Embodiment is so strange. We all have bodies, but we don’t all have the same body. Some bodies are judged more than others. In “You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People, Aubrey Gordon debunks twenty prevalent anti-fatness myths. Anti-fat bias is consistently the only form of discrimination that has increased over the past decades (other types have decreased or stayed roughly the same), and sometimes it is so pervasive that we don’t even realize we are engaging in it.

Gordon, a white fat woman and cohost of the podcast Maintenance Phase, organizes her myth-busting into four parts: “Being Fat Is a Choice,” “But What About Your Health?,” “Fat Acceptance Glorifies Obesity,” and “Fat People Should….” She makes it clear that this book is an introductory guide aimed at thin readers like myself and designed to get us thinking about our implicit biases and the systemic biases of society. Most chapters include calls to action at the end: concrete steps someone can take to challenge the discrimination described in that chapter.

Some of these myths I had already heard debunked, many from a longread written by Michael Hobbes, Gordon’s podcast cohost, in The Huffington Post called “Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong.”. I already knew that being fat is not a choice, that exercise is not usually an effective way to lose weight, that there are many factors—some genetic or epigenetic—that contribute to weight gain. I knew the BMI is racist and anti-fat bullshit. Nevertheless, it was good to refresh myself and to hear about more of the science (or questionable science, in the case of studies that supposedly validate anti-fatness).

I’ve long wondered how to take action against anti-fatness with what power I have as a thin person and an educator. Once upon a time, a student of mine chose to write a research essay all about the obesity epidemic. She tried to argue that fat acceptance is unhealthy. I remember being so uncomfortable reading it, but I also wasn’t sure how to challenge the student effectively. How do I speak up on an issue with which I have so little experience? Then again, I challenge students who inadvertently share racist myths all the time—why should this be different? So reading “You Just Need to Lose Weight” is important to me professionally as well as personally.

On a personal note, there are connections I made while reading between Gordon’s discussion of body acceptance and my own journey in my thirties with transition. Even as my dysphoria decreases, I find myself surprisingly vulnerable to the anti-fat messages our society targets all women with. I find myself far more concerned about, obsessing over, my weight and my body shape than I did pre-transition. I won’t equate this to the struggles of fat people (especially fat trans women), for that would put me into Myth Nineteen territory—but I wanted to share for a moment the connections I was making to my own experiences. What I took from this was how, like any liberation in our society, challenging anti-fatness “lifts all boats.” It helps thin people as well as fat people—and I am not saying that’s why we should do it; obviously we should challenge anti-fatness simply because it’s the right thing to do. But I think it is important to note that anti-fatness shares its roots with anti-transness, anti-Blackness, etc.: white supremacist and patriarchal desires to control people’s bodies, particularly the bodies of people who aren’t white men.

For that reason, I’m pleased that Gordon’s thesis trends more towards the systemic rather than the individual. Her points at the end of each chapter are individual actions (because that’s all we can do as individual readers). Yet her aims are social and systemic. This isn’t just about being “nicer” to fat people or more tolerant. This is about moving the fucking needle, about dismantling the systems that make it hard and expensive for fat people to fly or find clothing, the medical biases that prevent fat people from receiving dignified care.

This slim volume packs more of a punch than you would expect, and I highly recommend every thin person reads it. I love how careful and inclusive it is when talking about gender, race, and disability. I love how focused and organized it is. I love how Gordon doesn’t coddle the reader, challenging us while simultaneously—I hope—motivating us to do better. This is a book that should make a difference.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Damn, I don’t think I can write a review that’s going to do this book justice. It’s not just because I’m a white woman, and I’m going to miss a thousand little elements that Alicia Elliott has put in her for her fellow Indigenous readers. It’s not just because I read this weeks ago and am behind on writing reviews, so my memory has faded a bit. No, it’s mostly because And Then She Fell is just one of those novels, the ones where I feel like I, as a reader, have let it down. I’m awestruck by it, and I’m not sure I have the words. This is a must-read (with the caveat that it is very heavy and triggering, of course, especially for racialized readers), and it’s a sign, following on from her essay collection, that Elliott deserves a spot in the new canon of CanLit (with the caveat that I am not sure such a canon, with all of its nationalist undertones, is a desirable or useful thing any more).

Alice is a Haudenosaunee woman from Six Nations who has just had a baby, Dawn, and is nominally working on a novel that retells the Haudenosaunee creation story. Her husband, Steve, is tenure track at a university in Toronto. He and Alice have just moved into a beautiful house in a neighbourhood where no one looks like Alice. As she endures microaggressions and postpartum depression, Alice looks back on a series of strange incidents in her life. Was she just hearing voices? Was she hearing her ancestors or spirits? Is she paranoid, or is her next-door neighbour out to get her and have Children’s Aid Society take away her kid? At times a thriller, at times a deeply personal story of mental illness and trauma, And Then She Fell is always, always a story about how our choices in responding to the world shape us.

Elliott does interesting things with perspective. The prologue is told from a limited third-person point of view, carrying us through Alice’s early life on the reserve, her narrow avoidance of an encounter with a fuckboy named Mason, thanks to the strange incident where Pocahontas (from the Disney Pocahontas) speaks directly to her from the television. Then the novel shifts to first person. As Alice’s mental illness worsens, her narration becomes increasingly unreliable: did she really run into Mason? Did Steve really say those things, did he mean it the way Alice interprets it? There are enough jagged breaks in the narrative that Elliott has us questioning every event, every detail, wondering what is “real” and what isn’t. Then again, this book might very well be saying that “reality” is an overrated concept.

Women are, of course, less readily taken seriously than men in our society. This goes double for Indigenous women. And Then She Fell is a story about women, about Indigenous women, and the bonds between them. All the major characters in this story are women, from Alice herself to her aunties and cousins, daughter, descendant. The men, even Steve, are secondary. They exist on the periphery of these events and are not a part of the fabric of meaning-making of them. Similarly, Elliott draws a boundary between Alice’s femme relations and the white women she often finds herself surrounded by.

Elliott pulls no punches in describing the relentless thrum of racism running through Alice’s days. Less big events and more microaggressions, Alice details what it feels like to move through her neighbourhood as a visibly Indigenous woman. The judgment, the double standards, especially around how she looks, what she buys at a liquor store, how she parents her children. Elliott lays bare the myriad ways that Canada, despite its pledges of reconciliation, continues to police Indigenous women. Probably one of the most visceral experiences reading this book as a white woman is feeling how Alice has to have her shields up 24/7, especially now that she lives off reserve. There’s no escape.

One of the questions beating within the heart of this story is, to what extent does intergenerational trauma influence one’s mental health and stability? Mental illness affects people of all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Yet not everyone has the same family history of enduring centuries of colonialism. When your people have undergone gaslighting on a generational scale, that’s a whole different type of trauma. How much of Alice’s unravelling is genetic, environmental, intergenerational? Can we even parse it out in that way, and if we can, should we?

As Alice’s postpartum depression deepens and her and Steve start to drift further apart, I found myself wishing things would work out between them. I wanted this book to have a happy ending. I wanted there to be some kind of revelation at the climax that would help Alice turn it all around. While I won’t spoil the ending for you, I feel safe warning you that Elliott doesn’t let us off that easy. Which is for the best. This book has teeth, teeth which it has no problem sinking into you, dear reader, and which will not let you go.

To say that the final act of And Then She Fell has a twist is an understatement. The twist transcends genre. I think many people will compare it to something like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse for how Elliott describes things, which is apt. Nevertheless I was more reminded of Jo Walton’s My Real Children. In this final act, Elliott hammers home the theme lurking beneath this entire story: life isn’t about working towards some indefinite “happy” ending; life is everything we get, the good and the bad, and there is no way to pull it apart and optimize for the good.

In a way it reminds me of that famous speech at the end of “Vincent and the Doctor,” where the Doctor tells Amy that life is a series of good things and bad things, and you hope that the good outweighs the bad. Except Elliott takes this one step further, admonishes us that sometimes the good doesn’t outweigh the bad. Sometimes a life sucks, but it is and was, and if we could go back and change that, it wouldn’t be our life anymore. This might feel fatalist, but I think it might be more appropriate to call it circular. In the end, Alice’s story (by which I mean her life) overlaps with the creation story she is trying to work up the nerve to tell.

I really … I really appreciate this message. Again, that might feel weird given how addicted our culture is to the idea that “everything [should be] awesome.” This theme grounds me. I’m entering my mid-thirties, and I’m really starting to coming to terms with the fact that I am an adult and this is my life. I look back and wonder what I might have done differently, and I look forward and wonder what I might try to do in the future. And it’s so tempting to try to optimize my happiness. So I need art that grabs me by the collar and pulls me back and says, “No, Kara. You can’t do that.” Not shouldn’t. Can’t. Can’t be done.

This is the brilliance of Alicia Elliott’s first novel: the layers. It’s about mental illness, about racism, about connection and isolation. It’s about choices and what we leave for our descendants. It’s about who we are in relation to our wider society, and the responsibilities we have for telling stories with accuracy and grace. It’s about all of these things, speaks on all of these levels, and more spectacularly, it never stumbles, not once.

I never thought I would write this sentence, but my favourite part of this book was the cockroaches.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I am a firm believer that there is room for a wide range of literature. As much as my favourite form of storytelling is a juicy and straightforward novel, I enjoy short stories and novellas, stage plays and movies, video games and songs. Foster, by Claire Keegan, is an example of why I’m grateful that, at least for now, publishing has niches that have room for smaller, quieter tales. Although not something I would have picked up for myself (it was a gift), Foster is perfect in that it sets out with realistic goals and accomplishes them.

Set in Ireland, this novella follows an unnamed young girl sent to live on the farm of some relatives for the summer. She comes from a large family and is apprehensive about living with a childless couple—but as the summer progresses, they show her a tenderness and love that she could not have expected simply because she had no frame of reference for it. Far from a fairy tale, however, Foster is a story of juxtaposition: reminisces and the reality of the narrator’s family of origin continuously intrude upon her stable summer.

I don’t know much about Ireland. So one thing that immediately struck me as I read Foster was how deeply Irish it is—in a good way. Keegan traces geography as the narrator arrives at the Kinsella farm, casually references aspects of Irish life—especially rural life, on a farm—that most readers outside of Ireland, and perhaps a good few within, would not get on a first read. That’s the beauty when a talented author turns her hand to a novella: the limits of the form encourage a crispness of language and worldbuilding that novels usually don’t. Much like the long and languid summer over which it takes place, Foster evinces an effortless timelessness: there are newspapers and cooktops and Weetabix (for skincare, lol), television and cars and telephones. But there’s no web, no cell phones, no constant sense of connection and surveillance and participation. The narrator is isolated but not alone, disconnected but not dissatisfied.

This sense of utopia is undercut then by the narrator’s distinct feeling of being out of place. She’s unused to being the centre of attention, for she comes from a very large, Catholic family. The care she receives from both the Kinsellas feels uncomfortable—itchy. Mrs. Kinsella’s fussing over her cleanliness, complimenting her appearance, gently reproaching her for not cleaning out her earwax—to which, the narrator responds, her mother didn’t always have the time. Mr. Kinsella’s comfortable silences and the companionableness that the narrator feels with him as they are out on the land, something more subdued and powerful than the brooding silences of her father. One of life’s ironies is simply that we don’t get to choose our family of origin, nor do we have a great deal of control, at least as children, how we end up relating to our parents. Some people have beautiful childhoods; others have turbulent ones; most of us have something in between. Keegan captures this fundamental disconnect here, encouraging us to reflect on what it means to feel at home someplace.

Honestly, there’s a part of me that is suspicious of how much I liked Foster. I feel like I shouldn’t like it. It defies so much of what I personally enjoy about stories. Maybe that’s why I like it though. I appreciate its stubborn avoidance of any direct, external conflicts. I like that it never names the narrator. Keegan displays such confidence in how she restricts her narrative in its timeline and scope, almost as if she is challenging the reader to say, “No, this isn’t enough.” Except it is.

Foster is a sufficient story. It doesn’t grandstand or stunt. It invites you in, sits you down, and just as you are getting comfortable, sends you on your way.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Every time someone mentions iCarly, I feel old. This teen sitcom bookended my university years, 2007–2012, and as such its actors are my contemporaries even though they play younger roles. It’s easily the kind of show I would have watched had it premiered five years prior. As it is, I never got into it, and so I knew precious little of Miranda Cosgrove, Nathan Kress, or indeed, Jennette McCurdy. So when my best friend gave me I’m Glad My Mom Died for Christmas a couple years prior, I shelved it with mild interest, waiting for the right moment to pull it down and start reading.

This might not have been the right moment, but I read it. Wow. It has been a while since I read a book simultaneously so heavy yet so easy to get through. I’m not sure if McCurdy had a ghostwriter, but I really liked how she organized her thoughts and shared her story here. This memoir, pretty much chronological, starts in McCurdy’s early years as her mother pushes her into acting. It brings us through the iCarly years (McCurdy’s “big break”), past that, and then takes us just past her mother’s death. Divided into “Before” and “After” sections, the book is, not surprisingly, largely about McCurdy’s relationship with her mother and how that has influenced her career (not to mention her entire life). It’s equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

McCurdy slices through stereotypes about actors like a Jedi with a light-sabre. She wasn’t born into the biz. Her family doesn’t come from wealth. She also wasn’t “discovered.” She gets into acting because her mom is incredibly stubborn and ambitious on her behalf, and when she slowly begins to find success, she isn’t launched into stardom overnight. Most of her money goes to her mother and her family’s bills, and even when she does splurge on something like a home, it proves a bit much for her. Similarly, McCurdy belies the conventional notions of child actors: she isn’t spoiled, and if she is a bit out of touch with what a typical childhood and adolescence is like, it might be more because she grew up Mormon and homeschooled than because she grew up acting.

In this sense, I’m Glad My Mom Died is a clarion call to reform the acting business, especially where child actors are concerned. I don’t think anything that McCurdy shares in this book is surprising or even shocking. We have heard this story before, probably too many times—we just don’t listen. Tacitly, as a society, we accept that experiences like McCurdy’s are the price we pay so that we can have an endless rotating cast of child faces on our screens.

Consider, for instance, everything she writes about Dan Schneider. McCurdy calls him only “the Creator” in this book, but it’s transparently obvious to whom she refers. Serendipitously, I started this just after Quiet on Set premiered (though I haven’t watched it yet), which does refer to Schneider by name. Everything I heard about him in the media surrounding this documentary matches with what McCurdy shares here. The structure of our television and movie industry is such that people who enjoy abusing positions of power find it relatively easy to carve out their own little fiefdoms—and we let them, because they are “geniuses” and “auteurs.”

McCurdy’s abusive relationship with her mom is a whole other thing. It’s hard, reading her recollection of what her mom did to her. She strives to maintain a present tense, describing each memory as if it is happening in real-time rather than editorializing it. So she’ll be like, “Yeah, my mom showered with me,” and we the readers will be yelling, “That’s sexual abuse!” at the book until our voices are hoarse, but it isn’t until much later in the book that McCurdy processes that memory from that point of view. While effective at conveying how normalized her mom’s abusive behaviour felt, it’s also incredibly jarring. It’s no wonder McCurdy struggled to maintain even basic friendships, let alone deeper platonic or romantic relationships, even after her mom’s death.

Good for her for quitting acting. Good for her for getting out. All these “where are they now” articles that talk about has-been stars who haven’t had another hit since their early days of acting tend to downplay any actor who has successfully left the business on their terms. It’s easy for me to say this, I guess, as someone who didn’t watch iCarly and didn’t fall in love with Sam Puckett. Most of the actors I’ve enjoyed who have since left acting seem to have done so because they joined cults and went to prison (yikes, Allison Mack). Though not a big part of this book, McCurdy occasionally mentions how unsettling it has been to have people recognize her almost exclusively as Sam, to request that she identify herself with Sam in a way that is essentially traumatic for her. I joke sometimes about being a fangirl, but I’m not sure I will ever have it in me to obsess so much over any one person, character, or TV show. (I mean, I did name myself after Kara Danvers, and I adore Melissa Benoist and Nicole Maines, but I like to think I do this at a healthy distance….)

I’m Glad My Mom Died is a stellar if sad story. I hope that sharing it has helped McCurdy make some peace with how long it took her to get off the rails of her mother’s ambition and find her own. I wish her luck in whatever she is putting her hand to these days—even if it’s just growing a garden or, you know, existing. Everyone deserves to walk their own path.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Another satisfying conclusion to a fantasy trilogy? What have I done to deserve this? Freya Marske joins a small yet hallowed group of authors for wrapping her fantasy series with aplomb. A Power Unbound brings together the threads from the previous two books, resolving the story of the Last Contract and the more personal stories of the characters Marske has breathed into life over two novels. I was so excited to read this, and it does not disappoint.

As usual, spoilers for the first two books but not for this one.

This book is told primarily from the limited third-person perspective of Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn. Featured in the previous two books as a remote, unforgiving chap who had lost or given up his magic, Jack becomes more accessible to us in this third book. We learn more about his tragic past, the incident that claimed the life of his twin sister and robbed him of his magic. We also see how far Jack will go to take care of the people he loves. That includes family, friends, and lovers—because yes, there is more romance here. As the equinox approaches, the bad guys looking to bring together the three pieces of the Last Contract are dogging every move of Jack and his allies. It will take everyone working together to outwit and outfight those who would take the magic of England for themselves.

I’m not sure what I can say that I haven’t already said in my reviews of A Marvellous Light or A Restless Truth … Marske is just a phenomenal storyteller. She knows how to set up a conflict, ratchet up the tension scene after scene, and then pay it off with a big, desperate climax.

As far as character goes, the standout is, of course, the other perspective character, Alan. As we get to know this journalist/smutty writer better, we learn what drives him: the big family he feels responsible for taking care of, his desire to better himself in a world where upwards mobility is frowned upon. It’s through Alan and his attraction to Jack that we finally see fully Lord Hawthorn’s cold exterior melt—and yes, I mean that in every way, including the romantic.

Like with the first two books, the romance and smut here did nothing for me and were, if anything, things I skipped over—if spice is your thing, though, then whew, yes, read these! Nevertheless, I love the mixture of queer smut and fantasy set in Edwardian England. This is a rich, layered setting that Marske uses to her full advantage.

Probably the standout aspect of this novel, however, is simply the way Marske finally brings this series to a close. I love how she wraps this up! Without going into spoilers, let’s say that the story of the Last Contract is definitively resolved. Is there room for more stories with these characters? Certainly. But don’t worry about any cliffhangers connected to the main plot. I love how Marske plumbs the depth of this world that she has created, bringing together the threads of magic: faerie, ley lines and the land, spirits and ghosts—it all comes back, and it’s all put together in a way that makes sense.

Paramount to the plot is the theme of one’s connection to the land. One’s heritage. It’s so interesting to see this appear in a non-Indigenous story. Marske positions the contractual magic of English magicians against the land-based magic of hedge witches and sorcerers, essentially positing that contractual magic is associated with the rise of mercantilism and capitalism in England, whereas land-based magic is far more humanist, natural, forgiving. It’s a beautiful, anticapitalist sentiment lurking beneath a book that, after all, has relatively well-off people as several of its main characters.

My only complaint is that, since this book follows Jack and Alan, we don’t get to spend as much time with Maud, Violet, Edwin, or Robyn. I expected as much given how Marske changed things up for A Restless Truth. Nevertheless, I’m left wistful for more stories, especially from Maud’s point of view because I have a soft spot for her!

Beyond that, this is a fitting and feels-worthy conclusion to one of the most original, fulfilling, and spicy fantasy trilogies I have read in the past decade. If you like historical fantasy set in England, don’t mind a little queer romance/smut, and want a tense mystery along the way, then stop sleeping on this series. Read these books: you won’t regret it.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This book has been on my to-read list for ages. People keep recommending it to me (shout out to Meagan in particular). In true Kara fashion, I bought Wordslut and then allowed it to languish on my physical to-read shelf for … I don’t know, years? Meanwhile, I listened religiously (pun intended) to the Sounds Like a Cult podcast that Amanda Montell cohosted. The time has come, however, to talk about language from a feminist perspective! Let’s go.

Montell is a linguist, among other things, and curious about the origins of gendered language in English. Why does buddy have positive, not to mention gender-neutral, connotations, whereas sissy is a pejorative usually directed at men? They’re both colloquialisms for brother and sister, respectively (something I didn’t know, though which seems obvious, now that Montell explains it to me). Beyond words, though, Montell also explores linguistic phenomena such as vocal fry, uptalk, the word “like,” etc.—phenomena that are often feminine-coded and therefore derided by more “serious” speakers of language. Along the way, there are intersectional discussions of AAVE, appropriation therefrom, language connected to 2SLGBTQ+ communities, and more. For a relatively short book, Wordslut is packed with useful tidbits and ideas.

In the first few chapters, I was hesitant about what shape my review might take: most of what Montell was saying was stuff I already knew. I needn’t have worried, however, for as the book goes on there was plenty of material that was new to me—and that’s why I read nonfiction, ultimately. Chapters 3 and 4 are among my favourite; Chapter 7 was fascinating; Chapter 10 was, uh, enthralling; the final chapter, while short, offers a thoughtful and realistic meditation on what we might expect from language shifts in the future.

Chapter 3 covers “girl talk,” i.e., how women talk to each other when not in mixed company. Montell debunks some very outdated ideas about the differences in how genders use language. Then she discusses how women and men tend to use hedges differently (these are words like “just” or “you know”) as well as minimal linguistic responses (“mmhmm”). Although some of her points won’t be surprising to many of us—for example, women tend to be more collaborative in their speech, while men tend to take turns and the dominant person tends to talk the most—I loved how deep she dives into this topic and supports it with empirical research. For example, women tend to use hedges less to communicate insecurity than to soften their own sense of confidence in their topic.

As someone who has been in transition for four years now, I have been fascinated by the way my own speech has changed to reflect my new relationship with gender and relationality to other women. I’m not talking about my voice (which I am too lazy to do much about because voice coaching/therapy takes, you know, effort). Rather, I’ve definitely noticed that the way I speak, my diction and patterns, has shifted to emulate how the women in my social circles speak. I’m not consciously setting out to do it, but it’s happening kind of by osmosis. I’ll always have my own idiosyncratic features, like my cryptic, Teal’c-inspired “Indeed” that I throw in to many a conversation. But I definitely feel more empowered now that I have this wider, scientific understanding of girl talk!

Chapter 4 is one of several that pushes back against the policing of language. Montell establishes that linguistic innovation is in fact normative, and it’s often underrepresented or marginalized groups that engage in such innovation. She provides a host of examples from English and other languages around the world. Whether it’s uptalk or the use of the word “like” (which has more functions in speech than I realized!), whatever trend currently observed among teenage girls and criticized swiftly thereafter tends to spread to the rest of the population in a couple of decades. As with any moral panic, the current linguistic moral panics are not special, just the latest in a long line of excuses old white people look for to clutch pearls.

In this sense, Wordslut succeeds in its goal to get the reader thinking about language as a feminist or revolutionary concept. I like how Montell clearly put in the work to speak to researchers, journalists, and others who think and breathe language. I like how she challenges us to be more concrete in how we think about what we say and write.

The limitations of the book are equally clear: it is a pop linguistics book, not a deep treatise on these subjects, and it’s grounded firmly in white feminism despite attempts at intersectionality. If you’re looking for a more detailed examination of how, say, Black feminists in the 1970s like the Combahee River Collective changed the language, you won’t find that here. This book is designed to make its white women readers feel simultaneously erudite and salacious: ooh, I’m reading about all these slang words for my genitals! At no point, however, does the book truly push a white reader to feel at all uncomfortable or complicit in cultural appropriation or our role of judging racialized people if their accents, diction, or cultural references aren’t too our liking. The subtitle of this book purports to want a “taking back” of English, yet I’m not sure it was ever really taken from me at any point, and I want to own up to that.

All of this is to say: I really enjoyed Wordslut. It’s smart and sassy and easy to read. Montell’s voice is crisp, edifying yet also entertaining. I learned a lot, and I’ll join the legion of people already recommending this book. At the same time, I hope we are honest with ourselves when talking about books like this that trade on revolutionary language while falling short of much in the way of revolutionary action (though, credit where it is due, Montell has some harsh words for capitalism in here, and of course for misogyny!).

It’s like, you know, a totally great read about getting the patriarchy out of our language, y’all.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Although I have never dealt with loss of this magnitude, I understand how it can reshape someone. Bad Cree is a story about the shape of loss, the way grief carves itself into your soul even when you think you haven’t let it. Jessica Johns uses traditional Cree stories to explore the power of family, of trusting yourself, and confronting those parts of yourself that you would prefer not to look at. It’s a “horror” story in a sense, a suspense story too, but it’s also a story of growth, renewal, and hope.

Mackenzie is Cree but living in Vancouver. She starts to have unsettling dreams, and when she wakes, sometimes she brings back a part of the dream into the waking world. So she heads back home to Treaty 8 territory, the site of her dreams and her family. As Mackenzie seeks to uncover the source of her dreams, she must confront unresolved grief, tension with her siblings and mother, and memories of her lost sister.

Bad Cree pulls you into the story immediately and never lets you go. Mackenzie is a solid protagonist whom you feel like you get to know from page one. The way she is handling her unexpected dream magic feels so grounded and believable, right down to how she’s trying to casually dismiss it while talking to her friend even though, at the same time, she’s really freaked out and having trouble sleeping. The text messages from her dead sister aren’t helping either. Johns carefully unspools Mackenzie in such a way that all of her actions make sense.

As Mackenzie returns home, Johns unspools the rest of the backstory while simultaneously pushing the main plot forward. I love how we get to know each of the women in Mackenzie’s family. How, as she reveals her dreaming to them, they each provide a new piece of the puzzle, like the aunt who also has such dreams or the cousin who trained herself not to dream for this reason. Mackenzie’s family feels like so many families you have been in or met. They come together for Mackenzie, yet there remains tension among them, particularly become Mackenzie and her surviving sister over Mackenzie’s “abandonment.” Family are the people you call not just when you need them but when you need them and have no other choice.

Still, they all come together for her, each in their own way. The cover copy bills Bad Cree as a novel of female & femme friendship and family, and it’s right. There’s something very uplifting, especially juxtaposed against the horror lurking beneath this story, about so many competent and caring women coming together to help out. They don’t always agree on the best course of action, but they all contribute to success in the face of this threat. Nothing demonstrates this better than the climax, where they prepare to confront the threat directly. I love how Mackenzie’s mother and the aunties prepare the younger women for their trip, see them off. There aren’t really many men in this story—mostly just Mackenzie’s father, on the periphery—and that must be on purpose.

As a white girl, it isn’t for me to comment on the “Indigeneity” of this story. But I can see the shape of the circular storytelling happening here, the way Johns keeps revolving around the pivot point of Sabrina’s death, of Mackenzie’s memory of her and Sabrina on the lake, moving us around and through these focal points. Parts of this novel are so understated, and it works incredibly well because it allows you to focus on what matters: Mackenzie, her memories, her dreams, her family.

Here’s the thing: Bad Cree isn’t just great Indigenous storytelling (though I am sure it is that); it’s great storytelling, full stop. Alternatively heartbreaking, sympathetic, pulse-pounding, and exciting, this is a novel that knows what it’s about and pulls off its goals without breaking a sweat (though you, reader, might). I nearly passed on it because I’m not much of a horror girlie, and I’m glad I pushed myself past that apprehension, because there is a beautiful story here.

Also, Kokum stopping by at the end just to say, “What’s up”? Priceless. Perfection.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Sometimes love is not forever. Sometimes relationships end. Sometimes you transform your lover into an unholy monster bent on world domination. That’s the gist of The Sins on Their Bones, by Laura R. Samotin. Heavy on tragedy and pathos, this is a book steeped in magic and mysticism yet not always satisfying in terms of pacing or plot. I received a copy in exchange for a review.

Dimitri Alexeyev used to be the Tzar until his magically reanimated husband overthrew him for being a softie. Now in exile from Novo-Svitsevo, he and his court come to the unenviable conclusion that the only way for Dimitri to retake his throne and save his people from Alexey’s depredations is to kill the unkillable thing that Alexey has become. Easier said than done, of course. Meanwhile, hopped up on dark power, Alexey is determined to harness as much of that power as possible to create an army of demons that he can use to take over the entire world.

Do … do we call this a love story? The love between Dimitri and Alexey is central to the plot of this book, yet they are definitely on the enemies side of the lovers-to-enemies equation even at the start. I would have to describe the principal feeling that suffuses this book as ache. Not only does Dimitri ache for Alexey (and, though Alexey would not always admit it, vice versa), but all the supporting characters seem to ache as well. Whether it’s for someone or for something, each character has an ache, a want, a desire unfulfilled. This is a story about the depths of loss.

To that end, I really liked how languid this book is at times. The pacing is really slow (and I do have some criticisms of that to come). Dimitri is so, so broken throughout this book, from start to finish, because of what has become of his husband. This is not a story of heroism, patriotism, or fighting the good fight. It’s a story about the uncomfortable fact that if a loss doesn’t kill you, life goes on. Dimitri didn’t die. (Alexey did, but look what that did for him!) Dimitri has survived to watch the monster he created overrun his country and potentially the world. That must be a kind of living hell, and Samotin does an excellent job exploring what that would be like for someone.

The people who surround Dimitri do their best to bolster him, though they can only do so much. I enjoyed meeting these supporting characters and learning what we do about them. I wish we had learned more. The book focuses extremely tightly on three characters. Samotin sketches out, more or less successfully, distinct personalities for the rest. Nevertheless, the result is that this book feels far more intimate than your standard epic fantasy, much more like a stage play.

My biggest issue with this book, however, is how Samotin eschews showing flashbacks in favour of telling us about what happened in the past. I’m not a show-versus-tell purist. But I can only read so many scenes of characters sitting around telling us about how bad the war was, about how awful Alexey’s heel turn was, etc., when it is entirely possible to simply show us those moments. I understand Samotin starts this story very deliberately from a certain place, basically Dimitri at his nadir. Alas, the constant looking back and wallowing in the past made me wonder at times while I was reading whether the story should have started earlier.

Regardless, I can’t fault Samotin for the premise, for Alexey’s transformation and subsequent machinations. The tragedy that underpins this story is simple: Dimitri feels guilty for being the cause of Alexey’s transformation, yet Alexey left him little choice. Both men are responsible for what happens. I really liked how the story draws out and sustains a kind of narrative revulsion for Alexey’s character: his coldness, his cruelty, his dominating streak. He is a study in inhumanity as much as Vasily is a study in humanity, each man orbiting Dimitri, a study in misery and regret. These apposite characterizations are extremely satisfying.

The Sins on Their Bones is a clever, character-driven novel. I like that Samotin draws upon eastern European and Jewish folklore and history, which are all underrepresented in fantasy. I like the overall setup, the way that Dimitri and Alexey are at odds, and how Samotin unspools each man’s thoughts and feelings. I like the queernorm society. Overall, this is a rich, sympathetic, resonant novel—one that I wish I had connected with more.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Not bad, John M. Ford. Not bad. That’s about all I’ve got for opening thoughts. I received an eARC of this reprint edition of classic Web of Angels from Tor and NetGalley in exchange for a review.

This edition has a foreword from Cory Doctorow, who delivers an encomium of Ford while waxing poetically about Web of Angels as a kind of evolutionary cousin of what became cyberpunk. It makes a lot of sense. As Doctorow says, a lot in this book is familiar, right down to the naming of Ford’s cyberspace as the Web—however, a lot of it also feels dated, a result of Ford writing just prior to the PC and internet displacing the phone as the primary mode of telecommunication.

Grailer Diomede is nine years old when the book opens, a precocious boy singled out by a fascist interstellar law enforcement agency for death. Rescued in the nick of time, Grailer is raised to embrace his abilities as someone with “Fourth Literacy,” which means he can not only operate and program for the vast, interstellar Web, but he actually has the ability to conceive of it and its myriad connections in an intuitive way.

He’s a l33t hax0rz, as I might have put it back when I started my journey on the web in 2004.

This book is a bildungsroman that follows Grailer as he quickly grows up, falls in love, and starts sticking it to the man. Ford takes us to various exotic locations, and we meet a small but plucky cast of characters who alternately aid or antagonize Grailer while he is posing in one of his many Web-forged identities. The vignettes within this story overlap and spiral towards an inevitable conclusion, echoes of which reside in later science fiction, like The Matrix.

Doctorow mentions that this is one of Ford’s less accessible works, and I believe it. Time slips, unmarked flashbacks, and precious little exposition—especially for a reader unfamiliar with what operating a computer terminal felt like in the seventies. I won’t lie to you: I was really confused about what was going on for a great deal of this book. I still am, kind of, but rather than worry too much about it, I’m going to roll with it.

Here’s what I liked about this book: even without reading that foreword, I would have been able to see the connections between Ford’s writing and the authors who have come since. In this way, Web of Angels is clearly a classic worthy of this reissue, belonging up there among the other greats like Butler, Le Guin, Asimov.

Ford’s prose has a fairytale-like quality that reminds me of Neil Gaiman. He can quickly set a scene even when descriptive language is at a premium. The future of humanity that Ford sketches here is a lush one but also full of people, places, and things that aren’t entirely what they seem.

Ford and his contemporary cyberpunk founder, William Gibson, share in common a view of cyberspace as something that exists independently of the humans who use it. Grailer ponders whether the Web can be intelligent, as in self-aware, for it spans the entirety of human existence. Ideas like the Singularity lurk in the background of this novel, occasionally mentioned or hinted at in that way that happens when we haven’t quite coined all the terms that are now familiar to us.

But actually, the author whose writing this most reminds me of is Dan Simmons. His Hyperion novels feel ripped out of the pages of Web of Angels in the sense that both books posit a future of humanity steeped in literary trappings of our past. A lot of science fiction imagines that our culture will trend further towards secularism, towards a cold, minimalist aesthetic of starship hull blues and greys (or it goes solarpunk and imagines us all in the greens and browns of cholorphyll bioships, lol). Ford and Simmons draw their inspiration from humanity’s literary past in telling of our literary future: from subcultures whose every movements are part of an intricate Dance to doctors who wear capes and receive the title of Lord, these anachronisms, more even than the faster-than-light drives and lifespan-enhancing treatments, mark this society as futuristic and alien.

Web of Angels is not a novel that “holds up” in a modern sense of what most readers want from their novels. The story is not straightforward. The characters are not particularly deep. In many ways, this reads like a novella stretched thinly over the frame of a novel—and I mean that as a compliment. This is a book for the anthropologist of science fiction, for the fan digging into the archives to glimpse their favourite authors’ inspiration. I stipulate to Ford’s brilliance while also admitting that this book, on its own, didn’t do a lot for me. I won’t rush out to read more by Ford, but I am pleased to have read something by him, and perhaps I will explore his oeuvre further now that Tor has rights to republish!

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

There’s a now-classic sketch from comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb called “Are We the Baddies?”. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, but to spoil the bit, it’s about two SS officers having a conversation on the front line in which it gradually dawns on them that they might be the bad guys in this war. Involving Nazis in your comedy is always a dicey proposition, but Mitchell and Webb pull it off: the sketch illustrates how challenging it can be to break the cognitive dissonance required to rationalize one’s place in human suffering on a mass scale. The Wings Upon Her Back does the same thing. Through an intimate story told across two times, Samantha Mills illustrates how it’s harder to stand up to fascism when every step towards that fascism felt logical and just at the time. I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for my review.

Zemolai has spent the past decades of her life as a Winged. She flies through the air on mechanical wings attached to her body via implants. This technology is a gift from the gods, specifically the Mecha god, one of the five who sleep watchfully over Zemolai’s city. At the start of the novel, Zemolai makes a tragic mistake that leads to her downfall. Cast out of her paradise, she finds herself the unwilling companion of the rebels she has spent so long despising. Mills intersperses these chapters with a look back at who Zemolai was before she was Winged: Zenya, a descendant of scholars who dreamed of flying and set her sights on being a warrior who could protect her city.

Mills doesn’t pull punches here. This book is laser-focused, restricting its perspective almost entirely to Zemolai or her younger self, Zenya. The parallel storytelling drives home the central theme with startling clarity: Zenya is idealistic and optimistic, driven to impress Vodaya at all costs, devoted to the mission; Zemolai is bitter, tired, divided, and eventually resentful of Vodaya’s deceit. Like two ships passing in the night, Zenya’s radicalization proceeds apace with Zemolai’s deprogramming. The result is a kind of synergy foreshadowed by one of the city’s scholars: we are who we always were, all our selves across all points of our existence. She is Zemolai and Zenya, even if it takes her a while to recognize this.

You’ve seen elements of Zemolai’s story in plenty of media before. The prisoner who eventually comes around to the side of good, the face turn, is a common enough trope, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. So Zemolai’s gruff, half-hearted cooperation with Galiana and the others feels familiar. However, it has been a while (if ever) that I’ve read this story from the prisoner’s point of view. To have such a direct and personal audience to someone slowly being deradicalized is a fascinating experience. As the cracks appear in Zemolai’s faith in the mission, her desperation becomes palpable. It’s hard to come to terms with one’s complicity in causing suffering.

It’s also hard to write such a flawed protagonist. It’s easy to write a shining hero, someone who’s always trying to do the right thing (even if they misstep occasionally). That’s not Zemolai. She believes that what she is doing is for the greater good, of course. But each chapter, each decision, compromises Zenya’s connection to her past and her community a little more. She is such a sympathetic figure, but it’s hard to call her a good person, and that’s the point.

Few people set out to be the baddie. Zemolai certainly didn’t. Mills expertly depicts how Zenya endures the perfect storm: Vodaya’s manipulations, Zenya’s idealism, the secretive politics of the city’s most powerful, etc. (The nature of the gods lurks in the backdrop, a tantalizing mystery but not one that ultimately matters all that much to the overall plot.) All of Zemolai’s pain, particularly the deterioration of her relationship with Vodaya, is so bold on the page. I was really invested in seeing this story through to the end, and I really like where Mills chooses to end it.

This is a tight, contained novel with an excellent setting and a strong protagonist who can carry this story on her shoulders, much like she carried her wings for twenty years. In a time where we need to reflect more on our own complicity (those of us who live in countries that benefit from companies exploiting child labour in Congo, or countries that fund genocide), The Wings Upon Her Back offers a potent combination of admonishment and hope. You can’t wipe your sins away simply by announcing you’ve had a change of heart. You can’t excuse away your actions by pointing to the influences that shaped you into that person. But it is never too late to make a choice, to turn around, to embrace that past self that has been inside you all along.

I picked up The Wings Upon Her Back because I was intrigued by the idea of mechanical angels protecting a city. I got so much more than I bargained for: a story of fascism and abuse, of resilience and rebuilding, of loss and pain and sorrow. This is a poignant but worthwhile read, one I highly recommend when you are ready for it.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.