Just absolutely devastating. But of course, I have come to expect that of Louise O’Neill.

After two brilliant forays into young adult novels, both well worth a read, O’Neill brought her unstinting criticism of patriarchy to her first adult novel Almost Love in the best and most scathing way possible. After the Silence is a more-than-worthy second adult novel. While both have passing similarities—depictions of emotional abuse, gaslighting, male partners treating women poorly—O’Neill looks at these issues from an entirely different angle. She forces us to confront not the darkest parts of relationships (particularly with men); rather she forces us to confront the greyest parts, the parts we seldom talk about because to admit they are present would be to admit our entire model of romance is broken.

Hopefully the description of the book is enough, but in case it isn’t, seriously, massive trigger warnings for partner abuse, gaslighting, controlling and manipulative behaviour, murder, etc. I struggled with this at times, and I have never had a romantic relationship, let alone a toxic or abusive one—I can only imagine how triggering this book would be for some people who have, and you should really, really think hard about whether you want to expose yourself to that before you read this.

But to be clear: if you are up for it, After the Silence is a stone-cold masterpiece.

On one level, this is a psychological thriller. A documentary crew arrives on the small island of Inisrún. They are investigating the unsolved murder of Nessa Crowley, who ten years ago was found dead during a party on the storm-embattled island. The islanders blame Henry Kinsella and, by association, his wife Keelin, who is our protagonist. As the story progresses, we must wonder whether or not Henry is guilty—and if so, is Keelin covering for him, an unreliable narrator?—or if the mystery goes deeper. In actuality, Henry is guilty of many other things—whether or not he is the murderer is not something I will spoil.

Do not expect a simple thriller here though. Almost from page one, O’Neill makes it clear that the psychology in this psychological thriller is far more focused on Keelin Kinsella’s relationship with Henry. The brutality of O’Neill’s depiction of abuse is in its very mediocrity. Keelin, having left a physically abusive husband and subsequently trained as a domestic violence counsellor, believes she knows what abuse is. So when Henry begins to control her, to encourage her not to leave Inisrún, cut her off from her credit cards, her phone, her friends, medicate her—all “for her own good”—and because he does it gradually enough, Keelin doesn’t see what’s going on. Or maybe she does, but she is too afraid to acknowledge it. Because you can’t forget the death of Nessa Crowley. You can’t forget the way it ostracized the Kinsellas, and how, against such opposition, they would necessarily feel the need for solidarity. So not only might Keelin feel like she can’t run—she also doesn’t really have anywhere to run to.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll turn these pages while your skin crawls, and you’ll want to yell at the book, as if it could transmit your words to Keelin: leave him, run, wake up and realize what he’s doing. Every moment of reading After the Silence is a visceral moment of feeling Keelin’s sense of swimming through lead.

If that were it, if this book were just a portrayal of a woman being gaslit and manipulated by her husband in the decade following a murder, then the book would be good. But what makes this book sublime is how O’Neill connects the dots for us between Henry’s behaviour and our patriarchal society.

I think there is room to read Henry’s behaviour in two ways. On the one hand, he knows exactly what he is doing: he is the mastermind, the manipulator, cunningly controlling his wife for his own ends. On the other hand, I prefer the idea that Henry is somewhat oblivious to the harm in his behaviour—that is to say, he is not naive and he knows that he is good at manipulating people, but he genuinely believes that this is what love is. We see this throughout the book. He uses all the right phrases, condemns obvious incidents of sexism, tells Keelin she needs to listen to him “express his feelings” because isn’t communication important in a relationship? Henry is the epitome of the woke misogynist.

This is the true danger lurking at the heart of After the Silence. The problem is not the women who are abused. And without trying to excuse individual responsibility, the men who are the abusers are a symptom of the ultimate problem: our society enables abuse, particularly the abuse of women at the hands of male partners. It does this in multiple ways. Some are pretty obvious when you think about it—the way abused people can so easily be isolated in an age where we all seem connected at the hip through our phones, the victim-blaming and lack of supports to people who actually leave their situation of abuse. But most of th ways our society enables abuse are far more pernicious, and Henry is a textbook case. This is particularly evident towards the end, when we hear more about his backstory. No one taught Henry how to have a healthy relationship. He learned bad lessons, built atop a tower of white and male privilege. In Henry’s mind, his love for Keelin justifies how he behaves towards her, because our society teaches men that to love a woman is to want to control her, to put her on a pedestal, to bind her to you so that you can admire her and praise her—but on your terms and in a way that can never threaten your own success. Just think back to the vast majority of romances and romantic comedies with these kinds of messages.

Echoes of this theme abound throughout the book. Consider how Nessa and her two sisters were mythologized as the beautiful, slightly alien Crowley Girls. From an early age, we teach girls—intentionally and unintentionally—that their beauty is tied to their self worth. Nessa, even at 20, was still a very young, very inexperienced woman. She gets taken advantage of, not because she lacks agency, but because the messaging she received for the first two decades of her life have twisted that sense of agency. What we view as unacceptable she views as acceptable because it validates the messages we have told her for 20 years.

Did Henry Kinsella kill Nessa Crowley? Does she ever get justice? You’ll have to read the book to find out! I won’t lie: it will be a difficult read, but it is so worthwhile. O’Neill engages me, gets me thinking about these issues, all while telling a deep, rich, dark story. This is the power of fiction at full strength; what would be dry or too stark when laid out in non-fiction becomes moving, terrifying, paramount when told through fiction’s lens. After the Silence is an abiding story of abuse, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and the tolls that these take on women—up to and including their very lives.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

It feels like with fantasy these days I am eternally questing after the next fresh idea. Don’t get me wrong—there is sometimes nothing better than a classic, trope-laden fantasy from the late twentieth century to stir my book loins. But every time I pick up a big, heavy book like Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, I hope deep down in my heart that it will give me something new, that it will stir up not just passion but a joyous sense of surprise. For the most part, that is what Bradley P. Beaulieu does here. Rather than the standard alternative medieval or feudal European setting, Beaulieu draws on inspiration from numerous cultures to create something that we might describe as quasi–Middle Eastern. That being said, I think there was a lot of care taken not to appropriate Middle Eastern cultures or simply render them into caricature, as many white fantasy authors have done in the past.

Çeda (pronounced “chay-da”) fights in the Pits (think gladiators) for money. When she isn’t doing that, she is single-handedly trying to figure out how to overthrow the 12 immortal Kings of Sharakhai, her city, although she doesn’t seem to be making much headway until the beginning of the story. (I guess that’s why this is the beginning.) Çeda’s mother long opposed the Kings and had some kind of plan to defeat them. Rather than pass this plan on to her daughter, however, Çeda’s mother selfishly decided to protect her daughter and keep her innocent of such matters right up until the point where she was arrested and executed for her treason. So this means that Çeda is anonymous, as far as the Kings are concerned—but she resolves not to keep it that way, for she realizes she is in a unique position to get closer to the Kings and hopefully uncover the history they’ve tried to bury for a thousand years.

That manipulation of history is one of the most compelling elements of this book for me. The Kings have successfully obscured their pasts—each hails from one of the 12 founding tribes, of course, yet no one knows the individual Kings’ backstories. They have woven a mythology that distorts the truth in order to make it impossible for someone like Çeda to uncover what really happened during important events like Beht Ihman, when the Kings made a dark deal with the gods and slaughtered hundreds of innocents. This resonates with me because of how our own governments have practised similar manipulation and propaganda, obscuring or choosing not to discuss or teach about things like colonialism and the assimilation of Indigenous peoples. As much as we decry digital technologies for making such misinformation easier to spread, Beaulieu demonstrates here that an entirely analogue society is no less vulnerable to such attacks of cultural amnesia.

In the same way, I just fucking love that one of Çeda’s primary strategies to arm herself against the Kings is to study and read. There is plenty of combat in this book, don’t you fret—but so often fantasy seems to partition its heroes into fighters and scholars (or mages or clerics or whatever), and even in the latter case, the learning seems to happen off-page so there is more time for ass-kicking. So colour me biased, but when a hero spends her time in a dank room reading ancient texts for like a hundred pages before we go back to the ass-kicking? Oh my, someone bring me the smelling salts, for I do believe I will swoon!

Çeda is an all right protagonist, but she is probably best when acting against foils like Emre. Their strained we-were-once-ride-or-die-but-now-you-ride-with-others relationship is so good and so believable. It’s kind of heartbreaking, watching it happen, watching Emre drift further apart even though that’s partially Çeda’s fault because she’s repeating the mistake her mother made of trying to protect him from her actions … ugh, yes, just that nuance and complexity, the messiness of having people in your life you care about. It’s all on display here.

I also appreciate that Beaulieu mixes foreshadowing with a healthy dose of plot twists. There is plenty about this book that is predictable, such as a revelation around Çeda’s parentage. And the book follows the general arc of the plot it gradually lays out for us—but it meanders, digresses, and feints in ways that are pleasantly diverting. I bristled at the flashbacks at first, and although they grew on me towards the end as they revealed more information, they are still far from my favourite device used in this book. Similarly, as much as I love and believe in the dynamic between main characters like Çeda and Emre, so many of the minor characters in this book feel stock and unbelievable. They aren’t quite cardboard cutouts … it’s more like when you buy a new phone and there’s that plastic film on the screen that you don’t want to rip away just yet because you don’t want to get fingerprints on it? The side characters are like that: they still have that plastic film on them, newly minted as they are, and the story never sees a reason to rip it off and let them grow into themselves. They are too crisp, too sharply-defined versus the messier main characters.

All in all, this was a fun novel and I have already put a hold on book 2 at my library. I am very happy I picked this up after adding it to my to-read list 5 years ago! If you want a fantasy novel with a good original setting, an excellent balance between scholarship and scrapping, and believable main characters, then try out Twelve Kings in Sharakhai.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

As someone who is interested in the history of colonialism, I was very intrigued when I learned of this book about the Belgian exploitation of Congo—or should I say, King Leopold's exploitation? For indeed, it’s one thing to read about British or French colonization elsewhere, or to hear the famous phrase “Scramble for Africa,” and another entirely to be reminded that the creation, colonization, and exploitation of Congo and the peoples therein was initially driven by a single man. Yet Adam Hochschild is careful not to fall prey to Great Man Theory: he argues that Leopold was the primary visionary behind creating Congo, yes, but the atrocities that were implemented in his name were the result of centuries of a system of white supremacy designed to enslave Indigenous peoples for their land and resources. King Leopold’s Ghost is as much about the complicity of Europe as it is about one man’s avarice for Africa.

This is quite a rich book in terms of information. Roughly chronological, Hochschild establishes Leopold’s motivations for colonizing Congo while also diving into the lives of some of the more prominent people in this story—Henry Morton Stanley, George Sheppard, etc. He provides enough context for us to understand what the world was like in the late 1800s when this went down: most of the world had been colonized, or at least “discovered” and claimed, by one of several European powers, with Britain still leading as the empire on which the sun never set. The brave days of exploration were seemingly over—yet the so-called dark continent of Africa continued to beckon. Leopold became an expert at enticing explorers like Stanley, diplomats, and businessmen to act as his proxies in Africa. He provided the nudge that sent thousands of people trekking into jungles, portaging up rivers and through mountains, ultimately succumbing to sickness or violence or worse.

Hochschild balances this tale of last-ditch exploration with a sobre reflection on the de facto use of slavery in African colonies. Towards the end of the book, as he gives a final accounting of the atrocities in Congo, the lives lost, etc., he points out that Congo is not an exception to Africa—rather, it is just a particularly poignant example of the rule. Although slavery was theoretically abolished in most countries by this time, that didn’t stop white people from forcing Africans to serve as militia, harvest rubber, or otherwise labour for the good of empire. King Leopold’s Ghost is careful not to over-simplify history, particularly when it comes to atrocities. He also presents, lucidly and logically, the case for how economic imperatives drove these exploitative and inhumane practices. Often when we talk about racism, we think about it as highly personal (you were being racist to her) or abstract (ugh, that policy is so racist). What we forget is that there is a reason behind racist policies—exclusion and discrimination is often driven by the need to make subjugation and exploitation more palatable, more acceptable.

Hochschild is quite detail-oriented. At times I found his presentation of minutiae to be less interesting than some of the larger picture he was portraying. Yet as Hochschild himself acknowledges, when faced with large numbers and statistics, we are often overwhelmed. Only by burying us in a plethora of anecdotes and records can he hope to help touch us through the human plights he unveils. It’s one thing to tell me 6 million people died; it’s another to show me photos of women tied to stakes as hostages while their husbands collect rubber, or for a grisly recounting of what happened to one African man who tried to travel to testify before an inquiry into the Congo atrocities.

In addition to exposing the human cost of colonialism, Hochschild draws a clear line from Leopold to the present day situation in Africa. We say that those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it, and I’m not sure that is true—we are awfully good at coming up with new ways of being terrible. Nevertheless, if we don’t learn history, we won’t understand why things are the way they currently are, and that leaves us at a great disadvantage. The current issues in many African countries are a direct result of the colonialism of the late 1800s—after all, most of those countries wouldn’t exist in their present form had it not been for the Berlin Conference and other such fun “let us draw the map for you” moments. We (white people) literally created this mess, and it is ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst to say we should turn around and make African peoples sort it out and figure it out on their own. That being said, drowing their countries in debt they can’t ever pay back while we continue to extract massive amounts of conflict minerals to build more iPhones is … well, it’s not a good look.

At the end of the day, this is a necessary book. It is not a sexy book, or a happy book, or a book with much in the way of good news. But it is a necessary book. I would recommend it to anyone who considers themselves even casually a student of world history, anyone who wants to compare notes versus what was done here in Canada, or in the States, or South America or Australia. The language changes but the song is the same, and it will never truly end until we decide to abandon the instruments of exploitation that play it.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

A little over a year ago, I curtailed my review of Embers of War because of my broken elbow. I have now returned, stronger than ever, to review this sequel, Fleet of Knives. I finished this book in a single day, taking a break only to make dinner and watch Mean Girls (because it was October 3). This book is like candy to me. It is an invigorating space opera that balances grand, epic mysteries with smaller, more personal struggles. Gareth L. Powell’s plotting is measured and interesting, and his characters all carry their burdens with courage if not wisdom.

No spoilers for this book, but spoilers for the first book.

Fleet of Knives picks up soon after the first book finishes. The Marble Armada is parked in House of Reclamation space, negotiations and discussions ongoing. Ona Sedak rots in a prison, awaiting execution for her crimes—until a dramatic jailbreak leaves her in charge of the Armada, which has decided a killing spree of interstellar proportions is the only way to enforce peace. Meanwhile, Sal and her ship Trouble Dog take care of some spiritual business before they’re pulled back into Reclamation business: rescue the crew of the Lucy’s Ghost. Oh, and there might be monsters in hyperspace? Buckle up and strap in, my friends.

I want to start with the characterization, because that is truly what keeps me interested in these books. Powell’s people are all flawed, yet fortunately they are not flawed in the same way. (This sentiment is explicitly shared by our favourit Druff, Nod, at some point in the book!) Sal and Alva, for example, are both very broken—but they don’t really get along, because their broken pieces grate against one another. They are both trying to heal too, which is another thing I love about these books. Sometimes authors like to show off how edgy and broken and grim their characters are, and they never let those characters move beyond that pain to heal and grow and move on. Much like Maggie in Storm of Locusts, Sal is healing and growing in Fleet of Knives. Of course, the universe has a few more knocks to give her.

The evolution of Trouble Dog was perhaps more in the foreground in the first book, when she was evading her sisters and brothers and forced into battle against them. Yet she continues to grow here as well. A ship grown from the cloned cells of a dead human, Trouble Dog’s nascent emotional intelligence gets a workout as she must adopt some new crew members out of expediency—even as a current crew member doesn’t survive. By the way, Powell’s willingness to invest energy in building up a character only to kill them off not even really at the climax of the story? Love it. Don’t get me wrong—this isn’t some mad George R.R. Martin “kill all your darlings” situation. But I truly did not see that person’s death coming, and it was sad and beautiful in a bittersweet kind of way.

Similarly, Powell deftly intertwines the two major plots: the Armada’s extreme solution to human conflict, and the rescue of the Lucy’s Ghost crew. I enjoyed the new tidbits we get about the ancient threat the Armada was designed to protect against, even if one of its primary means of doing so is … um … gross? Oh, and without going into spoilers—how did Chet figure out that the Druff and the white ships are cousins?? Like it’s a cool little bit of info to drop, but there’s no explanation for why the Druff aboard Lucy’s Ghost is the one who deduces this. (As always, scenes with Nod are a delight though.)

My major grumble is mostly that Ona Sedak gets very little to do in this book. She basically sits around in the command centre of this incredibly powerful fleet, but she is still a prisoner. She serves at their whim. And whether or not she is morally on board with their plan, I wish she had exhibited a little more initiative in shaping their plan to her whims. Epic alien battle fleets are really only interesting as enemies when our side has ways of ferreting out their weaknesses (I realize Sedak isn’t on “our side,” but she also isn’t entirely on theirs). I hope the next book does just that.

Still, Fleet of Knives is a lot of fun and has moments of genuine touching beauty—like when Johnny and Addison decide what they will do if they survive this situation. Even when Powell strives for a great moment and doesn’t quite get there, the result is still good. I literally could not put this book down, and that’s not praise I often utter.

If you want good space opera with great, original characters and some cool ideas baked in, then this series is definitely for you.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Last year, I read the BuzzFeed article that inspired this book, and Rebecca and I discussed this topic in an episode of our podcast. I didn’t learn that Anne Helen Petersen had turned her article into a book until just around the publication day. Fortunately, I was still able to receive a review copy through NetGalley! I was very excited to dig into this book. Although in some ways this book could never have completely satisfied me—more on that later—Petersen nevertheless lays out many interesting ideas, theories, data points, anecdotes, and just in general a wealth of information that helps to describe, untangle, and name the systemic issue of overwork that plagues our society. I saw much of myself and my fellow millennials in Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, and it is one wild ride.

So first thing first: yes, I am a millennial. Petersen defines millennial as anyone born between 1981 and 1996, and even if you quibble with those boundary conditions, I am firmly planted in 1989. So I describe myself as a “middle millennial”: I have no memory of the ’80s, unlike Petersen, but I was already a teenager by the time the web, and then social media, became mainstream. So I kind of have an interesting perspective of being exposed to a variety of the phenemona Petersen describes here—for one of her points is that your experience as a millennial can still differ quite a great deal depending on when within the generation you were born, as well as where, of course, and in what conditions. Petersen acknowledges the influences of race and class on upbringing; she carefully notes how the people she has interviewed describe themselves (white, Black, mixed race, Latina, etc.) and where possible she includes studies that focus on the additional disparities visited upon people of colour. As she says in her introduction, we have a tendency to associate the millennial stereotype with whiteness, even though, statistically, a great proportion of millennials in the United States are not white.

A few other things about me: I am white, and I live in Canada, not the States. Some of what Petersen examines doesn’t apply to us in exactly the same way—we don’t worry about paying for health insurance, for example, although our so-called universal healthcare doesn’t actually cover everything, and many of us do worry about paying for glasses, dentist visits, etc. I also feel very privileged, because unlike many of my millennial cohort, I have fallen into a relatively stable teaching job, and I bought a house at the age of 28.

Yet I am not immune to burnout. As Petersen points out, burnout is a systemic monster: you can avoid it, for a time, with care and self-care—more often than not, however, it creeps up on you all the same. Much of what she describes was not new to me. I do not need to be convinced of capitalism’s rapacious demands for people to work more, more, more, despite the evidence that working less, less, less actually might make us more productive. Similarly, the additional burdens that fall on women (particularly mothers) don’t surprise me. (I would have loved for Petersen to talk about trans people at some point, but I suspect this omission is more due to the lack of data on this subject than an oversight—she seems to be pretty inclusive.) So, for many readers who are keeping up with the issues and the times, Can’t Even is a lot of “already knew.”

So why did I find it so compelling? First, there are definitely things I didn’t know or consider. One of the early chapters discusses the effects of boomer parenting on millennials, and it was quite mind-blowing. Petersen points to a movement from free-range parenting to concerted cultivation and draws a link between this parenting style and adult millennials’ tendencies to overschedule ourselves, to feel like we are never doing enough, and to conflate busy-ness with success or worth. It made me reflect on my own upbringing, and I realize now that my parents gave me a lot of time and space to do my own thing; they seldom pressured me to take certain paths or think about my resume. I believe, now that I’ve read this book, that I owe my parents a lot more for my “chill” attitude than I thought!

Second, even for the parts that sounded familiar to me, Petersen includes compelling data and anecdotes that provide depth. She discusses intersections. She emphasizes that burnout is systemic, not personal. This is the most important yet also the hardest part of this book. When I told Rebecca I was reading this, she said, “I hope she gives solutions too.” That is, we both hoped that Petersen can offer some alternatives, some ways to fix burnout. The truth is that this book is short on solutions. As Petersen points out, individual fixes are temporary at best. You can seldom beat the system.

To be fair, however, Can’t Even makes it clear that we can change the system for the better. Better healthcare that isn’t tied to your job. More time off for new parents—more support for parents (like childcare) in general—and a more frank discussion of unequal parenting and household responsibilities. Stop defining yourself by how much you work, and stop looking down at people for taking it easy.

This past summer, as I lay on my deck reading a book and drinking tea, I told a couple of friends that this is how I want to pass my days. I don’t particularly care if my name is ever recorded in some book with a contribution to society. I want to live well, and be good, and of course I would like to advocate and agitate for change—but I can do that in a collective way. At the end of the day, I want people to remember me as that mellow girl who was there when you needed her. I want to read good books, and have good conversations with interesting people, and live my life for myself instead of for the enrichment of others. I know—typical, entitled millennial. But if we are going to fix the culture of burnout, we have to begin by rejecting generational stereotypes.

Millennials might be the “burnout generation,” but Petersen freely acknowledges that every generation is susceptible to burnout. We do not have a monopoly on it—rather, we get the distinction of that label because ours is the generation that has so solidly ingrained it into the capitalist culture of the United States. Hence, Can’t Even is not an anti-boomer, pro-millennial polemic. Rather, it’s a diagnosis of an inter-generational problem that is everyone’s responsibility to fix. This book is a mirror for millennials but an important read for anyone, regardless of age. Brush aside the stereotypes, and listen to the stories and the data.

I do not like the cover image at all.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Look at me, finishing a series within a year! Who even am I?

The Stone Sky is the last book of The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. She give us answers to some of the questions from the first two books, as well as closure—of sorts—for most of the main characters. I’m not sure I would call the ending satisfying, but it is certainly thoughtful. This is how I’ve come to regard Jemisin’s storytelling and how it interacts with my sensibilities as a reader: she doesn’t always deliver the type of story I want, but I can appreciate that she is delivering a top-quality story.

Spoilers for the first two books but not this one.

Picking up just a few days after the end of The Obelisk Gate, this book is narrated in the second person. Hoa the Stone Eater tells Essun her own story, beginning with her return to consciousness after successfully using the obelisks at the end of the last book. Essun’s ability to use magic as well as orogeny now means that any such actions will petrify a part of her body. Nevertheless she remains committed to using the Obelisk Gate to recapture the Moon. She also needs to find Nassun—and here Jemisin alternates perspectives, allowing us to follow Nassun’s parallel journey to take control of the Gate and execute a plan, far more destructive, suggested by a rival Stone Eater. Who will make it to the Gate first? And what’s with the interspersed chapters about the ancient city of Syl Anagist?

I’d forgotten how young Nassun is! Only 11 years old! I’m trying to remember what I was like at 11—certainly not that capable. Of course, much of her apparent maturity has been forged in the painful crucible of necessity. Jemisin does a good job of displaying the trauma that weighs on Nassun’s young shoulders, the mistakes in judgment, etc. In a genre littered with youthful chosen ones, Nassun stands out. She has been chosen in the sense that others found her, groomed her, influenced her. Yet she is also broken; she is not serving out a destiny but rather stumbling towards something resembling the resolution of millennia of stagnation.

Both Nassun and Essun’s stories are about family. In the most narrow sense, both protagonists are attempting to find or reform their family: Nassun, having literally killed her biological father, chooses Schaffa as a new father; Essun becomes closer to Lerna even as she searches for a hint of belonging in Castrima. And of course, Essun yearns for reunion with Nassun, even if the latter has no idea her mother is still out there. As the world enters another apocalyptic Season, as the survivors of Castrima march desperately through a desert towards the ruined city of their would-be conquerors, these characters strive for those simplest, most basic connections.

In a broader sense, The Stone Sky questions who we consider family at a species level. Bigotry has been a bedrock of this series from the beginning. As Jemisin fills in some of the gaps about the origin story of orogenes, we understand that this isn’t merely about “roggas versus stills.” This is a rondo of discrimination: throughout thousands of years, humans repeat a pattern of discrimination caused by needing a narrative of difference to justify the subjugation of people who can be exploited. In this way, Jemisin tackles the white supremacy of our society from a high-concept, highly abstract perspective—the parallels are not exact; the correspondences are not one-to-one, but they are present in the themes and variations of these stories.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my review, Jemisin is a writer whose words I have come to respect and admire even if I don’t always enjoy the stories they create. The Broken Earth series has impressed me. And I would say I enjoyed it on some level. The style, particularly the characterization and narration, don’t appeal to me. Yet these are decorations atop a much more compelling and careful story that does have something important to say. Moreover, Jemisin is doing good work elevating and energizing fantasy and science fiction with these stories. I love the diversity of voices and storytelling happening in these genres these days, and The Stone Sky is the end of a series that epitomizes that diversity.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Rebecca Roanhorse bottled lightning once, and now she is back to do it again

Storm of Locusts picks up not too long after Trail of Lightning. Maggie agrees to help the Thirsty Boys apprehend the White Locust, a strange cult leader buying up explosives. The mission goes sideways in a big way, and Maggie picks up the pieces and finds herself responsible for a young woman, Ben, with some clan powers, a chip on her shoulder, and nothing left to lose—remind you of anyone? Maggie, Ben, and other allies have to leave Dinétah to find the White Locust—as well as Kai Arviso, Maggie’s onetime love and the man she killed to save the day last time.

I actually remember very little about the plot of Trail of Lightning. Roanhorse drops the major details here and there, but she is restrained with the exposition—usually a plus, and to be honest, you don’t need to remember all the details of the first book to follow this one. In fact, I found this one eminently satisfying: I read it in a single Sunday afternoon!

Roanhorse has the knack for getting you into the action quickly—essential in urban fantasy, in my opinion. I’m not just talking about an action sequnence near the beginning, either! She wastes no time getting us into the main plot. This holds for the entire book: Storm of Locusts is lean, its subplots tightly woven parallel to the weft of the main plot. As a result, the pace feels fast yet even. Short pit stops as Maggie gets diverted from her main goal always turn out to advance the main plot too.

Maggie has some damage—but who doesn’t in this post-apocalyptic world? I appreciate how Roanhorse balances Maggie’s psychological trauma and likely PTSD with self-awareness and compassion. She has a sense of humour, and she can land a good burn, but she isn’t the stereotypical wise-cracking badass you tend to get in these types of books. She’s … Maggie. And if the first book was about her accepting her power and moving on from her former mentor/lover, this one is about forging her own path. Or so she thinks….

As I said in my review of Trail of Lightning, it’s not my lane to comment on the representation of the Diné and their culture here. All I can do is repeat my pleasure that it is becoming easier and easier to find authentic voices who can write a variety of stories and imagine futures for their people. I’m not being original when I comment that Indigenous nations are better equipped to handle the next apocalypse because they’ve lived through one already—this quip is bleak but accurate, in my opinion, and Storm of Locusts reinforces this. The next apocalypse is always just around the corner.

I’ll close by commenting on the relationships. The only one I didn’t find satisfying was probably one of the most important—Maggie and Kai. Their reunion was rushed and fraught with confusion. Everyone else was great! I loved the frenemy vibe between Maggie and Rissa Goldacre, the grudging respect that builds as they work together. There’s nothing like characters who have legitimate reasons for not seeing eye-to-eye!

A worthy sequel to a fun and furious first book.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Let’s pause for a moment and savour the feeling of completing a series. That’s not always an easy undertaking, especially when reading them entirely through the library! After five books, this series is ready for a conclusion. Elizabeth Moon delivers everything you might think you want—tension and build-up to a big, fancy space battle, and then a little resolution—but I’m not sure always delivers it how one would want. As always, this series has hovered on the edge of too pedantic, too detail-oriented for its own good. Victory Conditions carries on that tradition.

As usual, spoilers for previous books in the series but not this one.

Ky Vatta is preparing to fight the next battle in her war with pirate Gammis Turek. She has had some success recently, and various governments are beginning to align with her and offer ships for her effort. But it still might not be enough. Meanwhile, cousin Stella is running one half of Vatta Enterprises and supervising a love-sick Toby. Grace is running a lot of Slotter’s Key, and Rafe is still on Nexus, trying to disentangle the ISC from many years of corrupt management.

There are too many main characters in this book. For a book of this size, there’s just too many people we are supposed to care about. And I really do think this leads to Moon dropping the ball: Toby, for instance, features prominently at the beginning of the story, only to be sidelined afterwards. We barely hear from him at all for the entire rest of the novel. Even for characters who receive their fair share of screen time, like Rafe or Stella, they seldom seem to have the time to breathe and grow. There’s this subtle conflict between Stella and Ky that is the result of their different yet equally strong and stubborn personalities: Stella thinks she is looking out for Ky when it comes to Rafe, and also Stella is very concerned about the business side of things; Ky, on the other hand, is laser-focused about winning the fight against Turek at any cost—and she is none too happy about Stella interfering with her love life either. It’s a lovely conflict, but it only gets a few pages here or there.

Meanwhile, of course, Moon treats us to the ongoing logistics of refitting, supplying, and then fighting with so many ships. If you have made it this far in the series, then none of this will surprise you. Most of this book is meetings or conversations about weapons loads, stress profiles, etc. This is military science fiction at its most significant attempt to be “realistic,” and I like it, but I won’t pretend it’s riveting.

Shout-out to Moon for including a chapter where Ky seeks therapy for her trauma, particularly with regards to having to kill so many people. Even when books like this acknowledge the toll that constant violence and combat takes, often they do it to demonstrate how edgy and tortured their protagonist is. For Moon to point out that even the best commanders need medical help from time to time is very important.

Beyond that, I’d like to say I loved this book, but honestly I’m happy the series is over. The first two books are the best: Ky is new to her situation and really needs to think on her feet while confronting a tense series of dangers. These last three books have raised the stakes, but in terms of plot and pacing—and now characterization—they’ve just felt off. A little dull.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that Turek has been a disappointing villain. This isn’t really his fault. For the first few books, he was barely more than a shadow—people died saying his name. In this book, he’s broadcasting moustache-twirling messages to various systems, telling everyone how much they will fear his name! Moon lampshades this in the book, but combined with the anti-climactic confrontation that happens between Ky and Turek … alas, he never had the chance or space to grow into a truly formidable, interesting personality.

Victory Conditions has a lot going for it. However, it’s also an example of a series that stumbles mid-way and never quite regains a solid footing. There is nothing wrong or bad here, nothing really even boring—but there also isn’t anything to make me sit up and say, “Wow, now that’s an ending.”

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Ever since I was a child, space has captivated my imagination. I love space. I love space science. I love science fiction. I have literally spent months of my life by this point, I would estimate, with the crews of the various starships Enterprise, Voyager, and the station Deep Space Nine. Yet never have I really had much desire to go to space. It seems like a cold, forbidding place, and the cost of getting there—monetarily, but also physically, is so much! Also, I’m a tall witch (192 cm), so they’d probably take one look at me, laugh as they visualized stuffing me into a launch capsule, and then pass.

Kate Greene, on the other hand, has at least entertained what it would be like to be an astronaut. While she never quite achieved that dream, she came close by participating in a HI-SEAS experiment to live in isolation with five other astronaut-like people. For four months, they ran experiments and simulated living in a habitat on Mars. Then she wrote about it, including for this book. I received an ARC from St. Martin’s Press in return for a review.

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars starts strong. I really love Greene’s awareness of and appreciation for the history of spaceflight. She weaves this history, along with personal anecdotes, throughout the book. Greene gets it in a way that some people don’t; as I read, I felt like we were speaking the same language. She describes her excitement and fascination for not just space itself but learning all about the people and projects who go to space, and I can dig that.

Organizationally, however, this book leaves much to be desired. Each chapter includes tidbits of Greene’s time participating in HI-SEAS. Yet these seem merely to function as launch pads for ruminations on larger issues, like climate change, or to discuss other aspects of the history of spaceflight. Sometimes Greene discusses her personal life, from having a brother who lives with a significant disability to the breakdown of her marriage. I like personal stories as much as the next person, cool—but I went into this book thinking I would hear more about Greene’s experience living “on Mars,” and I feel like I barely heard about that. She never fails to return to the HI-SEAS mission at least once a chapter, but it never seems to be the focus of the writing. And I could accept that, could live with it being merely a framework on which to craft essays, if the essays themselves were organized. But too often, I didn’t feel like Greene was making much of a point—or when she was making a point, it didn’t feel like something new and interesting to me.

There is a related issue to this: Greene is constantly referring to books that are cooler than hers. At one point she’s diving deep into Scott Kelly’s book about spending a year in space. Another time she quotes extensively from Michael Collins’ book. Now look, I love intertextuality as much as the next English teacher. I love that she is referring to and building upon past discussions of spaceflight. Yet it happens in such a way that the thought honestly crossed my mind that I should just be reading those books, not this one. What, exactly, is Greene contributing to the conversation in these chapters? She was obviously very moved by her experience, and there are times she alludes quite directly to this idea. Still, for something so significant to her life, I was expecting … more.

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars is a book that lacks confidence in itself. It never really settles down into a formula that is fruitful or reliable. Overall, I did enjoy it. When Greene’s writing veers towards the interesting, it is quite interesting. But I’m not sure it will leave much of an impression, especially not about what it might be like to one day live on Mars.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Every so often, I consider dropping the star ratings from my reviews. After all, ratings are a convention, not a requirement. Novels like A Suitable Boy confound the one-dimensionality of a 5-star rating system and leave me stymied. This is a 5-star novel. It is also a 1-star novel. Do I split the difference, give it 3 stars? Or do I depart from tradition and leave it unrated? You already know the answer, of course, because you’ve seen the rating. But here’s why I did it.

My friend Arushi recommended this to me when we were chatting about our genres of choice and I mentioned that I enjoy postcolonial Indian fiction. She did not, however, mention that it is the size of a short legal textbook or one of the longest novels in the English language. I have nothing against long novels—War and Peace is sublime, and A Suitable Boy reminds me both of it and of The Count of Monte Cristo. However, whereas all three novels sport an impressive cast of characters, The Count of Monte Cristo at least revolves around a simple revenge plot. A Suitable Boy is a much more sprawling, diffuse story, and that posed some problems for me, particularly reading it now, the first weeks going back to work in a new school year during a pandemic. So this could be a case of “I let the novel down.”

There is no way I can summarize all the plots of this book in a way that does them justice. Suffice it to say, this is an epic story of several interconnected Indian families in 1951/1952. The main characters are mostly members of the Mehra family, comprising the widow Mrs. Rupa Mehra and her children: Arun, Varun, Savita, and Lata. Arun and Savita are married—the book opens with Savita’s marriage—whereas Varun and Lata are not. As Mrs. Mehra’s remaining unmarried daughter, Lata becomes a focal point in the novel: will she meekly accept the husband her mother picks out for her? Or will she defy tradition to marry outside her cast, perhaps even to marry a non-Hindu?

The religious and ethnic tensions present in India immediately following Independence and Partition is definitely one of my favourite motifs. Vikram Seth employs them so well here. I say this, I should note, as a white outsider who has a very passing knowledge of Indian cultures and religions, so it’s not like I really know what I’m talking about. Indeed, I enjoy that Seth doesn’t use much exposition to explain the meaning of terms that outsiders would find unfamiliar. Either you look them up or you pass over them, because he isn’t going to educate you. He’s too busy writing a love story that isn’t a love story (whether I’m referring to Lata’s story, Maan’s, or someone else’s, though, I will leave for you to figure out!).

Still, I just see this as one of the immense strengths of this genre of novel. We outsiders think India and have stereotypical ideas of spirituality that has been repackaged for us in the West. But if you dig deeper and actually read the literature that has come out of India, watch the dramas, etc., you begin to become aware of—even if you can’t quite comprehend—the impressive ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity on the subcontinent. It’s not just Hindu and Muslim. There are so many different groups, a dazzling array of cultures that the West has flattened and erased (both actively, through colonialism, and then through a lack of nuance in media and a disinterest in Indian voices telling Indian stories).

Seth attempts to rectify this by immersing us into Indian society. On the one hand, we have the familial politics: Mrs. Mehra scheming marriage while feuding with Meenakshi; Arun throwing around his weight; Maan butting heads with his father because of his infatuation with a singer. On the other hand, we have the political landscape of a country Britain created out of thin air and then basically said, “Well, you’re on your own: good luck with independence, wot wot, cheerio.” Although I’ll happily admit to not enjoying the political chapters as much as the more personal ones, their presence is valuable because they are a reminder of the dynamic and passionate events occurring during this time. India was a country in flux, a country not yet 10 years old, attempting to find its footing and prove itself. The tension is so palpable on these pages, and every grand political issue is personified in the struggles of the characters—from Pran’s academic conflicts at the university to Haresh’s drive to become a self-made man.

However, in some ways I feel like my outsider status leaves me unqualified to critique this novel properly. Like, I just don’t know enough about Indian politics, history, or its various cultures to grasp the implications of Seth’s writing. Is he progressive? Is there some subtle racism or discrimination in these pages that I don’t see? I don’t know—and, as I said recently in my review of The Water Dancer and have said before and will say again: this is why we need own-voices reviewers. And for all I know this book is fine and dandy—but at nearly 1400 pages, there must be some problematic shit in here that I’m missing, eh?

Let’s talk about that length. Did I read every single word on every page? No. I skimmed a bunch of it, all right? There is a lot of poetry included here that didn’t interest me. So, like when you get up while a movie is on and go to the kitchen without pausing it, half-hearing it in the background as you rummage through your pantry for that bag of chips you thought you still had until you remember you finished it earlier that week and were too lazy to go to the store to buy more, I cut corners. I’m fine admitting that, and I’m not sorry if I have shattered your image of me as a diligent, careful reader of fine literature. Nope. I shovel this stuff down my mouth like fried potato products, munching by the handful until I’m sick of it.

Seth himself is very aware of, and subtly mocks, the length of his own novel. At one point he has a character express a desire to write a novel that is like a raag:

Later, the same character, asked why his upcoming novel is “to be so long” at over 1000 pages, replies,

As someone who recently re-read Middlemarch, I can sympathize with this perspective! That being said, if this is how Seth asks us to judge his lengthy work, I’m not sure I was avoiding people because of this book so much as because of social distancing. And holding up this book certainly was effort at times! Does this mean A Suitable Boy is bad?

Here is my verdict: this is a wonderful novel whose status as a classic is well deserved, but it is not a novel I enjoyed reading here and now in this moment. So we come to the ugly truth that underlies every review—the fact that the quality of a novel depends not just on the writer’s words but also upon the context in which they are received by the reader. In another time, another place, a calmer environment where I could have tackled this with more grace, perhaps I would rave about this book as I do War and Peace and The Count of Monte Cristo. As it is, I would definitely recommend this if it seems like your thing. Nevertheless, this is a commitment. Seth knows this; he did not write this to be read widely but instead to be read deeply, and I can respect that.

So that’s why I settled, ultimately, on 5 stars. Because I gave those other two books 5 stars, so deep down, I think the best version of myself as a reader would also give this book 5 stars. And I’ve been doing this long enough that I trust that extrapolation, and I don’t want people who use stars as a quick metric for quality to get the wrong impression. Ultimately, I do not think I “let down” this book as I have with some in the past—I think I gave it a fair chance, and I hope my review captures at least some of the rapt enjoyment I felt with portions of the plot and characters. But I can’t say I’m sad it’s over or upset I now have to find another book to read. Like many marathons, this one is most enjoyable as a memory of crossing the finish line.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.