Well, this book lives up to its title: they definitely take the long way around. Although nominally space opera, if you were hoping for sweeping galactic politics and high stakes, you might want to look elsewhere. The Wayfarer is in the middle of a tense diplomatic situation for sure, but this story isn’t about that. This story is about the Wayfarer crew, their journey rather than their destination, and the things you learn along the way. Becky Chambers hasn’t written space opera so much as space pop, and I’m cool with that.

This is a difficult book to summarize, because the back cover makes it seem like Rosemary is the main character, but in actuality this is an ensemble cast. Chambers takes the time to ensure each of the crew receives at least some time in the spotlight. Rather than trying to introduce them all, let me just say that there is an eclectic mix of Humans and other aliens, each of whom has distinctive personality traits, some as a result of their species and some as a result of their personality. What’s interesting to me is how Chambers manages to make most of the characters fairly round. There are moments when you love each character as well as moments you dislike them, and that takes talent to do repeatedly.

This crew lives and works primarily in space, and the story is more about their relationships than their mission to tunnel a wormhole from alien space back to familiar territory. Chambers explores the conflicts that arise from multiple species living in close quarters, the misunderstandings and the fun, as well as the stress that is possible when you are an unarmed vessel out in deep space. Though I would likely describe this book as a slow burn, there are moments of action and tension that kick the pace up into heart-pounding territory.

I love the thoughtfulness Chambers has put into her species. Some people will no doubt fault the level of exposition in this book, and you know … cool. That is a legitmate critique here, and I’m not going to say you’re wrong. But I think that’s the case for a lot of science fiction (Charles Stross called), so this is more about whether or not you like or can tolerate infodumping. If you can, if you want to go on this fun ride through the gallery of alien biology, customs, and foods that Chambers has created, then you will have a good time.

Another noticeable stylistic element is just the way that Chambers weaves humour throughout the book. This is particularly evident in the dialogue, which is rich with asides and moments that, in a tightly-paced 43 minute TV show or a novel that took itself too seriously, would be cut for time. This book revels in the idea of breathing room, the idea that there really isn’t any hurry to get on with the main plot. And while it is tempting to single out humour as the dominant emotion on display, I think that misrepresents the wealth of tones Chambers infuses into these scenes. There is plenty of humour, yes, but there is also anger and righteous fury; there is awkward bigotry and accidental insults; there is intense attraction and abiding love.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is one of those books where, if you like it, you like it for the reasons others dislike it. If you want direct, precision-plotting, this book is not for you. This is a book for people who religiously complete every side quest in a video game before daring to continue the main plot. If you want a book where you get to hang out with video game NPCs for a couple of hours—and oh yeah, galactic events are happening just outside the ship, but let’s not worry about those—then this is the book for you.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Few things are as much fun as getting to read the newest book from an author who continues to rise towards the height of her power. Courtney Summers is the Queen of YA/NA Devastation, and with good reason. Her stories, like so much great YA and NA literature, belie the idea that teen and young adult stories can’t grapple with the dark and dangerous aspects of life. The Project is a miasmic and cloying journey through the heart of a cult and out the other side. The ending, while not quite happy, demonstrates Summers’ knack for nuanced devastation, delivering just the right balance of optimism and despair.

Lo (Gloria) Denham is 19 years old with dreams of being a magazine writer. A few years ago, just as Lo was recovering from a car crash that killed her parents, Lo’s older sister, Bea, became wrapped up in the Unity Project. The Project is, to all outward appearances, a vehicle for good works to redeem humanity in the eyes of God. Frustrated by her lack of progress at the upstart magazine where she has been the editor’s assistant for a year, still hurt from the separation from her sister, Lo resolves to uncover and expose the Project—and its charismatic but reclusive leader, Lev Warren—for what it is. But she soon learns that bearding the lion in his own den is easier said than done, and the price of learning the truth of the Project and Bea’s involvement might be Lo’s very own soul.

Trigger warnings for physical, emotional, verbal abuse, as well as child abuse, parental death, car accidents.

This book is creepy—like, proper creepy. In the month or so prior to finally reading this copy from NetGalley (even though my paper copy is on pre-order for release day!), I had immersed myself in the two documentaries about the NXIVM cult. So I naturally kept comparing Lev Warren to the real-life Keith Raniere. Summers has discussed how Jonestown was the primary template for the Unity Project, but at the end of the day, if you are at all familiar with cults, you will recognize what happens here. The way that Warren deflects and uses minions to do his dirty work. The way that any criticism of the Project automatically becomes, conspiracy-theory fashion, proof that the Project is doing good work, and it’s just people who are jealous or have bad intent. The way that Warren twists your mind enough that you begin to believe his abuse of you is warranted, is what you deserve and must endure to atone and get closer to his light.

The narrative has a spiralling structure, dualistic both in timeframe and in mindset. I wasn’t a huge fan of this to begin with, but now that I look back at the novel as a whole, I appreciate it. Lo, told in first person in 2017/2018, starts skeptical of the Project yet finds herself inextricably drawn into its folds: the more she tries to discredit it, the more it seems to suck her in. Bea, told in shorter third person scenes from 2013 or so up until 2017, starts off enthusiastic about the Project and Warren, only for her disenchantment to become greater and more frantic as the story moves on. The complementary nature of the sisters’ narratives demonstrates how each person comes to a cult for different reasons, but the levers that move them into place and ultimately cause them to embrace the leader are the same. Cults act like viruses to the programming of the human mind: once they find the initial weakness that grants them entry, their MO and approach is almost always the same. Comfort. Empower. Isolate. Create dependency. In the end, the cult doesn’t want you to see yourself as a person anymore but as a part of something larger. If that sounds familiar … well, that’s why cults are so pernicious. A lot of the things we see as positive in our society can easily tip over into being cults. Humans are just messy that way.

The Project asks us to sympathize with Lo and also to marvel at her. We know as readers going into this book that the Unity Project is a cult. We know it’s bad news. So, like in a horror movie as the protagonist runs up the stairs, our first instinct as the audience is to yell at the book and wonder at why Lo doesn’t see her entrapment as it happens. This is the challenge to which Summers rises in this novel, a storytelling conundrum that proves as thorny as it is rewarding once unlocked: we all like to think we’d never join a cult, never fall for their recruitment tactics, so how does the author get the reader to sympathize with a main character who does fall for it?

Start by making your character angry. Not upset, not frustrated. Proper angry, the kind of anger that develops over time like an ulcer, burning away at you until it’s all you have left. Lo has lost everything: her parents, her sister, and even, really, herself.

Next, make the world around your character utterly unsympathetic to her emotions and needs. Paul doesn’t care about Lo or her career; he sees her as a useful employee (and he is really quite a dick). Lauren, similarly, is not a friend. Lo doesn’t get friends, doesn’t get connection. Her last real connection is with a stranger who subsequently jumps in front of a train. So you might understand why Lo’s psyche is fragile on this point: it is easier to turn your back on the world when, as far as you are concerned, the world has turned its back on you.

Finally, the carrot. Bea. Lo wants to take down the Project, yes, but deep down what she truly desires more than that is to be reunited with her sister. Warren understands this and uses this in such a cruel way, basically tearing down what is left of Lo’s sense of self by dangling that potential reunion in front of her, the carrot to the stick that was Bea’s initial estrangement. He strings Lo along even as he exposes Lo to numerous harmful encounters, psychologically and physically. No, he doesn’t cause Lo’s car accident—but he seizes every opportunity that presents itself, every crack in her exterior, and expertly applies the wedges that allow him to infiltrate and infect her very being.

Ultimately, if you sympathize with Lo as a reader, it doesn’t have to be because you think that you also could be seduced by a cult (though, let’s be real—I suspect most of us could, under the right circumstances, ego aside here). Rather, you should sympathize with Lo because Summers creates the conditions in which it becomes evident, even inevitable, that she should be seduced by a cult.

That is the project of The Project and what makes this novel so creepy. This is not a book about how cults are creepy and scary and harmful places—that would be boring and nothing new. No, this is a book about how cults could be appealing places under the right circumstances. The question, really, isn’t “why do people join cults?” but actually “why don’t more people join cults?” We like to think that cults recruit the broken and the lost, but if you find in a cult your family and your people, you are human and working as intended—that’s what the cults take advantage of, our very human need for connection.

Ok, so for the rest of the review, I’m going to get intertextual and compare The Project to Summers’ previous novel, Sadie. No spoilers, but if you haven’t read Sadie, it might not make much sense to you. If you stop here, you are not missing anything else. I hope you liked this review!

Honestly, Sadie remains my favourite, for the simple reason that Sadie’s brutal first-person narration of her single-minded revenge journey fucked me up, and I cannot get it out of my mind (body “sharp enough to cut glass” but still “a beautiful deception,” oh my god …). As much as I enjoyed The Project’s structure and storytelling overall, there is nothing quite so captivating or heart-stopping in its prose for me.

However, I think there is some value in comparing these two novels—not in trying to determine which one is better, because I think they are fundamentally different in that regard—but rather in terms of how Summers continues to evolve in her writing and storytelling.

Summers has always written about lost girls. It’s her thing, ok? Perhaps the most compelling facet of Sadie was that it was literally about a lost girl, both in the sense that Sadie was lost to us and to herself. And I think, recognizing that she had reached kind of the epitome of that particular incarnation of the lost girl narrative, Summers looked for another angle and found one for The Project. See, in many ways, The Project is an inversion of Sadie. Both are about lost girls, both are about sisters, and both are about cults.

Whaaat, you say? Sadie has nothing about cults in it! Except, dear reader, that book is all about the cult of the Lost Girl as seen in our media. West McCray’s entire half of the story is about establishing this, exploring the way that we as a society mythologize, idealize, and sacrifice these Lost Girls. Having never met Sadie, West himself forms this ersatz picture of her that we get to compare to the girl we know from her own (unreliable) narration. His podcast is the continuation in a long line of media fixation with what happens to the girls and women in our society too damaged for us to “fix.” We don’t just love trainwrecks; we worship them to the point of causing them.

So both novels are about cults, although the cult in The Project is much more straightforward and obvious. Additionally, both novels feature an intense bond between sisters. Whereas in Sadie only the eponymous sister has a voice, in this book both sisters get a chance to share their experiences with us. In many ways, Mattie is a MacGuffin: she exists as a memory for Sadie to cling to, her only tentative link back to a humanity that has, for all intents and purposes, rejected her. In contrast, The Project is where Summers digs deeper into the idea of sororal bonds by examining how Bea feels about Lo and vice versa and helping us to understand that their relationships can be equally intense yet not reciprocal.

And so the inversion: The Project turns inwards what Sadie left diffuse: the cult, making it a more focused and defined phenomenon versus its metaphoric status in Sadie; likewise, it turns outwards and makes more explicit what Sadie left implicit and ineffable: the relationships between two lost girls.

Both of these novels deserve accolades, and while I might prefer one to another, what I have discovered by doing this comparison (this is why I love writing reviews; they help me understand my feelings about a book) is that The Project struck a chord in me that Sadie did not. And that is what is so valuable about authors like Courtney Summers: even as her work explores similar motifs time and again, each of her books is its own self-contained symphony, recombining those motifs to explore new and valuable themes.

The Project is about loss, but it is also about (false) hope for redemption. The idea that there is something very human about wanting to be forgiven, to be told it is all right, you are all right. It is a novel about power and how we are willing to give it up before we even realize we have it, because part of being human is valuing connection and belonging even at the expense of our independence. Because the world, the whole world, is so scary and random that, in the face of something like a car accident, the small amount of power we possess seems so trivial that when someone more apparently powerful asks us to give it up, we might say, “Why not?” In the face of uncertainty, a certain face can feel like a life preserver, even while their hands tie the rock around our waist that ultimately drags us to the bottom, smiling along the way.

So … I guess I liked this book?

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

When I heard Ijeoma Oluo had written another book, there was no question in my mind that I would run, not walk, to NetGalley to request it. Publisher Seal Press made it happen! Medicore: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America is a formidable follow-up to So You Want to Talk About Race. In her first book, Oluo outlines all the ways that white people can move past ignorance and fragility to have authentic dialogue about race and racism. In this book, Oluo explains how white supremacy (particularly in the United States) creates a culture of mediocrity in which white men receive the message that they deserve greatness, even if they haven’t actually done all that much. I’m sure many people will dismiss this book as an attack on white people. But if you go into it with an open mind, the history that Oluo outlines demonstrates incontrovertibly the hostility that the United States has shown and continues to show Black people and people of colour.

At first, I wasn’t sure what Oluo was doing. But soon the picture emerged: each chapter began with the white supremacy of the past, from which Oluo draws a line into th white supremacy of the present. This is a history lesson, one that establishes how today’s racism exists atop a foundation of racism from centuries prior. In this way, Oluo demolishes the myth so often sold by white men to each other—the idea that it is possible to make American great again. America has not been great, especially for Black people and people of colour. The United States has always privileged the feelings of white people over the lives of non-white people.

Now, I am Canadian, so I am slightly outside the target audience for this book. Canada has its own dangerous legacy of colonialism and racism and is also a white supremacist state. I’ll have to seek out pertinent books about anti-Black racism here. Nevertheless, I think non-Americans would benefit greatly from reading this book. First, it will help us understand what the hell is going on in America. A little history lesson goes a long way. Second, although the details are different here, the story arc is the same: white people show up, steal the land, import cheap labour by people of colour, and then marginalize and oppress them when they’ve gone from useful to inconvenient. Oluo’s chapters are illuminating regardless of where you live.

Take her chapter on education, for example. I like how she explains the paradox of post-secondary education for people of colour. Right-wing pundits sometimes insist that post-secondary institutions are bastions of socialism and political correctness gone wrong. In fact, post-secondary institutions are still racist, sexist, classist, etc. Oluo points out, therefore, that attending college or university is simultaneously the best path people of colour have for attaining middle-class stability and one of the worst places to be, in terms of facing discrimination. This paradox is but one of many in American society—and I’m sure it is much the same here in Canada too.

For my fellow white people, this book asks us to examine how we are complicit in white supremacy and patriarchy. And those of us who aren’t men are still complicit. Oluo’s entire thesis is that we cannot allow the conversation to be distilled down to “some white guys are terrible.” Her whole point is that this is not about individuals; this is about systems. So you do not have to be a white man to participate in upholding a system that privileges white men. Additionally, Oluo points out that the system really wants to help rich white men—the system by design punishes poor white men too. This, in turn, motivates them to uphold white supremacy by encouraging them to feel superior to people of colour.

I’ve said this before, and I will say it again: if you want to consider yourself anti-racist, you need to do that work. And that means you need to do more than read books. But Mediocre is a great starting point in your quest for information. What matters going forward is what you do with the information, how you throw around your metaphorical weight to help dismantle the system Oluo exposes here.

I would like to quote at length from this book, but if I did that, this review would contain almost the entire book. Oluo’s writing is just that dense with meaning. This is a book that can be savoured as you explore each chapter, and it is rich with connections and ideas. Mediocre invites you, as I said, to truly consider white supremacy as a four-dimensional system—and when you can see the shape of a thing, through time as well as space, you have a better chance of understanding how to manipulate—or in this case, dismantle it.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

There must be some law about how, the longer an author is allowed to play in their sandbox, the worse their stories get. At some point, every author who has a long-spanning saga feels encouraged to go back and fill in gaps in the chronology, creating that wonderful dichotomy of possible reading experiences: publication order and chronological order. L.E. Modesitt’s Recluce saga is one of the most notable modern examples. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is a classic. Prelude to Foundation is one of the last Foundation stories Asimov wrote, yet it is chronologically the earliest. It is in many ways a great folly yet it also shows Asimov’s abiding love for a genre that he nurtured and helped kickstart into a thriving industry. I am starting to think Asimov himself is very much like this book: he should not be overlooked, but when you do look at him, he isn’t all that great.

Hari Seldon arrives on Trantor to give a talk at a conference. He speaks of a glimmer of an idea—psychohistory—and this is enough to get the attention of Galactic Emperor Cleon I. After a disappointing audience with the emperor, Hari thinks he is on his way home to Helicon. Instead, he is swept up by a journalist who is obviously so much more into a whirlwind adventure, touring various sectors of Trantor while under the protection of a love/lust interest, Dors. As Hari and Dors flee from sector to sector, experiencing each one’s diverse culture and customs, Hari considers whether predicting the future of humanity is indeed mathematically practical. The answer seems to lie in a common theme that arises throughout these novels: the forgotten origin of humanity, and the truth behind Earth and robots.

Frankly, as a novel, this book makes sense in many respects. Yet in some ways I miss the early Foundation novels that were compilations of shorter novellas. Working at that length, Asimov had reason to keep his plots crisp. Prelude to Foundation feels too long for all it accomplishes, too prone to filler. It is the indulgence of an author so established in his career that he gets a pass when it comes to editing.

In previous reviews of this series, I have tackled Asimov’s writing style as well as his relentless and gross male gaze. The latter is still present here, although I am pleased to report someone told him to tone it down. Sexism lurks beneath subtly undermined attempts to portray societies here as equal. Hari and Dors’ story is obviously one of those romances where the characters start at odds yet, as they overcome bigger struggles, they grow to love one another. Hari is just as much of a dog as the other Asimov protagonists; he just doesn’t have as much opportunity to put this into practice given the predicaments of plot.

In terms of big concepts, Prelude to Foundation is probably, at this point in the publication order of the series, Asimov’s most honest attempt to explain the nature of psychohistory. Up until now, he has handwaved it as incredibly complex mathematical formulas that only really really really smart people can know how to do. This book humanizes Hari in a way that the previous books couldn’t, and we come to see how fraught the early days of psychohistory were. And thus comes Asimov’s big idea, exemplified by the role of Chetter Hummin, this idea that it could be possible to guide humanity to a better future. Writing this in the late 1980s, having lived so long a life already and experienced so much of the tumultuous twentieth century, with its technological upheavals, I can bet that Asimov more than ever wished psychohistory could be science fact rather than science fiction. And the power hungry nature of those who would abduct Hari to use him for their own ends underscores this belief. For Asimov, psychohistory is the ultimate triumph of human ingenuity over human atavism: if we can predict and guide humanity in a way that overrides the follies of flawed individuals, we will be better. We will evolve.

I am close to the end of my re-read of the series. I intend to stop with Forward the Foundation; I don’t plan at this time to read any of the estate-authorized works, nor do I feel compelled to dive into the rest of Asimov’s oeuvre. I’m glad I embarked on this project, but my opinion of Asimov remains decidedly mixed. On one hand, he is so overrated. On the other, as noted above, his works contain a true genius of hopefulness about humanity, a commitment to writing science-fiction stories that show us ways forward beyond our own single world.

In my last review of this series, I will discuss how I feel about Asimov’s place overall in the canon of science fiction. For now, know this: Prelude to Foundation is a valuable insight into the final era of one of the most prolific science-fiction writers of the twentieth century. Given that, it would be, if it came from any other writer, a profound disappointment of a novel.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

New fantasy that tries to feel like classic sword-and-sorcery with a dash of epicness thrown in, Theft of Swords reads like a labour of love. It is an uneven combination of tropes any half-dedicated fantasy reader will recognize. However, Michael J. Sullivan turns those tropes into a decent, entertaining story that showcases some of the best parts of this genre, in my opinion. This is not the type of novel that blows off one’s socks, but it may indeed cause them to slip down your feet somewhat.

This is an omnibus of the first two novels in the Riyria Revelations series, which Sullivan initially self-published. In these novels, we meet the duo Royce and Hadrian. One is a thief and assassin, the other a mercenary with your classic heart of gold. This, naturally, gets them into trouble. From the beginning we see that Riyria as a concept is near-legendary; Riyria the duo are far more prosaic. When Hadrian convinces Royce to take a last-minute job (oh no) to steal a sword for a noble (oh noooo) because otherwise he’s going to die in an unjust duel (oh nooooooo) the two inadvertently find themselves accused of regicide. What follows is about 600 pages of toppling kings, declaring heirs to long-dead empires, freeing wizards who may or may not be up to no good, and slaying ancient and deadly beasts. If this sounds like your cup of tea, then it will be.

Let’s get the criticisms out of the way first, shall we? As I alluded to in my introduction, this book is three fantasy tropes in a trenchcoat. Well, make that thirty tropes. You’ve got your patchwork of kingdoms, your pantheon of gods, your vaguely sexist monarchies, that sort of thing. There are elves and dwarves and goblins. The tone of the book lampshades these clichés, with some of the characters subtly winking at the camera like they know this has all been seen and done before; there is a sly awareness of genre here. This is perhaps most keen in the character of Esrahaddon, who is Gandalf if Gandalf were more crotchety and had a more tragic and human backstory.

Like most pastiches, Theft of Swords struggles to rise above its source material. If, like me, you are steeped in this genre, you will likely roll your eyes in places and find parts of this book just a bit too cheeky, campy, or cute for comfort. Nevertheless, I still liked it.

Sullivan’s willingness not to take the setting entirely seriously sold me. I like that while Royce and Hadrian seem to find themselves in the thick of significant world events (and honestly, figuring out the secrets to Royce’s and Hadrian’s identities isn’t hard) they remain humble about it. At one point, Royce knows they are in the middle of a vast plot to destabilize the known kingdoms and reinvigorate a long-dead empire, and his reaction is one of total political apathy. Which I love.

Moreover, most of the villains are not all that villainous. I like me a grey bad guy, and Sullivan takes the time to help us understand the motivations of our antagonists. They aren’t evil. They’re just trying to make the world a more orderly place, and that so happens to be a world that they are in charge of. Really, can you blame them when there are thieves going about stealing swords??

Don’t let the cover mislead you—don’t get me wrong, the cover art is gorgeous, but the aesthetic makes this book seem like a gritty Game of Thrones–type fantasy series. It is certainly not that. All in all, this is a romp. Don’t treat it too seriously and it won’t bite you back: it’s fun and frivolous, and if I get a chance I’ll dip my toes back into this world.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This was one of those books where I was afraid it would not live up to the hype, because people I follow on Twitter have not been able to stop talking about it. Fortunately, Cemetery Boys lived up to the hype—perhaps even exceeded it in some ways—and I went from being apprehensive about possibly not liking such a popular book to being really happy I took this chance. It’s great as a trans story, great as a supernatural mystery, probably great as a romance too (not such a fan of that part, myself). I love how Aiden Thomas combines supernatural elements of Latinx beliefs with the hunt for a missing community member and the main character’s own struggles to belong.

Yadriel is seventeen years old, two years past when he should have celebrated his quinces and been inducted as a brujo, a male member of his community who can use magic to send spirits on to the afterlife. The issue? Yads is transgender. His late mother was very supportive of his transition and how that related to his future in the brujx community. His father and the other leaders of the community? They are supportive in some ways—doing their best to call him by his proper name, for instance—yet they do not embrace him as a brujo. This stings, of course, and the novel opens with Yadriel and his best friend, Maritska, sneaking into the church at their community’s cemetery to perform Yadriel’s quinces ceremony themselves. In a classic case of “be careful what you wish for,” Yadriel acquires the power that is his male birthright, and immediately ends up entangled with the spirit of a boy his age who died that night. As the community reels from one of their own dying under mysterious, unexplained circumstances, Yads must help Julian find out how he died so he can get closure.

I love the setup in this novel. For the first few pages, I admit I was a little lost, but you quickly adapt to Thomas’ style of narration and lose yourself in the action. I love that Thomas sets up the death/disappearance of Miguel and then immediately sidetracks us into the main plot—Yadriel and Julian—while making it clear that there must be some kind of connection happening. Indeed, one of my criticisms of this book would simply be that the mystery is fairly obvious: it was easy for me to connect the dots, to deduce who was behind everything and what they were up to, right up until the climax. Neverthless, Thomas executes it so artfully that I don’t mind I saw it all coming. The foreshadowing, the fulfilment … mmm, yeah, it’s all there.

There are some excellent themes about family here, both blood and found. Yads and Maritska’s bond is great. Similarly, Thomas portrays the realities of many poor youth (particularly Latinx) in places like southern California—Julian and his friends are not exactly running in a gang, but many of them have precarious home lives that cause them to be on the streets more than is safe for them. Julian sums this up perhaps most poignantly when he confesses to Yads that he never expected to live very long—perhaps only to thirty. His is a life already circumscribed in potential not by dint of anything he has done, or who he is, but rather because of how the system works.

Thomas explores similar issues of race and racism throughout the novel. Community members have difficulty filing a police report, for the police would prefer to interrogate them about their immigration status rather than provide them an interpreter. Similarly, neither Julian’s friends nor his brother Rio consider filing a missing persons report for Julian, because the police will probably consider him a runaway and therefore not worth their time. This exact issue comes up in Hood Feminism, which I just finished! All in all, Thomas deftly highlights the cracks in our society in a way that young Latinx readers will recognize while people like me, who don’t experience such issues, will hopefully learn and become more aware as a result.

I also really like how Thomas (who is trans) characterizes Yadriel and portrays his transition. For example, we never learn Yadriel’s deadname. At one point, a character slips up and uses it, but the narrator simply says that she uses Yadriel’s deadname without sharing it with us. Similarly, although the book contains misgendering and transphobia, it does so in a way that is compassionate to the reader’s experience.

I like how, at one point, Julian challenges Yadriel, asking why it’s so important that Yads prove to his father and the other brujos that Yads is real brujo. This sparks a powerful discussion that forces Yadriel to consider his motivations—is proving himself something he’s doing for his family, or for himself? As Julian points out, statistically speaking Yadriel cannot be the first trans brujx.

That being said, I don’t think I would have liked the alternative (Yads going his own separate way because his family doesn’t support him), and I understand what Thomas was going for with such an emotional moment of climax and acceptance. I just wish that trans characters didn’t have to prove their usefulness for reluctant family members to see them as the people they are.

That’s my major criticism of Cemetery Boys. Everything else, I loved. The dialogue. The wit. The slightly predictable mystery. The portrayal of gender and sexuality. This is a novel that has been honed to a razor’s edge of competent, compelling characterization and prose. 

In a dramatized conversation between Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth in season 4, episode 1 of The Crown, Thatcher, the UK’s first female prime minister, avers that she has found women “in general not to be suited to high office.” Thatcher climbed the ladder that feminism had built, but she saw herself as rising above the frailties of her sex—an exception that proved the rule—to be more like a man, and she and plenty of other conservative female politicians after her have happily pulled up the ladder behind them in an attempt to uphold patriarchy.

This is the phenomenon Mikki Kendall examines in Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot, albeit from a bottom-up, structural perspective rather than an historical, individualist perspective. For as long as we’ve had feminism—longer than we’ve had the term, in fact—we have debated over who belongs in the movement. When you peel back the righteous surface of the history of feminism, you quickly discover roiling depths of eugenics and white supremacy. Feminism is ultimately a human movement, after all, and we humans are flawed. We have centred feminism on white women—particularly white, able-bodied cis women in the middle and upper classes—to the detriment of Black women, Indigenous women, other women of colour, poor women, disabled women, trans women, etc.

Hood Feminism reminds me of another fave collection, Feminism for REAL—that was an anthology by multiple authors, but its subtitle (Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism) says it all. (That book was an anthology by multiple authors—and actually, that brings up one small peeve I have with this book: the subtitle seems to suggest this might be from multiple authors, when really this is Kendall’s writing, albeit influenced and informed by others. Nothing wrong with that, but I wish whoever was in charge of such decisions had thought twice.)

Kendall’s essays alternate in tone from deeply personal to swimming in statistics. Her experiences as a Black women are at the forefront of most chapters, but she also brings other experiences, other stories and facts, into the conversation. Although Kendall focuses quite a bit (and rightly so) on race, she also speaks as much as she can about disability and trans rights. Indeed, as someone who has recently gone from viewing herself as a cis male ally to a trans woman, it was really nice to feel included. It really, really buoys me to see Kendall so adamantly include trans experiences in her feminism, and I’m sure she would have my back if we were in the same room and someone was transphobic to my face. But make no mistake: I am still, as a white trans woman, the target audience for this book. My race and my education give me a whole lot of privilege, and so while I still experience transmisogyny, I will never have to experience what it’s like to navigate the world as a trans woman of colour. That’s why, as much as isolated sections of this book resonated with me on a personal level (public bathroom anxiety), it would be disingenuous for me to position myself outside the remit of white feminism as Kendall constructs it.

Here are a few reactions to this book that I suspect will be common yet ultimately unhelpful.

First, I’m sure that some white readers, particularly white women readers, will see Kendall as argumentative, reductive. They’ll view her construction of white feminism as a straw man or red herring—there is no oppression Olympics after all, right? The subtext of these criticisms will be clear: why aren’t you trying to placate us? Why are you an angry Black woman?

Kendall herself acknowledges such white fragility and stereotyping, admits she has no interest in respectability politics, and all the more power to her. There is nothing about her tone in this book, nothing about how she makes her arguments, that invalidates her message. Kendall is on point throughout these essays, and if we dismiss what she says simply because it discomforts us, we aren’t thinking critically.

Second, I’m sure that some white readers will fall over themselves to praise this book, to put Kendall on a pedestal. Finally, a book that speaks the truth! I have seen the light, and my eyes have been opened to how feminism can prop up systemic racism when it should be challenging it! Black women gonna save us all!

(There is something deeply ironic that white people espouse the myth of Black, female saviours even as we seldom hesitate to embody the white saviour stereotype ourselves….)

Indeed, like so many writings about race even slightly directed towards a white audience, I worry that Hood Feminism’s message will be lost in its popularity as a cool anti-racist text to be seen reading. Yet reading one anti-racist text does not fix you. Reading fifty anti-racists texts does not fix you. This book did not change magically make me a better, less racist feminist. Being anti-racist, much like being an ally in general, involves sustained, continual action, not a certain level of knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot. For me personally, the most useful aspect of Hood Feminism is its frequent reminder that feminism as a project to make society more equitable cannot succeed if we co-opt it to mean individual success. This is why Margaret Thatcher, Sheryl Sandberg, and other “lean-in” feminists are not icons we should revere. An “I got mine” approach to feminism is myopic. If your response to a feminist of colour’s complaint is “well, that hasn’t been my experience,” you are recreating the pattern of oppression that all women experience when a man tells them the exact same thing. Moreover, you erase the decades of labour done by women of colour who otherwise lacked the opportunity and academic pedigree for their voices to enter the conversation.

In the same way, feminism as a project cannot ignore structural inequities. Kendall’s essay on housing is an excellent example of this. Intersectionality, far from trying to create a hierarchy of oppression, simply asks us to consider how multiple types of oppression or marginalization can intersect in a way that has devastating consequences. In Kendall’s case, public housing allowed her the flexibility in her budget to feed herself and her son reliably. With that social safety net evaporating in the United States, more women suffer as a result—regardless of their personal character, regardless of whether or not they have access to a job or to anything else. If you don’t happen to be a member of a group disproportionately affected by that particular change, you might not understand why it’s such a big deal (“why can’t she just get a better job so she can afford housing?”). So we must trust. We must listen to feminists of different backgrounds, and hear them when they tell us that there is a problem.

Hood Feminism is ultimately about the project of re-centreing feminism, shifting it away from an emphasis on a minority so that it can be more inclusive and less monolithic.

This book is not a panacea, nor will every white feminist reader find it equally useful. It is, like so many other texts, a survey of a great many facets of society. Consequently, as I mentioned earlier, you’ll probably find that your mileage varies depending on how much you already know about these topics. I can imagine this book would be eye-opening to people who are just embarking on their feminist journey, while for others who have read more widely, this book will be less revelatory. That doesn’t diminish its quality overall—merely its relative usefulness. I’d recommend this as an introductory intersectional text—pair it with Crenshaw’s writings—and the sources at the back make for great recommendations for deeper, more specific readings on any of the topics Kendall addresses. As I mentioned before, at the end of the day, this should be one stop in your anti-racist reading journey, and it should be paired with copious thought on how you can turn your reading into action.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

For some reason I thought this book seemed way shorter than the first one, but I’m realizing now it’s just that I read Too Like the Lightning in hardcover, so it seemed thicker and more imposing. That being said, Seven Surrenders was less exhausting and easier to digest than the first book. At first I thought that was because I was just used to Ada Palmer’s writing, but now I think it’s also because this book is more focused. Whereas the first book educated us about this future world, Seven Surrenders is much more invested in unravelling both the political plot at the heart of this book as well as the existential and epistemological questions Palmer cloaks in this science fiction story.

This book picks up where the last one left off (so spoilers for the first book, but not for this one). Mycroft Canner, convicted murderer in a world of peace, must protect Bridger, a child with god-like abilities, from those who would corrupt or manipulate them. Meanwhile, we learn more about a conspiracy at the highest level—a conspiracy to murder just enough people every year, basically using statistical analysis to determine who to murder to keep the world’s powers balanced and humanity at peace. At the centre of this story? Mycroft’s fervent belief that J.E.D.D. Mason is another universe’s god made flesh, and that they and Bridger together can avert a war brewing despite anyone’s best efforts to the contrary.

What strikes me immediately about Palmer’s writing is how she brings her Renaissance historian perspective to writing the future. I commented on this in my review of the first book, but let’s talk about it again. This book has shadows of Umberto Eco. Its scenes are mostly intense dialogues between two or more characters, dialogues that verge upon philosophy and shade into the deepest questions of the human condition. Seven Surrenders asks us to consider what qualities make good leaders, how gender roles and ideas influence our behaviour, and how our religious and spiritual beliefs shape our ability to conceive of the world. Although set in the future, the language and intrigue would equally belong to the seventeenth century (something one character lampshades after the climax of the story). This is, of course, the purpose of science fiction in general (to explore the human condition and hypotheticals thereof), but Palmer’s use of Renaissance and Enlightenment motifs creates an interesting, compelling style to the entire piece. It’s challenging and not something I would like to read all the time, but I appreciate having my mind challenged in this way.

The gender stuff, of course, really jumped out at me. I read and reviewed Too Like the Lightning at the same time that I was questioning my own gender (and eventually landed on woman, hi!). So of course I’m interested in how science fiction books reimagine gender. In this 25th century, Palmer imagines a world that has pursued what we might call gender abolition. It’s not that sex is gone, but no one is supposed to care about anyone else’s gender—everyone is supposed to use they/them pronouns. This sounds liberating, but honestly as a trans person it kinda sounds like just a different kind of hell. Having fought so hard to figure out (and now assert) my true gender, the idea of erasing/ignoring that identity in a quest to erase gender roles and stereotypes doesn’t appeal to me. Gender abolition’s goals are noble but conflate the symptoms with the disease: gender as a social construct is not a problem, but the ways we police gender are. So I appreciate that Palmer depicts some of the problems with this approach to dealing with gender stereotypes. A kind of prohibitionism of gender is apt to backfire because it creates the opportunity for a “gender-aware underground,” which in this case becomes the framework for allowing an egotistical megalomaniac to corrupt and manipulate the major leaders of this world.

One of the subplots in Seven Surrenders eventually coalesces around the Cousins, a Hive (think … philosophical movement turned into club) that focuses on doing good for others. Without getting into spoilers, let’s just say that the subplot hinges on the idea that the Cousins embody the feminine in our society, but because this future society has worked to eradicate stereotypical gender roles, they’ve also eradicated the language that allows people to express this idea. As a result, the Cousins are at an existential impasse, unable to fully grasp and articulate the true nature of their work.

This made me think of Eugenia Cheng’s thought-provoking x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender. Cheng also zeroes in on the difficulty of using terms like masculine and feminine while avoiding stereotypes. For that reason, she proposes new language—particularly the terms ingressive and congressive to describe behaviours, because we can more easily divorce these from our concepts of genders. This seems to be missing from Seven Surrenders—that is, I don’t agree with Palmer that it follows that, if we abolish gender, we also lose language to discuss traditionally gendered activities. As Cheng points out, it is going to be work, but I think we can shift our language to abolish gender stereotypes when talking about behaviour (I just don’t think that should or needs to then turn into an abolition of gender itself).

Finally, let’s consider the religious themes in this book. One of the big reveals of Too Like the Lightning was that Mycroft (and many other powerful people) think J.E.D.D. Mason is literally the incarnation of a god from another universe. Palmer further develops this idea here while still keeping the idea fairly postmodern: there is room to interpret this as metaphorical, to view J.E.D.D. Mason as a particularly delusional youth shaped by his bespoke upbringing. Consequently, I found this particular mystery unremarkable. I don’t really care whether or not J.E.D.D. Mason is a god. But the idea that J.E.D.D. and Bridger complement one another is far more intriguing. And here we come full circle, for Palmer uses this plot to explore Western ideas on the best way to govern a society, to avoid war, to have peace. Some characters believe a benevolent dictatorship by J.E.D.D. Mason, perhaps assisted by the miraculous powers of Bridger, would ensure the continuity of peace. Others believe it would lead to stagnation or more division. That is ultimately one of the most interesting mysteries in Seven Surrenders.

Will I read the next book? Yes but not right away—I need a break again. This is definitely not candy science fiction; there’s so much going on here. And just in general, the style and the heavy focus on so many named characters is exhausting. So take this as the high praise it is when I say that, despite such frustrations, I still enjoyed and found this book a valuable addition to my 2020 reads.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Unlike Half of a Yellow Sun, which is a historical novel, Americanah is a more literary offering. Adichie examines how where we live—where we grow up, where we work, where we find relationships—affects how we relate to other people. In particular, this is a book about race and Blackness as a construct of American society.

Trigger warnings in this book for anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, suicide, infidelity, sexual harrassment.

Ifemelu and Obinze grow up together in Nigeria, each other’s first loves. She moves to the United States; he moves to England. They struggle to adapt to their new countries—or rather, their new countries try to adapt them. Ifemelu meets with more success, albeit perhaps at greater cost. She becomes, in the eyes of some of her fellow Nigerians, an eponymous Americanah: someone who adapts too well to her American setting, so that she isn’t fully Nigerian any more. Obinze has a rougher time with his immigration status, eventually returning to Nigeria years before Ifemelu finds her way back there. Adichie tells the bulk of the story in a flashback mode—we begin with Ifemelu leaving the United States for Nigeria, and then we flash back to hers and Obinze’s childhood together. We watch them grow and grow apart and see the trials they face before they are reunited. But even then, finding happiness is far from assured.

There’s a lot about this novel that isn’t my thing. The on/off romance, the relationships between the characters … this is why I usually prefer genre fiction, which offers more to its plot than a narrator telling me why a character is unhappy at this point in their life. But what makes Americanah a little more interesting, of course, is the way Adichie weaves nuances of race throughout the story.

While in the United States, Ifemelu writes a blog called Raceteenth, where she teaches non-American Blacks about life in America. In this way, Adichie creates a distinction that many non-Black Americans (or Canadians, in my case) might not think about: Black people who grew up in the United States are quite different from Black people who immigrate from elsewhere. Ifemelu points out that, until she came to the United States, she didn’t have any conception of race or of Blackness. What Adichie is doing here is gently explaining to readers this idea of racialization. Someone is racialized when their race, as determined by our society, is the minority in a given place. Consider how race versus ethnicity functions: in the United States, Ifemelu is seen as Black—she identifies more closely with other African Black people more so than African Americans—and her ethnicity as Igbo is largely irrelevant. In contrast, when she returns to Nigeria, her Blackness is entirely unremarkable, and her status as Igbo matters more.

So, I obviously can’t speak for how Black people of various origins would interpret this novel. As I white woman in Canada, I wanted to observe the way Adichie discusses race, and particularly Ifemelu’s experience of race in Nigeria. There are two white characters who caught my attention: Kimberly and Laura. Kimberly hires Ifemelu to be a babysitter/nanny for her two children. She does charity/NGO work related to Africa, and she is one portrait of a well-meaning, progressive white person: she always tries to say the right thing, try to be respectful of Ifemelu as a person—but as Ifemelu observes, she is anxious to please in this way. Laura, Kimberly’s friend, is another portrayal of a progressive white person: she’s too confident of her own wokeness, too ready to make pronouncements that Ifemelu can belie from her own experiences, offending Laura’s white fragility in the process. I like how Adichie carefully shapes these distinctive white women to show us various ways that white women treat Black women (and in particular, African women) in the United States.

This richness of the interactions of characters of various races and racializations is what makes Americanah so interesting, at least to me. There are many other examples: Ifemelu’s interactions with the other African women who work at the salon she visits; Obinze’s relationships to other Nigerians who go to England to make their fortune; Aunty Uju’s tenuous attempts to find another husband, to raise her son well in the United States. And so on. I wasn’t all that bothered by the underlying romance between Ifemelu and Obinze, but I was very happy to explore all these nuances of race.

A little long and drags a little in parts, Americanah is nevertheless thoughtful and quite successful at what it sets out to do. It showcases Adichie’s endearing talent at creating characters who move beyond the single story, as she cautions against in her TED talk. And it remains relevant in a post-Obama America, which is not a post-racial America like some hoped or pretended. As we challenge and dismantle white supremacy, it’s worth remembering that race (and in particular, Blackness) is not a universal, monolithic idea. Like any social construct, it is real, but its meanings and barriers and boundaries are fluid, and that must be taken into account.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I’m having a hard time with books about grief lately. I tried reading another YA novel similar to this one in terms of dealing with a recent death, and I ended up abandoning it—not because it was bad, but because there was something about the rawness of the emotion that made it a difficult read. Maybe it’s because I haven’t yet experienced that type of grief in my life. I don’t know. But the raw grief at the beginning of Summer Bird Blue made this a challenging read. Also, I’m not a big fan of musical novels—that is, books that incorporate songs or music as a part of the plot. So Akemi Dawn Bowman set herself a tall order, impressing me despite these preferences of mine. But she did it, as the 4-star rating attests.

Rumi loses her sister (and best friend), Lea, in a car accident that she and her mom survive. Her mom is so wrapped in grief that she ships Rumi off to Hawai’i (where her mom’s originally from) for the summer. Living with an aunt she doesn’t know well, Rumi initially struggles to connect to others. Eventually she begins visiting the next door neighbour, eighty-year-old Mr. Watanabe; she also makes friends with some kids her age. But what really eludes her is music: Rumi and Lea were going to start a band together, and Rumi is at a loss how to write music without her partner in crime. She knows she needs to, but she equally knows that she can’t.

Once I got past my discomfort with the grief on display, Summer Bird Blue swept me up and carried me away on Rumi’s journey. I say this very deliberately: the prose here is gentle and very careful. I wouldn’t describe it as lyrical, but it has a quality of distance to it. Descriptions of characters, for example, are there but easy to miss if you aren’t looking. Bowman focuses instead on actions and activity. This has the effect of some characters, like Kai, jumping off the page, whereas others, like Aunty Ani, tend to be more subdued. It’s all about the degree to which Rumi deigns to interact with them.

I also liked the flashbacks embedded within the book. In particular, Bowman skilfully intersperses them at changing intervals. In the beginning, the flashbacks come fast and frequently, as if to correspond with the rawness of Rumi’s grief. As the story progresses, the flashbacks slow down—but they never quite fade away, and if anything they pick up towards the end, when Rumi is finally coming to terms with this first phase of her grief. Sometimes flashbacks can be heavyhanded or jarring in their juxtaposition, and that just never happens here.

But probably the best part of the book for me, even if it is something that others might easily overlook, is the love story—or lack thereof. Indeed, Rumi’s asexuality was why I chose to read Summer Bird Blue even though I wasn’t all that hot on a novel about grief. I think it is so important we have more novels featuring ace and/or aro characters who just are. Where their aromanticism or asexuality aren’t huge parts of the story. And that’s what we get here. These parts of Rumi’s identity are important, and Bowman treats them with respect. She uses those words (and others) on page as Rumi sorts through her confusion regarding how she feels about Kai.

Rumi basically says that she is probably asexual and maybe also aromantic, but she stops short of embracing those labels. They feel too definite for her tastes, and she is also uncomfortable with how they revolve around attraction—she expresses some sentiments that I would interpret as feeling sex-repulsed, perhaps. Rumi’s discomfort is completely understandable for someone who is 16 or 17 years old and trying to figure herself out. It’s unrealistic to expect every ace or aro person to immediately find and adopt labels that work for them, and I really appreciate Bowman validating this stance while also making it clear that asexuality, demisexuality, aromanticism, etc., are completely valid identities in and of themselves. That is to say, Bowman isn’t having Rumi hedge as a way of portraying asexuality as some kind of transitional state. Rumi’s asexuality is valid; what’s in question is how she chooses to express it to others. Yes, we need more books with characters who are unapologetically out as ace, sure. But we also need books like this, where the label matters less than the love story itself.

And that not-so-romantic romance? Loved it. Kai is a nice guy who is understanding without being unrealistic, and Bowman provides him with plenty of his own challenges and opportunities to grow. Meanwhile, Rumi explores how she feels about Kai in a way that I can only describe as courageous. And when she realizes that dating and romance and kissing are not what she wants, she makes that clear. Mad respect for her and for Kai for negotiating these complex feelings, and for the way Bowman models what mature and consenting friendships between teenagers can be.

This is why I decided to praise Summer Bird Blue. For a novel grounded in grief, it nevertheless focuses on growth and strength. Bowman won me over because she is a writer who sharpens her skills by taking the more difficult path. It would have been easy to write a story about summer love redeeming a grief-stricken girl, maybe throw in an evil ex-girlfriend as a rival, kill off the old mentor neighbour character in the third act for some pathos, etc. Summer Bird Blue revels in its complexity and nuance, yet it never drowns you in them. I am, frankly, incredibly surprised yet also very pleased to have enjoyed this book so much.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.