Although Pet crossed my book radar a few times, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up if it hadn’t been recommended to me by my friend Emeline. The descriptions of the book, despite its promise of a trans main character, didn’t leave me with the impression that it would be my jam. Indeed, for the first third or so, that was my initial conclusion: that I could understand Pet’s appeal for other readers, but its style didn’t work for me. As I continued reading, however, and as Akwaeke Emezi’s story unfolded into my mind, my appreciation for Pet grew. While I’m not as enthralled with it as many others, I’ve gone from “eh, it’s ok” to “ah, I see what you did there.”

Pet begins allegorical, a utopian tale of the town of Lucille in a time after a revolution has removed all the “monsters” from power. Now the town is governed by angels, by people who are free of corruption, discrimination, etc. Explanations for how we got here are (necessarily) vague, nor is it clear how Lucille relates to the rest of the world. All we know is that Jam is a teenage trans girl who accidentally brings to life a figure from her mother’s painting. This figure, who names itself Pet, appears monstrous, but Pet insists it is here to hunt true monsters—and there is one within the house of Jam’s best friend, Redemption. What ensues is an examination of the nature of monstrosity and the boundaries of friendship.

I struggled with Pet at first simply because I prefer much more straightforward narration than Emezi provides here. This is not an unusual issue for me to have with books, and I can often tell even just from the way a book has been summarized if it’s going to work for me. Despite this book being a scant 200 pages, 50 pages in I was struggling to cast an anchor into this story. I want more conversation and discussion, and more description, than I was getting.

But, it’s 200 pages, right? So I persevered, and hey, this was one of those rare cases when it got better! To be clear, the style itself doesn’t change, but the substance of Jam’s adventure with Pet was enough to keep me going. I appreciate the conflict she experiences as she negotiates her loyalty to Redemption with her nervousness about telling him the full truth. Similarly, Emezi carefully establishes all the ways in which Jam (and then Redemption) try to put their faith in adults only to feel let down. This is a book for children and teens that acknowledges that they are not often believed by adults, even about the most serious things. The resolution of Pet is less about dealing with monsters as it is about reminding us that when we let down our guard and say, “No, that can’t be,” are opening ourselves up to harm from the unseen.

Pet grew on me. In the end, I’m not going to rave about this book like I do others. I’d say, read the summary, read the first few pages, and trust your gut. If it sounds like your style, you’re going to love it; if, like me, you balk at the narration, you might struggle like me too. This is a book that is unapologetic about how it tells its story, which I respect. And at the end of the day, it is definitely nice to have more books with trans protagonists that are emphatically not about transition/coming out. So I love Pet for that alone. As a novel and a story, however, it’s so-so to me.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 One of my goals last year was, and for this year remains, to read more works by transgender authors, particularly about trans issues. I have been following Julia Serano on Twitter for a while now, so during my latest shopping expedition I decided to pick up Whipping Girl, which has also been on my radar for a while. Serano is not only a trans woman but also a molecular biologist, providing her with insights into the biological side of the sex/gender equation that many people lack. I went into Whipping Girl with the understanding that, even in its second edition, the book is somewhat outdated in ways—but I thought it was important to read this before I dive into some of Serano’s more recent publications, like Excluded, because I know that these works build upon this one. My overall impression is that, if you can navigate through the parts that do sound and feel outdated, this is a valuable book for cis and trans people alike. Cis people will learn a lot about trans perspectives and their own privilege; trans people (particularly trans women like myself) will learn a lot of vocabulary that might make it easier to describe their experiences.

In the first part of the book, Serano advances her own understanding of transgender theory. Aspects of this don’t resonate with me because I grew up later than her and never belonged to the queer communities that she has belonged to in the States. In particular, I’m not a fan of the way she lumps non-trans crossdressers and other gender non-conforming people under the banner of “transgender” and then uses the term transsexual to distinguish between trans people in general and people who have transitioned in a binary way from male to female or vice versa. Please don’t ever call me a transsexual or transsexual woman; I am a transgender woman, trans woman, or preferably just a woman!

As far as other groups go, I am very much in favour of labels being descriptive and individualistic rather than prescribed or applied to people: transgender is an umbrella term that you can use if you think it works for you. Non-binary people and agender people are trans in my eyes, but I respect that not every such individual wants to use the trans label for themselves. Similarly, some gender non-conforming people identify as trans, but others don’t because for them gender expression is just that, but their gender identity remains congruent with what they were assigned at birth. For example, before I came out as trans, if I had worn a skirt, I would have been gender non-conforming in my expression (but would still have considered myself cis at the time). Now that I am out as a trans woman and I wear heels and dresses, I am actually very conformative in how I dress.

You might see how all of these terms start getting complicated, though, and that’s something I appreciate about Serano’s writing in Whipping Girl: she does a good job distinguishing among related yet distinct concepts, such as cissexism and transphobia and trans-misogyny. Much of what we discuss these days we lump under the umbrella of the middle term when it is better discussed as one of the other two. In particular, I liked that Serano pointed out how people who are otherwise good allies (and therefore usually not transphobic in and of themselves) can often inadvertently display cissexism, for example by assuming being cisgender is “normal” and transgender is an abnormality.

Do you need to know all these terms, and the ones I didn’t even mention, to be a good ally? No, absolutely not. Nevertheless, if you are interested in gender theory and feminism, I think that delving into these ideas will provide interesting perspective to help shape the way you engage with the concepts of sex, gender, and gender expression.

I also like Serano’s intrinsic inclinations model for explaining why some people experience incongruence with their gender assigned at birth. Serano challenges the widely-held idea that gender is purely a social construct. This theory emerged out of the rejection of the gender essentialism that positions men and women as inherently, biologically different—something that transphobic people often cling to in an attempt to prove that trans people are mistaken or deluded about our gender, despite the harm that gender essentialism poses to feminism as a whole. Nevertheless, some transphobic people are now weaponizing the social construct theory of gender too, claiming that because we have been “socialized” as one gender, it isn’t possible for us to ever truly understand what it is like to be our actual gender, even if we transition and start living outwardly as that gender. So I agree with Serano that both models are unsatisfactory. Her intrinsic inclinations model does what we know is true already for other nature versus nurture questions—namely, establish that it isn’t nature or nurture, but rather a subtle combination that isn’t always easy to inspect. (On a similar note, I appreciate how Serano points out that the idea of using the term “biological male [or female]” is very problematic when we consider trans people who have started hormone therapy.) In general, these are very difficult concepts to investigate! The difficulty for trans people is that we keep encountering people who think they know better than us about our gender, and who think they have “science” and “biology” on their side, when the reality is so much more complex than they would care to admit.

Serano also offers poignant critiques of how researchers who study trans people are themselves overwhelmingly cisgender, and this has introduced staggering bias into how transgender psychology is characterized within the medical establishment. Serano has been very critical in particular of Ray Blanchard’s theory of autogynephelia, here and elsewhere, although I like that she branches out and provides a far more comprehensive overview of gatekeeping here. All in all, it comes down to the fact that cisgender researchers of trans people are often inordinately obsessed with linking our transness to some type of sexual deviance—or at best, they view us not as human beings with agency of our own but as a subject of study for the benefit of cis people.

In the second part of Whipping Girl, Serano starts to discuss how transgender issues relate to feminism as a whole. Again, aspects of this feel dated—she seems in particular to be pushing back strongly against second-wave feminists, which I totally understand, but I think third and fourth wave feminism have brought new and interesting problems to the forefront. I also disagree with how she uses the terms masculine and feminine, discussing how some women are “masculine” and some men do “feminine” things. I realize this might seem like common usage to most people, but I prefer to say that men are masculine, by definition, and women are feminine. Thus, if I wear a dress, it is a feminine act because I’m female; if a man wears a dress, it’s a masculine act because he’s male. I prefer this conceptualization because it seeks to do away with the idea that certain activities are inherently masculine or feminine. (On the other hand, note that I agree that similar terms like femme, masc, and butch can be applied regardless of gender—I am a femme trans woman, or but other trans women might describe themselves as butch if they end up expressing themselves in ways we often associate with men.)

Beyond this splitting of hairs I’m performing here, however, I’ll register that I largely agree with what Serano has to say in these essays. I agree that—in some cases—modern feminism has sought to disavow femininity and feminine expression (but as I mentioned earlier, third wave feminism was, in no small part, an attempt to rectify this). Additionally, Serano engages with the concept of male privilege as it may or may not apply to AMAB trans people. She makes the important point, which I’ve seen made before, that privilege is not an absolute but rather quite dependent upon context.

Whipping Girl is a fascinating collection of essays that yields fruitful ideas. This is a great place to begin a reading journey about feminism and trans issues. For trans people, particularly trans women, much of this will resonate and hopefully feel affirming. Timeliness aside, this is not the be-all, end-all of trans writings (nor does Serano position it as such!). It’s very specifically attempting to discuss issues of history, sociology, and gender politics. In between the pages you’ll likely notice opportunities for tangents and intersections that Serano leaves unexplored (at least in this book). After reading this, if you are like me, you will only be motivated to keep on reading.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I became hooked on astronomy in a very big way. It’s just that idea that once you’ve passed the event horizon, then there is no escape from the black hole. So a book about taking a photograph of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy using a radio telescope assembled out of telescopes from around the Earth?

Yes, please. Einstein’s Shadow tries to tell the story of this project, the Event Horizon Telescope or EHT, and particularly its founder, Shep Doeleman. However, somewhere along the way, Seth Fletcher’s attempts to combine the budgetary wrangling of an astronomical project with the astrophysical ideas behind the project lose their way, and we are left with a book lacking in heart. 

From the beginning, I was nervous about Fletcher’s choice to follow Doeleman and portray him as the “hero” of this book. I understand that he was one of the visionaries for this project, that he brought it to life and shepherded toward its (eventual) successful photograph. Yet Fletcher readily admits that a project like this is really the work of hundreds of minds, not one. So the focus on Doeleman is odd, because you can’t have your cake and eat it too—don’t remind me that science is a collaborative enterprise and then spend a whole chapter telling me about Doeleman’s childhood. Is this a biography or isn’t it? In the same vein, there were points in this book where Fletcher lionizes Doeleman too much for my liking. Sure, he also points out Doeleman’s recalcitrance and flaws, so maybe that’s just balance. Nevertheless, I just walked away with an uneasy impression we’re supposed to see Doeleman as a visionary and a hero, and it’s just like … dude managed a big science project. 

It feels like Fletcher is casting about for a story in the middle of events that are, in their own way, quite interesting, but for which there isn’t much story to be found. I did like the details on how the project was funded. I liked hearing about the behind-the-scences, backdoor wrangling. I liked the acknowledgement of the dearth of women in this field. More of these things. I didn’t mind Fletcher’s attempts to explain the physics behind black holes, although I have heard it done better and with more … I don’t know, flair? All in all, however, these two faces of the book never unified into a whole that I could appreciate. I would be excited for a few pages before the narrative returned to less interesting things, or bogged itself down in a few pages of scientific chat, and my interest level flatlined. 

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that, in the end, Fletcher’s writing style just didn’t work for me. I also think it was so premature to finalize this book prior to the EHT actually releasing its data/images (I ended up looking up the EHT’s website and realizing I had seen its image of M87 in a science news article some time ago). I’m not sure if this was the publisher’s eagerness or what, but if you held off another year or so, hey, you would have a way better ending for this book. As it is, “They got data, but they need time to keep sifting through it, stay tuuuuuned” is literally a definition of anticlimax. This book is all science foreplay, no science orgasm, and I’m not here for that.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 Jo Walton’s novels are always so creative and refreshing, and The Just City is no exception. This book stretched my mind and my imagination just enough without overwhelming me with the philosophy. Perhaps the best part of this book is how Walton plays with the Greek gods (primarily as inspired by Homeric tradition) while simultaneously acknowledging their rapey tendencies in a very real way. This is a challenge for authors who want to play in historical or mythological sandboxes in our increasingly progressive, reflective society, and Walton rises to the occasion.

The Just City refers to the hypothetical city laid out by Plato in his famous Republic. The Greek gods are real, and Athena decides she wants to actually make this thing happen. So she grabs a bunch of people from across time who have prayed to her (she can do that) and places them on Thera, just prior to the eruption of the volcano that devastated the island and inspired the myth of Atlantis. Athena charges these people with the task of developing Plato’s Just City, and when they are ready, she helps them buy thousands of child slaves to raise as the first true generation of citizens. Meanwhile, Athena’s brother Apollo decides to be incarnated into human form—i.e., no powers, none, not until he dies—so he can experience this for the first time and hopefully figure out why Daphne chose to turn into a tree rather than have sex with him.

The story is primarily told from the point of view of three people: Simmea, one of the children raised in the city; Maia, originally Ethel from Victorian England and now one of the masters who built the city; and Apollo, living a mortal life as Pytheas. All three have slightly different perspectives on the city as an experiment given their different backgrounds, and this proves key to the philosophical exploration Walton undertakes in this novel. A great deal of the novel is dialogue—often involving Sokrates, who basically steals the show—into the nature of justice, self-determination and autonomy, etc. It’s a highly didactic novel, but the philosophy never threatens to overtake the characterization, and though I’ll freely admit it seems to overtake what little plot there is to begin with, the novel ends with a rather satisfying eruption—just not of the volcanic type.

As an aromantic and asexual person, I spend a lot of time talking about my platonic relationships. So the fact that this book meditates a lot on what Platonic relationships actually are was very intriguing for me. Walton approaches sexuality, romance, and friendship in a philosophical way as well. I wouldn’t necessarily describe this book as heteronormative, but I also wouldn’t call it queer: it takes a very Greek view to the notion that men can enjoy a more fluid sexuality than women tend to; that being said, we’re somewhat restricted because our two female viewpoint characters are both not particularly interested in sex. So there’s a dearth of queer representation, both in terms of sexuality and gender identity, which is rather essentialist. Walton spends a fair amount of time trying to reconcile Plato’s relatively equitable ideas about women with the fact that he didn’t seem to actually, you know, know many educated women. But it just left me wondering, really, where I, an aroace trans woman, might fit into this imagined version of the Just City if Athena had plucked me from 21st century Canada.

I also found Apollo’s apparent journey of self-discovery somewhat unsatisfying. Dude doesn’t understand consent and self-determination and the principle of equal significance, so he decides to live as a human, fine. But Walton spends most of the novel telling us he’s learning things rather than really showing us. This is one example of my principal criticism of the book, which is that it drags at points. It’s not that the book is ever truly boring or uninteresting—I was never tempted to DNF it like I have with a couple of others recently. But I kept wondering when something would happen, something other than endless scenes of conversations and deliberations.

So at the end of the book, I was left kind of wondering how satiated I was. I don’t really want to read the second book—but the description for the third book is so very intriguing! Maybe I will just skip a whole book! Maybe I will make myself read the second one too. Who knows, I’m just unpredictable that way! Regardless, The Just City is a good read for anyone who likes Greek mythology, Greek philosophy, and science fiction that really doesn’t bother to hide how much of a thought experiment it is.

Originally published at Kara.Reviews.

It pains me, because everyone is so hyped about Kameron Hurley, and I want to be hyped too. Alas, this first foray into her writing was not a successful venture. Despite spending exactly a week with this book, I am just barely halfway through. It was this realization that made me decide to cut my losses. I am not going to finish The Mirror Empire.

Principally, I just don’t care about any of the main characters and their fate. I genuinely do not care to find out how this book ends.

That isn’t just a problem with the characterization (which is poor) but also the plot, which is stretched thin. For example, Lilia’s entire plot in this first half of the book is “go back and forth between two travel companions, both of whom she hates, and ending up exactly nowhere.” Zezili is a fearsome general who spends her time whinging that her empress is going to get everyone killed, but after half a novel, she still hasn’t done anything about it. Likewise with Ahkio or Roh—these characters are moving slower than molasses.

I was in a reading slump earlier, one which Felix Ever After rescued me from. This book has threatened to send me spiralling back into the slump. Sigh.

 I am in the minority for this one judging by the rave reviews it is getting ahead of its release. Like many of those other reviewers, I received a copy of The Councillor from NetGalley and DAW in exchange for a review. Unfortunately, it’s going to be a short one: I did not finish this book.

We’re off to a great start. Lysande is an advisor/close friend to Queen Sarelin, who plucked her from an orphanage for her scholastic potential. Sarelin dies unexpectedly (murder!), but not before she secretly named Lysande as her Councillor. Lysande’s sole purpose in this role? Since Sarelin died without an heir, Lysande must select the new monarch of their realm from one of the four rulers of the cities that make up the realm. Of course, those rulers hate each other, and one or more of them might have murdered the queen. Sounds like a fun job.

This is exactly the kind of political intrigue I want from my high fantasy. Toss in the fact that there are a ton of openly queer characters (and it’s normal), and that’s cool: The Councillor should be a book for me. So what gives?

It drags. Like seriously, seriously dragged for me. Page after page after scene after scene of repetitive action and description. I reached a point where I was skimming just to see when something actually happened, and I think I finally got about a quarter of the way into the book before that occurred.

Despite a great setting and cool plot, none of the characterization and especially none of the narration works for me. Nothing gels into a compelling voice that makes me want to sit on the edge of my seat and bite my nails like I did for a book like The Goblin Emperor, which faces a similarly-inexperienced person dealing with huge political machinations.

All I can say, attempting to assuage my feeling bad for writing this review, is that I don’t think these are problems with the book or Beaton’s writing. As I said earlier, the critical consensus seems to be positive, so if you are interested in The Councillor, I would go with that—please don’t take this critique as a recommendation to skip this one. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work for me, and I decided to accept that and move on. Maybe next time!

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I’ll give this book credit for getting me out of my reading slump that I fell into at the beginning of the year. I read Felix Ever After in a day! Kacen Callender made me feel very invested in Felix’s story. Though I wouldn’t call this a “light” YA read by any stretch of the imagination, there is a lot in here that is humourous to balance out the more serious parts. In particular, Callender creates a memorable, believable voice for our eponymous narrator.

Felix is a 17-year-old trans kid living in New York City, going to a private art school and hoping to get into Brown. Except he spends more time pondering his lack of a relationship than actually working on his portfolio. Oh, and even though Felix knows he definitely isn’t a girl, he isn’t entirely sure the binary idea of “boy” fits him either. With his mother out of the picture and his father supportive materially but not always emotionally, this leaves Felix adrift and vulnerable. Not to mention that someone cracked into his Instagram, found photos of him pre-transition, and plastered them along with his deadname all over a school hallway.

If it sounds like there’s a lot of moving parts to this novel, that’s because there is! I didn’t even mention Felix’s gay best friend, whom everyone mistakes as his boyfriend, or Felix’s nemesis. Rather than getting lost in the forest of details here, I’ll discuss how Felix Ever After made me feel.

I can’t review this book as an own-voices reviewer, because I am white and transfemme rather than transmasc, so Felix and I don’t have much in common beyond being transgender in some way. I laughed a little when he says he figured out his identity “late” compared to others (we’ve just passed a year since I realized, at 30, that I am trans). Nevertheless, I felt for Felix so much, and some of the aspects of the book that dealt with Felix’s transness resonated for me—and even made me anxious, at points! Perhaps that’s why I wanted to finish it in a day: if I allowed the book to linger unresolved beyond that, my anxiety might worsen.

See, what this book captures, and something I have had to reckon with for the past year now, is that when you are visibly trans or out, you are always aware of this, and it is always on your mind. This is not a consequence of being trans, mind you, but a consequence of how our society others transgender people. When I go out, I’m thinking about how people will read me. Will they use the right pronouns for me? Will they misgender me entirely? Who will be a Marisol, outwardly using the correct pronouns but inwardly never truly accepting my gender because it doesn’t conform to her rigid, essentialist version of feminism? (As an aside, I want to add that Callender does a great job portraying young people as simultaneously aware of social issues yet also tentative in that their understanding and ability to have viable discussions about those issues is still developing.)

This constant awareness is exhausting and is itself a form of microagression society foists upon marginalized people.

There were times when Felix really annoyed me. He is so immature in some ways, so flawed—it’s great. Callender creates a voice for him that is agonizing without being stereotypically angsty, if you know what I mean. His self-doubt and his perceptions are not wrong or unrealistic, but from my perspective as an adult, they feel outsized. And that, I think, is as it should be: Callender captures the raw emotions that wash through teenage minds without verging into melodrama.

I will also say that there are moments of incredible sweetness in this book. In particular, there is a lot of tenderness and intimacy between boys. Some of this has sexual/romantic overtones, yes, but in other respects it is more platonic—and in any case, this is way, way needed in our literature. Men and boys of any sexuality need to know it is ok to cuddle, to be cuddled, to hold and to be held, provided it’s what you want and consensual. This is a book where aggression and conflict abound yet do not manifest as toxic masculinity.

In the end, some of the pieces didn’t quite fit in their places for me. I wasn’t a huge fan of the solution to the identity of Felix’s transphobic bully. The resolution of the love triangle is messy and rushed, though maybe that’s actually more realistic than I am willing to give credit for! Regardless, these are minor quibbles against the overwhelming balance of evidence that this is a wonderful, well-written novel. Trans teens, especially trans masc kids and demiboys, will see themselves in this. Cis readers will get a chance to live in the mind of a trans teen and see what that can be like. Felix Ever After is diverse in its representation and deep in its characterization.

I am free! Over a year ago I embarked on re-reading the two trilogies that comprise The Wayfarer Redemption, and with Crusader I have achived this goal. Sara Douglass no longer has any hold over me! (So, after I finished this book, I discovered that of course Douglass couldn’t resist writing another sequel trilogy, featuring Axis and StarDrifter, along with characters from other novels. I could, therefore, keep going. But I will not, and this review should make hopefully explain why.)

In many ways, Crusader is like one of the Avengers movies. There are a lot of people with powers wandering around, stepping on each other’s toes, and internecine disputes abound. Everyone is out for the most screen time they can wrangle from the screenwriter, not realizing the director’s final cut is going to change everything….

Oh, sorry, did you want an actual summary? Fine.

Set a hot second after the events of Pilgrim, Crusader throws us into Qeteb’s reign of terror and DragonStar’s utter lack of a plan for dealing with it. Caelum is dead, and pretty much all the good magic is gone, except for the magic that isn’t gone. DragonStar has no allies left, except for the ones he does have. People and entities die, except that

they go to heaven and basically that’s the endgame—some kind of Narnia-esque “Tencendor was but a reflection of the true existence” bullshit.

Anyway, this book is the same kind of hot mess that this series is, and honestly if you make it this far I think you deserve some kind of medal.

I want to praise Douglass’ imagination. She can certainly come up with the kinds of creative ideas that make fantasy novels compelling. The subtle touches of science fiction, nods to Earth and other such elements are a nice way of further enhancing what might otherwise feel like a less interesting story. If there’s one thing you can’t accuse this series of, it’s unoriginality. This is a series packed to the brim with original concepts—and that, of course, is the problem.

Douglass’ playground is so filled with toys that, like a child improvising a narrative on that playground, she doesn’t know how to bring it all together. She jumps from character to character, subplot to subplot, all to the detriment of the story’s unity and coherence. What, exactly, am I supposed to care about here?

Qeteb and DragonStar’s ultimate grudge match? Axis feeling obsolete? Faraday feeling like she has to sacrifice herself? The fact that random characters with powers keep showing up at just the right time?

Crusader reminds me of Malazan in terms of the cognitive strain this world places on me as the reader. Whereas in Malazan’s case it’s remembering cities’ worth of characters and their story arcs, in this book’s case it’s more about the various moving parts that interfere with one another’s plots. I admire Douglass’ attempt to make her fantasy feel more “realistic.” There’s certainly many fantasy novels that are too straightforward, and I would criticize them for it. Yet in her attempt to make her world more fleshed out, I fear Douglass has gone too far in the other direction. This book is unfulfilling for me because it tries to do too much.

Also (and this is a nitpick but one I can’t shake), it’s just weird that

all of this affects the land of Tencendor only, not the entire planet. So all this magic stops at Tencendor’s borders? All these creatures are somehow unique to Tencendor? Even the Gatekeeper lady? This was never explored in earlier books, and the fact that there even are other lands is kind of glossed over except for brief mentions in books 1 and … I think maybe 4. So when Crusader is like, “Yeah, the Corolean Empire is going to be weirded out by what’s happening here,” I was like, “What … this isn’t a global phenomenon?”

Anyway.

This is a flawed ending to a flawed series. With a few exceptions, I felt like each subsequent book brought me diminishing returns. Douglass is an author full of big ideas, but her eagerness to include every big idea in one story results in a cluttered playground with too many characters, too many grudges, too many stories for one book to contain coherently. Crusader isn’t bad, but it also isn’t good.

And the incest and rape stuff continues to be creepy and uncomfortable AF.

Full disclosure: I was a Kickstarter backer for this book. I was very excited for Common Bonds, because I am aromantic, but that’s an identity that isn’t well-represented in mainstream media (and when it is, it’s usually conflated with/paired with asexuality—I am also asexual, but I like the split attraction model because it helps me discuss my experiences with nuance). A great deal of this review will be me talking about the importance of books like this. But first, stories!

Honestly, none of these stories jumped out at me as stand-out entries. This is fine and something I’ve come to expect from anthologies—or rather, from how I experience anthologies. I find short stories challenging at the best of times, and the start of this year has been challenging for me in terms of reading in general. So I’m not surprised that I can’t pick out any one or two stories as the best of this collection.

What I can say, however, is that these stories are incredibly varied and diverse in all senses—structure, plot, representation, theme. The editors of this collection did a great job selecting submissions that not only portray a wide range of aromantic experiences but also a wide range of speculative fiction. While I would say most of the stories tend towards fantasy, there is some science fiction—and beyond genre, we also have some poetry! Some of my favourite stories were the shorter, calmer ones that were a small number of scenes—but there are also longer, more adventurous stories here as well.

Aromanticism is prominent in many of the stories and less so in others. For example, in “A Full Deck,” by Avi Silver, the antihero protagonist’s aromanticism is pivotal to taking on an incubus. In other stories, like “Shift,” by Mika Standard, the protagonist’s aromanticism is mentioned and important but not central to the story, which is mostly about trying to figure out how to tell your roommate you know she’s a werewolf.

That’s the other thing I like about this anthology: the stories are just good in general at modelling excellent use of pronouns, of consent, of respecting boundaries and talking about relationships. This anthology is so much more than a collection of stories and poems about aromanticism.

But it is definitely that too. And this is perhaps what surprised me about Common Bonds: despite the individual stories not making much impression on me, overall they … added up, I guess? About two thirds of the way through this collection, I began to feel a kind of weight settle on me, in a good way. It was a weight of recognition, or of feeling recognized. I realized that, while I have read a few books here and there with aro characters, the concentrated dose of aro experiences here was powerful for me.

I’ll blog more about this next month when it is Aromantic Awareness Week, but I have been thinking lately about how being aro in a society that privileges romance over friendship stunted my making of adult friends until quite recently. The stories here in Common Bonds made me feel seen and filled me with joy, because they reflect back a life I recognize. These are stories of people with partners despite not desiring romance, of people who live by themselves because that is what they prefer. It made me think about how I have one platonic friendship that is, above others, so important and essential to me, a relationship that others could mistake as romantic because of its intensity but is, to its core, not. I appreciated the stories, like “Cinder,” by Jennifer Lee Rossman, that articulate the heady feelings of meeting your platonic soulmate.

This anthology is important because we need to talk about how our society portrays romance as a higher good. I have nothing against romance, either as a concept or as a genre—but friendship, companionship, family (chosen or otherwise), and one’s own individual selfhood—those things are important too. This is a collection of stories and experiences that ask, “What if romance were not the end goal?” I think we should ask that more often.

I hope this is not the last anthology of aromantic speculative fiction. Would back again.

Every year my dad buys me the CBC Massey Lectures book, and last year was no exception! Reading Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society after the events of January 6, in which white supremacist and fascist Americans, incited by their own president, stormed their own Capitol Building, was a trip. As Ronald J. Deibert unpacked the problematic aspects of our reliance upon social media, all I could think about was the role social media played on and around January 6—the way far-right platform Parler was used to plan the riot, the way people on Twitter immediately began identifying rioters, and the way now, afterwards, social media has been used to discuss, dissect, and evaluate the event.

I joined “social media” in 2007 when Facebook opened up to non-college students. Graduating high school, it felt like a nice way to stay in touch with my peers (I barely talk to anyone from high school now, of course). The following year, I joined Twitter, which I would say is the main social network I use these days. However, I am old enough to remember the golden age of the web: after the days of walled gardens like CompuServe and AOL, but before the days of walled gardens like Facebook, Twitter, etc. (For an excellent read on how platforms have replaced protocols, check out the unfortunately prescient The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain.) I’ve lived through many iterations of social media and networks, some of which I’ve participated in, while others I have eschewed as not for me. I don’t think I would be alone in shuddering with the accuracy with which Deibert identifies our dependence upon not just our phones but social media in particular.

Oh, by the way, my best friend and I have a podcast and we released a two-part episode about The Social Dilemma (recorded before I read Reset). Listen if you want to hear more of my thoughts on social media—now for my thoughts on this book.

I’m always impressed by how variable the Massey Lecture books are in style. This comes with the diversity of speakers, of course. Some are telling a story; others, like Deibert, sound like they are lecturing on public policy to a group of university students. This is fine, but if you have regularly enjoyed the Massey Lectures in the past, you might find this one a departure in terms of density and jargon.

The first parts of the book will sound dire, especially to anyone who is new to the topics and ideas Deibert covers. I was already very aware of much of the surveillance Deibert mentions, so that didn’t faze me. Nevertheless, when you put it all together the way he does in this book, it forms a startling picture. We have abdicated so much of our privacy already, and one of the central questions of Reset is whether or not we can possibly reclaim that privacy in a meaningful way.

Perhaps one of the most important parts of this book, for me at least, comes near the end. Deibert addresses the environmental impact of how we currently use these technologies—from Bitcoin to Google searches, the Internet consumes power and water, and the devices that give us access demand an ever-increasing supply of precious minerals and dangerous substances. I love that he brings this up, because it is something we often overlook as a result of our view of the Internet as existing within “the Cloud”—the Cloud has a physical existence, albeit a distributed one, and it costs energy and resources to maintain. Deibert’s reminder that our technology problems dovetail with the larger problem of climate change is a nice way to help us understand how, to move forward as a civilization, we can’t just fix one thing. We can’t just fix the Internet without doing it in an environmentally responsible way—nor will we be able to tend to the environment if we continue to use the Internet like we do now.

At the end of the book, Deibert actually addresses what he means by the title, what he envisions as a possible future for our online lives. In doing so he slides from sociology and philosophy of technology over into political science and political philosophy. He gives us some basic tutoring in concepts of liberalism, republicanism, etc., before deploying these as foundations for reimagining our Internet society. Although I appreciate the connections he tries to make, this part feels rushed. Maybe I’ve been too lucky to read so many good history books that explore these ideas, but Deibert doesn’t do the topic justice. Moreover, in his attempt to ground his ideas for the Internet in a philosophical/political framework, he inadvertently erases certain layers of nuance. For example, his philosophy is inextricably Western in its foundations. Yet if we ever have hope of truly remodelling the Internet to be more equitable, more inclusive, and more privacy-centric, how can we do so if we don’t embrace Eastern, Middle Eastern, Southern, and especially Indigenous perspectives?

Basically, I think Deibert does an excellent job communicating the problems of our Internet, particularly social media. The solution frameworks he lays out are vague. This is not so much because he doesn’t seem to have ideas for improvement. Rather, whether as a result of space/time constraints or a flaw in his actual thinking, his solution frameworks are heavy on theory but light on nuance, practicality, and intersectionality.

All in all, this is a good read. But I think it really addresses this issue from a particular perspective. If you want to learn more about this stuff, you need to go further and read other voices. You need to hear from people who have been harassed online, and we need to listen to the voices of marginalized people, including Black people, Indigenous people, and LGBTQ+ people. I agree with Deibert that this is a battle to be fought at an organizational and governmental level—but Reset only provides a starting point, not a roadmap.