This middle-grade novella was a great way to get into the New Year and relax in the bath during my first arduous week back at work. What Magic Is This? is short and sweet. Let’s be clear: if you go into this expecting Holly Bourne’s usual perspicacity from her adult or young adult reads, you might feel disappointed by how simplistic this book is in comparison. But if you approach this from the mindset of your middle-school self, you’ll have much more luck enjoying this. Aimed at alloromantic girls in Year 9 (Grade 8) in particular, this is a book about the tensions between friendship and infatuation, and the lines we draw between reality and fantasy.

Trigger warning in this book for discussions of self-harm/cutting.

Sophie thinks of herself as the boring one in her friendship trio. Alexis is the dramatic one, Mia is the dark/quirky one, and Sophie is the boring one. She hopes to change that one night by casting a spell. Each of the girls wishes for something different, and by the end of the night, it’s possible each girl’s spell came true. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking. This is not a book about magic. It’s a book about teenage relationships.

Bourne’s characterization, while obviously less subtle than her novels for older readers, remains just as skilled and apt as ever. In particular, I love her turns of phrase and I love the way she establishes the bonds among friends. The running gag with Alexis’ ability to eat entire frozen pizzas from (insert any feeling here), for example, feels quite real, like it’s something that would have actually happened if I had such a friend group at that age. Likewise, Sophie’s first-person narration feels every bit a type of Year 9 girl who is beginning to explore her romantic feelings. Bourne captures the urgency of youthful infatuation.

The plot that frames this story and ties together its characters’ struggles is perhaps the least important element of the book, ironically. What Magic Is This? uses witchcraft to help us learn what these girls are dealing with, but this isn’t a book about girls who believe they are witches. The epilogue that takes place a year later makes this clear, draws a nice line underneath the whole story and provides some good closure.

While Sophie and Mia receive a fair amount of development, Alexis feels like the odd girl out. Her struggle is coming to terms with grief—she lost a dog, whom we are told she actually hated while he was alive—and we also learn she has a flair for drama. That’s about it. Unlike Mia, who at least is revealed as Sophie’s foil through her flare-ups with both Sophie and Alexis, Alexis herself remains the most enigmatic and least used character.

This is a cute book, with many satisfying elements, tightly plotted so it doesn’t overstay its welcome. I think for its target audience it’s a win. As I said in my introduction, older readers will need to approach it with that awareness in order to appreciate it. But I am a huge Holly Bourne fangirl, and I love that she now has stories for all ages.

There were many reasons I added Elatsoe to my to-read list when it started making the rounds on Twitter: supernatural mystery, asexual protagonist (which I forgot until I started reading it), Indigenous author and protagonist, etc. It’s great when a novel has so many draws, isn’t just a single thing. Darcie Little Badger’s debut is one part ghost story, one part educational piece about stolen land and colonial ambitions—and all about a main character who embodies “spunky.”

This eponymous protagonist goes by the name of Ellie for most of the book. In this alternative United States, magic exists in a variety of forms. For Ellie’s family, who are Lipan Apache like Little Badger herself, this means passing down traditional knowledge about summoning spirits. Ellie has been practising this skill from childhood, and she has a loyal companion in her ghost dog, Kirby! After her cousin, Trevor, dies near a small and mysterious town in Texas, Ellie receives a visit from him in a dream. Trevor tells her he was murdered and even reveals the murderer—but that’s all. And Ellie is forbidden from waking the spirits of dead humans, lest they return as vengeful ghosts. So as she and her parents visit her cousin’s widow to help out, Ellie launches an investigation, with Kirby and her best friend Jay by her side, against the most prominent and wealthy man in town.

I enjoyed Elatsoe from the beginning, and it just gets better and better. Little Badger’s plotting and pacing is very smooth, and while there are moments of infodumping here and there, overall I like that she doesn’t spend too much time trying to explicate how this universe is different from our own. You just kind of get thrown into it—vampires and fairy rings and ghosts and all—and I appreciate that. There is room to grow if this turns into a series, and if this is a standalone then it strikes the right balance between plot and worldbuilding.

There’s also a healthy balance with Ellie’s characterization. Ellie is a great protagonist in terms of her growth. At 17, she is on the cusp of adulthood and quite independent, yet her dynamic with her parents is a healthy one. She respects their boundaries but pushes them just a little when she believes she is capable of more. Her parents, in return, set those boundaries out of concern for her safety, but they also respect her agency and believe her when she says things like “my cousin’s spirit told me he was murdered.” People are classifying this as young adult, and that’s cool, I guess it technically is from the age of the protagonist, but if anything this is definitely crossover … regardless, more books with healthy relationships between the protagonist and her parents, please!

Similarly, more asexual representation like this! I love, love books that emphasize and explore a character’s asexuality, of course. But I have said and will say again here: we need books where characters are just casually asexual. Ellie hints at this early in the book when she talks about not wanting children and not needing a partner—but of course, that doesn’t equate with asexuality. The word finally gets used on page later, when someone says, “I know you’re asexual,” suggesting Ellie is out to people in general, and that’s lovely! It’s not explained, not interrogated, just accepted. Moreover, it was so important to me that her friendship with Jay was platonic and lacked any hint of romantic/sexual tension or unrequited love. Just two peeps being pals, and I can stan that.

This kind of casual representation extends to Ellie’s identity as Lipan Apache. This identity is asserted more often and firmly than her asexuality, and Little Badger drops in nuggets of education for us settlers about what Indigenous people, and the Lipan Apache in particular, suffered at the hands of settlers. She works ideas of land and belonging into the vampire mythos in a really cool way. And of course, the entire mystery itself is rooted in a group of settlers’ beliefs that they can take what they want, from the land and its people, over and over indefinitely, without ever paying recompense. Overall, Elatsoe grounds itself in Indigenous roots and integrates, on every level, lessons in the harms of colonialism and the extant colonial mentality within American culture and history. It’s sophisticated and powerful.

Ok, ok, Kara—but what about the ghost story??? The mystery?? Does it work?

Short answer: yes. My main fear as the story developed would be that Ellie would turn into a kind of Mary Sue, that her magic or detective skills would make solving, and resolving, the case too easy. Without going into spoilers, I’d say Little Badger averts this through careful foreshadowing, as well as the way she uses stories of Ellie’s ancestor. The connection between Ellie’s power and the land/her ancestors is so important, another example of what I was talking about above when I said that this book is grounded in Indigenous roots—Ellie prevails not just as a result of her own strength but because she knows who she is and where she comes from. Elatsoe is a book about the power of remembering yourself in the face of a world that wants you to forget.

Sometimes you read books because you know what to expect: they are predictable, comfortable reads. Other times you read a book because you are expecting an experiment, something that might or might not work for you. Elatsoe fits comfortably into a third category of book: the type of book that isn’t really an experiment, but it is much more than a comfort read. It stretches you but in a way that does not demand cerebral contortions, educates you in a way that does not make you feel patronized, entertains you in a way that is fairly conventional for a novel yet layered and nuanced as well. If you like any of the things I listed at the top of this review, check it out.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Mirage reminds me, in a good and less racist way, of Dune. I wish I had liked it more, because honestly this is the type of science fiction I want more of: science fiction that might be set in space and in the future, sure, but that focuses more on the intrigue and relationships than on the tech and whizz-bang special effects, and in a way that centres people of colour. Mirage does all that, a great elevation of the planetary romance subgenre—unfortunately, I personally found it boring.

Amani has the misfortune of appearing nearly identical to the Vathek Crown Princess, Maram. As a result, the Vatheks kidnap her to act as Maram’s body double at precarious public appearances. Amani is Andalan, her world occupied by the Vatheks somewhat extralegally, her culture only barely hanging on after decades of oppression. She has no love for the Vatheks, but her choices are cooperation or death (not even cake!). Unfortunately, as Amani studies how to be the cruel and callous Maram, she worries she might get too good at her job. And she has to balance her desire to help her people—as a spy, for example—with her own survival.

Like, every ingredient of this book sets it up for success. I love everything I mentioned in the above paragraph. The setting is great, the clashing cultures Daud has created are fantastic. There is life to this setting, a sense of history. There is richness here. I say this all because I don’t want to damn this book with faint praise—I don’t think Mirage is poorly written, bad, and even though I found it boring, I don’t think that means you necessarily will. So I feel like, as occasionally happens to me, I let down this book.

The romance subplot was predictable (and maybe that is fine for some!). The spy subplot was under-developed. Amani’s precarious bonding with Maram was actually kind of fun—I really liked the baking/cooking scene! That too, however, felt like it never really went anywhere. I guess, upon reflection, that’s what I disliked about Mirage: the subplots together lack a sense of unity and coherence in their structure, and individually they might be entertaining, yet they don’t culminate in any fulfilling way. I originally sought out Mirage because so many people on Twitter were hyped for its sequel, Court of Lions—but I want my first book in a series to really stand alone while also setting up future conflict. Mirage does the latter but is not as good at the former.

So my advice would be not to pay too much attention to my review and try the book for yourself, if it seems like it’s your thing. If it doesn’t seem like your thing, don’t go into it expecting it to change your mind. I’m happy so many people enjoyed this one, but it didn’t work for me.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

So I have had mixed results with Matt Haig to date: I adored How to Stop Time but disliked The Humans. In both cases, I appreciated Haig’s perspicacity and philosophy, but the overall storytelling in The Humans didn’t work for me, whereas How to Stop Time was cute and romantic and poignant. So I was looking forward to The Midnight Library acting as a kind of tie-breaker to tell me if I should keep reading Haig. I won’t keep you in suspense: this is one of the good ones, folx, every bit as or better than How to Stop Time.

Trigger warnings for attempted suicide on page and mentions of suicide, death, alcoholism, cancer, car crashes.

Nora Seed is full of regrets, and after a particularly bad day in which she loses her cat, her job, her only piano student, and even her responsibility to pick up prescriptions for her elderly neighbour, Nora decides she doesn’t want to live. But instead of death she finds the Midnight Library, where a person in the form of her old school librarian, Mrs. Elm, greets her and exhorts her to choose a different life. Each book on each of the infinite shelves in Nora’s library represents a different Nora, a different life being lived based on one more slightly divergent choices from our Nora’s root life. 

So the story unfolds, chapter by chapter, life by life, as Nora explores and expunges her regrets. In this way, Haig explores the perennial question of: if you could change something about your life, would you? And what effect would that have, really? Nora’s first attempts at finding a new, more satisfactory life are as fumbling as you would expect. They falter more on semantics than anything else. As she refines her ability to express the type of life for which she is looking, Nora learns soon that concepts like happiness and success are not easily quantified or even qualified.

Indeed, much like the wonderful Siddhartha, what I took away from The Midnight Library is the important theme that happiness is not a state you can achieve but rather a transitory experience that comes and goes. There is no life out there in which I am happy all of the time. Every version of my life has happy moments and sad ones. The pursuit of happiness is illusory and elusive, because it is not something to be attained but something to enjoy while it endures, and to remember when it slips away.

I think about this a lot right now because, of course, I am going through a big transition. In my review of Transhood, an HBO documentary, I ruminate on whether I am better or worse off for having realized I am trans at 30 rather than at 5 or 13. What would my life have been like if I had transitioned earlier? And no matter how much I ponder, I have to admit the only answer that has any merit is: different. My life would have been different. Probably not better or worse, but just different.

That’s the secret Nora discovers and Haig unfurls as he travels the tapestry of her lives: most of our alternative lives are neither better nor worse than the one we have; they are different. So I wasn’t all that surprised by the ending, by Nora’s ultimate fate. My prediction didn’t spoil my enjoyment, because Haig’s writing is beautiful and his distillation of poignant philosophical ideas is a soothing balm after a year of existential dread. I think some people will be dissatisfied with the ending because they somehow want more from this book, and I wouldn’t blame them, because Haig sets himself a nigh-impossible task with this kind of story. All I can really say in apology is that this is very much a book that is about the journey, not the destination.

Inevitably, The Midnight Library reminded me of My Real Children, which absolutely blew my mind. They basically have identical themes, yet each is different enough in conceit to stand on its own, and I enjoyed Haig’s approach to these ideas. But if you liked this book, do yourself a favour and pick up Walton’s, because there is way more where this came from.

I’m not sure I’ve decided what criteria make me love versus dislike a Haig novel yet. Maybe it’s the way he writes his main characters. Maybe it’s just the premise behind the story. I guess I’ll have to keep reading him, and at some point, in some life, I’ll have it figured out.

This is one of the oldest (perhaps the oldest?) physical books I own and have yet to read. Goodreads suggests I’ve had it for nearly a decade. Oops. The truth is, I was never excited to read this. I love reading math books! But I am not particularly enamoured of books that explore one or two “special numbers,” and phi is perhaps my least favourite special number. The blurb from Dan Brown on the cover didn’t help. See, phi has been egregiously sexed up and romanticized by people, turned into a mystical number that recurs exactly throughout art and nature, and ascribed aesthetic properties it doesn’t deserve. I was nervous this book would repeat these claims. Well, I owe Mario Livio an apology. Not only does he critically challenge those claims and debunk a lot of the hogwash surrounding the golden ratio, but he also takes it upon himself to tell a broader and more complete story than focusing solely on this number. The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number is a good story of the intersection of mathematics and society, and it provided one key insight that, as a math and English teacher, I find very valuable.

You would be forgiven for, having begun the book, thinking that Livio has entirely forgotten about phi for the first couple of chapters. Rather, he explores the history of numbers and counting in general, eventually ended up in ancient Babylon and Greece and making some connections with geometry. This creates a much richer backdrop for Livio’s later exposition of the golden ratio, and it also broadens the reader’s awareness for how various cultures developed and practised mathematics at different points in history. For example, Livio discusses the Rhind/Ahmes papyrus, which famously provides insight into Egyptian mathematics about 3500 years ago. He emphasizes the papyrus’ purpose as a teaching/reference tool—it specifically explains how to do practical calculations. Fast-forward a couple of millennia, and Fibonacci was doing the same thing—writing tutorials, essentially, for accountants.

See, I appreciate this, because most approaches to discussing the golden ratio focus on the idea that its use in architecture, art, etc., invokes certain ingrained aesthetic ideals in us. These approaches further seek to ground the golden ratio in the idea that its proponents and adherents throughout history have sought it out as a result of being fascinated with mathematical beauty. Livio, on the other hand, reminds us that a great deal of mathematics was (and remains) practical. It’s true that the Pythagoreans were a semi-mystical cult that believed their discoveries reflected the beauty of nature—but the problems they solved were motivated by questions of geometry and arithmetic that were relevant to life in Greece at the time. This has remained true throughout history: our development of mathematical approaches is driven by our needs as a society. The adoption of Hindu-Arabic numerals, for example, didn’t happen because they are “more beautiful” than Roman numerals—the accounts liked them better for arithmetic!

It might seem strange for a mathematician, especially one who loves pure math, to be arguing against the idea that beauty should be a foundational concept of mathematics. And I’m not, not really. But I agree with Livio that viewing mathematics in the past through a lens of beauty/aesthetics is ultimately an ahistorical reading that confuses more than it illuminates. Understanding the emphasis on practical applications for math helps us understand its place in our society.

And this is where The Golden Ratio really got me. Several chapters examine whether well-known artists used the golden ratio in their work. Livio discusses the works themselves, as well as numerous scholarly intrepretations both for and against the idea that the golden ratio played a part. I appreciate his extensive use of references and the way he engages with the topic as objectively as possible. Most importantly, Livio suggests that our desire to spot the golden ratio in this artwork undermines and devalues the artists’ general mathematical brilliance. If the aesthetic quality of a work of art were simply the matter of using the right shape of rectangle everywhere, what does that say about art and artists? Why wouldn’t we have made a computer program that can generate “the perfect work of art” by now? No, Livio concludes, the brilliance of these works of art is independent of their use, or lack of use, of the golden ratio. It comes from a far deeper grounding in mathematics than we care to credit—from the use of perspective to plane geometry, math is everywhere in art. He points out how some artists, like Durer, studied mathematics purposefully to improve and influence their artistic output.

I teach math. I also teach English. People treat me like a unicorn because of this, but I really don’t see them as all that different. Neither did Charles Dodgson, who wrote Alice in Wonderland. Livio cites numerous other poems and literary works that use math, as subject matter or metrical inspiration or both. He reminds us that this siloing of STEM is a recent and very artificial phenomenon, that throughout the majority of history, STEAM indeed was the rule of the day. The idea that if you have an artistic sensibility you must somehow be allergic to mathematics is ahistorical and untrue, for as Livio points out here, many of the most celebrated and famous artists studied, understood, and used math in their work.

In this way, The Golden Ratio provides a far more valuable story than simply “the world’s most astonishing number” (which phi is not). Livio’s tangents into philosophy, history, art, and music remind the layreader that mathematics is not this alien construct that only super-intelligent people can appreciate or do. It is fundamental to our lives, to our praxis, and to our pleasure—not for any innate beauty it possesses, but for the way its practice can help us create what we consider beautiful. The golden ratio does not play as big a role in this process as some want you to believe. Rather, as is usually the case, the truth is far more wonderful and broader in scope than the simple idea that one number can rule them all.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

The idea of the multiverse is captivating, no? The thought that there are infinitely-many yous out there, that at any moment the choice you make diverges you from them a little more. I do so love parallel-universe fiction and other, similar, world-hopping stories, so I was excited for The Space Between Worlds. The fact it has a queer protagonist of colour? Even better! Indeed, Micaiah Johnson isn’t just telling a multiverse thriller here. This is a postcolonial novel about not belonging, about belonging only when you are useful, and how you calibrate your life when that is all you know how to do.

Cara is one of a small number of people who are useful to the Eldridge corporation as traversers, world-walkers. She is useful because she has died in most of the nearly 400 worlds that the corporation can access. She travels to these worlds to collect information that could enrich Eldridge. But Cara has secrets—for one thing,

she isn’t Caramenta from this Earth 0; she is Caralee from Earth 22, who managed to impersonat Caramenta after the latter arrived, broken and dying, on Caralee’s Earth

(this is what happens when you try to visit an Earth where your counterpart lives). Matters at Eldridge are coming to a head, because Cara and all the other traversers might be out of a job soon. So she has to find a way to protect her interests, lest she is deported back to the impoverished town on the outskirts of Wiley City that she hails from (in any universe). Unfortunately for Cara, it isn’t even clear who her allies or—or her enemies.

Cara’s secret identity is revealed early in the book (this is why it’s a minor spoiler) and is what got me hooked on the whole plot. Up until that point, I wasn’t sure what Johnson was playing with here—there are so many directions a multiverse story can go in! When she revealed

Cara is not actually from this Earth,

holy wow, yes, I was so in for stakes like that. As Cara travels to visit her family in Ashtown, and flirts/spars with her handler, Dell, we see the cracks in her facade. It’s hard to pretend to be someone you’re not, even when that person is also you.

Indeed, Cara is a great example of an unlikable protagonist. She is very self-interested and spiky, a result of her rough and difficult upbringing, so she doesn’t fit into the mould of lovable heroine that we might want from a book like this. I like this choice by Johnson, just as I like that Johnson doesn’t shy away from social commentary about the way we (white people and corporations) use Black and brown bodies as labour to build our cities and businesses while simultaneously impoverishing and punishing those same bodies.

There’s also a queer romance hiding in here, although to be honest it was developed in a somewhat slapdash way with far too much of a helping of exposition. That would be my complaint about this book: the characters are cool, but the plotting that brings them together doesn’t always satisfy me. After electrifying me for the first few acts, the final act was convoluted and even anticlimactic.

In the end, I was left wanting more. More use of the multiverse and traversing. More poignant scenes between characters. More careful plotting and exposition in a way that didn’t leave everything so obvious. The Space Between Worlds is intriguing and enjoyable, yet there was something about it that didn’t quite gel for me.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Empire of Wild is a supernatural thriller that combines the legend of the rogarou with a woman’s search for her missing husband. But it would be a mistake not to recognize that this is also a story about colonialism, about European/settler ideologies clashing with Indigenous ideas of hearth, home, and connection to one’s community and the land. Just as The Marrow Thieves showcases how settlers can go to any length to extract and exploit resources they see as necessary, Empire of Wild charts how we can lose ourselves to ambition and ego.

Nearly a year ago, Joan’s husband, Victor, walked out on her and suddenly went missing. In the tight-knit, predominantly Métis town of Arcand, Ontario, this was a big deal for a long time, especially given that Victor’s entrance into Jean’s life finally allowed her to settle down in a way that her community never thought she would. Now, Jean stumbles across Victor—except he is the Reverend Eugene Wolff, preacher for a small group of touring Christian revivalists led by the enigmatic, entirely-too-slick Thomas Heiser. Reverend Wolff claims he doesn’t know Jean, isn’t Victor at all—yet Jean is convinced he is her husband. Her resolution to get to the truth leads her into the woods of magic and shadows, even as Victor tries to find the way out of his own woods.

What stands out for me about Empire of Wild is the characters. There are so many interesting characters here: Joan, Zeus, Ajean, Victor, Heiser, Cecile—all of them are significant and, in turn, receive plenty of development from Dimaline. Yet even minor characters, like Jimmy Fine, take on this larger-than-life quality that make this book feel like a kind of modern fairy tale. Joan has gone off the path into the woods, and the people she encounters along the way aren’t just people but parables for her education.

Joan’s relationship with Zeus, the way he tags along like a sidekick but she ultimatly decides she doesn’t want to put him in harms way, is adorable. I enjoy the complex interplay of the characters here, whether it’s the way Joan’s mom and brother give her tough love, or Zeus’ complicated teenage relationship with his mom. Perhaps the most surprising character for me was Cecile, whom I assumed was going to be a one-dimensional minion for the side of the antagonists. Dimaline instead gives us an entire backstory that makes her into an interesting, three-dimensional character whose betrayal both of Joan and of Heiser makes the book all the more fascinating.

Then we have Heiser, whose rapport with canines forms the basis for the supernatural aspects of the book. Heiser isn’t just the leader of a small group of Christian revivalists—he is mainly a consultant for development projects that want to move north. Empire of Wild lays bare the depressing but not surprising ways in which mining companies, other similar corporate outfits, will use religion as a way to captivate and manipulate Indigenous communities whose land they want to develop or exploit. In this way, Dimaline illustrates how colonialism in Canada is ongoing. This book is pointed social commentary about the fact that neither government nor corporations truly treat First Nations, the Inuit, or Métis as sovereign nations. Their consent to development projects is seen as an obstacle to overcome rather than a collaboration to be earned. Heiser is a toxic, irredeemable character—not because he is a white man of European descent, but because he is a white man of European descent who willingly steeps himself in colonial tactics of control and exploitation for his own advancement.

The inclusion of the rogarou mythos precludes reading this story as a simplistic tale of “settler = bad, Indigenous = good” though. Rather, Dimaline stresses (especially through the mouthpiece of Ajean) that there must be balance among the forces of nature. A rogarou is the most extreme example of someone who is out of balance, a man who succumbs to his most atavistic self until it consumes him and leaves him nothing but a beast. Without going into spoilers, the way that Dimaline portrays characters’ internal struggles against their rogarous is fascinating, and while it isn’t always straightforward to follow what’s happening, these dream-like sequences create an important backbone to the novel. They underlie the theme that connection is what is most important. The characters in this novel who succumb to the infection of the rogarou are characters who, in their hearts, feel disconnected as a result of their actions and the actions of others.

This is more than a thriller. It’s a carefully crafted mystery laced with the supernatural the way a chef seasons a soup with the finest of spices. I became very invested in Joan’s quest to get Victor back, and the abrupt and shocking ending—which invites but does not promise a sequel—feels oddly fitting for a book that is simultaneously punk rock and rockabilly/blues. When you read Empire of Wild you need to grab and hold on, but if you manage to do so, this book will take you places.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I was not expecting to fall for this book quite as hard as I did. If you asked me how Earth Girl ended up on my to-read list, I could not tell you. But my library had a copy (I love my library!). The description is lacklustre and didn’t make me too excited, but within a few pages I was on Jarra’s side, and within about 3 chapters I was loving this book. It made me giddy, at points … I think that might have been how much this book was a needed, escapist story right now.

Jarra is turning 18 and has decided to study pre-history—that is, the history of humanity before it spread out amongst the stars in the Exodus, thanks to portal technology. However, Jarra is also an ape—or, in less pejorative terms, Handicapped. She lost the genetic lottery, and her immune system cannot handle non-Earth worlds, even for a minute. As a result, Jarra can never leave Earth and faces discrimination from the “norms” who visit this planet—including the rest of her university class, because Jarra stubbornly decides to go to an off-world university, which holds all of its first-year courses on Earth.

Let’s start with the uncomfortable thing: Jarra is a Mary Sue. She has a chip on her shoulder the size of the planet, but she cleverly turns this to her advantage, posing as a Military kid to explain her lack of origin from any of the settled interstellar sectors. Her experience on other Earth dig sites means she quickly rises in the esteem of her professor and then her peers, and although we are repeatedly told to expect some kind of drama and blowback when they find out she is an ape, we are simultaneously told how amazing everyone thinks she is. Jarra expertly leads a rescue! Jarra can fly a plane when not many others are qualified for that! Oooh, turns out Jarra’s lie about being Military isn’t such a lie after all….

I am not going to apologize for Jarra’s Mary Sueness. It’s a thing, and if it turns you off the book, I get it. I’m wary of reading the sequel because of this—I adored Jarra in this book because, despite the story itself being so intent on warping her life, she resolutely makes mistake after mistake and reflects and criticizes herself, and that is the kind of characterization I like to see. But I’m not sure her self-awareness can survive a sequel where apparently the fate of all humanity is in her hands? Yeah….

But if you can look the other way and get past Jarra’s Mary Sue-ness, then what’s left is a book that tries to explore how we make assumptions about others. Jarra’s professor is aware of her status, and at first he assumes that means she wants to make trouble, so he gives her a hard time. She doesn’t like him for this. But they gradually come to respect one another, and Janet Edwards puts a fair amount of effort into making this a dynamic and believable process. The same goes for Jarra’s relationships with her peers, particularly the love interest of the book. Although it isn’t exactly subtle (and this is lampshaded in the book itself, several times over, shifting cultural norms and all), the love story is an interesting subplot that really tests Jarra’s commitment to flying under the radar.

Towards the end of the book, things go off the rails. A tragedy causes Jarra to disassociate and actually believe her Military persona is true for a while. This … was weird. I did a double-take. I think what bothered me about it is the haphazard way Edwards had treated the subject of mental health up until that point—Jarra was distrustful of psychologists, while her best friend loved them, but overall Edwards hadn’t really discussed Jarra’s mental health or anyone else’s mental health in much detail. So for this kind of episode to take place without warning or explanation, it felt very contrived, just as its resolution felt sudden and convenient.

Indeed, my least favourite thing about Earth Girl is its ending. Edwards wraps everything up very quickly, with quite a lot accomplished off-page and then told to our protagonist after she wakes up, having been taken off the board Bella Swan–style (by being knocked unconscious). It’s a narrative bait-and-switch that I don’t appreciate, particularly when it comes to the much-anticipated, teased moment when Jarra’s peers learn that they have been learning next to—and from—an ape. I definitely feel cheated by that, and it’s why this book, despite being so fun for me, is not getting a higher rating.

In other words, Earth Girl is a mess from a literary standpoint—its protagonist is a delightful Mary Sue, and its plot is a convolution of predictable and unpredictable (but contrived) ideas—yet somehow, it all comes together into one of the most compelling and enjoyable stories I’ve read this year. And you know what I say: story comes first. This is not a great novel, but it is a great and enjoyable story.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I have listened to Jenn and Trin’s Friendshipping podcast for a couple of years now. I adore it, mostly for their amusing and endearing banter, but also for their compassionate takes on listener questions about doing friendship—I enjoy their emphasis on this idea that friendship is a verb, because I agree. So when I heard they had turned their podcast into a self-help book, I pre-ordered the hell out of it—and I was also fortunate enough to get to read it early thanks to Workman and NetGalley.

Friendshipping: The Art of Finding Friends, Being Friends, and Keeping Friends is a very straightforward book, divided into three parts per its subtitle. From its tone and overall language to its art design (by Jean Wei), the target audience is millennials—I suspect older generations will find Jenn and Trin’s brand of humour too youthful, whereas Gen Z and younger will look at them as “oldies.” This is a book for people of an age that is used to moving for work and school, to navigating the Internet but still holding it slightly at arm’s length, to embracing nerdiness as something that we still think is uncool (even though it is now mainstream). I’m not saying younger or older people wouldn’t benefit from this book, but it knows its niche and goes for it, which is probably for the best.

Indeed, I think this book will appeal to people who are looking for friends or friendship advice but who are skeptical of more polished, adult-looking self-help books. The chapters here are very conversational, with plenty of sidebars with practical tips. This isn’t a book I would recommend reading from start to finish—rather, you can dip into it for reference as and when you need help with various situations.

I love the inclusive nature of the book. There is a section dedicated to pronouns, for instance. They talk about healthy boundaries in friendships. They acknowledge that friendships are difficult work, sometimes, and that more often than not the issues in a friendship are the result of both parties, not just one. They talk about what to do if you are the toxic friend.

If I personally didn’t get that much out of this book on my initial read, it’s only because—and I am totally bragging here—I am very satisfied with my friendships at this point in my life. Indeed, for about the past 3 years, I feel like I have finally cultivated the types of healthy friendships and acquaintances an adult should have in her life: I have found close friends who support me and who let me support them; I am beginning to get more comfortable at making new acquaintances and expanding my circle ever so slightly. So I am lucky enough to report that I am happy, at least in that sense, and at least for now.

But friendship is something you do, not something you have indefinitely. I am sure I will face rocky moments of indecision, and when I do, this will be a good book to have on my shelf. Jenn and Trin’s wisdom comes from the fact that they don’t pretend to know it all—you will find practical advice in this book, tips for starting difficult conversations, that kind of thing, yes, but the majority of this book boils down to a single thesis: be kind to your friends and potential friends. And although I can’t remember if they say it in the book, perhaps the single best thing I have learned from Jenn and Trin’s podcast is that there is a difference between being nice and being kind. Sometimes in our attempts to be nice, to not ruffle feathers or make people upset, we do no kindness through dissembly. Sometimes telling an uncomfortable truth is kinder. Kindness is not always easy to figure out, just like friendship isn’t always easy to put into practice.

I think the best way you can decide if this book is for you is to listen to an episode of their podcast. The book is the podcast, just curated and then frozen in carbonite; the podcast is the book on a weekly release schedule with more discussion of snails and Animal Crossing. As I said at the beginning, I don’t think this book is for everyone, and that is ok and probably for the best—self-help books should target a niche. For some people, though, I suspect this book will give useful succour and guidance, and that pleases me.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This one took a while to start to work for me, and I’m not sure it really ever did. Vicious is one of those novels where I can tell that V.E. Schwab knows her stuff. That is, the writing here is quality; the plot is top-notch, the characterization is exemplary. Nevertheless, there is something about her style, something about the tenor or tone or theme of the book, that left me cold. And so this is a review where I can sing praises for this novel’s technical achievements, but as a work of art it left me wanting.

Told for the most part in a split timeline narrative, with flashbacks to ten years prior mixed in with the present day, Vicious follows 2 men who successfully turn themselves into ExtraOrdinary people, or EOs. Their transformations create a rift in their relationship that results in one of them going to prison and the other believing it is his duty to remove EOs from the world, as they are an affront to God. Now, a reckoning comes: they will reunite, fight, and one of them won’t be walking away.

As far as plot goes, like I said in my intro, it is all here. Schwab has very clearly planned and intricately imagined every moment, right down to Victor and Eli’s confrontation, and it pays off. Despite my coolness towards the book, even I was getting tense and turning pages faster as we approached the climax.

Additionally, Schwab has a good core premise here. Eli’s fixation with being the only one who is different, with the idea that an EO comes back to life “wrong” and therefore is an aberration, it’s not necessarily original, but she conceptualizes it in a believable and interesting way. Eli’s saviour/god complexes make him a potent villain, while Victor’s brusque fatalism makes him a good anti-hero.

Where this book doesn’t work for me is in the heart of it all. I just didn’t care about any of these characters (no, not even Sydney). I blame the structure of the novel—the jumping back and forth in time didn’t work for me from the beginning—but even if the narrative were linear, I’m not sure that would have fixed it for me, because young Victor was still a dick. More importantly, because the plot is so laser-focused on Victor-versus-Eli, because all of the backstory is mostly told rather than shown in an attempt to fill us in on how these characters got to now, this novel really lacks the depth of context that we often refer to as worldbuilding.

We have the barest of hints that, in this world, some people know about EOs (Detective Stell is an example), but most people don’t believe. However, the paucity of side characters and Schwab’s avoidance of scenes extraneous to the main plot make it difficult for me to feel invested in this universe. Victor’s parents remain abstract ideas rather than real people. Mitch’s past, presented to me in a single rushed chapter that really doesn’t satisfy me, is an abstraction designed to make him the character he needs to be.

Maybe this all gets fleshed out more in the next book of the series. Cool. But the first book hasn’t sold me that this is a world I want to know more about. I’m really glad so many people I know enjoyed this one—I don’t want to condemn this book as bad—but this is a great example of something that turned out to be not my cup of tea.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.