Paradise lost and paradise reclaimed can be powerful tropes in science fiction. In Stolen Earth, J.T. Nicholas attempts to harness these ideas. Wish that I could say he succeeds admirably. For the most part, all I can do is acknowledge the attempt.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for the free eARC in exchange for a review.

Grayson Lynch, previously of the Sol Commonwealth Navy, now captains the Arcus out in the Fringe. Lynch, like the rest of his crew, are disillusioned by the combination of control and corruption in SolComm—but as the sole government left to humanity after its disastrous flight from Earth generations ago, it’s either SolComm or a life on the Fringe. Everything changes when Lynch and his crew are offered a job that will take them to Earth. They will dare to penetrate the impenetrable Interdiction Zone that protects SolComm from the artificial intelligences left behind after Earth was inefficiently evacuated. Yet the crew of the Arcus isn’t prepared for what it finds, and it will set off repercussions for all of humanity.

Look, I’ll cut to the chase: this book bored me. Worse, I knew it would, because post-apocalyptic books like this often do. The first red flag happened early: we have a prologue of Lynch as a youth, being assigned to the Navy, and then the story jumps forward several decades to when Lynch is a disillusioned ex-Navy officer who did bad things and regrets them. Instead of showing us all this, though, Nicholas tells it to us. Nicholas tells us everything. Stolen Earth is full of exposition, and it doesn’t work for me.

The other issue is that very few of the characters receive anything resembling development. Lynch is nominally our protagonist, but he actually has no character arc. He starts the book (after the prologue) as a disillusioned and well-meaning captain who cares for his crew and wants to do what’s best. He ends the book the same way. There’s no journey. The same goes for Bishop and Federov. There are two viewpoint characters in addition to Lynch, and they fare better in this regard—Hayer definitely changes a little, and one could argue that Morales has at least a smattering of development. Nevertheless, that isn’t enough to sustain my interest or dramatic tension.

Which brings me to my final complaint: the plot is on rails. The stakes get pretty high, but at no point did I really feel like the crew was in danger. Elements of conflict get resolved without much issue—I’m being vague to avoid spoilers, but let’s just say that our intrepid heroes seldom have to make hard choices. Everything just kind of comes together for them. This is, in part, because having a super-powerful AI can be a kind of deus ex machina. To his credit, Nicholas does try to work around this issue—I just don’t think he entirely succeeds.

In the end, this is not a bad book. Points for subtle gender diversity (a non-binary character, or at least one who uses the Mx honorific, shows up in the prologue). It’s sensibly paced and works fine as a standalone, although it also has potential for a sequel. I can see other people who are more tolerant of staid exposition enjoying this book a lot more than me. Unfortunately, as much as I love the idea of strong AI and reclaiming a planet, Stolen Earth never gets me caring.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Did Kara read this book totally unaware that it’s the middle of a trilogy? Absolutely I did that. I picked this up for $5 from a used bookstore because it’s a Jo Walton novel I haven’t read, and I really like Jo Walton’s books. Even when I don’t love them, I like them, which is the case here. Honestly, you couldn’t tell from this book that there was one previous—obviously the first book would have filled in some of the backstory to how we got to now, and I would have met Inspector Carmichael sooner. But Walton is really good at making Ha’penny feel like a standalone novel.

It’s 1949, and the Second World War ended with a peace that left Hitler in power in Germany and fascism rising in Britain. A bomb went off in the home of an actor, Lauria Gilmore, killing her and another man. Were they terrorists, planning an attack? Or innocent victims? Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard is on the case, getting heat from above to get results soon, close it, and move on. Meanwhile, actor Viola Lark (former Larkin) is cast as Hamlet even as one of her estranged sisters reaches out to bring her into a bombing conspiracy. Viola must decide if she is capable of helping them blow up Hitler and British Prime Minister Normanby on the opening night of her play. But will cutting the head off the snake save Britain from its fall into fascism? Or, like the hydra, will an even worse head climb into the power vacuum that awaits?

This is the central question of Ha’penny. When is violent revolution effective? When is civil resistance effective? When is it sufficient to depose a despot, and when is wider education and persuasion necessary? This might seem like a lot for a book about the theatre to tackle—but that is Walton for you, always meditating on complex issues in the most interesting of environments. This might be stating the obvious, but even the choice of play for the backdrop of this drama supports the question: Hamlet is about the main character’s indecisiveness over how to deal with his knowledge that his uncle murdered his father for the throne.

Walton’s choice of a counterfactual 1940s in which Hitler has held onto power makes the stakes all the more interesting. There were, of course, actual plots to kill Hitler with a bomb at several points leading up to and during the Second World War. I don’t know enough history to understand if that would have toppled the Third Reich and stopped the war dead in its tracks, but it seems to me like Hitler being in control of a consolidated peacetime Germany is a far different situation. Similarly, the grip that fascism has on Britain is fledgling—which seems to be harder to dislodge, in a way. People like Viola shrug at the violations of civil liberties visited upon Jewish people and non-British people, because they seem minor. In a world before mass television, the rumours of what is happening concentration camps are just that—rumours. So it’s more difficult to observe the descent, and people like Lord Scott seem more like alarmists than patriots.

Then we have Carmichael, who feels over the barrel because his superiors know he’s gay. Without spoiling the ending, he basically gets promoted into a position he really doesn’t want. He’s forced to hope that he can use his newfound power to “do some good” or at least mitigate the damage being done in the name of the state. The road to Hell and all … I can only imagine this is exactly the kind of thinking that many collaborators used during Nazi occupations and similar situations, including today. Do we stick inside the system and try to change it from within? Or do we disappear, go underground, even if that means leaving behind our lives? Carmichael is in a hard place, and there are no easy answers.

In the end, this isn’t so much a mystery novel (because we already know whodunit) as it is a suspense novel (will they be successful in their bombing plot, and will it make a difference)? Again, without spoilers, I’d also assert that given the ending it’s a bit of a horror story. At least a cautionary tale. I’m tempted to read the previous and subsequent books, which will hopefully give me a fuller understanding of the journey that Carmichael is on. We shall see what my library and used bookstore turn up for me!

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Last month I adored Break Your Glass Slippers and bought all of Amanda Lovelace’s books that I didn’t already own. To Make Monsters Out of Girls was one of these books. For some reason, after re-reading Pretending I decided I wanted to add to my emotional devastation by reading this poetry book.

All of Lovelace’s books deal with the trauma of abusive/toxic relationships in some way. To Make Monsters Out of Girls, though, focuses on such a relationship in a very keen sense. As the title attests, Lovelace wants to explore how such a relationship twists the survivor as well as the abuser. In so doing, she touches on the lasting harm that abuse creates, yet they also end the book on a note of hope. A reminder that, yes, you can heal and—if you so desire—you may one day find another person who means a great deal to you.

This book resonated less for me on a personal level than Lovelace’s previous works. As I said in my review of Break Your Glass Slippers, that book really helped me in some ways process some of my emotions related to a friend’s abusive relationship. This book, being far more focused on the survivor’s own grief and other emotions, doesn’t touch upon the same dimensions of friendship and support, and so there is less here that feels relatable to me personally.

As a result, I can say I enjoyed this book like I have all of Lovelace’s poetry. There’s something about the way they right, the honesty and rawness that shade over into vulnerability, that definitely appeals. I also just appreciate the willingness to challenge the narrative that love is all about constant happiness. Our society is getting better at talking about abuse, but emotional abuse is still not acknowledged enough, and we still have too many narratives around romance that promote or excuse abusive behaviour. To Make Monsters Out of Girls rejects these premises and insists on calling out the toxic ideas we often internalize in such relationships.

So, I wouldn’t call this one of my favourite Lovelace books. I see this as a positive thing, because it means I have read enough of their books to have these kinds of opinions. I’m intrigued to see how the sequel affects me, and then to dive into her newest book, which might be more my speed.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This was recommended to me by my bestie (and podcast cohost), Rebecca. She has a talent for pointing me in the direction of books that might feel like self-help to an extent but are actually interesting dives into specific topics in psychology. She most recently finally got me to read Quiet, by Susan Cain, a book that definitely has overlap with The Highly Sensitive Person. In particular, Cain actually mentions this term, and in my review I concluded that, yes, I am highly sensitive and so is my extroverted Rebecca. Now here’s an entire book about this trait (or set of traits).

Aron might not have coined the term but she has literally written the book on what it means to be highly sensitive. The basic definition, as I understood it, is that a highly sensitive person (HSP) is more prone to overstimulation than less sensitive people. That’s it. There are more specifics, of course, but that’s the main distinction between HSPs and other people. It is less about our inclinations for socializing (as with being introverted/extroverted) and more about how we react to stimuli. Each chapter of The Highly Sensitive Person focuses on a specific dimension of life as an HSP, concluding with a workbook-like activity that Aron suggests for readers who identify as HSP.

As I said above, I am an HSP. We don’t need to go through why. Certainly when I first encountered the label, my older millennial self cringed. Isn’t this exactly what we millennials are accused of doing all the time—calling ourselves “special”? What a snowflake! Except that this book, in multiple editions, is backed up by decades of research both by Aron and others. Additionally, Aron is not marketing the term HSP as a trendy label for people to feel different. She makes it very clear that being highly sensitive is just another trait, that it confers advantages and disadvantages alike. For example, HSPs definitely flourish in careers that require a great deal of interpersonal empathy, like my job as a teacher, even though some of those careers stress us out more (because of the overstimulation). Aron’s thesis is not how it’s better to be an HSP. Rather, she says that the world needs a mix of HSPs and non-HSPs—this book, then, is a glimpse into what HSPs are and how to optimize your highly sensitive nature, or better understand an HSP in your life.

I won’t pretend this book has changed my life or anything like that. Maybe I’ve already internalized a lot of what Aron discusses simply through hard-earned trial-and-error experience. I’m pretty well adapted to my highly sensitive life, although the pandemic and now the current situation with teaching definitely pushes me to my limits more than I want to talk about. In a later chapter, Aron mentions a highly sensitive teacher patient of hers who scaled back on how much he worked outside of school hours. That’s me this year, and I really identified with that struggle (I blogged about the guilt I wrestle with because of how the teaching profession is regarded).

But little nougats here and there resonated, such as when Aron talked about sleep and HSPs. We need our sleep; functioning on little sleep is much harder for HSPs. Similarly, Aron mentioned how even just lying in bed with our eyes closed, even if we don’t fall asleep, can be very restorative (because it gives us a break from stimulation). This is so true for me. Often I will lie in my lounger on my deck, or lie on my couch, or yes, lie in bed if I wake up too early, and close my eyes with no expectation of actually falling asleep. I find that such pseudo-naps, as I call them, help me a lot.

There was also a chapter on relationships. While I am aromantic, asexual, and happily single in a lifetime sense, I still found this chapter resonating for my friendships. I value close, quite intimate friendships over weaker-tie ones—something I always attributed to my introversion, but perhaps being highly sensitive has a lot to do with it too. A few of my friendships are extremely intense—Rebecca being one, my other best friend another. They have always found me, pursued me, leaned on my heavy door until I opened it—but something I’m coming to realize as I grow older is that my door might be heavy because I’m afraid of being too intense and scaring people away, so I push people away before they can see that intensity and get scared. I am grateful for those friends who persisted enough to find out what an amazing heart I have, even if it can be a bit extra. Ok, a lot extra.

This is a book full of information, and I doubt I absorbed more than perhaps a fifth of it (if that high a proportion). But it was still fascinating. I recommend it if you think you are highly sensitive (Aron provides a bit of a personality test near the beginning to help you see if you might fall into this category). I recommend it if you think you have an HSP in your life who needs your understanding and support.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

It’s rare that I re-read a book so soon after reading it. I acquired a lovely paperback version signed by Bourne, and I decided I was in the mood to re-read Pretending. It might not have been the best decision (so many feels), but it might have been the right decision. 

My first review feels very true and comprehensive, so I won’t add too much to this one. Mostly I just want to emphasize how real this book feels. 

For some time prior to the pandemic, and then as the pandemic exacerbated it, one of my friends endured an abusive relationship. While it bears little resemblance to the trauma that April experienced prior to the start of Pretending, I have witnessed the emotional toll that my friend’s trauma has extracted and continues to extract from her. And it makes me angry, angry at the abuser specifically but also at our society for enabling it in so many ways. Angry, too, at the microaggressions women face constantly even if we are not in abusive situations. 

A great deal of this book wrestles with the question “#NotAllMen?” April takes a very hardline stance of “Yes, all men” for most of the book. One of themes, of course, is that there is far more nuance to this issue—Bourne is definitely trying to portray growth in April by her gradual admission to herself that not all men are as toxic as she believes. Yet, as many characters comment in various ways, it might be the case that all cis men “are a little bit shit,” to quote one woman in particular. What Pretending excels at is how it demonstrates the way that this shittiness is embedded in our patriarchal society, especially when it comes to romantic interactions with women. 

This is a difficult book to read because it is raw. April makes so many mistakes, does things she knows she shouldn’t do. Yes, she is traumatized, but the book is clear that this is not an excuse for her behaviour. The difficulty in reading this book, at least for me, comes in the visceral awareness that there is no magic bullet. There is no small change we could make that magically makes our society less misogynistic. We need radical change, and we needed it yesterday. 

I really hope more cis men read this book—and take it seriously, and think about what they can do to materially dismantle patriarchy every single day.

What happens when your life is built on a lie? This is Renata Ghali’s problem in Planetfall. Emma Newman manages to construct a science fiction mystery with a mentally ill protagonist that is simultaneously about our need to believe and our desire to forget. The result is a captivating read I didn’t want to put down.

Ren is one of many colonists who came to this planet as part of an expedition led by Lee Suh-Mi, a woman who claims to have received a vision from God. Though most of the colonists would say they aren’t religious, many of them believed enough in Suh’s vision to leave everything they knew behind on Earth and settle on this planet outside an alien construct known as God’s City. Every year, the colonists receive a message “seed” from Suh, who is inaccessible within God’s City, communing with the creator. Or so we’re told. Only Ren and the mayor of the colony, Mack, know the truth. But when Suh’s grandson shows up with a story that he is the last survivor of a group of colonists long thought to be lost, secrets old and new alike will be uncovered.

Probably the best thing about this book is the utter chill Newman has about the central mystery. We make very little progress towards understanding the nature of this planet, of God’s City, of the connection between the plant that Suh ingested that caused her vision and the beings that created God’s City. Towards the very end, we receive … I guess you would call it a resolution. I’m actually not too sure what to make of the ending, but I guess that’s all right. The ending isn’t as important as the journey.

Really this is a story about belief. Ren and the others travel through the stars (the technology, like so much else in this story, is never really discussed; it’s implied humans have the capability for interstellar travel but it doesn’t seem to be commonplace) because they believe in Suh’s vision. Or they believe they will find something on this planet, some purpose they couldn’t find on Earth. In Suh’s prolonged absence, Ren has withdrawn into herself. She maintains the colony’s 3D printers and some other equipment, but she otherwise has begun to isolate herself from relationships. As Planetfall unfolds, we learn more about Ren’s poor mental health. Now, as a first person narrator she is technically unreliable. But it feels like Newman provides as lucid an insight into Ren’s condition as is possible. We go from “oh, Ren is quirky” to “oh, Ren is not well at all” and this informs how we look at what happened in the past, at Ren’s complicity with Mack and what happens at the climax of the novel.

Everything in this story is built on belief, belief in a lie. Mack believes that the lie preserves the colony’s unity—but he went to great lengths to achieve that initial unity, and now his bill has come due. The chaos in the climax of the story feels inevitable, a storm brewing from the first page, and it is a sharp contrast to the calm throughout the rest of the book. We spend much of Planetfall waiting, fed action only through flashbacks, as we are left to ponder the purpose of these colonists now. Newman doesn’t give everything away all at once, but it’s easy enough to read between the lines and understand what Mack and Ren did.

Perhaps ironically, the centre of this entire book is a character we only meet in flashbacks: Lee Suh-Mi. Her fate seals the fate of the colonists, in a way. There is hubris to this journey but also a sad inevitability. I think Planetfall is one of those books that is very open to interpretation in terms of what you get from the ending. What I got was the idea that, in the end, you can only reach apotheosis by completely giving yourself over to the process. Suh failed to do this because she saw herself as an individual separate from God (or whatever you want to call the being or beings behind the scenes here); she thought she could meet God. Ren’s journey reveals instead that one can only meet God through becoming, in a sense, God, although that of course isn’t accurate either (and I am deliberately keeping it vague).

I think what I needed more of from this book were other people. The colony seems to be fairly large but knit together, but we really only meet and interact with a handful of individuals. We never really get to know them all that well. Ren is our constant companion, our faithful narrator, and even her life is mostly a mystery. I can understand Newman’s reasons for this, but it left me feeling unsatisfied versus the rest of the book’s very satisfying elements.

This is a neat book. It’s a sad book too, don’t get me wrong. Not the best book to read if you want to be uplifted. But this is exactly the kind of science fiction I crave. Less emphasis on the hows and whys of the tech, more emphasis on exploring the themes of the journey. Call it “soft” science fiction if you will, but really, Planetfall is science fiction at its most human.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This book came on my radar after reading Fossil Men. Whereas that book is a deep dive into one spectacular fossil’s story and the stories of those involved in its finding and analysis, Lone Survivors is more of an overview of human evolution entire. Chris Stringer focuses in particular on the origins of modern humans, i.e., Homo sapiens and our relationship with our cousins the Neanderthals. In so doing, he furnishes us with vital knowledge about human evolution and, perhaps more importantly, how paleoanthropologists discuss these theories of evolution. It’s a little dry and technical at times, but don’t let that dissuade if this is an area of interest.

The title is a good summary. Stringer wants to explore the prehistory that took us from being one of many hominid primate species to being the only members of the genus Homo left standing. He summarizes the various theories paleoanthropologists have explored over the past decades. These tend to fall into two broad schools: multiregionalism and “out of Africa.” The former suggests that modern humans evolved independently throughout Asia, Europe, and Africa from earlier hominid species (e.g., Homo erectus), eventually blending together into the genome we see today. Multiregionalism was the predominant theory for most of the 20th century (unfortunately driven quite often by racist assumptions that Africa represented an evolutionary backwater). The Out of Africa school suggests that modern humans evolved in Africa and then migrated (once or severally) into Europe and Asia to supplant the earlier hominids living there. This school has taken prominence over multiregionalism since the 1970s because of new fossil discoveries, more precise dating techniques, and other evidence. Stringer himself is a proponent of the Recent African Origin theory, which specifically suggests that modern humans arose from a single, relatively more recent exodus from Africa than earlier versions of Out of Africa proposed.

Although Stringer obviously wants to justify his support for Recent African Origin, I’d say the majority of this book actually just summarizes how paleoanthropologists investigate the evolution of humanity. Each chapter discusses different techniques and issues. Stringer describes various ways of dating artifacts and fossils. He spends quite a bit of time talking about genetics, particularly because this is key in trying to determine if modern humans mixed significantly with Neanderthals (bow chicka wow wow). He throws in some possible climatic/environmental explanations for the decline of Neanderthals and subsequent spread of modern humans across the world.

If this all sounds like paleoanthropologists still aren’t sure, I got that impression too. I think it’s the impression Stringer wants us to have. I respect this. Sometimes scientists get so attached to their theories they become too eager to explain the advantages their theory has over the competition to the point where they don’t quite come out and say, “My theory is fact” but it can feel pretty close. Stringer very helpfully shares his personal evolution of thinking on this subject, from his time as a grad student throughout the more recent decades and advancements in technologies.

Indeed, as informative as this book is about evolution, it is most illuminating as a book about the scientific method. Many people who reject evolution decry it as “only a theory.” Which isn’t really accurate—as Stringer explains, evolution is actually many theories, some of which are competing. If an anti-evolutionist claims that scientists don’t have it all figured out, they’re right! But that doesn’t matter. Science isn’t about finding absolute truth; it’s about hypothesizing and then gathering as much evidence as possible to test that hypothesis. Stringer himself encapsulates this by illustrating the vacillation between multiregionalism and Out of Africa as a pendulum that has swung back and forth throughout the 20th century; Recent African Origin is simply a more extreme movement of the pendulum in the Out of Africa direction. In the case of evolution, gathering evidence can be really difficult because the fossil record is so spotty. I empathize a lot with these scientists who work hard to infer as much as possible from the data they do have—even if they don’t always get it right.

I appreciate Stringer’s attention to detail. Some of his language strikes me as outdated even for a book from 2012 (for example use of the label “Orientals”). He delves into ideas of evolutionary psychology and makes statements about what we might infer of the behaviour of modern humans based on ideas of gender roles extrapolated from fossil anatomy. I’m always loath to tar any entire discipline with a single brush, but evolutionary psychology always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

As I previous said, this book is very detailed and somewhat technical. It perches on the edge of what I would all a popular science book. I don’t think this is an academic book, however—this is meant for laypeople but for laypeople who have serious interest in science. Stringer is very clearly a scientist rather than a science communicator, and it shows.

I’m not sure I’ll pick up any of his other books, but I’m happy to have read this one and learned more about some of the theories (as of 2012) of how modern humans arose!

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Been a while since I read a new Thomas Hardy novel, mostly because I try to pick them up in gently used editions from my local used bookstore! I think I have read all of his most well-known novels now and have just a few less celebrated ones, along with collections of short stories, left. A Pair of Blue Eyes is not Hardy’s first novel, but it is an early one and the first to be published under his name originally. According to the very brief introduction (I commend the Wordsworth Classics editors for not indulging in a 30-page academic treatise like some publishers do), this novel contains a scene that scandalized contemporary readers at the time! I was excited for that.

Elfride Swancourt is a vicar’s daughter in a rural part of the country. She meets Stephen Smith when he comes to make drawings and measurements for his architect mentor to redo the church in a gothic style. Elfride and Stephen fall in love—young, puppy love if you will—but in a cruel twist of fate, it turns out Stephen is actually from the area! His father is a mere mason, and this combined with Stephen’s own architectural aspirations make him an unsuitable suitor in the eyes of Mr. Swancourt. After nearly marrying in secret, Stephen and Elfride part but swear to remain faithful. Stephen travels to India for a multi-year project where he hope he can make a name for himself and prove himself worthy of Elfride. What he doesn’t know is that a friend of his, Henry Knight, gets introduced to Elfride by way of another connection. Knight, unaware that Elfride is the one who got away for Stephen, soon falls for Elfride! So we have a love triangle amidst a series of unlikely coincidences.

This book is a hot mess in the best possible way.

The first third of the book, when Stephen and Elfride meet and fall for each other, is adorable. I love the hesitation, the way that Stephen is so reluctant to return because he knows he is falling for her and he also knows he isn’t “good enough” for her. I can overlook the constant interjection of coincidence into the plot because it’s just so much fun!

But what I think really elevates A Pair of Blue Eyes beyond its fun romance is Hardy’s trademark commentary on a revolutionary shift in English life and culture. This is commentary he later refined into a much sharper delivery in his more famous works like Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. So for those of us who love luxuriating in Hardy’s novels, getting to see his first attempts at this commentary is a delight.

Basically, this book is in part about urbanization and the resulting shift in cultural capital from landed gentry to a new upper–middle class of working people. In Mr. Swancourt we see a man very much concerned with heredity. When he first learns Stephen’s last name, he is convinced Stephen is related to a very prestigious family—of course we later that’s not true, and when Mr. Swancourt finds out, he looks down on Stephen. Despite he and Elfride living in a rural village, as a vicar he is an educated man and therefore sees himself as above the villagers like Stephen’s (presumably illiterate) mason father. Stephen has gone to London to study architecture to better himself—designing buildings surely is more prestigious than labouring over the actual building of them—but this is an upward mobility that Swancourt doesn’t recognize. In a contrasting irony, Swancourt himself attempts upward mobility through a channel he does see as valid: marrying up, by marrying a rich widow. He hopes to harness the same avenue for Elfride.

So when Henry Knight, promising barrister, shows up, we see the effect this has on Swancourt. Henry comes from a “good family” and lawyers are not seen as tradespeople like architects. So he’s a far more attractive suitor. His attitude towards Elfride is also far more traditional than Stephen’s. Whereas Stephen was bewitched, perhaps even besotted, with Elfride, Henry is more enamoured of her. The distinction here, to be clear, is that Henry sees Elfride as a woman to love for being a woman. Her most attractive qualities are her feminine ones. He doesn’t greatly admire her writing—though he does, at one point, admit she has some talent. He rather expects her to conform, to marry (hopefully him) and be a good little wife. As Elfride falls for Henry, the narrator explains how she bites her tongue and develops the habit of not challenging him or his views.

The result, then, is a novel about upward mobility, about gender roles, about propriety and who “deserves” to marry a vicar’s daughter. As many have noted, there are plenty of autobiographical features to this text (notably Hardy being an architect by trade). I’m actually really glad I read this novel now, after having read so many of Hardy’s later works. This way I get to see the seeds of those later works in A Pair of Blue Eyes, and I think that enhances the book overall. If I had read this as one of my first Hardy novels, I understandably wouldn’t have been as impressed.

So that’s my recommendation: don’t, if you have the opportunity, make this your first Hardy novel. He has so many others that are unquestionably superior in both plot and theme. But if you have read one or two of those, and like me you recognize the skill that Hardy brings to discussing his changing country at the end of the nineteenth century, then read this book too.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

After reading Artificial Condition earlier this year I decided that I shouldn’t wait too long before reading the next Murderbot novella. This is my first time reading one of these books in hard copy as opposed to an ebook!

Murderbot has decided to travel to a remote planet where GrayCris claimed a terraforming operation failed. This is likely a cover story for something more sinister, such as research into alien synthetics! If Murderbot can find evidence of that, it might help out Dr. Mensah, whom Murderbot now feels a little sorry for leaving in a quagmire of legal questions. But it isn’t the only sentience interested in this planet: an investigative team from another organization has been sent to survey the station GrayCris left in orbit. Murderbot inadvertently finds itself posing as a SecUnit controlled by a remote security consultant and helping this team, including its pet robot, out of corporate-induced mortal peril.

If you want to get all thematic—and you know I do—then Martha Wells is exploring, with each of these novellas, the idea of how an artificial sentience might relate to other sentients. In the first Murderbot Diaries book, we’re introduced to Murderbot and understand what it thinks of the humans it tends to get assigned to protect. In the previous book, Murderbot teams up with ART, an intelligence inside a ship. Now in Rogue Protocol we see Murderbot relate to Miki, a robot far more constrained in many ways yet also very tender and personable in a way Murderbot is not.

Wells asks us: what is it that makes us human? Miki looks less human than Murderbot, and Murderbot disparagingly at one point compares Miki to a pet dog. Yet Miki’s traits of loyalty and caring for its human companions are arguably traits we would associate with humanity. There’s an interesting level of anthropomorphization happening, both on the part of Don Abene but even Murderbot itself has to remind itself that Miki is “just” a bot and doesn’t feel things like pain. Murderbot does feel pain (even if it can turn that pain down) and looks more human. However, it faces an essential paradox in that it keeps insisting it doesn’t want to be human, sees itself as apart from humanity … yet it keeps ending up in situations where it poses as a human or is humanized.

So in this way, Wells continues the long tradition of using robots and artificial sentients in science fiction to get us thinking about the nature not just of identity but of belonging. If Murderbot is not human, then what community can it belong to? No longer governed by GrayCris commands, it isn’t really a SecUnit anymore. It is unique, alone, rogue … and that is lonely.

As far as the plot of this novella goes, my opinion is roughly the same as the previous ones: it’s fine. Evil corporations, double-crosses, etc. I’m not yawning but I’m not jumping up and down with excitement either. With each installment, Wells adds layers of interest to Murderbot’s personality, and that is keeping me reading. But the stories themselves are still lacking something more compelling to them.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

As many of you know, I am a sucker for heist and con artists stories. So I was drawn to Priceless because Robert K. Wittman offered a perspective I haven’t heard from—I’ve read a lot of stories from the points of view of the criminals, as well as from the marks. I was excited to hear from a retired law enforcement officer who specialized at going undercover. Wittman’s memoir is a treasure trove of insight into how art theft and the underground art market works, along with some interesting looks at how world events in the 1990s and 2000s shaped FBI enforcement and pursuit of things like art crime. As with many memoirs, one must swallow his stories with a grain of salt, sift through the small moments of self-aggrandizement. Yet Wittman largely won me over, and most importantly, I feel like I learned a lot.

The structure of this book is from a textbook in memoir writing: start with a dramatic incident at the height of Wittman’s career, then yank us back to the beginning of his life to tell us how he got involved in the FBI and art theft. This works pretty well. We learn about Wittman’s background (he is mixed race, his father a white American who served in the Korean War and married Wittman’s Japanese mother while on deployment), along with why he became interested in being an FBI agent. His entrance into the world of art crime was a little more accidental, though Wittman draws lines connecting his father’s interest in antiques and Wittman’s own penchant for sales—in the case of the latter, Wittman emphasizes the need for an undercover agent to sell oneself all the time: they buy you, your personality, not the facts of the cover story.

In this way, this book becomes about more than mere art theft. This is a window on the life of a certain type of FBI agent during the 1990s and 2000s. Wittman emphasizes the procedural demands of the job, along with his attitude towards them. He’s up front that one of the reasons he retired as soon as he was eligible for a full pension is that he thought, by 2008, that the FBI had “changed” and was “no longer the agency it once was.” Throughout his tellings, he definitely comes across as one of the smartest people in the room—that’s not to say he makes a Mary Sue out of himself, but there were a couple of points near the beginning of the book that I was tempted to put it down and walk away. I didn’t want to snark on this guy in a bad review. Nevertheless, I persevered, and eventually his tone and storytelling style grew on me. I believe Wittman is genuinely doing his best to be honest and straight with us, that he isn’t trying to make himself out to be some outsized hero.

So once you get past that, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in here. Wittman discusses why the FBI generally didn’t put a lot of resources behind art crime within the United States. He describes how 9/11 changed that (along with his own, very personal involvement on that day). I definitely got the impression that a lot of his experiences, the opportunities he had, the way things went down was a case of “the stars aligned” kind of juxtaposition of various events—something I feel is all too common in our lives and a good thing to keep in mind as we move through them. You never know how one world event or life event is going to alter the trajectory of what you are studying, working on, or engaged in.

Regarding the actual art crime angle, I built upon my existing knowledge. For example, I already knew that a lot of stolen art is difficult to fence because it is rare and recognizable. I knew that when it came to antiquities from nations in the global south, the market was driven by rich people from the West. I didn’t know much about the process that goes into investigating and taking down an art thief or dealer. Each chapter of Priceless focuses on a particular undercover case from Wittman’s career, and each reveals slightly different facets of the art crime industry. I really liked one in which, ironically, he couldn’t go undercover because it was too close to home—he arrested an Antiques Roadshow appraiser for defrauding people of the true value of their antiques! Wittman’s passion for getting justice and preserving the artistic and cultural heritage of various countries comes through loud and clear in these chapters. He laments law enforcement officers who focus solely on “getting their man” and putting people behind bars; for him, solving art crimes and retrieving stolen art was a public good.

So if you are looking for some good yarns, some “back in my day” adventures from a former undercover art crime investigator, Priceless has what you want. It has more serious moments, of course, such as when Wittman talks about the years-long struggle to clear his name of a drunk driving charge based on a hospital test mix-up. But this book is mostly what you would expect from the title and description, so as long as you go into it expecting that, you will be satisfied.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.