Perhaps not the most uplifting book to start my new year with, but you cannot beat Octavia E. Butler’s skills. Seriously, she can write. Moreover, this might be my favourite novel of hers so far. It combines some of the insistence on change that marks Lilith’s Brood with the discomfort and hardship of Kindred, yet it does so in a way that hits much closer to home in both respects. I also enjoyed the ending for how it strikes the perfect note between optimism and realism. This is not a dystopian novel, not really, for Lauren is not living in a dystopia so much as an even more dysfunctional society than our current one. And so the message here is less about bringing down the dystopia and more about finding a way to create meaning in one’s life.

Butler, writing in the 1990s, sets her book in the 2020s. Normally when science fiction authors set their stories in the near future, their chosen decade comes round and is nothing like what they have predicted. (And that’s fine—science fiction doesn’t have to be predictive to be powerful.) Um, maybe someone should have told Butler that though, because her picture of California in 2023 is not too far off from where we are here in 2022, and honestly it freaks me out how prescient she was! Environmental crises, break downs of democracy and governance, the return of company towns and corporate slavery—all of this is occurring, perhaps slightly differently from how Butler saw it playing out, but it is present. So perhaps this was the perfect book to read in 2022.

Lauren Olamina is the daughter of a Baptist preacher and lives with him, her stepmother, and stepbrothers in a walled but mostly poor community somewhere in California. Lauren has Hyper-Sensitivity Syndrome, which means that she literally feels others’ pain (and pleasure, but as she notes, it is mostly pain these days). She starts to develop her own religion, which she eventually names Earthseed, and when events force Lauren out of her community to venture forth into the wider world, she takes the idea of Earthseed with her and begins to preach it to those she meets along the way. But trust and allegiance can be as scarce as clean drinking water in this world, and Lauren’s life is destined never to be an easy one.

I’ve largely been avoiding post-apocalyptic stories given that we are edging towards the third year of a pandemic. So take this for the huge praise that it is that Parable of the Sower spoke to me. I think it helps that, as I mentioned, it actually feels very close to home in its setting—this is not some hypothetical world torn asunder by zombies, or another contagion, or an unforeseen natural disaster. This is the world as it is now, just slightly more awry. While that might make it feel scarier, it also helped me connect better to these characters. There but for the grace of God go I and whatnot.

At times early in the novel, Lauren questions her father’s perspective and remarks upon the generational gap between her and the adults (who have memories of the halcyon days before she was born). I related to this. Given when this book is set, I am smack in the middle between Lauren and her father’s generation (she is in her teens, he in his fifties, I in my thirties)—the good days were, for me, in my childhood and have a somewhat dream-like quality. In general, though, I just admire how Butler portrays the stories we tell ourselves to create invisible lines of safety in our community.

The sense of community is central to Parable of the Sower. It is the driving force that protects Lauren’s home neighbourhood for the first half of the book. Later, when Lauren is on her own and then finds her new people, she starts to forge community and introduce them to Earthseed. I’m kind of down with Earthseed! The idea of God being change rather than some kind of omnipotent person seems good to me. But I also appreciate the warning Butler laces into the store with Bankole’s observation that religions tend to metamorphose after their founders die. It would indeed to be interesting to see what layers of mysticism Earthseed’s later followers graft upon it.

Finally, though, I think what struck me so deeply about this book is the way Butler portrays striving. One of my dearest friends had an extremely difficult 2021, more difficult even than most in the pandemic. She has kept on going, kept moving forward, made plans to further her life and her career as best she can right now. Yet I don’t mean to hold her up as a paragon, for I also know that she has moments of intense doubt. When life gets this hard, what is the point? we are liable to ask. Hence my aversion to post-apocalyptic fiction these days, yet my appreciation that this novel embodies that paradox one occasionally finds within that genre: optimism. Lauren and her allies are ultimately optimists; they believe they can build a better world for themselves despite all the events constantly seeming to conspire to teach them otherwise. I suppose I am optimist too, as is my friend, though I suspect she might be loath to admit it.

So, curled up on my couch during the deep freeze that was our first and second days of 2022 here in snowy Canada, I pondered this story of an eighteen-year-old girl trekking north along Californian highways some five years hence. Parable of the Sower gave me so much to think about, roiled my emotions, and left me if not uplifted then at least not empty and dark like much of its genre tends to do. This is not a book I want you to read in your dark days, but it is a book that might, when you do read it, remind you of the incorrigibility of hope.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This book perplexed yet also entertained me. The Glass Sentence feels like a novel from a different era, a pulpy young adult adventure story that would already have been turned into a movie of questionable quality by the time I was still too young to appreciate it. Perhaps this is appropriate for a story that is about different eras! S.E. Grove’s storytelling is rich and creative in many ways that I will be happy to extol—yet despite having plenty of free time these past few days, I struggled to finish this novel.

It’s 1891 and the city is Boston, except it’s not our 1891 or our Boston—in this timeline, the world was hit a century ago by the Great Disruption. Different places on Earth were ripped out of different eras, such that 1891 Boston (in what is now called “the New Occident”) co-exists with the Papal States in Europe, prehistoric snows up north where my hometown would be, and a patchwork of many eras in western and central America only known as the Baldlands. In such a patchwork world, explorers and mapmakers—the latter known as cartologers—have risen to prominence, though there is always that lovely xenophobic element to contend with. Our protagonist is Sophia, daughter of missing explorers, raised by her uncle Shadrack, the most famous cartologer. But Shadrack gets kidnapped, catapulting young Sophia into a cross-country, trans-era adventure that culminates in a scramble to save possibly the very world itself.

Something that isn’t immediately obvious about this novel is how intensely deep it is in a philosophical sense. Sophia lives up to her name; she clearly loves knowledge and learning. She is a precocious heroine whose penchant for improvising, along with her ability to make allies, serves her well. But really what kept me going was the fact that with each chapter, Grove kept elevating my opinion of the novel’s themes. What starts as a simple adventure story soon turns into an ethical dilemma—if you had the power to remake the world through a map, would you do it? What if not doing it would lead to destruction? Could you destroy your current world in order to save it?

Indeed, the idea of a map so powerful it can physically affect the world it maps is a neat idea. Maps of course do have power—any political geographer can point to numerous examples throughout history of how labelling regions, drawing borders, etc., can start or end disputes. Grove translates this into a far more literal idea, however. Additionally, I really appreciate her diverse and dynamic understanding of maps. Maps have always fascinated me too, but those of us in the West sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that a map has to be a drawing on paper. Wayfinding is an excellent book on the various methods other cultures have used to get around. Grove mirrors this in The Glass Sentence, making it clear that maps need not be made on paper: they can be metal, glass, even onions. Maps can contain memories (and when you think about it, really that is what a map—someone’s memory of place—so Grove is once again just amplifying that somewhat).

So in this respect, I give The Glass Sentence a great deal of credit for creativity, originality, and embracing diverse ideas of mapmaking. All of this contributes to a more enjoyable and more fun adventure. Some affable pirates, an ally who might or might not be trustworthy, the race against the clock … all those essential adventure elements are present too.

Then why didn’t I enjoy this book more?

Part of it is simply that the pandemic is breathing down my neck particularly acutely this week, and so I had trouble focusing on a book.

But mainly, I think, the problem is a combination of pacing and characterization. There are parts of the story that dragged on; I wish we had been catapulted into the adventure sooner and with more alacrity. The end, in contrast, feels very rushed. As much as I applaud Grove’s worldbuilding overall, there were times when it felt like she was too excited to show off this world and all the inventions in it, leading to expansive exposition and descriptions that didn’t actually move forward the plot. Similarly, there is a lot of telling us about characters’ backstories without much organic integration into the main story. At times this works fine and is fairly interesting, but at other times it makes the story feel like it’s grinding to a halt. This is a five-hundred-page book that really should have been about three hundred pages, tops.

I am also perplexed by some of the timing. Sophia is thirteen. Her parents left when she was three, which suggests they’ve been gone for ten years. A letter she receives corroborates this—it’s dated 1881. Yet the cover copy of this book says her parents have been missing for eight years—now, maybe her parents left ten years ago but only dropped off the grid after two more years. However, the preview chapter for The Golden Specific mentions the letter from them was dated eight years prior. So the sequence of events is unclear to me.

Look, I don’t want to be too hard on The Glass Sentence. If you want something that is a lot of fun but also very intense, if you want a good adventure yarn, there is potential for enjoyment to be had here. However, don’t go into it expecting too much, and perhaps don’t feel bad if it’s taking you longer to read than you thought.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Longtime readers of my reviews should not be surprised that I love time travel. I have a whole bookshelf dedicated to it, and I love Doctor Who. So Time Travel: A History by James Gleick was really a no-brainer. This is going to be a short review, because I don’t have a lot to say: this book does what the title promises. Gleick presents a brief history of the concept of time travel in literature and popular culture. This book is part history, part philosophy, part physics text. There are a few moments where you might get lost in the details Gleick presents to you, but for the most part it’s very easy to follow his discussion. What emerges is a wonderful record of intertextuality and a conversation that has been happening for over a century.

See, what Gleick understands and what I really appreciate about this book is the fact that stories are always in conversation with each other. The continuum of literature builds on what has come before, either very deliberately—like modern retellings of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and others—or more obliquely, perhaps even unintentionally. Some of us are fascinated enough by this intertextuality that it turns us into English teachers or even, indeed, professors of literature. But I think that any reader can appreciate these conversations—you just need to read widely, and books like Time Travel help.

Gleick begins his survey of this concept with H.G. Wells and The Time Machine. From the publication of this novel, ripples spread outwards throughout Western literature (unfortunately, aside from a note that more recently China has banned time travel stories for their potential heterodoxy, this book focuses almost exclusively on Western storytelling, with a couple of spicy mentions of Indigenous oral histories, etc.). Gleick examines how some of the important developments in physics in the early twentieth century—Einstein and relativity, quantum field theory, etc.—influenced literature, and perhaps vice versa.

As someone who grew up in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, I’ve always been fascinated when I hear about the early days of science fiction. Though its origins stretch back beyond Wells and Verne to luminaries like Mary Shelley, I can’t dispute that science fiction in its modern form emerged from the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s—and this literature form feels so far removed from how I experience stories a hundred years later. It’s tough for me to wrap my head around the idea that Amazing Stories was but one of Hugo Gernsback’s many (often failed) business ventures, and that there was a time when kids would pay a nickel or quarter to grab a cheaply printed booklet of the latest yarns from Heinlein or Asimov or whomever. Then again, I suppose they would be equally stymied to imagine how we get to read short stories in online magazines, sometimes even for free (but let’s pay our authors).

So in this respect, Time Travel is itself, like most history books, a form of time travel. As Gleick discusses how the popular ideas of time travel developed—the rules, the paradoxes, the understandings that we all seem to be aware of now that we are inundated by franchises like Terminator—he also reminds us that these ideas did develop over time. Philosophers weighed in on the concepts they thought plausible or ridiculous. Physicists opined on whether time travel could be possible, if not perhaps practical. Artists imagined the possibilities that time travel might create, as well as the ethical conundrums. We live in an era that has inherited all of this intellectual and creative labour, and the result is the cornucopia of time travel stories we have today.

Gleick’s effortless and seamless transitions from quoting obscure short stories to philosophers to explaining thermodynamics can make for both interesting and sometimes overwhelming reading. Nevertheless, I found that this was a wonderful book to sit with on a cold winter’s day, sunlight streaming in through my library window, so I could ponder the mysteries of the universe—or perhaps the multiverse. It’s not so much whether or not I learned from this book (while many of the ideas, like multiverse theory, were not really new to me, I can’t claim I had the detailed grasp of time travel history that this book presents)—rather, I think it is more important to stress that I luxuriated in the thinking this book provoked. I love that, in my fiction and my non-fiction alike.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Media tie-in novels aren’t my thing. I have a form of aphantasia that makes it nearly impossible for me to visualize events as I read, and as a result, novels about characters I know from screen tend to fall flat because I can’t imagine the actors portraying those characters. Nevertheless, I have long been a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and in 2021 I started a rewatch podcast, Prophecy Girls with a friend. So when In Every Generation came up on NetGalley, I decided I should review it, if only for the pod. I received an e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a review, but Hyperion also contacted our podcast and sent us hardcover editions for review as well. I’ll update this review with links to any TikToks or podcast content we release about the book!

Kendare Blake has taken on quite the challenge here! This coming year, 2022, is the twenty-fifth anniversary of Buffy’s premiere. The alacrity with which my podcast has acquired listeners is evidence enough that there are plenty of Buffy fans still, both new and old. However, In Every Generation is very much a young adult novel, from the high school age of its protagonists to the tropes and plot at work. So Blake’s challenge is to write a book that appeals to the existing fan base, who are mostly older, but that will also potentially capture a newer, younger audience who maybe haven’t watched the TV series. For this reason, I tried to approach the book from the perspective of someone new to the series, at least as best I can given how many times I’ve watched this show. In my opinion, Blake mostly succeeds in writing a spin-off novel that captures the spirit of the show while still talking to a more contemporary audience. That being said, it still feels like something is missing.

Our protagonists are Hailey Larrson and Frankie Rosenberg. Hailey is the younger half-sister of Vi, whom Buffy fans will recall from season 7 (she was the Potential played by Felicia Day). Frankie is Willow’s daughter, and she has grown up in Sunnydale alongside Jake, a werewolf cousin of Oz. Willow, Oz, and Spike are the three characters from the show who feature most prominently in this book (Xander is there too, but only via phone and very intermittently). When an explosion rocks the retreat where Vi, Buffy, Faith, and all the extant Slayers were meeting, everyone assumes the worst. This only seems to be reinforced by the fact that Frankie, who up until now has been content with styling herself an eco-witch owing to her desire to use magic in environmentally-conscious ways, is activated as the newest (and now sole) Slayer. Together, Frankie, Hailey, and Jake will need to get to grips with all of this and protect Sunnydale from the monsters who now think that the Slayers are gone for good.

Right away, I know a sore point for a lot of fans will be how Blake puts all the Slayers on a bus. It feels drastic, I know, but in a way it’s also rather necessary? The most difficult thing about establishing “the next generation” of any storytelling universe is what to do with the heroes of the past generation. With this calamity, Blake satisfies multiple narrative needs: Frankie et al are (mostly) on their own, there is an important overarching mystery that might stretch several books, and everyone—human and demon—is thrown off balance by the upset to the status quo. Moreover, for the record, I don’t believe for a moment that all the Slayers are dead. As events towards the end of the book reveal, something else is definitely going on—and I am not going to believe anything we hear about that explosion until it gets confirmed by other characters, ok?

So with the responsibility firmly thrust upon this new generation, it’s up to Frankie, Hailey, and Jake—with some parental guidance from figures such as Oz, Willow, and the incorrigible Spike. I want to give Blake credit here for capturing the voices of these three characters, at least as best as I can tell given my limited imagination. Willow in particular feels very Willowy—exuberant, feisty, her intelligence matched only by a geeky, self-conscious awkwardness. There’s a particular moment when Willow is confessing to Oz how freaked out she is that her daughter is the new Slayer, and she muses, “I don’t know if I can be the new Joyce.” Not only is this a wonderful callback to the series, but it is very much something that adult, mom Willow might say.

In this respect, Blake clearly establishes the weight of this responsibility that comes with being the Slayer or one of the Slayer’s allies. Even though wonderful allusions abound, whether they are references to Willow’s fashion or Buffy’s penchant for Slayer-banter, new readers will not be worse off for missing those and focusing on what’s happening on the page. A part of me was a little skeptical of how much handwaving Blake does to get Spike situated as Frankie’s new Watcher in a send-up of Buffy and Giles complete with Spike taking on the role of librarian and wearing tweed. It’s a little twee for me. Indeed, the first act of the book falls a little flat for me as an existing fan only because it feels like it is too closely retracing the footsteps of early Buffy.

To be fair, though, such comparisons really only live in my mind. There is a lot that is different about our central trio. Jake, the least-developed of the three, is way less toxic than Xander. I was afraid that Blake might create some kind of love triangle thing among Jake, Frankie, and Hailey, and while certain tensions are hinted at, nothing comes of it in this book and I’m grateful for that. Although we learn a good deal about Jake’s backstory, his role in this book is a supportive one. In contrast, Hailey is far more active. She knows her way around a fight and can take out a vampire despite not having super strength. But she is impulsive and brash, quick to leap before she looks. Finally, Frankie is very unsure of herself as the new Slayer, but I appreciated how much she asserted herself within the group dynamic. She definitely makes her own decisions throughout the novel, emerging as a strong protagonist with interesting flaws and room for growth.

Oh, and how can I forget the Big Bad? Well, perhaps not the Big Bad, given that the book doesn’t establish who/what is behind the apparent murder of the Slayers. But Frankie’s first Big Bad. At first she seems absurd and untenable as an antagonist—yet it feels as if Blake wants us to underestimate her, and it is only after the midpoint of the book that we start to understand the threat she poses, to Frankie and to Sunnydale as a whole. So she grew on me as an antagonist. In fact, she might be the part of the book that feels the most like the TV series to me, if that makes any sense.

Some other aspects of the story and characterization didn’t work as well for me. There was a line in the ARC that read, “All women can understand the cramping.” As a trans woman, that definitely jumped out at me and didn’t make me feel good …so because I had a copy of the final published version as well, I checked and the line has been corrected to “Everyone who menstruates can understand the cramping”!! Many of the early reviews based on ARCs (rightly) flagged this problematic line, but it did get fixed and I am pleased by that. As far as the general topic of menstruation humour goes, I think it’s great to see it mentioned openly in young adult novels—just make sure it’s inclusive!

More troubling to me is the utter lack of subtlety around sexuality. Without spoiling it, there is a mystical origin to Willow’s pregnancy with Frankie. That in and of itself is a creepy callback to Joss Whedon’s legacy of weird pregnancies and other female body horror in his shows. But beyond that, In Every Generation seems very anxious to walk every possible line it can when it comes to Willow’s queerness. Blake tries to handwave it all away with a throwaway line of narration that affirms “sexuality is fluid.” So Willow’s definitely gay, but she also flirts with dudes, lol! She and Oz aren’t living together, but there is an element of co-parenting thanks Jake’s presence, and in general their relationship feels queerplatonic. And look, as an aro/ace person I love QPRs and as a Buffy fan I can see the appeal of Oz/Willow. On its own, that would be great and fine to see. But when considered in the context of Disney’s disappointing and homophobic track record, it feels like erasure: all of Willow’s relationships with women (Tara, Kennedy, a non-starter relationship with Sarafina de Witt) have been unhappy or failed in some way, and the relationship we see on the page here is with a man.

Combine this with the fact that there is no other on-page queer representation, and that part of the plot involves virginity, which feels like such an uncomfortably nineties horror trope … well, I don’t know. Let’s just say that I have concerns that the Mouse’s ownership of this property will attenuate some of its subversiveness in favour of a blander, more broadly palatable version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s really too early to tell.

That’s the rub for me: In Every Generation is a perfectly serviceable YA novel, and I think it offers newcomers an accessible, entertaining path into the Buffyverse. I also think existing fans can potentially enjoy it. However, in spite of its striving to recreate the high stakes of the series, with its drama, death, and danger, it never seems to get at the core of Buffy, which is snark against the darkness. The snark is here, but the darkness hasn’t yet descended, and as a result, the snark feels a little hollow and premature. Much like Frankie Rosenberg, this series has a lot of growing to do before it can feel comfortable living up to Buffy’s legacy.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

If there is one thing I can say about Jo Walton, it’s probably that her novels never fail to surprise me in various ways. Some of her novels I have loved—years later and I still can’t stop thinking about My Real Children, whereas others I only tolerated or didn’t quite enjoy. The more I read of Walton’s work, the clearer it is she has certain motifs she likes to return to time and again—ideas of parallel universes, timelines, time loops, and altered realities—but she also enjoys cloaking these tropes in different literary and historical frameworks. So while sometimes she is writing about alternative British history, she might equally be writing about a real historical monk at the end of the fifteenth century in Florence.

Here is my very brief spoiler-free review: if you like books that combine medievalist and Renaissance philosophy, particularly humanism, with supernatural and religious allegory, this book is going to push all the right buttons for you.

I really want to talk about Lent in its entirety, so I’m going to spoil the book for you. There is a pretty big twist after the first third of the book. If you think you might want to read Lent and don’t want that twist spoiled, stop reading my review for now. I didn’t know the twist and greatly enjoyed its revelation!

Still with me? Ok, here we go!

Girolamo Savonarola is a Dominican brother—First Brother, in fact—at San Marco in Florence. When the novel starts in 1492, he attends the deathbed of Lorenzo de Medici and thereafter begins jockeying for more political power while making prophetic proclamations that occasionally even come true. This angers the corrupt Pope Alexander, a Borgia and a Spaniard and not at all enamoured with Girolamo’s style. So he persecutes Girolamo, excommunicating him, all while Girolamo does his best to turn Florence into a holy city. Oh, and—this is important—Girolamo can see and banish demons, which are literal creatures from Hell. After he is hanged and burned for heresy, Girolamo wakes up in Hell to the crushing realization that he is a demon, a fallen angel. Soon after he is pulled into another iteration of his life as Girolamo, only this time a strange stone awakens his demonic memories of all his past iterations while he is still on Earth. From there on out, Lent becomes a series of time loopy lives as Girolamo tries to figure out how to escape from Hell, as well as from Hell on Earth.

The idea of needing multiple iterations of one’s lifetime to earn redemption is not new, of course. Most famously Groundhog Day did it, and more recently The Good Place explored this idea. The latter explores the idea of what it means to be a good person through many facets of moral philosophy. Here, Walton takes a more spiritual track. Much of Lent reminds me of Umberto Eco and The Name of the Rose. Walton weaves a framework of Christian theology that underpins Girolamo’s choices and experiences throughout his lifetimes.

The first life of Girolamo’s that we experience (we don’t know how many lifetimes he has led) is special for both the reader and Girolamo because of our shared ignorance of his nature. Indeed, when I was only a third of the way through the book and Girolamo’s death was imminent, I remarked to a friend, “Something is going on” because I knew how much more book there was—and I suspected Walton of being up to her usual tricks. Sure enough, that moment where Girolamo wakes up in Hell is mind-blowing, the type of twist that utterly alters the trajectory of the whole novel. His return to Earth and subsequent awakening launch him on several lifetimes of experimentation. Each death lands him back in Hell, however, no matter how good he tries to live his life, how he tries to use the stone, etc. Girolamo’s frustration and despondency over not knowing how he can prove himself good enough for God’s love becomes palpable.

It is tempting to dismiss the ultimate resolution to Girolamo’s eternal cycle as trite and underwhelming. All he had to do was give the stone to Crookback after all? And suddenly he’s in heaven? That was definitely my initial reaction. Yet as I sat with Lent on my mind for a couple of days, the beautiful simplicity of the act unfolded before me. The most touching acts in this book are the moments where Girolamo does something selfless and compassionate for another person even though it doesn’t benefit him or his cause. When Girolamo gives the green stone to Crookback—when two demons cooperate, which is possible only on Earth because such communication is literally impossible in Hell—he has no guarantee that Crookback will actually help him. After several lifetimes of believing God must have granted him the stone for a reason, that he therefore must be the one to use it rather than Crookback, Girolamo surrenders up the idea that he can save himself and instead has to trust his demonic brother. That’s pretty powerful on several levels.

Lent took me a while to read, far longer than a novel of this size would—especially reading most of it over a holiday break. Partly that’s because I got caught up in knitting and coding as well. But it’s also because this is a book that subtly asks you to think about big ideas of spirituality and morality. Walton’s choice of time and place and main character locate the book at these intersections: Savonarola the historical figure was greatly interested in creating a purer, more moral society; he believed that was the role God meant him to play. This happened during a time of intense corruption within the Catholic Church, belying the idea that clerics were the closest people to God. This paradox is central to the novel, for Girolamo himself is a demon seeking redemption, doomed to relive the life of a priest who will be tortured and burned for heresy, even though his heresy is mostly just defying the corruption of the Church … it’s just so wonderfully twisted, and somehow Walton perceived the potential that Savonarola’s life had for this type of story and then told it, which is truly the remarkable accomplishment here.

So I think, on balance, Lent goes into the “yeah, this was a good one” pile of Walton novels I have read. Big on ideas and excellent in execution, it’s a great example of an author telling a story small enough in scope to feel human while large enough in scope to have room for the reader to fill in one’s own interpretations. I’m quite happy I finally got around to reading this one.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Anyone who has read even a smattering of my reviews probably knows a few things about me. First, I am a teacher. Second, I live in Thunder Bay, Canada, which unfortunately is a strong contender for one of the most racist cities in the world. Third, a large proportion of the adult students I teach in this racist city are Indigenous. So over nearly a decade, I’ve done a lot of learning about anti-Indigenous racism and colonialism for both professional and personal reasons. Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call has some things in common with the memoirs, such as Unreconciled, that I have read recently, but it is far more than memoir. It is Arthur Manuel’s telling of a history of struggle, in particular over the past sixty years, and the effort that Canada puts in to avoid acknowledging the rights and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples because it would be economically and politically undesirable.

Naomi Klein says in her foreword that “even those who are sure they know this material already will be taken aback by the originality o fhte legal and financial strategies described in these pages, and inspired by the hope they represent.” She is correct. While I would not describe myself as an expert in these subjects by any means, the learning I’ve been doing so that I can better discuss these issues in class and with others means I feel quite familiar with the general arc of Indigenous struggles in this country. Nevertheless, Unsettling Canada provides so much more background and depth, particularly to very recent history of the eighties, nineties, and early 2000s which I never learned. He goes into a great deal of detail regarding court cases and international attempts to get Canada to respect the rights of First Nations. Additionally, he explains the colonial origin of the band and elected chief system and how Canada has always done its best to pick and choose which representatives it deals with, squeezing First Nations so that they accept bad deals because it’s still better than starvation and poverty.

Right out of the gate, Manuel addresses the straw man argument that many erect when decolonization is brought up. No, he says, he doesn’t expect settlers to “go back” to Europe. “Land back,” a cry associated with decolonization, doesn’t mean giving up our tenancy of lands. It means acknowledging who had original title and stewardship of the lands, acknowledging First Nations, Métis, Inuit sovereignty—and most importantly, dismantling the current colonial structures (e.g., Crown land) that exist to prevent Indigenous peoples from exercising that sovereignty. Manuel isn’t saying that all white people need to be expelled from the country—but if we are truly to pursue reconciliation, we have to find a way to live together instead of living on colonial terms.

From there, Manuel advances the thesis that the Canadian federal government has, ever since it took over from British rule, consistently done everything in its power to dissolve Indigenous peoples as a political category and assimilate them into the idea of the broader Canadian population. That this still hasn’t happened after several centuries is perhaps one of the most powerful symbols of Indigenous resistance. But there have been casualties along the way, from political disarray to cultural loss as a result of institutions like residential schools and the outlawing of ceremonies via the Indian Act. Manuel carefully and systematically documents all the various tools that Canada has used to oppress Indigenous peoples. And it all comes back, as many others have also pointed out, to the land. Canada wants absolute control over the land, mostly to make money from resource extraction. The original peoples living on it? They are a problem, an inconvenience to be dealt with through legal fictions like the Doctrine of Discovery or more underhanded schemes like the White Paper. (If you don’t know what these things are, read this book.)

I also appreciate that Manuel recognizes the fundamental incongruity of the Supreme Court of Canada’s role as the arbiter between First Nations and the governments. Despite the Supreme Court often ruling in favour of First Nations and concepts like “Aboriginal title”—in part thanks to the hard work activists put in to ensure that Indigenous peoples were recognized in Canada’s repatriated constitution in the way they are, a history I wasn’t aware of—the courts are ultimately based on colonial, European traditions of law. I’m reminded of the “tired, wired, inspired” meme now, and this particular argument strikes me as a next level understanding of decolonization. A lot of us settlers get to a point of allyship where we recognize ongoing colonialism, but our privilege prevents us from understanding that the problem cannot really be addressed from within our existing political and legal systems.

That doesn’t stop people from trying, of course. And if First Nations lawyers or politicians can win some small victories here and there, all the more power to them. Nevertheless, Manuel is critical of the idea that Indigenous people have a place within existing Canadian political parties—and alas, I think most of the experiences of Indigenous politicians have borne that out. Every party pays lip service to the buzzwords of truth and reconciliation, but they are happy enough to keep fighting First Nations in court. As I read, I felt sad because none of the political parties are truly taking a radical stance towards decolonization—mostly because it would, unfortunately, be incredibly unpopular with the majority of (settler) Canadians. I suspect that Manuel’s evaluation is accurate.

The discussions of international conferences, trips to the United Nations, and other efforts to increase Indigenous solidarity around the world were also super interesting to me. I had a vague notion that these types of groups existed, but Manuel provides a lot more insight into what they have accomplished, especially in their involvement around the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (which is included as an appendix to this book). Canada’s failure to uphold UNDRIP is perhaps one of the most glaring examples of how reconciliation falls by the wayside when economics are on the line.

I used to be very naive and think that ignorance was the primary problem among settlers who didn’t grasp the extent of Canada’s colonialism—certainly, when I was younger, I was ignorant of it. That was by design. But as I was reading this book, I just couldn’t help but think, “Wow, all the puzzle pieces are right here, and Manuel is assembling them in front of my eyes.” When other settlers claim that colonialism is in the past, when they brush aside land defence at Unist’ot’en Camp as going against the wishes of the elected chiefs who “want” a pipeline, when they insist that Canada is reasonable now and First Nations aren’t … I can’t help but think that this goes beyond mere ignorance. It’s willful ignorance. If you are a settler in Canada in 2021 and you aren’t taking the time to learn about both the history of Canadian colonialism and its ongoing actions (like taking First Nations to court to challenge a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling), that’s on you. All of these books are out there—for free, too, I borrowed this one from my library—and the University of Alberta has a free online course you can take as well.

Unsettling Canada provides a clear, detailed, essential overview of the intertwined history of Indigenous peoples’ struggles to assert their rights and the Canadian government’s obsession with refusing to recognize those rights. This is a book of specifics, and while much of Manuel’s fight focuses on the interior First Nations in British Columbia, this is a book that anyone living in Canada can benefit from reading.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Back in a previous life when I was an English student in university, we learned about something called intertextuality, which loosely put is the relationship among various texts. All I can say is that I am glad I read at least one book by Audre Lorde before reading The Days of Afrekete, which from its title to its tropes is steeped in Lorde’s work. (A lot of other reviews are also comparing it to Mrs. Dalloway, and while I suppose I see that comparison it’s less interesting to me given how little I remember of the book). This is a novel where, if you completely ignore the intertexuality, you might walk away from it feeling like Asali Solomon hasn’t done anything. It’s quite a flat, meditative, unassuming story on the surface. If you are willing to extend yourself slightly and view the book as in conversation with Lorde, Woolf, and others, then of course there’s something much deeper afoot.

The book takes place over two main time periods. It begins in the present day, where Liselle Belmont’s husband, Winn, has just lost his primary bid to run for a congressional seat. Liselle is Black and from their town of Philadelphia; Winn is the son of white northeasterners. Solomon frames Liselle’s narrative around hosting one last dinner party for Winn’s supporters. The contemplative mood of the night prompts her to think back to her college years, where she was one of a small number of Black lesbians on the Bryn Mawr campus, and for one half of her final year she dated another Black woman, Selena Octave. Meanwhile, Liselle debates whether or not to tell Winn that she learned, from an FBI agent, that he is going to be indicted for corruption.

Solomon’s choice to privilege Liselle’s perspective for the majority of the book is an interesting one. Selena finally gets her say towards the end, and we see her relationship with Liselle through her eyes and also learn more about her family dynamics. But this is definitely Liselle’s story. As Solomon excavates the layers of Liselle’s life in front of us, it’s a reminder that seldom can we predict how our lives will turn out. Twenty-two-year-old lesbian Liselle would never have guessed she would be a schoolteacher married to a white man and a mother, right? Twenty-two-year-old Kara would never have guessed that she would, at thirty, come out as trans, change her name and pronouns, launch her own book review website and not one but two podcasts … life is a ride, my friends!

Yeah, see I can relate to this book despite being neither Black nor lesbian nor American. It is very tempting to utter some nonsense like, “this is a book about Blackness” or “this is a book about being a queer Black woman” followed by an even worse clause like, “and therefore I, as a white woman, cannot possibly understand or participate in it.” I think the reader I was several years ago likely would have said that—but I like to think that now I have grown out of such racist ideas. Yes, it is very much the case that there are layers to this book, themes and tropes and even perhaps storytelling structures, that are less accessible to me in my whiteness. I haven’t read a lot of Lorde, haven’t read Zora Neale Hurston, don’t have the background in the literature of the African diaspora that Solomon and many other Black people do, either by dint of exposure or through more intensive study. Nevertheless, if I use that as an excuse to dismiss the book and recuse myself from criticism or review, really what I’m saying is something Lorde pushes back against in Sister Outsider, namely, that Black literature can only ever be for Black people, whereas white literature is apparently for everyone.

So while you should totally take my review, as a white lady, with more grains of salt than you would the review of a queer African-American woman, I hope you can appreciate my decision to embrace my discomfort with my lack of subject knowledge here rather than dismiss it.

For when you try to engage, even as superficially and ineptly as I can, with the queer and Black themes of The Days of Afrekete, that’s where the novel begins to shine. Honestly the political stuff, the indictment hanging over their heads, Liselle’s fraught relationship with Winn—none of it is all that interesting until you consider how Solomon weaves the dynamics of sexuality and race into the conversation. America, of course, is a country built on white supremacy and exploitation and a deliberately persistent amnesia about those things. A mixed-race couple is inherently one of tension regardless of their personal feelings simply because of how they are perceived by the state and by society—perhaps the most blatant example of this comes deep within the story, when Liselle flashes back to taking her baby around town and people assume she is his nanny rather than his mother because he isn’t dark-skinned like her. Similarly, whether he realizes it or not, Winn harnesses his wife’s Blackness when he tries to win a primary bid against the incumbent Black congressperson of this predominantly Black district.

Through the title and the flashbacks we see, Solomon advances a thesis that despite their disconnection and divergence, there is something fundamental that ties Liselle and Selena together. It isn’t their queer Black womanhood per se, but that is a core component. Take, for example, Liselle’s sense of isolation among the lesbian community at Bryn Mawr, mirrored by how out of place she feels among a sea of white girls trying to take a class in African diaspora literature. This is exactly what Lorde means when she criticizes Black women’s exclusion from feminism, along with the tense relationship between queer Black women and many Black communities. That’s the “outsider” part of the equation: Liselle often stands apart, even when she is with those who are supposedly her people. Now, in her middle age, she finds herself among a group that is decidedly not her people. And the question she seeks to answer is, how did I get here?

I feel like there is a lot more I could unpack about this novel if I had the time, energy, and perhaps were better read on these subjects. This wasn’t quite the book I wanted to read this week, for its weight settled heavily atop existing weighty emotions. Nevertheless, I am glad I read it. I hope other white people challenge themselves to read novels like this, to expose yourself to genres and modes of storytelling that are not for us but should still be part of the larger, mainstream literary discussion.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

In my review of The Transgender Issue, I said I was more interested in manifestos than memoirs when it comes to trans people. This remains the case. However, as Redefining Realness demonstrates, memoirs can still be powerful and useful. I read this as part of the same book club that got me reading White Tears/Brown Scars. I was initially apprehensive to be one of the few if only transfeminine people in a group of predominantly cis people discussing this book—but I chose to participate firstly because I have made a promise to myself not to let my fears hold me back, and secondly because the organizer of the book club is a rad person and I knew I would feel safe. I wanted to have good conversations about gender and also race, which is an important factor in Janet Mock’s life and this book.

My initial reaction to Redefining Realness was that Mock’s gender journey is quite distinct from my own. This is fine, of course—no two trans people are going to have the same story of transition, and Mock and I are separated by nationality, race, time period, sexuality, and career choices. There were definitely some more general observations about gender that resonated with me—I will get to those in due time—but overall, little of Mock’s experience matches with mine.

The most obvious point of departure is simply the age at which Mock began to realize she was different from her siblings and peers. At first she thought she might be gay, since language like trans, etc., wasn’t as common when she was a child. But she knew she was different early on, knew she liked feminine things. She recounts how much she enjoyed spending time in the kitchen around her grandmother and aunts, observing that “this is womanhood” and it was something she wanted access to. Although it took me a much longer time frame to realize I’m trans, I can identify with that observation, for it was something I articulated very early in my journey: I didn’t want to be treated like one of the girls; I wanted to be one of the girls.

Mock eventually discovers, through meeting other trans people her age and older, that trans applies to her, and that she wants to express herself differently and start hormone therapy. I hope that the cis people who read this book will grasp how lack of reliable and affordable access to gender-affirming care is still a serious issue for trans people, both in the States and here in Canada. Mock’s frank discussion of how she turned to sex work out of neither pride nor trafficking but rather the sense that as long as she had a body, she could make the money she needed for gender-affirming surgery belies the simplistic narratives we often tell about sex work. She is not apologetic for her actions, yet she does not celebrate what she did either. For her, it is another example of a chapter in her life that was made harder by her circumstances.

As always, I am more interested in the social rather than medical aspects of transition given the latter’s over-emphasis in our media (something Mock also laments). Mock’s social transition is interesting because she begins by coming out in high school before ultimately “living stealth,” as we say, when she moves to New York. When she initially comes out, she faces challenges that are all too familiar to me: people using the wrong name or pronoun (intentionally or not), and an unevenness in how people accept or react to one’s transition. I’d like to say my experience was “better” than Mock’s, but again, I can only really settle on different. I had some challenges she didn’t as a result of my age and embarking on transition at the start of a pandemic; she had challenges I didn’t as a result of her age, her economic circumstances, and the time in which she lived. It’s difficult to compare, but part of me is sad I can recognize so much of my struggle in hers despite our separation of over two decades.

I appreciated Mock’s commentary on race as well. In particular, she observes how she was racialized differently depending on where she lived, Texas or Hawai’i—in the former she was Black; in the latter her connection to her heritage was far more nuanced. Again, she undermines simplistic stories we like to tell about race, particularly race in America.

In book club, we were discussing how race and gender differ in terms of marginalization despite both being social constructs that can be used to oppress. Mock’s description at the intersections of race and gender led me to conceptualize it thusly: race is weaponized; gender is pathologized. White supremacy uses whiteness as a way to reward or punish through inclusion/exclusion—we see this in how the definitions of whiteness have changed throughout history. Whereas with gender, if you do not conform to the roles set out through your assigned gender at birth, something is wrong with you in a pathological sense. Cis women who don’t have kids have been, and sometimes continue to be, told that something is wrong with them for lacking that maternal urge. For trans people like myself, we have always been at the mercy of a diagnosis to be legally recognized in various circumstances—the fact that it has changed from “gender identity disorder” to “gender dysphoria” doesn’t erase the pathologization of my gender identity. Hence, while both race and gender are social constructs that can create conditions of oppression, the differing ways in which our society wields those constructs to promote conformity influences how we perceive them as ideas.

Mock’s writing style is clear and simple in a good way: her descriptions are candid and forthright. Whether she is sharing her joy or discussing a truly horrible experience, she tells her story without embellishment. Despite the detailed accounts of sexual abuse, sex work, and other potentially triggering experiences, this book is very easy to read.

If I could change anything about the book, it would simply be to add more about the contemporary events surrounding Mock coming out and what that was like. (I’m guessing she has addressed this in her subsequent books, I hope.) But as far as a memoir of this part of her life goes, it’s pretty good, and I hope for some, eye-opening.

A couple of other quotations that resonated with me.

From the introduction:

 

This resonated with me because I carry a lot of privilege aside from my transness and count myself somewhat fortunate in my transition. Moreover, I appreciate that Mock emphasizes that one’s identity is not by itself revolutionary. Neither my transness nor my aceness automatically make me a revolutionary. I need to consciously and consistently fight for liberation.

Much later in the book, in Chapter Eleven, Mock notes:

 

I feel this too. Mock chose Janet in part because of Janet Jackson. I chose Kara because of the CW Supergirl portrayal of Kara Danvers—the show is so progressive, and Kara herself tries so hard yet, mostly because of her whiteness, makes a lot of mistakes. I chose the name to remind myself that I will make mistakes too in the fight for liberation, but I can learn and keep fighting.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I have rather slept on Kendare Blake up until now. However, I applied to read her tie-in novel for Buffy the Vampire Slayer on NetGalley (because I have a Buffy rewatch podcast). Because I am generally more critical of tie-in novels, I wanted to try some of Blake’s original fantasy fiction to get a feel for her writing. Unfortunately, Three Dark Crowns left me wanting—not in a good way.

On the island of Fennbirn, a queen always rules. She gives birth to triplets, who are raised apart and then at sixteen introduced to one another and told to kill the other two to take the crown. Each queen (they are all called queens, not princesses) has a gift—there is usually, it seems, a poisoner, a naturalist, and an elemental, though there is mention of other, rarer gifts that others might inherit. Each queen is really the face of a larger power base: the poisoners are led by the manipulative, scheming Arron family; the elementals are backed by the priestesses of the temple of the Goddess; the naturalists are backed by the common people of Wolf Spring. Whichever queen prevails to sit the throne will see her backers become ascendant. The previous queen was a poisoner, so the Arrons are sitting pretty—but everything is about to change.

When I went into this book, I was expecting a fairly straightforward young adult fantasy novel in which the three queens eventually band together and rebel against their fates. I won’t spoil things, but I will say that I am both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised by the ending. The pleasant part of the surprise was simply how Blake upends my expectations. I am always happy to be wrong when I make such predictions; books that surprise me are often quite satisfying! However, the manner in which she does so is a letdown. One of the queens is betrayed by someone very close to her, and while there is a modicum of foreshadowing, as far as I can tell there is no explanation for his betrayal. Similarly, the very end of the book sees another queen discovering something very important about her gift—argh, yes, this book kicks off the real plot in the last thirty pages and leaves us on rather a cliffhanger. Will I read the next one? Definitely, maybe.

My other major gripe is the utter lack of queer representation. The book felt weirdly heteronormative—because, to be clear, this island is a matriarchy. All these families and groups like the temple are led by women. There’s a handful of male characters, but the most powerful characters and the ones with the most agency are women—and that part is great. Yet all of the romantic aspects of the book occur between men and women. Speaking of which—Joseph/Mirabella did not make sense to me. I mentioned this to a friend, when we were talking about romance stuff, because as an aromantic person most romance doesn’t make sense to me. So as I was yelling at the page where Joseph is making out with Mirabella because she just saved his life, I’m like, “Why are you kissing her, you’re cold and wet and nearly died??” A quick glance at some other reviews from possibly allo readers suggests I am not alone in feeling like this romance is shoehorned in, though, so I feel vindicated.

Anyway, my point is that it is strange to see a book that is only five years old with literally zero queer rep. I didn’t need it to be huge, didn’t even need it to be one of the main characters. But I need to see that queer characters exist in your world, because the alternative is that you are erasing us. That is not ok. Nor is queerness even addressed—like, if Blake had put an in-universe explanation for why everyone is depressingly cisallohet, that would have been acceptable. I’d probably still grumble, because these days I am interested in positive and progressive rep, but at least it would have been explained. It’s just … not mentioned at all, and it feels like a big omission.

The rest of the relationships are better depicted. I loved the friendship among Arsinoe, Jules, and Joseph, and Arsinoe’s reluctant alliance with Jules’ estrange mother, Madrigal. I appreciated the coldness of Katharine’s relationship with Nathalia and Genevieve. I understood the discomfort of Mirabella with her strained relationship with High Priestess Luca. In all of these ways, Blake defines and shapes each of her three queens, who in turn become quite distinct girls. (I would argue that Katharine perhaps receives the least interesting vector of character development, alas, and perhaps that changes in the second book.)

On a wider scope, the entire society of the island is fascinating. There is a fairy tale-esque quality to it, in the sense that I feel like the society is not really all that functional as it is depicted, but I’m willing to go with it because the story and idea are fascinating enough. It’s implied but never outright stated that the island’s isolation from the mainland is magical—the mists prevent anyone from visiting unless they have the right knowledge, or are welcome, or something like that—Blake never really explains it, and I like that, because the worst sin I can imagine for a fantasy novel is to give me exposition about every mystery of your world.

So let’s say that Three Dark Crowns had moments where it intrigued me with its premise and stimulated me with its execution, yet it left a bad taste in my mouth, especially with the romantic relationships and lack of queer rep. There is a good, solid story here, but it is weighed down by the critiques I’ve mentioned. I’m curious to see about how Blake’s tie-in novel stacks up compared to this one.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I can’t say that I have ever personally wanted to clone a mammoth, but you reach a point in your life where you should probably be prepared for certain things, right? Thankfully, Beth Shapiro has my back. How to Clone a Mammoth is a tour through what it would take to resurrect extinct species. It’s a perfect length, and while Shapiro occasionally gets into more complicated biochemistry concepts that you’ll need to skim over, the book as a whole is accessible and interesting.

Shapiro begins by identifying potential definitions and goals of de-extinction. To give you a sample: when do we say that a species has successfully been brought back? When we clone a single member? Or when we’ve established a captive breeding population? Or when we release a population back into the wild? Immediately, Shapiro asks us to confront and unpack our assumptions about the nature of de-extinction, clarifying that it is, like so much in science, a process rather than an event.

Indeed, most of this book seems to be Shapiro’s heartfelt attempt to demystify and de-sensationalize de-extinction. She laments (understandably) how media has (also understandably) seized only upon the most sensationalized, most exaggerated examples of de-extinction, which might lead laypeople like myself to think that we are mere years away from mammoths roaming the Siberian tundra or flocks of billions of passenger pigeons darkening our skies. Shapiro’s whole thesis is basically, “De-extinction is fucking hard, really fucking complicated, and woefully underfunded. But I also think it might be worth it.”

Beyond definitions, Shapiro asks us to consider the goals for de-extinction. Are we doing it for kicks? That feels irresponsible. Perhaps it’s because bringing back an extinct species might have a positive effect on the environment? Possibly, although there are probably less expensive and more practical solutions in many cases. In any event, I love that Shapiro asks us to consider de-extinction holistically, to consider its consequences for ecosystems and our world rather than simply viewing it as a cool but somehow isolated occurrence.

This is truly the strength of the book: at every turn, Shapiro reminds us of our ethical obligations, both of scientists like herself and of every human. These questions of ethics span the entire process of de-extinction, from the selection of species to the harvesting of DNA, sequencing of genomes, preparation of eggs (if that’s the route we go down), and use of surrogate parent species. Even when Shapiro gets into the nitty gritty of the science, she never loses sight of the humanistic need to consider the wider picture and implications of what we are doing.

The science in this science book is really fascinating too. I knew some very basic basics about somatic cell nuclear transfer. Shapiro hooks you up with everything you need to clone a mammoth, along with some different techniques that would work better for birds like passenger pigeons. Of course, one of the most difficult parts of the process is getting a mammoth genome—ancient DNA is very fragile and fragmented. As I mentioned earlier, there are a few points where Shapiro goes into enough detail that I had to carefully dust off my Grade 12 Chemistry knowledge to follow along. The good news is that you don’t really need to follow along to understand the gist.

I also appreciate that this book isn’t too long. There are points where it feels a little repetitive, but I think that’s because Shapiro is deliberately using a cyclic way of storytelling so that she can bring everything back to the beginning at the end. In any event, the book never overstays its welcome, coming to a close just as I’ve had my fill of understanding the immense challenges and potential rewards of de-extinction from this scientist’s point of view.

Definitely a great read if you are interested in ecosystems, communities, and how science can influence our environment (for better or for worse).

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.