me hungry.

I am a trans woman. Much of Katrina’s story is quite different from mine and not something I can identify with—I am white rather than mixed race, and my transition has been aided by my education and social capital. My family has been supportive. I’ve never had to engage in sex work to make ends meet. Yet despite these differences, despite the level of acceptance I have found within my community, much of the anxiety Katrina feels I feel too. Struggles with body acceptance. Self-consciousness over going into stores or other public places, apprehension over being misgendered or ruthlessly interrogated about “what are you, really?” Something I have tried to stress to my cis friends is that not only is it important to push back against the obvious transphobic hatred happening on a social level, but it is also vital that they recognize the casual, cissexist, transmisogynistic microaggressions that are just a part of everyday life for many trans women. In Katrina, Aoki presents a cross-section of what a young trans person might face—both the bad, yes, but also the beautiful, such as the acceptance from Shizuka and Katrina’s unexpected friendship with Shirley.

Katrina is so much more than trans, of course, and Aoki makes sure to portray this as well. One of my favourite bits of characterization in this book is how Katrina navigates Shizuka’s unexpected largesse, from her initial reaction of suspicion to her eventual desire to “save” Shizuka from her inescapable deal. Katrina’s indifference to the curse Shizuka plans to bestow upon her reflects the philosophy she has developed that everything comes with a cost, and in many ways, her story is a journey of finding the unconditional love she has never felt before.

Which brings me to Shizuka, the pivot of Light from Uncommon Stars, a most interesting of sympathetic anti-heroes. Her story is a moral quandary for the reader: we want to like her, want to cheer for her, yet at the same time, we don’t want Katrina to end up in Hell. So for much of the story, we exist in a calculated limbo of Aoki’s design, wondering how Shizuka might possibly cheat her way out of her deal, thus redeeming and saving herself at the same time. Is that even possible without the story jumping the shark?

I won’t spoil it for you, of course, but in case you couldn’t guess, my answer is yes. Yes, Shizuka’s redemption is not only possible but inevitable, for in this novel’s many stories of the search for belonging the message that comes back is always that no one is beyond redemption. Whether through music or cooking or warp filament calibrations, you can find salvation. You can find your people. And when you find your people, when you have the tremulous tenacity to make yourself vulnerable, they will move Heaven—and Hell—and Earth to help save you, because you are worth it.

A couple of weeks ago, I raved about about The Midnight Bargain and prognosticated that the other books I read in 2022 would have a difficult time dethroning it as best book of the year; it was just that good. Well, shortly thereafter Light from Uncommon Stars rocked up and said, “Hold my tea,” and proceeded to blow me away. I don’t want to overhype this book. I found it exquisite and enthralling, and it is going to sit with me for a very long time. If, after reading my review, you think, “no, this doesn’t sound like a book for me,” I get it. I hope your book finds you one day. For me, for right now, I am simply grateful that Aoki wrote this and put it out into the world and that somehow it found its way to me.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

My brain hurts, but I did this to myself! Métis: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood is a juicy but chonky read that demands quite a lot of one’s focus as Chris Andersen explores issues both contemporary and historical. While not for the faint of heart, this book definitely needed to be written, and I am glad I read it!

This book definitely favours the academic end of the non-fiction spectrum. Not only is it replete with juicy references, but Andersen wields those references with the confidence of someone taking part in a larger conversation with the literature. For someone like me who is entirely unfamiliar with this field, it was a little inscrutable—I am certain I missed on on several layers of meaning. Additionally, Andersen’s chapters are structured very much in the formal academic style of “here is what I will argue,” “now I am arguing,” “here is what I have argued” that doesn’t really appeal to me as a casual reader. This is not to dissuade any other casuals from reading this book—it is really very informative and eye-opening—but you deserve to know what you are getting yourself into.

I’m a little hesitant to discuss the actual arguments in this book simply because, if I am being completely honest, I am not sure I totally understood them all. (This is not so much a criticism of Andersen’s writing as it is my unfamiliarity with the field, how long it has been since I’ve read more academic texts like this, and my whiteness.) Andersen’s main thesis seems to be that the definition of Métis is muddied by the fact that it is used differently in different spheres of our society, often in ways that perpetuate colonial harms both to Métis themselves and to other Indigenous people. At its core, he insists, a definition of Métis should not be bound up in the idea of “mixed heritage” because this ultimately racializes Métis (and other Indigenous people) but must instead be linked to cultural connections. His writing provides not so much a way forward as a very detailed and precise examination of several of the pressing issues of defining Métishood through the lens of demography and judiciary. Of particular interest to me, which I will get to later, is the way that Andersen treats the idea of self-identification.

The value of Métis for me, as a casual reader, is simply that I don’t know much about Métis culture or history. I hear the phrase “First Nations, Métis, and Inuit” (often abbreviated to FNMI) in my work as an educator quite a bit. Yet that middle group—Métis—has always been rather a cipher to me. All we learned in school are the stereotypes Andersen carefully confronts in this book, i.e., that they are basically synonymous with the mixed-heritage folx born of unions between Indigenous people and Europeans involved in the fur trade. The fact that this literal grade-school-level understanding permeates our society up to and including the level of the Supreme Court is a little bit disturbing but should probably not be all that surprising to me.

Nevertheless, Andersen acknowledges that there are times when the Métis Nation itself has not been very clear on these distinctions. The unfortunate fact is that ongoing colonialism from the Canadian government provides the Métis Nation with an incentive to increase its membership, and to use statistics like those Andersen critiques from the National Housing Survey’s Métis identification questions, to allow it to access more funding and support for its members. This is something I think a lot of settlers like myself don’t really grasp, at least not initially, as we start to pick at the threads of colonialism we’ve been raised to ignore: if it seems like the concept of indigeneity is fraught with contradiction, this is mostly because Indigenous peoples must contend with the paradox of colonial structures defining them. Cross reference with the Indian Act, the band council structure, Status, etc.—all of these definitions of indigeneity in Canada are actually external and imposed on Indigenous people. Andersen is asking what a definition of Métis would look like if Métis people themselves could instead define it, without reference to colonial ideas—but this is a hard question, because centuries of colonial thought really make it difficult to interrogate the semantics involved, as we see in the chapter where Andersen tries to define what nationhood actually means in various Indigenous contexts.

So I think my main takeaway from this book is “shit be complicated.” I mean this not to be irreverent but merely as a reminder to myself and other settlers that, really, it doesn’t matter how many books I read on these subjects; I am never going to be an expert on these issues the way those with lived experience do—but at the same time, it is important that some of those with lived experience also have the opportunity and encouragement to engage with these ideas in a more academic realm, as Andersen does, for this is a valuable aspect of knowledge-keeping and knowledge-discovery. By this I mean that it’s pretty easy for any settler to find their “Indigenous friend” who will support whatever particular interpretation of indigeneity the settler wants to uphold (see: many of the high-profile “leaders” of groups like the Assembly of First Nations). This is a point Arthur Manuel explores quite explicitly in Unsettling Canada. So it is important for settlers not just to listen to the Indigenous people around them but also to engage with the wider academic discussion happening via Indigenous scholars.

Of course, in Canada (and I am given to understand, also in the US) there is an ongoing issue especially in scholarly circles of false claims to Indigenous heritage and indigeneity. Métis people are caught up in this because it is especially easy to claim one is “mixed” and therefore Métis. For this reason, Andersen explains why self-identification of one’s indigeneity can be complicated and often harmful if one cannot demonstrate connection to a community. It’s a complex issue, and Andersen expresses some sympathy for those affected by events like the Sixties Scoop and therefore unable to reconnect to their roots. And it isn’t an issue I can opine on. All I can say is that I think it is important to note that Andersen is less interested in adjudicating individual claims to Métisness as he is in establishing criteria for an overall cultural definition of the term. What remains to be seen, however, is the extent to which any organizations—Métis or colonial—have the will to pursue such a shift in terms.

Almost a decade ago now, I read A Fair Country by John Ralston Saul, who argues that Canada is a lowercase-m métis nation. I think it’s a sign of how far I have come in the intervening years, as I continue to learn and grow, that my initial criticism of Saul has only increased. Indeed, Andersen briefly mentions this book in his introduction as an example of how Métis identity has often been diluted or appropriated. This is exactly why I read Métis, for I feel it is important that we settlers grapple with these ideas as much as Indigenous peoples themselves. I’m not sure where I am going from here—I think I need to maybe take a step backwards and find some simpler introductions to Métis culture and history, because this book felt a little bit like diving into the deep end of the scholarly pool. But I know I need to keep learning, because the alternative is to perpetuate in my apathy the harmful definitions that Andersen seeks to unravel here.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Ever read a book where the middle is the best part? Weird, I know. Usually we criticize a book for having a middle third that drags before the action picks up towards the end. But in the case of Constance, this was my experience: the first and final thirds of this book were fine but somewhat unremarkable; the middle third, on the other hand, was a fascinating exploration of the human condition. Overall these combine into a science-fiction thriller that is, if not very original in its tropes, quite a good execution thereof.

Matthew FitzSimmons boldly imagines a world not much more than a decade away from our own. It’s 2038, going on 2039. Constance—Con to her friends—is a struggling musician holding a candle for her former bandmate, who is in a coma after their van crashed over a year ago. Unlike most people in her situation, Con has a clone on ice at your standard evil megacorp Pangenesis, because her estranged aunt is the inventor of the consciousness scanning and storage technology that makes human cloning possible. So, every month, Con gets her mind scanned at a swank facility before returning to her dingy life. Until one day, when she wakes up after the scan to find out she is her clone—and that her previous self died a year and a half prior, and she has been decanted long after what is considered the “safe” amount of time to pass to awaken a clone.

And then Con needs to solve her own murder.

It’s this last part that really got me, as I suspect it will get you. Who wouldn’t want to read a mystery like this? Fortunately, FitzSimmons delivers a tantalizing set of clues and circumstances to keep us guessing. Some elements of the plot are predictable, alas. This is what I meant about the final third fizzling somewhat for me. It wasn’t exactly hard to guess who would be revealed as the Big Bad after the final twist. Likewise, Con’s reaction and resolution to this confrontation is predictable as well, which takes away some of my enjoyment of the ending. I don’t want to be too harsh: FitzSimmons ably ties up the loose ends and gives us a satisfactory conclusion, making this quite a nice, tidy standalone novel. I liked it. But if you were hoping for something that breaks the thriller formula more than that initial premise, you’re going to be disappointed on that score.

Where Constance does shine, in my opinion, is the part of the book in which Con must unravel not only the mystery of her murder but the mystery of herself. It’s a commentary on how much and how little we change as humans: Con is the same person she was before, except she is missing the most recent eighteen months of her memory. In those eighteen months, she somehow fell in love, married, moved to a different state, and who else knows what? Imagine waking up with that kind of amnesia—not a complete loss of episodic memory, but just enough that you felt out of sync with everything around you. Con frequently expresses bemusement at how much her life changed in less than two years, yet isn’t that so often the case? It’s just coming up on two years now that I realized I was trans, and in that time, I have come out, changed my name, and done innumerable other things that have altered my life (for the better), and in the same amount of time, we have all struggled with the dramatic changes wrought by a pandemic. Can you imagine someone who slipped into a coma just before the pandemic waking up today? Ouch.

So it’s very satisfying to watch Con deal with her discomfort, which spans several levels. First, of course, is her discomfort with being a clone. Is she really even a person? Is she really her? Other people’s reactions and beliefs notwithstanding, Con herself has a certain amount of internalized prejudice. Second is her bewilderment over getting married to a pro athlete. When she discovers why she was making secret trips (which the police viewed as an affair), things fall into place. There are some beautiful scenes of acceptance amidst grief during this rediscovery, by the way, and it was probably here that FitzSimmons’s writing shines the most brightly.

Many of the tropes around cloning as used in this book are far from original. The fingerprints of other science fiction are visible all over these ideas. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing—I appreciate it when writers acknowledge and embrace such tropes. But if you are looking for a breathtaking new perspective on the issues of identity and individuality that beset human cloning, you will not find that here.

Constance started as a book with a premise that made me want to read it, and that is always a promising sign. Sometimes such books prove to be a huge letdown—thankfully, that isn’t the case here. It never quite exceeds its potential, mind you, but it was a pleasant way to spend part of a weekend.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Cherie Dimaline in her author’s note says she didn’t anticipate writing a sequel to The Marrow Thieves, and I understand why. French’s story of finding a new family in a post-apocalyptic world where Indigenous people’s bone marrow is being harvested to give non-Indigenous people back their dreams is quite a powerful tale on its own. There isn’t a need for a sequel … or at least, there wasn’t. Now that Dimaline has given us one, I have to say, I’m very impressed.

Spoilers ahead for The Marrow Thieves but not for this book.

Hunting by Stars picks up where The Marrow Thieves leaves off. Minerva, the Elder of French’s newfound family, has been killed in an attack by Recruiters. Nevertheless, Miigwans was reunited with his partner Isaac, and the family had found a larger group to join up with—a group that includes French’s long-lost father, Jean. But as the book opens, French himself has just been taken by Recruiters. At the institution where he is held, he discovers something more terrifying than having his marrow sucked dry: his brother, Mitch, who sacrificed himself to save French when French was ten years old, is now working for the institution. And he expects French to start working for them too.

Dimaline branches out her storytelling in this book. French remains a first-person narrator, but chapters follow Rose and a few other characters in limited third person as well. Rose leaves the group to pursue and try to rescue French. Meanwhile, the rest of the family reluctantly decides it must leave south, for the States, to protect Wab’s unborn child.

This is a story of broken reunions and betrayal. It’s also about hope. Consider how Rose tries to get the two-spirit Nam to help her escape from Nam’s uncle’s incredibly creepy sex cult (did not expect that whole subplot, but in retrospect, this is a post-apocalyptic world, so I probably should have). Rose’s entire attempt to sway Nam to her side involves appealing to their hope for the possibility of a better future than the one they currently eke out—a future with a family that actually cares for them.

Chosen family and relationships thus form the backbone of Hunting by Stars even more so, I think, than they did the first book. French’s reunion with Mitch is bittersweet precisely because they are blood relations, brothers, yet Mitch is doing his best to convince French to join the dark side. In contrast, Miig, Isaac, Tree, Zheewon, etc.—that family, French and Rose’s found family, are loyal and true. I know that concepts of relation among Indigenous peoples are complex and fraught with colonial trauma (not just residential schools, but the Sixties Scoop alienated a lot of people from their nations and communities), so there is likely a lot that I, as a settler, am missing to these dynamics. Nevertheless, I certainly understand the appeal of finding people who will always be in your corner.

French’s agony over how he might pretend to go dark side is also a palpable and powerful aspect of this book. The way he gradually collects the notes from his fellow inmates, and how he reluctantly participates in a kidnapping operation, all comes together to touch on a larger issue of collaboration. We see this in the minor characters of the nurses who help Indigenous people escape and Father Carole, the “man on the inside.” To what extent does one collaborate with a harmful system in order to feed information to the outside or participate in even broader resistance from within? At what point does the sham of collaboration become indistinguishable from actual collaboration and thus indefensible? French’s primary worry, when he has a chance to return to his family, is that they will perceive him as a traitor when they discover the truth of what he has done. It’s a sensible fear.

I think some readers of these books will balk at the dystopian world portrayed here. The American women who function as vigilantes feel extremely over-the-top at first. But I think that is a fundamental underestimation of the lengths to which both the state and individuals would go to oppress a marginalized group (such as Indigenous people) when there are benefits to it. We are not far removed from residential schools, from high Arctic relocations, from the Trail of Tears. Systemic discrimination against Indigenous people in the justice system, the plight of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and the discrimination against Indigenous people in our health care systems are all ongoing issues. What Dimaline does in Hunting by Stars is simply extrapolate how this oppression might manifest in a society stricken by a plague so devastating it breaks down a lot of our existing supremacist systems. But to see it as unrealistic is to ignore the fabric of our modern day society on which this story is firmly constructed.

Hunting by Stars proved to be an engrossing read, one that captivated me even more than The Marrow Thieves did. I also think it stands on its own as well, so if for some reason you don’t want to read the first book, you can pick this one up and still follow along. This is the second post-apocalyptic novel I have read this year already—I don’t know what’s going on! But as with Parable of the Sower, I have no regrets.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Don’t you just love when you read a book and it makes your heart feel so incredibly full? That was my experience with The Midnight Bargain. While C.L. Polk’s earlier Kingston Cycle was captivating, The Midnight Bargain was an absolutely sublime balance of magic, romance, social justice, and more. I say this as someone who is not particularly keen on romantic plots! I loved nearly everything about this book, from its characters to its storylines and setting. Dare I even try to distill this into a sensible review?

Beatrice Clayborn is a sorceress. That by itself is not remarkable in her world. But it is time for her to wed, and in this world once again drawn from echoes of Regency England, that means debuting during the mercenary-sounding “bargaining season.” If Beatrice doesn’t make a good match, her family will be destitute and her younger sister will never be able to debut. Yet marriage means a collar to suppress her magic in order to protect the unborn children she must produce for her husband (blech)—and Beatrice dreams of a life as a mage, a life with a greater spirit as a companion, a life denied to women. To complicate matters, one of her potential suitors is actually not all that bad, and as she tries to find out of her quandary, she also seems to be falling in love with him—oops.

From the start, Polk catapults us into the middle of Beatrice’s conundrum. Hers is a country where higher-born women are basically property to be bargained away by fathers to husbands. But there is a complexity to this world, as seen in the presence of foreigners like love interest Ianthe and his sister and Beatrice’s reluctant ally, Ysbeta, who come from a slightly more liberal society—which nonetheless has many restrictions on the freedoms of women. These gradations and nuance mean that Polk can wrestle with that eternal question of individual versus collective good. Beatrice could just run away, but it would mean deserting her family and leaving them bankrupt. Her true conflict isn’t the incompatibility of her magical desires with marriage (though that doesn’t help)—it is her conscience, her desire to be free yet also protect and uplift her family. We see echoes of this throughout the book in terms of Ianthe and Ysbeta’s marriage prospects as well.

Once again, Polk is brilliant at writing clueless characters of privilege. As Beatrice gets to know Ianthe, she lets slip her cleverness and her radical attitude towards the independence of women. At first Ianthe is taken aback, demonstrating how, despite being a “good man,” he has nevertheless internalized a “but this is just the way it is” attitude. When society is built for you, Beatrice points out, you never question its structure. You never think to look for a better way. Much of the frustration and tension in this novel originates from Ianthe’s sympathy for Beatrice manifesting sometimes as an overbearing desire to protect her from herself. Some might see this as patronizing, but I like to see it as the seeds of growth for him as a character and their romance, and without spoiling the ending, I like how Polk directs that.

I won’t say too much on the gender politics, simply because they are fairly obvious and others have already remarked on them. But what mainly spoke to me was how Polk used the collaring of fertile women as a symbol for how our society is not built for women and other marginalized people. That is to say, if you have a lot of privilege in our world (especially if you are a white, cis, straight, able-bodied man), then it is very easy to look around and think, “Huh, things are going pretty well,” and dismiss people’s complaints about a system as individual inconveniences. That’s because the system—whether it’s education, transit, a particular workplace—was designed for you by people who share your privilege. This manifests in The Midnight Bargain again through the collar, which is seen as a necessary evil by pretty much everyone, including more progressive people like those from Llanandras. Yet it is only this way because no one in a position of power thought to research further because it doesn’t inconvenience them (men) all that much.

Something that surprised me with the gender politics, however, was the notable dearth of queer characters. There are a few allusions to same-sex attraction, but I was surprised, given how thoroughly Polk worked it into their previous books, that we didn’t get more of that here. Understandably, it would be lower-key in a backwards place like Chasland, and likewise, I understand that it is much simpler to construct the allegory Polk wants through a simplistic gender binary—yet I don’t really consider those acceptable reasons to omit this representation from one’s world. So this is probably my one big critique of this book, for as I read it I simultaneously loved every moment of it yet also wondered, “Where would I be in this world?”

Beyond that, The Midnight Bargain is simply another brilliant novel from Polk. I don’t really know how else to say it. This was my third book of the year, and pretty much every novel I read from now until December will have to work hard to dislodge this one from being the best book I’ve read in 2022. It is poignant, fun, tense, and magical. If you like Regency romances and fashion mixed with a dash of sensible questioning of society, you need to pick this up.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

At the start of the year I published my 2021 book awards in my bookish newsletter (have you signed up yet?). I delighted in making up the categories. If I do awards for 2022, A Burglar’s Guide to the City might win Missed It By That Much (though my actual awards I tried to keep positive). Geoff Manaugh’s promise of a foray into the ways burglars exploit, undermine, or otherwise abuse architecture for nefarious ends sputters out into an unimpressive reflection on how different buildings are different, and some people are bad and do bad things.

Let’s start with what this book could have and should have been. This book should have looked at the intersection of crime and architecture—and to some extent it does, more on that later—and, crucially, sought to demonstrate cause and effect through case studies. I want you to explain to me how burglars who target residential homes in the suburbs are different from burglars who target bodegas in the inner city or warehouses at the harbour. How does the layout of a building, its materials, and its location inform the way a heist is done? Give me the greats from history, and explain how the heists benefited from—or were stymied by—the architecture of their target.

The book is at its best when Manaugh does exactly that. The sections with some historical anecdotes, the parts where he explains how burglars benefit from easy access to drywall knives, those are all cool. But for a book that is just short of three hundred pages, I took way too long to read this, and it is entirely because most of the book is boring.

Despite pretending that this book is about burglars, too much of Manaugh’s information comes instead from law enforcement. The bulk of his research seems to have happened via interviews with police officers, federal agents, or retired versions thereof—including ridealongs and other activities that I am sure were super fun for him, but did I really need him to talk about getting to see the houses from The Brady Bunch or The Jeffersons during a helicopter ride? Why would I care that so many people in Los Angeles have Oakland Raiders logos tiled at the bottom of their pool? Back to the burglary, Geoff.

But seriously, my general ACAB leanings these days, while not making me totally uninterested in stories of catching criminals, made me feel less interested in learning about burglary from law enforcement’s point of view. As Manaugh points out towards the end of the book, law enforcement only knows the tactics of the burglars it caught.

Such an excellent premise, such an incredible misuse of it resulting in a disappointing book.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I love works of popular science and works of popular history, so naturally I love works of popular science history. One of my favourite books of all time is A Short History of Nearly Everything, but it is getting on in years and could use some updating. I rather naively hoped that The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged) might be a worthy spiritual successor to that volume. Both Hannah Fry and Adam Rutherford have written books I have enjoyed in the past: Hello World and How to Argue With a Racist, respectively. I was delighted to be approved for this eARC through NetGalley and publisher W.W. Norton & Company. Alas, the book didn’t quite live up to my lofty expectations—and that is probably on me.

Although the title makes it sound like Rutherford and Fry are taking on the (admittedly daunting) task of explaining everything, the subtitle, Adventures in Math and Science, is a more accurate description of this book. The chapters are a meandering, sometimes unfocused exploration of topics that feel picked somewhat out of a hat, or perhaps through the authors’ interest in them. Through a mixture of history, philosophy, science, and geeky pop culture references, the authors deliver a wonderful backgrounder on the age of the universe (and how we know it), the history of measuring (and defining) time, biases in perception and cognition, human (and animal) emotions, and more.

As I said in the introduction, it’s my fault for wanting this book to be something it isn’t, so I don’t want to be too harsh on it as a result. This book does not take us through the history of life, the universe, and everything with delightful anecdotes from the scientists we meet along the way. Yes, there are delightful anecdotes, and there are also plenty of facts—I definitely learned from this book, including that Charles Darwin had a third work on evolutionary theory, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, that no one else has ever mentioned in my presence! There are plenty of allusions and stories about scientific contributions I was familiar with, as well as ones I was not.

But I just couldn’t enjoy the organization of this book. Partly, reading the eARC on a Kindle was hell because there are a bunch of sidebars that don’t get rendered properly, so halfway through a paragraph of the main text it jumps inexplicably to a different topic for three paragraphs before resuming the original topic. This isn’t the authors’ fault, but it did seem emblematic of their writing style in general, which is frenetic and conversational in a way that is meant to be approachable but doesn’t work for me. Again, I’ve enjoyed their writing separately, so I guess it’s the particular combination of their voices that didn’t work.

It’s also important to remember that any book as general and broad as this can be susceptible to mistakes. Fry is a mathematician, Rutherford a geneticist, yet they seek to explicate topics as intense as radiological dating and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle—and in the latter case, they actually perpetuate a common yet incorrect explanation (they repeat misconception #2 in this wonderful video from Looking Glass Universe should you be curious, which is how I recognized this explanation as incorrect). That was just a particular nuance that jumped out at me; I am sure there are more.

So in this way, The Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything (Abridged) is likely going to be a big hit with some readers. It certainly has the potential to introduce you to a wide range of very interesting topics, which I hope will lead people to read more specialized books about those topics. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy the writing style or how the book was organized, which made it difficult to appreciate the book as a whole. While I therefore can’t enthusiastically recommend it, I’m also not panning it either—just not my particular cup of tea, which honestly surprised me a great deal.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.