One of my favourite passages to assign to my English classes is an excerpt from All Our Relations, by Tanya Talaga. In it, she says, “The New World, so to speak, was already an Old World.” I love this excerpt, the facts that Talaga shares as she grounds them in her own search for identity and relations, because it approaches issues of colonialism through a different lens from the one we often see in Canada. The story of colonization, when it is taught at all, is often very one-sided and Eurocentric. The suffering of Indigenous peoples, when it is framed that way at all, is presented in the context of technologically and even culturally superior Europeans overwhelming and eliminating the small groups of Indigenous people who lived here. In this way, Talaga explains, settlers maintain control over the narrative of colonization, even as they allow it to be adjusted to be tragic. In reality, Indigenous peoples had vibrant and populous civilizations on these continents long before Europeans arrived. That’s the topic Charles C. Mann covers in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. In a series of detailed yet never too dense chapters, Mann helps us understand the complexity of life in the Americas before they were ever named that. Although likely outdated in parts by now, this book was still so illuminating and invigorating. I can’t speak for how interesting an Indigenous reader would find it, but as a white person, I have to say, I needed this knowledge. 

Mann’s overall thesis is simple: what we learn in school doesn’t match with the actual, current state of archaeological/anthropological ideas of life in pre-Columbian America. The textbooks misrepresent colonization, yes, but they also misrepresent the state of this land before European colonization. In so doing, they perpetuate the white supremacist idea of terra nullius—that Europeans are justified in settling the land because it was basically empty and unused. In the past, archaeologists supported that viewpoint—partly because, you know, ethnocentric blindspots and racism and all that, but also because the archaeological record is fragmentary and often difficult to locate and interpret. 

To that end, Mann devotes the first part of the book to exploring the question of how many people lived here prior to 1492. It’s a difficult question to answer with anything like accuracy, something he and his sources acknowledge. Mann is careful throughout this book to discuss conflicting theories, to point out when the science and history are far from settled, and to discuss when source material or calculations might be problematic. This is one of the strengths of 1491: while Mann certainly has an agenda here, it’s one built on careful reference to evidence. At no point does one get the sense that Mann is selectively presenting evidence to convince us he’s right. Instead, what he tries to do is show us that there is plenty of evidence that undermines the conventional narratives we’ve grown up with. 

Much of this part of the book focuses on the role of disease in decimating Indigenous populations. (Decimation in its most literal meaning of “1 in 10” is, of course, grossly inaccurate in this case.) Recent scholarship suggests that Indigenous populations were far larger than initially estimated because initial contacts with Europeans allowed diseases like smallpox to spread far and wide in advance of colonization. Hence, as settlers moved in to new areas, the people they saw were often already greatly reduced in number. This is an interesting idea and a reminder that, when we are creating hypotheses in science, especially science that intersects with historical accounts, we need to be careful to consider all the angles. 

Now, one of the most obvious potential problems with this book is that Mann is a settler journalist. Again, he confronts this head-on. He acknowledges that it is problematic that so much research relies on colonial records and Western ways of knowledge-gathering. To his credit, he often quotes Indigenous scientists, scholars, and activists, especially when their points of view disagree with a loud view in the scientific arena. We need to work on decolonizing anthropology and archaeology as much as the other sciences. This book is almost 20 years old, and I would hope that now, in 2021, an Indigenous journalist would be the one who writes this type of book. All I can say is that Mann does his best given the limits of his positionality. On a similar note, this book is a survey. The cultures discussed within all deserve their own books—probably volumes upon volumes of their own books—and I would love to see those written by Indigenous scholars. 

The second part of the book moves from quantity to quality. Mann examines new theories regarding both how Indigenous peoples populated the Americas as well as the types of civilizations they created. Mann discusses the more well-known cultures that were recognizable even to colonizers as a type of society (even if those colonizers didn’t want to call it civilization): the Inka, the Triple Alliance (aka the Mexica/Aztec), the Maya, etc. He mentions Cahokia, which I had heard about. But perhaps more interesting is how he connects many of these stories. He doesn’t just talk about the Maya or the Aztec: he gets into the details of the various cultures that rose and fell around these giants of history. In so doing, he establishes how these more well-known empires didn’t exist in vacuums but rather emerged from complex societies and fell back into different but still complex societies. The end result is a picture of the Americas that is so much busier than the stereotypes would have us believe. 

The final part of 1491 pulls back from social structure to discuss instead infrastructure. Again, we have this stereotype that Indigenous peoples were primitive and lived in harmony and balance with nature. In some ways this is a “positive” stereotype that frames Indigenous people as superior to greedy, extractive Europeans. In other ways this is a “negative” stereotype that frames Indigenous people as inferior to technologically innovative Europeans. Either way, it’s a stereotype that harms Indigenous people. It’s true that Indigenous peoples lived off the land in a symbiotic way. But as Mann seeks to demonstrate, across both continents Indigenous nations were shaping the land for practical uses, including agriculture. Not all Indigenous cultures were primarily hunter/gatherer or foragers. Some practised complex agriculture, which resulted in far-flung trade routes as well. 

It’s just so incredible to see everything laid out like this in a single volume! Some of it I had heard about, lots of it I hadn’t, and all of it in far more detail than I had encountered before. Sure, some of it is outdated by now, and even at the time of writing was speculative at best. Mann isn’t claiming that his work is the definitive history of pre-Columbian America. Rather, 1491 explores how archaeologists and anthropologists are finally beginning to listen to what Indigenous people have been saying all along: we were always here; we know where we used to live before Europeans came; we have lost much as a result of colonization. For me as a white person, reading this book helps me educate myself so I can speak more forcefully against modern-day colonialism. 

I recommend this book to anyone who wants a semi-academic, very detailed survey of Indigenous civilizations prior to contact with Europeans. It’s not a perfect volume. Sometimes Mann’s organization of ideas could be improved; sometimes his writing becomes a little too effusive or poetical for me. But the ideas, the evidence, the meticulousness of the research? It’s all there, and it is laid out in such a way that if you steep yourself in it like I did, you’ll walk away so much better informed about this topic than school ever did. 

I just hope I can pass it on to my students.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Could we teach this book in schools instead of Lord of the Flies? Pretty please? I say this even though I didn’t particularly like Wilder Girls, which just goes to show how unenthusiastic I remain about the idea that, 67 years and how many gender revolutions later, we’re still claiming there are no better books out there to teach to children. Wilder Girls hits me in the same place, but I think in terms of writing quality and gender politics it’s a lot better. Forgive me, Rory Power, for SF horror isn’t my style (and no, I don’t remember why I decided to add this to my to-read list in the first place). But you did good overall, Power. You did good.

The girls of Raxter School have been living in quarantine on their island off the coast of Maine for nearly two years now. They and most of the wildlife on the island are infected with the Tox, a disease of unknown origin that radically and unpredictably alters one’s body and, eventually, takes one’s mind (if it doesn’t just kill you). The Tox killed off all but two of the adults; most of the girls have survived, albeit changed. The book follows three: Hetty, Byatt, and Reese, an unlikely trio whose devotion to one another forms the foundation for some of the chaos that unfolds. Ultimately, however, Power follows the time-honoured route of a lot of horror: crank the climax up to 11, and then leave us with a cliffhanger that is equal parts hope and despair.

Psychologically, this book is terrifying. We got into the body horror from like page 1, and honestly I wasn’t much in the mood for it (so naturally, I finished the book that same night). Power’s descriptions of the transformations these girls endure is just graphic enough to set me on edge without causing me to physically, you know, lose my lunch. The toll of being isolated on the island—not even being allowed to correspond with one’s family and loved ones—is also palpable on these pages. These girls are abandoned, and even if Hetty (who is our narrator for the majority of the book) doesn’t quite realize it, Power telegraphs it through Hetty with frightening effectiveness.

Of course, in a book like this you are just waiting for that other shoe to drop, that twist. The revelation this was all part of an experiment created by the government from the start. Or that the rest of the world also got the Tox, and the supplies they’ve been getting every few days aren’t from the Navy at all. Or perhaps that this is all a fever dream, that Hetty isn’t on Raxter, that she is trapped in an asylum or other situation and these stories are her way of rationalizing what she is experiencing.

Obviously not all of the above are true, and maybe none of them are—I won’t spoil the book for you. In my opinion the twist is fairly mundane and unimpressive, kind of what I expected going into the book, and it leads to an ending that similarly feels like exactly what you would expect this kind of story to end on. So in that respect, as someone for whom this subgenre already delivers very little, Wilder Girls let me down.

I also wasn’t too keen on how Power explores the ways in which the girls’ interpersonal relations have fractured in the past couple of years. Yes, there is some romance here, some bisexual and lesbian attraction happening, and I like seeing that representation. But for the most part, we only scratch the very surface of these characters’ feelings. I want to know more about why Taylor has aligned herself with certain people. I want to see Reese, Hetty, and Byatt have more substantive conversations about how each feels about the other. There’s too much left unsaid here, hanging in the air, leaving me unsatisfied.

Wilder Girls thrums with a certain kind of power to it, I admit (no pun intended). The power comes from Power’s faculties for description, from her imagination and her ability to embed the Tox deeply in this world. In this respect, I enjoyed the writing, and I think that’s what allowed me to read this book so fast despite not particularly enjoying the plot. I could be persuaded to read another novel by Power if it weren’t perhaps this horror-focused.

But how will fans of this subgenre like it? Honestly that’s hard for me to say. Better than I did, to be certain. There is a bleakness underlying the plot that I think appeals to most people who enjoy SF horror. This same bleakness is why I tend to avoid it, and why movies focusing on one or two sole survivors of an apocalypse seldom interest me. I need a world pulsing with life and social complexity, whereas books like Wilder Girls ask us to consider a world where that complexity has given way to the simplicity of survival. That is a worthwhile question to ask, and it is one that Power explores competently.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 I recently rediscovered this book hiding in a crate in my home library, waiting several years to be read. As with most of my experiences reading Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17 proved at various times frustrating, inscrutable, exceptional, and interesting. When a friend asked me if I had enjoyed it, I replied, “I respect it.” That’s perhaps the best way to sum up a lot of my feelings about Delany’s science fiction.

Babel-17 takes place in a future where humanity has spread out across the stars. We are also at war with unspecified aliens called the Invaders. Rydra Wong is a poet of great repute. She has mastered so many languages that the military approaches her to decipher an Invader code called Babel-17. Rydra decides she needs to take out a starship and crew and investigate the site of an upcoming attack by the Invaders, one that will help her understand the nature of Babel-17 once and for all. In this process, she and her crew face terrible danger. Perhaps more importantly for Delany’s themes, Rydra meets an enigmatic man whose incomprehension of I and you provides that final piece to her Babel-17 puzzle.

Though a short book, it took me a week to read because, as always, Delany’s science fiction exemplifies the way in which this genre can be used to explore complex ideas. Delany has a knack for imagining and telegraphing complex societies that are very different from our own without drowning us in exposition. We quickly learn that death isn’t necessarily the end in this society: you can become discorporate, a kind of consciousness separate from corporeal form, and that discorporate crew are essential for some of the operations of a starship. I kind of wish Delany had explored or explained this more; motifs of embodiment have long been something that fascinates me in science fiction. They manifest strongly in Babel-17, where Delany suggests that language might in fact be enough to shape or split someone’s personality, to effectively disembody oneself within one’s body. From here, he further invokes tropes common to 1960s SF, including psychic and telepathic abilities.

But language remains the defining feature of this novel. Rydra’s investigation into Babel-17 hinges on her ability to parse, comprehend, and eventually speak this alien language. Delany is clearly influenced by the advances happening in computer programming in his time: if we can literally shape the “minds” of our machines depending on the type of programming language we use, could we not shape the minds of people the same way? (This also feels like an anticipation of the pseudoscience of neuro-linguistic programming that emerged in the 1970s, although that was more about patterns of speech than developing an entirely different language.) Indeed, some of the most intense conversations in this book aren’t directly about Babel-17 but are still about language. Rydra explains the difficulty of communicating with alien species that lack concepts we take for granted (like home) while, in turn, having words so attuned to describing concepts we might take entire books to relate. While linguistic relativity and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis remain somewhat controversial, depending on how you define them, their staying power is evident because we are just obsessed with language. It’s one of the most defining aspects of our humanity—and as anyone from a marginalized identity group is aware, language and vocabulary can be important in asserting one’s agency too.

So don’t underestimate this book just because it’s tiny! There is a lot to unpack here.

I will add a small warning, though, which is that the book definitely feels dated in some regards. Delany uses terms for ethnicities that, while common in the 1960s, have long since fallen out of favour (and therefore it’s kind of jarring to see them show up in a setting in the far future). This is less a criticism than an observation for anyone embarking on this book in 2021. Unlike, say, the Foundation novels I just finished reading, Delany’s writing holds up remarkably well when it comes to characterization. Male or female, corporeal or discorporate, professional or hired help, the characters in this book each have their own chances to show off what they can do without the kind of jingoistic editorializing that Asimov brings to his characterization.

Far from my favourite Delany novel, Babel-17 does confirm, I think, that I prefer his science fiction to his fantasy outings. I think that when he is imagining entirely different worlds and technologies, Delany often creates stories that ironically feel more grounded in the mundane than the ones that he weaves in, say, Neveryóna. Regardless of setting, however, Delany’s writing is inevitably thought-provoking, and Babel-17 is no exception.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

As the description of this book suggests, many of us have an inaccurate understanding of the history of Black people’s presence in Europe. So I wanted to correct my understanding. It’s important for us to learn the history of the slave trade, of course. But if we reduce Black histories merely to slavery, we are engaging in yet another type of colonial violence. Olivette Otélé aims to highlight the presence of African Europeans throughout history. She complicates and problematizes both our understanding of the slave trade as well as our conceptions about what it meant to be a “free” Black person in Europe during various centuries. African Europeans is informative and interesting, although it is also highly academic and difficult to read. Thanks to Perseus Books and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

I’m not going to attempt to summarize this book. All I will say is that I learned a lot from it. Some of the highlights include the first Medici Duke of Florence, Alessandro, and how his skin colour affected his rule. Another highlight would be the ways that various European countries attempted to restrict or require extensive documentation from people of colour. Throughout this book, Otélé demonstrates how European countries, such as France, the Netherlands, and Sweden, have yet to really reckon with their role in the slave trade. Much is made of celebrating when these countries abolished slavery. Little discussion happens around the experiences of Black people in these countries around or even after that time.

I wish I could say I enjoyed the book, but that would be a stretch. There are academic books, and then there are academic books, and then there are academic books. Like, African Europeans is full of research and references to other scholars. If that’s what you’re looking for—if you are studying this subject, then you will find this book useful. Nor do I want to suggest that every book should be comprehensible to a lay reader. But as someone who has a couple of university degrees and has been around the academic block a couple of times, I still found large parts of this book a slog to read. It largely comes down to how Otélé has organized the information. The transitions are often abrupt, and at times I found it difficult to understand the overall topic of each chapter.

So when I say that I learned a lot from this book, I also want to say that I think I could have learned more if the writing style had worked better for me. I’m not sure how much I will retain that I learned. Therefore, unfortunately, as much as I would love to recommend this book widely to my friends, I’m not sure I can do that. African Europeans is informative but no compelling, well-researched but not well-organized, important but perhaps in need of more work to make its information accessible to those of us who most need to read it.

I don’t really know what I just read. The Accident Season is a supernatural YA thriller that purports to have a mystery at the heart of it. Yet the deeper we go into the story, the more that mystery unravels into almost a bait-and-switch. Populated by the barest hints of ghosts, fairies, changelings, and other such spirits, this book tugs at your brain in a pleasing way, but I’m not sure, in the end, it actually has anything interesting to say.

Also, trigger warning for weeeeeeeirrrd fucking quasi-incestuous relationship that is normalized and … yeah. Sorry, I just had to give myself a little shake there before I continue.

Ok, so the first-person protagonist of this book is Cara (that’s right, not Kara—you were so close!) Morris. She’s 17. Her entire family, every October, endures what they have semi-affectionately called “the accident season,” in which their rate of “accidents” increases to life-threatening levels. The cover copy of this book makes it sound like Cara is determined to get to the bottom of the cause of accident season this year, but in actuality, Fowley-Doyle begins this book as a mystery surrounding one of Cara’s classmates, Elsie. When Cara notices that Elsie is, somehow, in every photo of her family, she resolves to track down this girl and figure out why. Except Elsie proves elusive. She’s so quiet at school that no one really seems to know her or know where she lives. Meanwhile, as the Morris family endures another accident season, Cara struggles with weird feelings for her “ex-stepbrother” (ugh) Sam, an odd distance developing between her and her best friend Bea, and the sense that something is not quite right with her sister Alice. Will a rager in an abandoned, probably haunted mansion fix everything? Of course not, but these teenagers will try anything to get kissed.

Ok, ok, I am starting to slip into sarcasm territory because my unease around this book is making me defensive. Let’s break this down into the good, the bad, and the just plain what?

I will say this for Fowley-Doyle: her writing style is deliberate and skillful. This is a book that just screams “creepy, slow-burn ghost story.” The descriptions, the interstitial flashbacks, the creepy costume store that vanishes the moment the characters leave, the hallucinatory dreamlike sequence during the climax … every part of this book is designed to leave you with your hair on end and your stomach just ever so queasy from the experience. Now, this is not normally my cup of tea. However, I appreciate the skill at work here. Even though I don’t think I liked the book overall, I could see myself recommending it to a small subset of people I know who really like this kind of tone and atmosphere.

As I alluded in my summary, I feel let down by the cover copy. If it had just been honest that this is more a mystery about Elsie than anything else, maybe I would have enjoyed the book more. Instead, the first half of the book was difficult for me to read, because I kept waiting for when Cara would actually start investigating the nature of the accident season. This is doubly disappointing, because that lack of attention means I never fully picked up on the foreshadowing and subtext scattered throughout the book that points to Christopher as an abuser.

The ending, after the climax at the party, feels rushed. So much exposition, so many explanations from Cara’s mother and others. Revelations that don’t feel like rewards, because did we really work for it? This is my issue with a lot of supernatural stories like this: in trying to create a confounding experience for the senses, one risks obscuring the elements that allow a reader to follow one to the conclusion. So Fowley-Doyle spells it all out, just in case we didn’t notice how clever everything is.

Finally, I can’t not discuss the incest angle here. When I mentioned it to a friend who is the master of choosing GIF replies, she replied with a GIF of Cher from Clueless, and that was, as usual, a chef’s kiss–level of reply. Yeah, the situation here is very similar to the relationship between Cher and Josh. In both cases, you have two people who are not related by blood, who are family by dint of parents marrying, whose parents have since divorced. Are they still “family”? In the case of

Cara and Sam, I have to say yes—they grew up together for years, some of their most formative years. The book almost eagerly, gleefully shoves them together; both of them go through the usual tapdance of “it’s wrong; I shouldn’t have these feelings,” but by the end, the author is basically condoning their love and a romantic, perhaps even sexual relationship. I find this incredibly problematic. Meanwhile, we learn that Alice has endured not just abuse from a stepfather but also from a boyfriend, up to and including rape, and we receive almost no time to process this before the book wraps up and … I don’t know, everyone has a neutral ending?

Sigh.

I guess I’ve made up my mind about what I just read. The Accident Season is a profoundly disappointing book. It has moments where, thanks to Fowley-Doyle’s writing skills, it almost approaches something sublime in its use of genre, mood, and atmosphere. Yet all of these positives are outweighed by choices of plot and characterization that preclude me from truly enjoying this read. Instead, it left me uncomfortable, and not in the good way that a ghost story should.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 Seldom have I read consecutive books in a series so closely together, but as I explained in my review of book 2, a misunderstanding of what book I was requesting on NetGalley has necessitated such haste. Now, there are advantages: I remembered everything that had happened in the previous book! Nevertheless, I was concerned that diving into A Veil of Spears so soon after the previous book would leave me feeling bored; worse still, I wasn’t sure what kind of review I could muster. The thing about such a long-running series like this is that, after a while, you start to run out of things to say. What am I going to do? Praise the characters again? The careful plotting? The cool worldbuilding? I’m going to try to focus on specifics in this book, without going into spoilers.

Spoilers for previous books, of course.

A Veil of Spears opens with more of the 12 Kings of Sharakhai dead. The playing board is now covered with blood, if you will, and shifting allegiances are the order of the day. One King has gone rogue and begun co-opting desert tribes. Another aligns himself with the Queen of Qaimir against the blood mage Hamzakiir. Meanwhile, or nominal main protagonist Çeda forges more firmly her connections with the thirteenth tribe and the Moonless Host that fights against the Kings. The result is a series of events that culminate in a bloody, messy battle in which the fates of multiple Kings rest even as, back in Sharakhai, other Kings plot to take power for themselves.

In my previous review, I likened this series to Malazan or Game of Thrones in terms of its ever-growing cast and various points of view. This book only solidifies that comparison. It’s indeed becoming a tad difficult to follow, focus on, and remember the various characters and their motivations. That’s why I appreciate how Beaulieu ensures Çeda remains the spiritual centre of this series. Even as other characters appropriate more and more time on the page, Çeda’s journey as a character remains the most important. She connects us to all of the mythology, from the appearances of goddess Nalamae to the dark and twisted origins of the asirim. Her self-righteous and often headstrong nature puts her into conflict not just with enemies but also with allies, including her own grandfather and great-great-grandmother. I just love how incredibly flawed Çeda is, and how much she continues to mess things up and make things worse, while still being a morally upstanding and heroic persona.

To contrast this, Beaulieu almost gleefully plumbs depths of depravity in other characters. Ramahd, a one-time ally of Çeda, comes to mind. His sister-in-law and now queen, Meryam, seems to be in the midst of a Xanatos gambit that will drag her into darkness. Ramahd constantly questions her in the name of standing up for Qaimir, but he inevitably gives way to pressure from her in the name of loyalty and helps her with many a dirty deed done dirt cheap. The result is a character who is pitiable: in attempting to serve two masters (his queen and his country), Ramahd abandons all claim to moral backbone. I mean, we already saw this in the previous book when he sold out Çeda in a heartbeat to save his own life from a scary demon guy, but my interpretation of his character is solidified by the events in this book.

Part of me is very wary about how complex the mythology of this series is starting to become. It’s beautiful, in a way, how Beaulieu is connecting disparate elements and pulling things together into a tighter pattern. This does create a sense for the reader that everything is building, leading up towards a promised climax in a later book. However, as with my issue with characters, I think I’ve probably forgotten a lot about the mythos of this despite having just read 2 of the books nearly back to back! We are getting into “I need to keep the fandom wiki open” territory here. For some readers, of course, that might be a selling point!

A Veil of Spears cements my impression that this would be a wonderful fantasy series to adapt, though I shudder to think about the amount of T&A that HBO would shove into it. Rather than falling back on trite adjectives like cinematic, I’d prefer to praise the structure that Beaulieu gives to the plot. Each book advances the series in a clear and almost predictable way—after three books, Çeda has come such a long way from being the White Wolf dominating in the fighting pits. She has been a Blade Maiden and is now—in deed if not in name—a rebel against the Kings. Her growth and her character arc, along with the titanic shifts in the balance of power from novel to novel, make for compelling story fuel for a small screen adaptation.

See you soon with book 4!

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 So excited to read this new YA novel from Charlie Jane Anders. Previously I read her debut, All the Birds in the Sky, which I thought was full of fun, quirky writing and good ideas but whose ending didn’t quite gel. Victories Greater Than Death, I was hoping, would deliver the same kind of quirky entertainment but with an overall plot that was more focused and more satisfying. In this sense, it succeeds. However, there are still aspects to this book that didn’t work great for me.

Tina Mains might look like your average human teenager, but she is actually the alien clone of a dead war hero. She was left on Earth as a baby, with a beacon that would activate when the time came for the aliens to reclaim her and restore her progenitor’s memories in a bid to finish a war they didn’t want to start. When this finally happens, Tina is excite: she has been preparing for this her whole life. Yet the reality is, as it always is, so much more complicated and disappointing than the anticipation fantasy. Along with her best friend, Rachel, and a few more brilliant recruits from Earth, Tina finds herself in a strange position on an alien spaceship trying to stop a mad supervillain from genocide. You know, no big deal.

There is a zaniness to this book that reminds me of 1990s science fiction, and I love it. We need more of this. The diversity of alien species reminds me a lot of John Scalzi’s writing (although, as with a lot of science fiction, including Scalzi’s, the exposition required to populate this universe can occasionally get out of hand). Anders approaches her alien societies with a sense of playfulness. One of the things I most appreciated was how the Royal Fleet, despite its name, is not particularly hierarchal. There’s a Captain and an Alternate Captain, but after that, most people have job titles instead of ranks. I think a lot of our modern science fiction is still hungover from the hold that military SF took on the genre after the success of things like Star Trek. Nothing wrong with those series, of course, but I like that Anders deliberately tries to imagine a very different approach to organized, multi-species space travel.

Similarly, another stand-out feature of this book was the inclusion of pronouns. Apparently it’s a function of Anders’ brand of universal translator, which can infer your pronoun—both the standard human ones like she, he, and they, as well as some neopronoun or more alien pronouns like wey. I’ve been a fan of sharing my pronouns since before I realized I was a trans. (Wow, that sounded like such a hipster thing to say, lol.) Seeing this on page was very powerful.

Finally, Anders normalizes consent and asking before touching. Every time a character is upset, other characters ask, “Can I hug you?” before they do so. This is so valuable to see modelled, particularly in a YA book—consent is important, even when your touch is meant to be comforting, because some people are touch-averse or simply don’t want to be touched by you in this moment. Showing young people that it’s ok to decline, and that it’s important to ask, is good.

The characters of Tina and Rachel and their relationship are interesting and one of the best features of the book. I felt Rachel so hard, especially the week that I read this, which was a No Good Very Bad Week indeed. Tina is extroverted and gregarious, whereas Rachel is, like me, an introvert who needs to recharge by herself a lot. The balance in this relationship, the fact that Tina respects Rachel’s boundaries so much, and that the other members of the crew also respect them, is awesome. Again, Rachel helped me see myself in science fiction in a way that isn’t always present on page or screen. Moreover, while Tina has a romantic subplot in the works, her platonic relationship with Rachel is clearly the most important relationship in this book, and I love this!

I liked how Anders avoids making Tina into a Mary Sue who inherits her progenitor’s skills, knowledge, and reputation automatically. Without going into details, let’s just say the cloning process turns out to be … flawed. This leaves Tina struggling to live up to the memory of her progenitor even though she isn’t quite this person. It’s a weird, thorny issue of identity, and I think Anders handles it very well.

The other human characters are less memorable and, while certainly not stereotypical, somewhat one note. Elza might be the exception. Love the casual inclusion of a trans character, of course. The fact that she comes from so much trauma and that it makes it difficult for her to integrate into this new situation is an important distinction from the other humans whom Tina and Rachel recruit. At the same time, however, I wish the book had given Tina and Elza more opportunities to explore this in the depth it demands.

Indeed, my criticism of Victories Greater Than Death is mostly about the plot and pacing. I breezed through this book in just over a day, mostly because I was enjoying it so much, but also because it’s just not that long. I appreciate that we aren’t forced to wait around on Earth very long before we meet the aliens. Nevertheless, the story flies through Tina and Rachel’s acclimation and induction into the Royal Fleet’s conflict with the Compassion. It doesn’t give us much time to digest the magnitude of this conflict. There’s your usual Forerunners who left powerful tech lying around, ancient enemies, all that jazz—as far as science fiction ideas go, things are pretty standard from here on out.

So, I enjoyed Victories Greater Than Death and recommend it to people who like quirky, compassionate science fiction and as a YA novel in general. That being said, there’s still something about Anders’ writing style, about the choices she makes in terms of plot and character, that leaves me a tiny bit unsatisfied.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 This is one of those books where I don’t remember how it came to be on my to-read list, but I’m glad it did. Fossil Men is a book about science and history—both subjects I adore in my non-fiction reading—in a somewhat niche subject of paleoanthropology. Indeed, I wouldn’t describe this as a “pop science” book, which is usually the type of scientific non-fiction I read. Kermit Pattison, while not himself a scientist, has spent so many years on his research for this subject that he ends up presenting a text that goes far deeper than most popular accounts. While still comprehensible to laypeople like myself, the more you know about theories of evolution, paleoanthropology, etc., then the more enticing this book will be for you. As it is, I really enjoyed learning more both about this scientific discipline and what it might be teaching us about our deep, deep past as a species. 

Fossil Men focuses mainly on the Middle Awash team of paleoanthropologists and related people—so named for the region of Ethiopia in which this team found the first fossils of Ardipithecus ramidus. This team, led by prickly paleoanthropologist Tim White, claimed that “Ardi” was the oldest ancestor of modern humans then discovered and indicated a link between modern humans and our more ancient ancestors, whom scientists until now assumed must be more similar to modern chimpanzees. The catch? The Middle Awash team found Ardi in 1994, yet they didn’t publish any major findings for fifteen years. Since then, the significance of Ardi and similar new fossil findings has been a subject of major dispute. What Pattison contends in this book is that these debates and controversies are, perhaps unsurprisingly, as much a result of clashing egos and human fallibility as they are a search for scientific truth. This, to me, was the main lure of Fossil Men (yeah, that’s right, I am a whore for that juicy science drama). 

Pattison organizes his account in roughly chronological detail. The exception is when he dives into the past for half a chapter or so in order to explore the history of particular people of note. I found this organizational method very easy to follow. Pattison carefully charts the relationships among the most famous and well-known fossil hunters, like Tim White and the various Leakeys, or White’s estranged protégé, Don Johanson. Moreover, he ties the people to places—most notably when discussing how successive periods of political unrest in Ethiopia made it impossible for foreign paleoanthropologists to dig and also threatened the lives and livelihood of Ethiopian paleoanthropologists. 

I appreciate that Pattison takes the time to highlight the colonial, Western domination of this field. For a scientific discipline depending on fossils that mostly come from Africa, the field is incredibly white (and male, something Pattison also points out). Pattison lauds White and a few others for opening doors, for making the training of Indigenous anthropologists part and parcel of their projects. And I like that, even as we learn of the oppressive and authoritarian actions of some of the Ethiopian regimes, Pattison reminds us that the country has every right to be suspicious of foreign scientists and officials extracting fossils and exploiting Ethiopia for such discoveries without giving back. In this way, Pattison touches on something that I think is well known within science but needs to be discussed far, far more often: the practice of science is racist and colonial, and we can’t justify continuing such practices in the name of “progress.” We need to rethink how we science, especially in the field, and who is doing the sciencing. 

If we are rethinking this, of course, then we should also probably think about personalities and policies. Pattison doesn’t just give us a window into evolutionary history—he also shows us how hiring and admissions policies at universities, along with grant policies for institutions like the National Science Foundation in the United States, can make or break someone’s career. Similarly, his portrait of Tim White is multi-dimensional, emphasizing the man’s incredible adherence to what he perceives as “good science” and a hard work ethic, while simultaneously admitting the various judgments of colleagues and former friends who call him difficult to work with, impossible, infuriating. Should we laud and encourage a scientist with such personality issues? Or are we better off encouraging scientists who collaborate and avoid conflict? On one hand, we definitely need to avoid the excuse that “he’s difficult to work with, but he’s a genius so put up with it” (somehow almost exclusively applied to white cis men). On the other hand, constructive disagreement is an important part of doing good science. Pattison touches on—but doesn’t quite go on a tangent to discuss, which is fine—the fact that, in the past half-century, we have started to interrogate our assumptions underpinning what “science” should be. Just as the twentieth century saw science migrate from the domain of wealthy individuals to a concentrated group of wealthy academic institutions, hopefully the twenty-first century will bring a similar paradigm shift in the structural nature of science. 

Ok, ok—but what of the evolutionary science aspect of the book? How was that, Kara? 

It was brilliant. I learned so much from Fossil Men (and probably forgot half of it by now, lol). I can remember throughout my childhood a similar fascination as the one Pattison recounts in people like Tim White: I would eat up books and National Geographic magazines and even documentaries all about our evolutionary history. I remember whispering to myself the names of extinct genuses and species: Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Australopithecus, as if such incantation would reveal the secrets of our past to my 12-year-old self. Science never held much allure for me as a career or a calling, but I thirsted to learn more about these things. I remember the special on Homo naledi, the shift from hominid to hominin, etc. So this book really satisfies that thirst for me. 

What I took away from this, thanks to Pattison’s careful storytelling, is the utter complexity of this field. It is not as simple as our textbooks and magazines pronounce—White laments through Pattison that these publications often rely on the initial announcements scientists make to get the jump on others for credit, and they seldom incorporate the retractions and corrections that follow those announcements in the years to come. So the picture we get in school and on TV is often incomplete and out of date, and scientists working in the field know about it, but we don’t get to see all the debates going on. This makes me wonder about the role of science communication in all this, and whether there are better ways to discussing these ideas in the open…. 

Anyway, I learned from Fossil Men that our common ancestors with chimps and other apes might not have been chimp-like. They might have been bipedal and more like us, and it might be chimpanzees, gorillas, etc., whose ancestors, having split from our common one, evolved along the lines we now see these species representing. That seems to have upset a lot of long-held theories in paleoanthropology, so it’s cool to hear Pattison explain how people like Gen Suwa and Owen Lovejoy were able to piece together this possible explanation based on teeth and bones and all sorts of other expertise. Again, I’m just filled with this admiration and awe for the work that scientists do to try to uncover things about our distant past. They don’t always (maybe even seldom) get it right or get the whole story, but it’s undeniable that in the past centuries we have gone from knowing almost nothing about the origins of our species to having a great many plausible theories. 

If you like science but more importantly like stories about how science is done, you will like Fossil Men. At times technical, at times biographical, at times political, this book is far more than a “here’s how they did it,” and it preserves the awesomeness of these discoveries without lionizing the discoverers. Pattison ultimately concludes that science is a tenacious and enduring process, yet the scientists themselves are fallible.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 Three years ago I picked up Treasure & Treason, the first half of what should have been one spin-off novel from Lisa Shearin’s Raine Benares series. Finally, I got around to reading Ruins & Revenge, the sequel/conclusion. I find that most of my review from Treasure & Treason stands for this book (not surprising, given that they should have been one book!). Despite long singing the praises of Shearin and her fantasy series, both Raine Benares and the SPI Files, I don’t have much to say in praise of these two books.

Quite literally picking up where the last book left off (did I say that this should have been one book), Ruins & Revenge begins with Tam organizing a smaller party to find their way to the city of the Cha’Nidaar. He is having dreams featuring their queen, Baeseria, so he’s feeling pretty good they’ll encounter these long-lost goblin brethren at some point. That is, if they don’t get eaten by creatures or killed by Khrynsani or their lizard allies first.

Yes, I will give it to Shearin: lots of action, lots of threats in this book. For the first half, though, until we actually get to the ancient city, it feels dull. There’s a long flight, then a puzzle to get into a tunnel, and then some threatening dragon-like beasties. Throughout, we get a lot of exposition about why it’s so important for them to get to the Heart. Once we finally reach the city and meet the Cha’Nidaar, the action and plot both intensify. Nevertheless, for a book about finding something called the Heart, that is exactly what it lacks: heart.

There’s a scene kind of towards the end of the book between Tam and Talon that is supposed to be heartwarming, a real tearjerker of a bonding experience between father and son. But the book is so full of Tam telling us about his son, rather than us ever really seeing much of this bond, that the scene feels lukewarm at best. This is my issue with these two books. Whereas the Raine Benares novels felt rich in the world they portrayed, these books, despite literally taking us to a new continent, feel small. I feel trapped inside Tam’s head, having to listen to his commentary about everything, yet what they actually end up doing takes up so little of the book.

Moreover, the plot itself is … drab. Ok, so we have another stone of power—seriously, why are there so many of these lying around? And the Khrynsani want it—that’s kind of a given, sure, ok, we can work with that. The solution to prevent this from happening is fine, I guess. But I don’t really feel like it has many huge consequences, overall, for this series or this world? Like I come away from these two books feeling like I could skip it and just pick up the next Raine novel and hear about Tam’s adventures secondhand, and I would have been more satisfied.

Look, I really, really liked the original series (well, most of it anyway). And I’ve been enjoying the SPI Files. So I will happily keep reading Shearin’s novels. And maybe I’m just being too harsh, or maybe these would have been better for me if I were a massive Tam fangirl (and it’s fine if you are!). Alas, I didn’t enjoy these diversions into Tam’s point of view, and I am happy to leave them behind me where they belong.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 Fun story: Kara requested the latest book in this series on NetGalley, mistakenly thinking it was book 3. Turns out it is book 6 she’s been approved to read, even though she has only read book 1. Oops. Fortunately, my awesome public library had books 2 through 5 available, and I was able to check them all out at once! So for the next month or so, I’m going to be binging this series in a way I seldom do, especially with doorstopper fantasy. It will be interesting to see how this influences my perception of Bradley P. Beaulieu’s epic series.

I really liked Twelve Kings in Sharakhai. It felt fresh and original. With book 2, Beaulieu tries to bottle that lightning a second time—and he succeeds. Picking up soon after the first book concludes, With Blood Upon the Sand follows Çeda’s ongoing quest to kill the Kings of Sharakhai, whom she currently serves as a Blade Maiden. There are other characters with their own allegiances and goals, from Ramahd and his sister-in-law to Çeda’s childhood friend Emre, who now runs with the rebellious Moonless Host. Meanwhile, the Kings themselves have plots within plots. Basically, Beaulieu’s promise is that from the moment you sit down with this book to when you turn the last page, nothing will be the same. In this respect, he delivers.

Once again, Çeda proves to be a great protagonist with her balance of talents and flaws. This book continues to share flashbacks to her childhood and her life with her mother. We learn more about how her past is intertwined with that of the Moonless Host and the Thirteenth Tribe, not to mention the goddess Nalamae. In the present, Çeda struggles to control herself now that her bond with the asirim is so strong; their collective anger and grief threatens to overpower her. She also has her own tempers and impatience to manage, and there plenty of examples in this story where those get the better of her to the detriment of her mission.

I really appreciate Beaulieu’s willingness to move the overall story along and not keep us waiting for payoffs. No spoilers, obviously, but if you were worried that by the end of this book Çeda would still be lurking within the ranks of the Blade Maidens, playing it safe while the Kings lord it over Sharakhai … well, don’t worry. Beaulieu doesn’t know the words “status quo.”

The structure and pacing of this book work well. Those payoffs come almost like clockwork, but there are also moments to breathe. With Blood Upon the Sand recognizes that fantasy novels can be overwhelming in how they conceptualize magic, religion, and entire worlds. I don’t quite feel like I’m in this world, but I come close—cinematic isn’t the right word, but maybe it’s closer to the feeling of a video game universe? In any event, Beaulieu helps us acclimate throughout the book to the revelations Çeda and other characters receive.

If I had one gripe about these books, it would just be the sheer amount of characters and names they demand my brain to remember. Actually, you know what this reminds me of? Those damn Malazan books. I never could get into that series, precisely because there were too many names. I couldn’t keep any of it straight. Beaulieu verges upon this sin in this series, yet there’s something—writing, plotting, characterization, I’m not sure what—that means he comes up short of triggering my wrath (no one wants that!).

Moreover, the complexity, of course, is what makes this very epic fantasy indeed. Like if HBO were in the mood, this would be great source material for a series that could rival Game of Thrones in its scope while also having the benefit of less misogyny and random character deaths. (Is it a coincidence that this series’ official name also contains “song” and that it is set among “sands” as opposed to “ice and fire”? I will let you be the judge!)

I would love to see a little less … I don’t know, queer-baiting? Not sure if that is the right term here. There’s another female character who makes a pass of sorts at Çeda, and it doesn’t go anywhere for reasons that make total sense for the plot—but it stood out a lot more in my mind because there aren’t really any other queer relationships in this book that I can recall. Just a lot of straight relationships (and straight-up messed up relationships, lol). I would love to see some more casually queer characters in this series, just hanging out and living their best desert lives.

Liked it, devoured it, will happily dive into book 3 soon with every expectation that it’s going to further raise the stakes and leaving me gasping.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.