As longtime readers of my reviews will know, I am a big fan of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. Novik’s blending of historical fiction with the fantasy concept of dragons serving in militaries is such a captivating tale. So when Uprooted came out in 2015, I was excited to read Novik’s foray into more traditional fantasy.

Then, of course, I never got around to it. Until now!

Agnieszka lives in a small village near an evil, corrupting Wood. Every ten years, the wizard who protects this group of villages from the encroaching Wood picks a single village girl to serve him for a decade. This wizard, the Dragon, is a fair yet foreboding lord. When Agnieszka is unexpectedly chosen over her more appealing best friend, this triggers a series of magical events that upend the lives of Agnieszka and many, many more. Uprooted draws from the atmosphere of fairy tales, particularly central and eastern European folklore, to pit our protagonist against twisted nature itself.

I’ll be upfront: I loved the first half of this book far more than the second half. From the time Agnieszka is chosen by the Dragon to roughly her arrival at the capital city, I was thoroughly engrossed in this narrative. The second half of the book branched out (pun intended) into a more epic narrative, and to be honest I just kind of lost interest in it all. So I’m going to deal with each half separately and then render a final opinion.

The first half of this book is so lovely. When Agnieszka arrives at the Dragon’s tower, she initially struggles with his attitude towards her, his moods, and her own inability to cope. What I love about this relationship is that Agnieszka constantly refuses to work within the confines the Dragon sets out for her. She pursues numerous little acts of rebellion. Then, when danger arises in another village while the Dragon is dealing with something else, she doesn’t hesitate: she takes matters into her own hands, proving herself heroic.

Agnieszka’s relationship with magic is important too. The way that she feels magic intuitively, versus how the Dragon and other wizards seem to believe it is a highly structured, very formulaic practice, strikes me as a very feminist theme. The wizards seem like a conservative lot in general, and their dismissiveness towards Agnieszka and Jaga and those who would use magic more liberally, based more on feeling than formula, supports this reading. (One theory I developed, which proved not to be borne out, was that Agnieszka becomes Old Jaga—the comment about Jaga saying at her own funeral “I’m unstuck in time” made me think Novik was foreshadowing Agnieszka’s fate to become the very witch whose journals inspired her to find herself.)

In this way, watching Agnieszka grow into herself was just so pleasurable. I curled up under a blanket and thoroughly enjoyed how Novik subverts the idea that women are captured in towers and need to be rescued by princes. Well, the prince in this story is a boorish mama’s boy. Similarly, the Dragon is not a great mentor figure. Watching him transform gradually from a remote, one-dimensional idea in Agnieszka’s eyes to a living, breathing human with a backstory of his own is so great. Novik has studied the symphony of a fairy tale so thoroughly she can reproduce it yet subtly adjust the notes to achieve new and superior harmonies.

The second half of Uprooted, alas, shifts the tone of the book from fairy tale to epic fantasy. I want to be clear that I’m not saying the second half is bad. If you enjoyed every page of this book, that’s cool. But I noticed my attention wandering during the last half in a way that it didn’t near the beginning, and I attribute this to how we went from Agnieszka’s very personal struggles to her and the Dragon fighting a pitched battle against Prince Marek and his evil witch mom. The climax, the last-ditch effort to kill the Wood and save everyone, felt like a confusing fever dream that was difficult for me to follow.

In the end, I enjoyed this book overall, but there’s a gap between what I was hoping it would be and what it ended up being. When that happens, it’s neither the author’s nor the reader’s fault. This is a beautiful standalone fantasy novel that once again showcases Novik’s storytelling skill, and I would recommend it.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This book was recommended to me by Esmè, who wrote into my Buffy rewatch podcast, Prophecy Girls. Some of our comments on the show about how strange life at Sunnydale High must be for students who aren’t in the know about Buffy’s life reminded Esmè of The Rest of Us Just Live Here. Indeed, it sounds like a great choice for me: I love “meta” books that deconstruct literary tropes like this in a way that is self-aware without being too patronizing of the trope itself. Also, Patrick Ness had somehow managed to elude me this entire time, and so it was time to read something he has written! While I won’t say I loved this book, I did enjoy a lot of its themes.

Mikey is not a Chosen One, or in the lingo of this book, one of the “indie kids.” He doesn’t have a slick indie kid name like Finn, and he doesn’t always seem to be turning up dead. Mikey is a side character in all those dystopian fantasy YA novels you love to read. Except this story is about him. It’s about his relationships with his friends and family, about his struggle with OCD, and about his attempt to find worth for himself in a confusing, chaotic world.

Trigger warnings in this book for mentions of eating disorder, mental illness, and suicide ideation.

At the beginning of each chapter, Ness provides a small introduction that summarizes what’s happening with the “main” storyline of the indie kids. We are witnessing everything from Mikey’s point of view, so even though there are immortal faeries trying to invade our world, we don’t see that except for the moments that intersect with Mikey’s life or the flavour text at the start of each chapter. I liked how this narrative device kept us grounded in Mikey’s reality while acknowledging that something bigger was happening behind the scenes.

Similarly, Mikey and his friends often discuss how difficult it is to get adults in town to acknowledge the weirdness—even though they also went through it in high school. It’s as if you grow up and suppress it through a hefty dose of cognitive dissonance. This is far from the only way in which Ness examines how YA fantasy fiction with Chosen Ones is really a metaphor for growing up: the wounds of adolescence fade and scar over, and most adults struggle to believe that what teens experience is as real, as deep, as the teens themselves believe it to be. (This is one reason I enjoy reading young adult fiction so much—it keeps me grounded in teenage experiences, even as I march inexorably into middle age.)

Mikey and his sister are graduating in a few weeks. They are on the cusp of that scariest time of adolescence, the liminal space between dependence and independence. Mikey craves the freedom to escape and move away, yet he’s also concerned—for his mental health, for his sister’s mental health, and for his feelings for Henna. As the weeks tick down towards the graduation ceremony, Mikey and the others navigate what would, in any other novel, be fairly mundane events.

This is where I was less satisfied with how Ness uses the central premise of The Rest of Us Just Live Here. I understand that, in order for the novel to work, Mikey’s life needs to be boring and ordinary. Nevertheless, the result is a plot that overall is quite boring and ordinary. Towards the end (without spoiling it), Mikey’s story intersects with that of the indie kids in a way that even the indie kids themselves didn’t foresee—but even then, Ness kind of cheats thanks to some revelations about Mikey’s friend, Jared. While I wasn’t all that interested in the indie kids plot happening behind the scenes (Ness keeps it fairly generic on purpose), the relentless focus on how Mikey’s experiences are different from the indie kids because they are so boringly normal felt … well, boring. The Chosen One story in the background acts like an anchor that drags the main plot’s pace to a crawl—in other words, had the book jettisoned its whole premise and simply been a story about a teenage boy struggling with OCD, graduation thoughts, romance, etc., it would have been a better story. There. I said it.

So from a literary criticism perspective, I don’t think Ness succeeds at critiquing and deconstructing the Chosen One narrative in YA. To do this, I think he would have needed more intersections with the two worlds. The indie kids in this book are all shallow, flat characters with little to recommend them or make them interesting to us. As a result, Ness never takes the opportunity to truly juxtapose the emotional weight of the decisions the indie kids face versus the decisions the non-indie kids face.

On the other hand, The Rest of Us Just Live Here still has a lot of merit as a story. I love the way Ness handles Mikey’s feelings for Henna. I headcanon Mikey as aromantic—the book literally starts off with Henna describing romantic attraction only for Mikey to repeatedly say, throughout the book, that he doesn’t feel like that towards Henna. Even if this isn’t explicitly aromantic rep, I appreciate that Ness is portraying a teenage boy character who isn’t a horn dog on main—Mikey’s attraction to Henna (however you label it) is the confusing attraction of one person to his friend, and they explore it in a way that I think, frankly, is healthy and mature for two people on the cusp of adulthood to go about it.

Similarly, there are some good moments between Mikey and his other family members. As I said above, I think there are times when the book doesn’t delve deeply enough into these ideas. Ness is really pulling from some stock characters here, such as in the case of Mikey’s dad. The book doesn’t quite spend the time fleshing his parents out into actual humans, even if it comes close with Mikey’s mom by the end. However, the relationship dynamics are solid and not one-dimensional: Mikey’s mom is neither a tyrant nor suddenly a cuddly, feeling person. Her relationship with her children is complicated by her political ambitions, by her role as a woman in politics, by her strained marriage, etc. These are normal, common experiences that deserve to be represented in YA, which all too often kills off parents (especially in Chosen One YA) or relegates them to being one-dimensional tropes of parental strictness, laxity, concern, etc.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here, then, is neither a slam dunk nor a total miss of a novel. It’s messy, in my opinion, and not entirely successful at what it sets out to do. But it’s full of good moments, good characters, good ideas, and that might make it worth the read for some.

I’ll conclude with a shout-out to one of my favourite Doubleclicks songs, “Can’t You See the World Is Ending?”. It’s such a clever and catchy song about the conflict between being a teenage Chosen One and Ordinary High School Life; I think of Kim Possible every time I listen to it, and it makes me smile.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I  very much enjoyed Lisa Randall’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door, which provided a layperson like me with a cogent explanation of the Standard Model that underpins modern particle physics. Randall is a physicist with a knack for explaining things both enthusiastically and clearly; she’s a good storyteller who doesn’t get too bogged down in trying to get all the details right for us. So I was intrigued enough to put Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs on my to-read list, even if that was years and years ago. Now that I’ve read it, all I can say is: wow. What an interesting take on a popular physics book. 

The title hints at how different this book is going to be. How could the dinosaurs be connected at all with dark matter? Randall has a plausible scientific theory—this book is not science fiction or fantasy—but I want to be up front with anyone considering reading this book: this is a thought experiment. Randall and her collaborator, Matthew Reece, decided to investigate the possibility that the solar system’s passage through a hypothetical disk of dark matter embedded in the galactic plane might disturb comets from the Oort cloud and periodically send them into the solar system in a way that could lead to a devastating, extinction-level impact on Earth. Their work is built on decades of investigations into extinctions, the theory of periodic impacts from space, and of course, the nature and distribution of dark matter in our universe. Everything they say here is (as far as I can tell) plausible from a scientific perspective but also highly theoretical. Just keep that in mind as you read. 

Also be aware that much of this book discusses neither dark matter nor dinosaurs! Never fear, they do come up, especially towards the end. But there is a lot of build-up first. In this respect, the book’s subtitle—The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe—is quite apt, and this is probably the make-or-break selling point of the book for people. Either you appreciate how Randall tells the story or you don’t. The first few parts of the book develop our basic understanding of the universe itself and our particular corner of it. In particular, Randall explains where impactors—asteroids, comets, meteoroids—come from. She does a good job helping us wrap our heads around the vastness of our solar system as well. Those school models of the planets all neatly lined up at distances not to scale warp our ideas about how big the solar system is—Randall makes it clear that our solar system is vast and mostly empty, but there is a lot about the composition of its fringes (like the Oort cloud) that we’re still unsure of because it’s so far away and hard to probe. 

The middle of the book is mostly about the effects of impacts on Earth. While the dinosaurs come up here and there, they aren’t the main story. Randall is more interested in explaining about craters, how we investigate their properties, and what they can tell us about the nature of the impact and impactor itself. This part was extremely interesting and valuable to me. Randall strives to help us understand that science is a fallible but hopefully self-correcting process. As with the story in Fossil Men, this is a story about people’s egos and different theories running up against each other, looking for evidence either way. Things I took for granted growing up, like the fact that the extinction of the dinosaurs was kicked off by an impact off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, were only accepted very recently! And the story of how these theories were formed and investigated in incredibly interesting and full of drama. (Hearing about all the messy drama is probably my favourite thing about reading popular science books, let’s be real!) 

So it’s a lot of setup before we finally arrive at the end of the book, where Randall unspools the theory she and Reece have cooked up. I explained it above, and that’s about all the detail I can give, because I am not an astrophysicist! I appreciate the care with which Randall explains competing models of dark matter and how she reminds us, over and over, that what she and Reece are proposing is just one idea among many. Sometimes scientists become too invested in promoting or hyping up their own theories when the evidence isn’t there yet. Randall doesn’t do this, and it makes me respect her all the more. 

Yes, it might seem silly to some people to write an entire book about a hypothetical scenario. Yes, it might seem odd that Randall has spent so much time investigating a connection between physics and extinction events that doesn’t seem to have any practical consequences for humans here and now. In my opinion, however, this book has a great deal of merit. It demonstrates how science is a creative process. I love the way Randall describes how she and Reece went about forming their theory, from reviewing existing literature to gathering datasets to forming their hypotheses. She makes it clear that this is a fun project for them, but she also explains its value: by searching for evidence that supports or rules out their theory, they might further refine our understanding of dark matter in general. Similarly, if their theory helps us to understand impact events and whether or not they are periodic, this might help paleontologists further refine our understanding of the history of life on Earth! None of this would happen if two physicists didn’t decide one day to get creative. I know any physicist (or scientist in general) who reads this review might not be surprised—I bet all of you are a fairly creative bunch! But that isn’t the picture we’re painted, especially in schools where we are not taught science in a creative, messy way like we were from The Magic School Bus. And that’s a shame.
 

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs might not hold a revolutionary new discovery within. But it shows us the value of looking at connections, of being interdisciplinary, and of creative thinking. These are qualities scientists need, and this book helps you think a little more like a scientist. 

Not sure what my record is for “longest time between book and its sequel,” but Prototype might be the holder. I read Archetype over 6 years ago. Since then, this sequel has sat on my to-read list, never quite making it to my bookshelf. Until now! I recently conducted a joyous purge of my to-read list as part of migrating it to The StoryGraph—somehow, Prototype made the cut, but I was galvanized to finally borrow it from my library. I remember so little about Archetype, though, and that might have been to this book’s detriment. I didn’t enjoy this as much as my review of Archetype suggests that 2015 Kara enjoyed it. Maybe this is because I’m a different person, maybe it’s the book—maybe it’s both!

Little time has passed since the conclusion of the first book. Emma is a clone. In the first book, she awakes with little personal memory. She’s told she is married to Declan Burke, the rich dude who paid for her to be cloned. In reality, she was married to a resistance member, Noah Tucker, although her last name is Wade, so, you know, already a lot to keep track of. Emma used to be part of the resistance! She has a daughter! And now she is on the run from Declan Burke, searching for her parents—also former resistance members—and struggling to find freedom in a world where neither clones nor women, especially fertile women, are particularly free. Oh, and she never uses contractions, even in her first-person narration, and I don’t remember if the first book ever explains this but it’s weird.

My review of Archetype focuses on two ideas. The first is whether or not the novel “feels like” what we call young adult literature. The second is how its themes and motifs tie into novels with similar premises around an ultra-overt form of patriarchy. I say “ultra-overt” because all forms of patriarchy are obsessed with controlling the fertility of people who can reproduce—just see the latest round of anti-abortion laws in the United States. But books like Archetype/Prototype and The Handmaid’s Tale crank this up to 11 in the hopes that it will prompt people to pay attention to the inequality that women face today.

In my original review I said this lovely nugget:

I love the presently in there, since it so carefully qualified something I had no idea at the time would change but ended up changing! Oh, 2015 Kara. I wish you had been slightly bolder in exploring what was going on in your heart and your mind….

Like, I still can’t speak for women here and couldn’t even if I were a cis woman. But Prototype definitely hit differently now that I understand that I am a trans woman. I can’t bear children. Lots of cis women can’t, so that doesn’t make me feel any less like a woman. Moreover, I’ve never particularly wanted kids, so I’m not too worried about finding alternatives. And yet, the particular premise of this book—cloning women to “cure” their infertility—prompted me to think philosophically about this.

If the technology in this book existed, we wouldn’t have to use it on cis people only. We could clone trans people new bodies that are congruent with their genders—just tweak a chromosome here, a gene sequence there. If I had access to a cloning technology that would put me into the cisfeminine analogue of my body, would I go through with such a procedure? (I am delicately side-stepping the issues of continuity of identity much like this book sweeps them away.) I know, of course, that in the real world trans people probably wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the list of beneficiaries of such technology. As this book observes, after controlling the fertility of women, the next item on the list is preserving the lives of rich and powerful men. Still, it’s an intriguing and perhaps even unsettling idea.

Prototype walks a fine line with this discussion of cloning technology. Like I said above, it evades some of the deeper philosophical question even as it verges on the pseudoscientific and metaphysical at times. I get the impression Waters doesn’t really want to spend too much time on the implications of this technology so much as use it as a vehicle for the story she’s telling about a woman trying to get back to her family. And you know what? Fair. I might not like that storytelling decision, but I respect that Waters makes it and sticks with it instead of half-measures.

So even though there is a subplot here about overturning an evil cloning corporation, don’t mistake it for the real story. This is about Emma, Noah, and their daughter Adrienne attempting to overcome all the obstacles trying to keep them apart. One of those obstacles is, in no small part, Emma’s own doubts about her authenticity of self and where she belongs. I wish that we saw her struggle with that more fully—the scenes where she is confronting Declan or in his power ring hollow, the way she talks about how much she desires him even though she hates how he treats her. I’m not trying to deny that people often still want to be with their abusers even while recognizing them as abusers—but Emma’s voice feels lacking in nuance. There’s too much telling going on.

I also wasn’t a fan of Emma’s constant insistence on motherhood as her anchor for her identity. Again, I don’t want to invalidate anyone here who sees their status as a parent as their anchor. It just feels like a weird choice for a book that is, on one layer, a critique of our society’s obsession with people who can reproduce only existing for the purpose of reproduction. I suppose we might interpret the fact that this Emma didn’t physically birth Adrienne as Waters trying to tell us that motherhood is about your emotional connection to a child rather than the physical bonding of birth. That’s a plus for parents who adopt, I guess. Nevertheless, like my complaint about Emma’s voice, my critique here isn’t so much what Waters is trying to say but rather her skill at saying it.

In short, Prototype strikes me as a book that swings big but doesn’t quite succeed in hitting the emotional notes it aims for. I’ve said this before in reviews: I would rather see a book swing big and miss than not try at all. So in that sense, I liked this book. I don’t regret reading it 6 years after the first one. That being said, I don’t see myself raving about it and recommending it any time soon. Even though I believe this book is exploring some valuable territory about patriarchy, womanhood, and relationships, there are much better books out there doing the same thing.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This is my 1700th review per my website’s official count (counts on other places, like Goodreads and The StoryGraph, might be slightly off because of import issues/what gets counted as a “review”)!! I didn’t choose Bookishly Ever After for my 1700th review on purpose, but I couldn’t think of a more deserving book for this arbitrary milestone. Lucy Powrie concludes the trilogy began in The Paper & Hearts Society and furthered in Read with Pride. As is the case with those first two books, I adored this one. I laughed. I also cried. Powrie’s abilities as a writer have only increased since the first Paper & Hearts Society book, and Bookishly Ever After manages the impressive feat of ending a trilogy on a satisfying note while leaving me wanting more more more from Powrie.

This book follows Ed. We have come to know him over the previous two books as someone with a flair for the dramatic. Everything is big and emotional for Ed, from his obsession with Shakespeare to how much he cares for his friends. In this book, he has acquired a part-time job at Woolf and Wilde, an independent bookstore in their town. Ed is excited for the new job, but as you can probably imagine, reality turns out to be less impressive. Ed’s co-worker, Hannah, is aloof. Dealing with customers is tricky. And in the meantime, Ed’s mum lets spill that she is seeing someone, just as Ed’s dad seems to be pulling away from Ed while also lecturing him to “man up.” Indeed, for emotional Ed, it feels like his world is lurching perilously from its axis. Can the Paper & Hearts Society be his Atlas, or will he go spinning off into space?

I don’t even know where to begin in my encomium, so I guess we’ll start with all the feels and why that’s important. First, I think Powrie nails the intensity of emotions that teenagers experience. She is not alone in doing this. However, other authors of YA fiction sometimes eschew that—perhaps for fear that it will feel melodramatic or unrealistic, or perhaps because they weren’t really writing YA in the first place but the book got marketed that way. Regardless of the reason, a lot of books we call YA are either “new adult” or have the emotional sensibility of NA even if their protagonists are 16 or under. That’s not the case here. Ed and friends are so gloriously, cheerfully, completely messy. They laugh and cry and snap at one another, in person and in text. They make lots of mistakes. The moment Ed put that can of beans in the microwave, I looked up from my book and said, “Oh nooooo,” but that’s because I am a 31-year-old adult who has indeed tripped a circuit breaker or two in her time because of infelicitous microwaving choices. (Shout-out as well to the moment where Ed said to us that all he has to do is keep pushing down his feelings, that everything would be fine if he did this, which prompted a knowing chuckle as I turned the page to continue reading about how that worked out for him.)

Moreover, it’s significant that Ed is a boy and experiencing all these raw emotions. Our society still has a tendency to devalue when men show emotions that are not related to aggression. Men and boys who show too much emotion are sensitive if we want to be charitable and girly or sissy if we decide to throw some misogyny in there while we’re at it. Powrie subverts and openly acknowledges these expectations in Bookishly Ever After. Ed cries. He becomes a big ol’ pile of tears when necessary. But we also see how confused he is by his emotions, and how much he struggles with emotional regulation because it was never really taught properly to him—not by his dad, certainly, who is all about the toxic masculinity I mentioned at the top of this paragraph; but also not even by his loving mum, who seems to be a little taken aback by Ed in the later half of the book, like she blinked and has only now realized her boy is on the cusp of manhood and certain things are now Very Difficult. They finally have a good conversation about it towards the end of the book, along with a touching conversation with Cassie that echoes many of the same themes, including the powerful idea that you can be disappointed in someone and still love them, that you can want more from someone and feel let down if you don’t get it. This really resonated with me, as a single person who relies on a very small number of close friendships for fulfillment in my life. Sometimes my friends do disappoint me—we are all only human—but that is not a reflection on our love for each other.

The value that this trilogy places on friendship is another reason it will always be dear to me. Powrie’s books currently sit alphabetically on my shelf next to Non Pratt’s, another UK YA author whose work often focuses on friendship in a way that makes me, as an aromantic asexual person who doesn’t desire a partner, romantic or otherwise, feel seen. This is the case for the Paper & Hearts Society books as well. Yes, Bookishly Ever After has a romantic subplot. It is adorable! However, that plot is not the central part of this book, and without going into spoilers, Powrie skilfully resolves the conflict within that subplot without resorting to an over-the-top grand gesture. Rather, the resolution to the romance subplot relies entirely on the assistance and advice of Ed’s friends. They are the ones he goes to, individually and as a group, when he needs help. They are the ones who will lift him up. And Ed’s paramour begins as a new friend, one who makes him feel fulfilled and at ease in ways his book club friends don’t—that is to say, it’s ok to have different people in your life for different moods and activities. A new person entering our lives who makes us feel wonderful doesn’t invalidate or minimize the joy we derive from our existing friendships.

Ok, speaking of paramours, let’s talk a little about Hannah! I love her characterization so much. I know enough about Powrie from her YouTube and Twitter to know she has put a lot of herself into Hannah, from her book love and book blogging, to her guinea pig obsession and animal love to, yes, being autistic. Powrie leaves enough hints in Hannah’s actions that even my allistic self can pick up on Hannah being autistic before we hear that label. (I don’t blame Ed for not picking up on it, because he’s … well, he’s Ed. What matters is that when he does learn she’s autistic, his reaction is acceptance.) I can’t speak to what this representation means to autistic readers. All I can say is that I love how Hannah is portrayed and how Powrie includes Hannah’s voice throughout the book in the form of posts Ed reads from her blog. This includes a post with recommendations for other, real books with autistic characters. So sneaky! I smiled a little every time I turned the page and saw another of Hannah’s blog posts, because I knew I was in for a little break in the narrative, a little treat.

Indeed, I said this when comparing Read with Pride to the first book, and I’ll say it now when comparing this book to Read with Pride: marked improvement. Powrie’s debut novel was great, but as she herself notes in her afterword, she has changed a lot since writing that first book. This is evident in each subsequent novel. Bookishly Ever After’s structure, the way the various plots end up hanging together, and the careful inclusion of elements like Hannah’s voice, has a richness and complexity that is all the more rewarding if you’ve read the first two books in this trilogy and seen that growth. I hope when I say this that it isn’t coming off as condescending of a young author; rather, I want to celebrate how far Powrie has come over the course of this trilogy.

See, I’m really sad that this series is over. It was so good, yet at the same time, there’s so much more I want to see from these characters! Powrie wraps it up neatly with an epilogue, and while of course the door remains open for her to revisit these characters should she choose, it’s clear that, for now, she has told the stories she wants to tell. Hence why I’m so excited by how Powrie’s writing has developed over just these three novels. Even though I’m sad to say goodbye to these characters, I’m simultaneously eager to see what Powrie plans to give us next. Her love of 18th and 19th century English literature was how I first found her on YouTube and has been a constant in her reading and also influenced her writing (Woolf and Wilde, anyone?), so I’m super hopeful she will channel that more directly into a new project. Regardless of the form it takes, however, I’m going to be a fan. Because I’ve been reviewing books on these here internets long enough that this one is #1700, and it’s because authors like Powrie keep surprising me, keeping serving up those delicious emotional highs, that I’m going to keep going for the foreseeable future.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 A year and a half and one gender identity change later, here I am reading the second Murderbot Diaries novella, Artificial Condition! My review of the first book focuses quite a bit on Murderbot’s portrayal as agender, along with some critiques of the worldbuilding (or lack thereof). The good news is, I think I liked this book even more than the first! That being said, I’m happy with the current lengths of these books—I know Martha Wells has a Murderbot novel out, but I’m not sure I would want to read a novel-length story with this protagonist? Hmm. We’ll see.

Having “escaped” from the humans who bought it, Murderbot books passage on an uncrewed research transport vessel. Its destination is the planet where it thinks it hacked its governor module and then killed a bunch of people, for unknown reasons. Murderbot wants answers. What it doesn’t anticipate is that the bot intelligence that runs the transport is smarter than your average bot. Murderbot nicknames it ART, for Asshole Research Transport. The two of them “bond,” if you can call it that, over watching human-produced media, and ART kind of starts to feel protective towards Murderbot. So ART helps out as Murderbot poses as a security consultant to get down to the surface of the planet and learn more about its missing murderous memories.

The dynamic between Murderbot and ART is everything in this book. This is the odd couple bot comedy I hadn’t realized I needed. I mean, yes, there is still murder and intrigue and all that stuff—but none of that matters compared to the banter between these two. You come to find out what happens to Murderbot, but you stay for ART’s sulking and Murderbot’s reluctant partnership with it.

Indeed, this is probably the most appealing element of this series: the protagonists are not human. The humans in this series are bad or fragile, and Murderbot knows how to deal with one even if it still struggles to understand the other. Watching Murderbot interact with its new humans is a rewarding experience that helps us understand what it is struggling with: it wants to hide that it is a SecUnit, so it attempts to become more human-like. But how far does it want to go in its emulation of humanity? Murderbot’s obsession with uncovering its past is laudable and understandable—but will this hinder Murderbot’s ability to conceive of a concrete, satisfactory future?

Artificial Condition doesn’t answer all those questions, nor should it. It’s a competent little novella that sets up a problem and shows us how Murderbot approaches it, and that’s good enough. If you liked All Systems Red, this one is worth a read too! Will I read the next one? Who knows! Stay tuned.

Despite not enjoying The Mirror Empire to the point of not finishing it, I was still eager to read this collection of essays by Kameron Hurley. One of the reasons I was so disappointed about The Mirror Empire was that I really wanted to enjoy Hurley’s novels based on what I had seen from her on Twitter, her blog, etc. So I still wanted to try The Geek Feminist Revolution, and I’m glad that I did.

Much of the book concerns writing. In particular, Hurley focuses on the nature of writing commercially while female—both as a fiction author and a marketing copywriter. I always love it when writers talk writing as a business. If you’ve read any of my much older reviews, you’ll know that when I was a teenager, my aspirations were to be a fantasy novelist! However, I gradually realized that I wasn’t interested in the business side of being a published writer. As much as discussions of writing as an art form can be valuable, I also appreciate when writers discuss the practical aspects of their careers. In this case, Hurley doles out that advice while also pointing out the obstacles in place when you are a woman, especially in speculative fiction. She notes that she is standing on the shoulders of giants, like Alice Sheldon and Joanna Russ, but sadly in some ways, now in the 21st century, we are still fighting for a place at the table—even though we have always been there! This theme is perhaps most prominent in “Where Have All the Women Gone? Reclaiming the Future of Fiction,” in which Hurley responds to a series of statements commonly used as arguments that women have no place in science fiction and fantasy.

The polemics continue, much to my delight. As is the case with many such collections, many of the pieces here have been published elsewhere. Often, however, they have been updated and revised for this book. For example, one of the standout essays for me was “Public Speaking While Fat,” and the version in this book is longer and more detailed than the one that appears on Hurley’s blog:

Welp, that hit me right in the patriarchy. Full disclosure: I am not fat, but this rings true for so much of the experience of being a woman in our society. One of the most potent walls patriarchy erects in our way is the idea that we need to meet standards of beauty before we can be seen, heard, or accorded credence. Hurley challenging that idea so directly is powerful. Her essay is a rejection of the idea that her body is the problem, in any way, rather than society’s discrimination against her because of how her body appears.

In similar ways, Hurley reflects on issues like access to affordable healthcare. As a Canadian, this isn’t something I have a lot of experience with to the level that Hurley does (although our healthcare system is far from “universal” as some might claim)—but by the same token, I just feel so grateful that I do not live and work in the United States, where apparently my very life is dependent on the largesse of my corporate overlords.

Oof.

Which brings us back to writing science fiction and fantasy. Some of the most valuable insights for me as a reader in this collection occur when Hurley discusses why she writes what she writes. She says that she considers herself an optimist and wants to write optimistic futures—but it’s important, she maintains, that we also write the futures we don’t want so we know what to avoid. This is an interesting perspective for me! I have started avoiding a lot of gritty, grimdark speculative fiction right now (maybe because of the pandemic, maybe I just want happy things). However, I see her point. Similarly, Hurley maintains that it is important she constructs worlds that challenge our allocisheteronormative worldview. But she talks about how that is a struggle, because of course she has internalized ideas thanks to patriarchy and white supremacy. Hurley engages with this in numerous essays, including “A complexity of Desires: Expectations of Sex and Sexuality in Science Fiction,” where she discusses how her initial attempts to write a bisexual hero were very rough, in terms of the telegraphing of the hero’s sexuality, and didn’t fit into the world she was creating where bisexuality was in fact normative.

So this is a collection of essays by a queer, female writer about her personal life as well as her professional learning. I would have loved to read this as a teenager, and even though my aspirations to write novels are shelved (but not completely abandoned …), I still found this valuable. It was nice to spend some time inside Hurley’s mind like this. I can’t promise this means I will like any of her fiction! But I’ll give it another try and continue to seek out and enjoy her non-fiction.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This book was recommended to me by a comment on my Goodreads Review of For Today I Am A Boy. As I said in that review, we need more trans people telling trans stories. Confessions of the Fox is exactly that: author Jordy Rosenberg is a trans man, the frame story protagonist is a trans man, and the protagonist of the inner story is a trans man. More incredibly, however, this book does something For Today I Am A Boy could never do: it offers a thoughtful and compassionate meta-narrative on the struggle to create a continuity of trans community and identity despite the attempts to erase us from history.

Dr. R. Voth is a literature professor at an unnamed university. At a sale of manuscripts and books from the university’s library (throughout the story, Rosenberg parodies how universities these days are increasingly becoming public–private partnerships focused more on generating revenue than generating or safekeeping knowledge), Voth discovers a manuscript purporting to be the true story of 18th-century thief Jack Sheppard. Sheppard, aka “Honest Jack,” is a real person about whom some literature has already been written, and Voth mentions these other depictions in his annotations. The book we’re reading, then, is supposedly this manuscript, with footnotes coming to us from the voice of Voth. The major revelation early in the book is that this manuscript is the only one that even hints that Jack is a trans man. For Voth, also a trans man, this is a big deal. But the motif of connection and community doesn’t stop there….

You could just read the story within (“the manuscript” if you will) straight through, skipping the footnotes, as if it were an accurate representation of the life of Jack Sheppard. The manuscript is a fun tale all of its own right, tracing Jack’s life from his indenture with a cabinetmaker all the way to a spectacular confrontation with Jack Wild, a thief-turned-thiefcatcher. There’s resourceful, smart-talking sex workers and credulous constables and all sorts of characters to keep you entertained. Moreover, Rosenberg openly challenges the whitewashing of this period of London. His London is historically accurate in that it includes many people of colour from all over the world while also acknowledging the presence of racism.

However, the power of this book comes from how Rosenberg uses intertextual and meta-fictional conceits to create a conversation in which the reader is a silent yet integral participant. Each layer of the story has its own, unique voice. The main story, the manuscript itself, is chock full of 18th-century vocabulary. (Indeed, when I first picked it up, I was nervous its verisimilitude would be too daunting—fortunately, Rosenberg knows how to strike a balance.) As a professor of 18th-century literature himself, Rosenberg is spectacularly positioned to write such a manuscript. He has Voth chime in to interpret for us, sometimes with just one-word translations of slang, but just as often with longer explanations or references to other (real) scholarship. In this way, the conversation begins.

The manuscript is earnest, humorous, and very sexually explicit (albeit in an 18th-century mode). That last part actually made me a bit uncomfortable, not really my cup of tea, but if you are looking for 18th-century descriptions of making out and having intercourse, then yeah, you need this book. (There are also some fairly oblique references, both in the manuscript and the footnotes, to how testosterone affects the size of the clitoris; I like how Rosenberg drops in these little touches that a cis person might overlook but a trans person is likely to notice right away.) Voth’s annotations, in contrast, are the voice of a harried and cynical university prof at the end of his rope, both financially and emotionally. When Sullivan, the enigmatic representative of a pharmaceutical research company, joins Voth in the footnotes in ALL CAPS to harangue the professor as he works, this adds yet another layer to the conversation: the reader gets the sense that every word here is being surveilled by a third party, and in a way, we too feel under surveillance.

This interplay among Voth, the manuscript, Sullivan, the reader—it creates a unique third layer to the story, one that exists in the liminal space between manuscript and annotation. The crux is simple: all of our narrators are unreliable. The original author(s) of the manuscript could be lying to us, or mistaken, about anything—and indeed, Voth speculates a few times that parts of what he’s reading were added later, in the 19th century or even far more recently. Voth’s annotations are unreliable—I don’t think he’s intentionally misleading us, but his verbose oversharing makes it clear that his emotional stability is in question. Any annotations of a work are bound to be subjective, and Voth’s will be particularly subjective. Add to this the pressure created by the surveillance from Sullivan—there are moments in the text where Voth deliberately obfuscates details from the manuscript or withholds information from Sullivan, from us, or from both Sullivan and the reader.

In this way, Rosenberg replicates for lay readers what scholars like himself and his fictional avatar must grapple with on the regular: the harried and scattered nature of archival research. Reading Confessions of the Fox is as close as most of us will get to trying to piece together the truth from a series of damaged, edited manuscripts of suspect provenance while a dean and a private corporation breathe down our necks, wondering what profit is to be found in the deed.

Yet by leaning into the unreliability of his narratives, Rosenberg also creates a space in which to explore the possibilities of trans history and community. As I mentioned earlier, Rosenberg makes references will escape the notice of all but the most careful, astute cis readers even as they wave red flags at trans readers. This starts at the end of Voth’s editor’s note that functions as a prologue:

The moment I read those lines, I knew the “us” was referring to trans people. This is not just a book with trans characters and by a trans author; it is a text that comments on the need for a sense of community among trans people that acknowledges our existence throughout history. Voth believes the manuscript is a message to other trans people; he in turn attempts to find a way to safeguard and preserve that message.

The interaction between Voth and Sullivan underscores why Voth believes the manuscript needs safeguarding—Sullivan’s company is interested in a pharmaceutical secret they believe the manuscript can reveal. This secret happens to be related to Jack’s trans-ness. In this way, Rosenberg underscores an anti-capitalist theme that runs throughout the novel in a variety of ways but basically boils down to you can’t trust the Man, because the Man will use you up and spit you out for profits. For us trans people, we know this acutely in the fascination society has with medical transition—when we aren’t erased, we are portrayed as spectacle, poked and prodded and asked about our genitals and surgeries. The visibility of trans people under capitalism is desirable only when that visibility can be commodified for cis consumption or benefit. Rosenberg reifies this in the manuscript in Voth’s hands, and Voth’s decisions towards the end of the novel are based entirely on pushing back against this idea.

Put it simply, Confessions of the Fox is a story for us. For trans people. Yes, cis readers, you can still enjoy this book! There is a lot of entertaining stuff in here. But this book speaks to trans people, and it does it not through the standard narrative of transphobia and cissexism that often permeates the portrayals of trans stories in our media but rather through a rich set of storytelling devices that invite the reader to participate in this conversation. I was just asking for books with trans protagonists by trans authors, and optionally, that weren’t focused on being trans! I thought some trans historical fiction sounded like a great idea. Did I ever get more than I asked for here!

This is a smart book. Sometimes, smart books are designed to show off an author’s erudition at the expense of reader’s ego. Confessions of the Fox doesn’t do this. This is one of those rare gems of a novel that is incredibly clever in its construction and deep in its philosophy yet doesn’t rub the reader’s nose in those things. Rather than running ahead and insisting we keep up, it joyfully lifts us up and carries us along. The journey it takes us on is not always a happy one, but it is incredibly worthwhile.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

As promised a scant two weeks ago, I’m back with my review of Beneath the Twisted Trees, book 4 of Bradley P. Beaulieu’s epic The Song of the Shattered Sands series. Things are definitely heating up.

Çeda is determined to free Sehid-Alaz, the King of the Asirim. Not only would this hopefully free the asirim from bondage to the Kings of Sharakhai, but it is also the right thing to do: Sehid-Alaz is her ancestor, and she owes it to him. To achieve this goal, however, Çeda must find a way to help brave women of the Thirteenth Tribe to bond with asirim. The other protagonists we’ve come to know (even if we don’t love them—looking at you, Ramahd) face new challenges of their own. Emre is politicking when he’s better at fighting; Ramahd and Davud both independently want help from the secretive Enclave of Blood Mages; Brama finds himself torn between helping and once again trying to break free of Rümayesh. The forces of multiple nations around Sharakhai are descending upon the once-secure desert city, and the Kings—both new and old—are at their most precarious. Behind and beyond all of this lurk the new gods, whose schemes after 400 years may be reaching fruition.

Everything is ripe for change, and this comes through so clearly on the pages it’s energizing.

In my previous review, I commented on how Beaulieu manages to keep Çeda’s story central to the plot even as he expands the cast ever more. I still believe this to be true. However, Beneath the Twisted Trees definitely feels like it features more of the other cast members. We see a lot more of Ramahd, Emre, and Davud and their struggles. This isn’t a bad thing—it helps us understand the various forces at work in this world—but if you’ve come to identify with Çeda closely, as I have, it is somewhat of an adjustment. As I noted above, I don’t really like these other characters (Emre is all right, I guess). Ramahd and Davud both strike me as whiny people who keep making a lot of bad decisions. Davud, in particular, doesn’t seem to understand how not to be an overbearing, overprotective dude. Don’t get me wrong—I think this is a sign of great characterization on Beaulieu’s part, that he’s giving us these protagonists who are flawed and unlikable and not particularly heroic. But I don’t like spending time with them the way I like hanging out with Çeda. Just sayin.’

Speaking of characterization, I want to just flag Meryam as an excellent example of a heel turn. She started this series as someone we might have considered a protagonist and has sharply departed from that role, and it is a sight to behold. The fact that we seldom get access to her viewpoint means we’re forced to interpolate what we see from other characters (in contrast to someone like Hamzakiir, whose viewpoint we see in this book so we can understand the struggle that Meryam’s blood magic bondage has precipitated within him). Ramahd’s perception of her is clouded by his lingering love for her and his horror at how she has changed. Other characters see her more at a distance, and it’s so interesting, the way their opinions differ, not just on Meryam but on other prominent cast members. Beaulieu has a knack for showing (rather than telling) us how the main characters are perceived differently by different parties.

With each book, Beaulieu considerably advances the over plot of this series, and this one is no different. The gods are actively getting involved. Previously, we had (kind of) met Nalamae and briefly saw Yerinde talk to the Kings. In this book, those gods return, along with a couple of others. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say that Beaulieu makes it clear that the gods have a Plan, and all this chaos in the desert? All according to plan. Now, let’s hope that this Plan is better than the one the Cylons had on Battlestar Galactica, because boy was that a big letdown.

One criticism I have is that it’s often hard to understand the timescale of these novels. When are various events occurring? Is this chapter a day after the previous one? A week? Wait, this next chapter seems to be set before previous chapter? Similarly, when it comes to how long it takes characters to travel various places or accomplish a task, Beaulieu seems to use whatever timescale is appropriate for the plot. I’m not one to insist that an author meticulously calendar every event and make sure everything is internally consistent. But sometimes I need some good signposts, you know? And that seems to be largely missing from this book, so my sense of timing for a lot of the important events feels wonky.

Such is the peril of an epic fantasy series! On to book 5!

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I put this book down at the start of Chapter 6, where one of the supposed protagonists (a 15-year-old girl) is sexually assaulting a kidnapped 15-year-old boy she idolizes. I don’t care why it’s happening or what justification there is—Kill the Boy Band had already tried my patience with some other red flags as well as Goldy Moldavsky’s style; I was already mulling over DNFing it despite being less than 50 pages in. As usual, Kara needs to learn to trust her gut.

This is supposedly a dark comedy about four 15-year-old American girls who are diehard fans of British boy band The Ruperts (because they are all named Rupert, get it?). These girls are so hardcore that they get a room at the same hotel where the Ruperts will be staying during their appearance in New York City. They end up inadvertently kidnapping one of the Ruperts, though, and holding him in their room, bound and gagged with tights. And that is all I know, because I didn’t even bother to look up how the book ends. I don’t care.

From the beginning of the book, I wasn’t happy with how Moldavsky was characterizing these girls. It felt like she was satirizing the idea of a boy band fangirl. I didn’t want to bring this up initially, because I wasn’t too sure where Moldavsky is coming from—but then I saw this answer from her on Goodreads where she basically admits that she herself hasn’t been a boy band fan girl, and this is all based on watching a documentary about boy bands.

So … yeah. So much of the humour in this book, at least the chapters I managed to read, feels like it is punching down, like Moldavsky is making fun of our protagonists. That’s a weird tone to take for a young adult novel. There’s also some fatphobia with Apple, one of the girls, who was adopted from an orphanage in Beijing (and therefore, presumably, Chinese). Similarly, Isabel is of Dominican descent, but she has patchier Spanish than our narrator and also apparently knows stuff about crime?? This exemplifies the poor attempts at diversity among our main characters. It’s not enough to just toss in a couple of different races if you aren’t thinking carefully about the stereotypes involved. Also, the character development itself is clunky—our narrator (who apparently, according to other reviews, just goes unnamed for the whole book??) just straight-up tells us Apple is an adopted Chinese orphan. Like, maybe save that for a moment where it’s relevant instead of giving us a “crit stats” rundown on each of your friends?

For all these reasons and more, I wasn’t too happy with Kill the Boy Band before we got to Chapter 6. And then, within the first paragraph, there’s the sexual assault. Yeah, it’s just straddling and licking his face—but that is happening while he’s bound and gagged and unable to consent. That makes it assault. And like so much already seen in this book, it isn’t treated with the severity that such an action deserves.

This is an unfortunate trend I see in books, both YA and adult, that try to blend comedy with darkness without verging full-on into horror. Yeah, the premise that a bunch of 15-year-old girls accidentally kidnap a member of their favourite band and maybe (?) end up accidentally killing him is dark. You can also make it funny. But making it sympathetic? So much more difficult. If you want an example of a YA novel that embraces the darkness and doesn’t look away, go read Hannah Capin’s Foul is Fair instead.

I just restocked on library books and owned books. Let’s move on.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.