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| 1487011938
| 9781487011932
| 1487011938
| 4.21
| 406
| Sep 05, 2023
| Sep 05, 2023
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Apr 24, 2025
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Paperback
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| 1803369396
| 9781803369396
| B0D1M3Y8XH
| 3.36
| 306
| Apr 15, 2025
| Apr 15, 2025
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liked it
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Two years ago I read an interesting little novelette by Ai Jiang and was intrigued. Now I’ve got a review copy of A Palace Near the Wind courtesy NetG
Two years ago I read an interesting little novelette by Ai Jiang and was intrigued. Now I’ve got a review copy of A Palace Near the Wind courtesy NetGalley, and I remain intrigued. Jiang once again harnesses her incredible talent for descriptive prose and layers atop that an impressive, tender style of characterization. I wanted to like this more than I did—and will explain why I didn’t—but I did like it quite a bit. Liu Lufeng is the eldest princess of the Feng, a people made from bark and who live more or less harmoniously with the natural world. The Land Walkers (ordinary humans, near as I can tell) encroach upon the forests of Feng with their Travellers and engines and other machinery. Only the marriages of Lufeng’s sisters and mother to the King has delayed further encroachment. Now it’s Lufeng’s turn—except she is about to discover there are far more secrets to this agreement than she could ever realize. The first thing you’ll notice is how immediately Jiang creates a strikingly different world from ours. Lufeng is, of course, somewhat alien to us in how she lives, from her custom to her very being—the Feng walk on the wind. Yet even the human characters in this story feel utterly alien as well, with names like Copper and Tin. There is precious little familiar to grasp on to—in a good way. I loved how Jiang slowly reveals this world to us piece by piece as sheltered Lufeng explores and questions everything. The reader must do the same thing. On its surface, A Palace Near the Wind is obviously a book about colonialism, extraction-based capitalism, industralization, etc. If you stop there, however, you will miss some deeper motifs. Family, and the tensions caused by family members embracing different ideologies, is another somewhat obvious one. Deep down, however, I think this novella is trying to say something about the knife’s edge between guile and cynicism. Lufeng at the beginning of this story is guileless and, if not innocent, quite gullible. She learns quickly. She starts to develop guile and the ability to dissemble, and she soon plots escapes and betrayals. Yet the people around her constantly tempt her with the opportunity to nope out, to take the easy way out, to join them or at the very list stop opposing them, and in return, her life will be set. This is a book about why we choose the struggle when evil uses every tool at its disposal to tell us that struggle is pointless or profitless. For some reason—I honestly cannot explain why—this book reminds me of The Wizard of Oz. There is something of the Wizard in the King. There is something of Oz and its wider landscape in this world. I make this comparison favourably, mind. My major criticism is simply that I wish this were a full-throated novel rather than the first novella in a � trilogy? Duology? Some kind of series. The story builds and builds and ends on a semi-cliffhanger that is � fine. But I think it takes some of the wind out of the story’s sails, if you will. I liked this story but not enough to be hungry for the sequel, whereas if it were a novel, I feel like I’d be more satisfied when I reached the conclusion. Or maybe not! Points for originality and beautiful writing, along with an interesting exploration of themes. Originally posted on . ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 28, 2025
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Apr 04, 2025
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Apr 21, 2025
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Kindle Edition
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| 0593183169
| 9780593183168
| 0593183169
| 3.52
| 164,093
| Jun 29, 2021
| Jun 29, 2021
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did not like it
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Not my usual fare, but my neighbour bought it and a different friend, who is much more into horror, had mentioned Riley Sager a few times. I didn’t le
Not my usual fare, but my neighbour bought it and a different friend, who is much more into horror, had mentioned Riley Sager a few times. I didn’t learn until after I read Survive the Night that she considers it one of Sager’s weaker novels! While diehard horror fans might find something good in this, there was very little here for me. Charlie Jordan is heading home to Ohio, effectively dropping out of college. Her roommate was murdered by a campus serial killer, and Charlie blames herself. Now Charlie is off her meds and hallucinating her dead friend, among other things. She finds a rideshare with Josh, a clean-cut, straightforward young man who almost-definitely-maybe isn’t a serial killer himself—or is he � dun dun dun. Charlie gets into his car, and they start driving, and that, of course, is when the plot thickens. I totally see what Sager is going for here. He attempts to build suspense, dangling the possibility of Josh being Maddie’s killer before us while at the same time doing enough to establish doubt to keep us guessing. It’s generally well done. However, the book relies a lot on Charlie making stupid decisions to keep the plot going. She has plenty of opportunities to escape from Josh. Even when she does the right thing, though, she somehow manages to bungle it. I really don’t have much else to say about this one. It DZ’t live up to its premise, and it was pretty boring. The ending retcons everything into a framed narrative that is � meh. That’s all from me. Originally posted on . ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 25, 2025
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Mar 27, 2025
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Apr 21, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 0586074619
| 9780586074619
| 0586074619
| 4.06
| 41,574
| Apr 1986
| 2000
|
really liked it
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We are very spoiled, and very privileged, to live now in the twenty-first century. We look back on works of science fiction from the 1950s, 1960s, and
We are very spoiled, and very privileged, to live now in the twenty-first century. We look back on works of science fiction from the 1950s, 1960s, and onward that reference the 1990s or 2000s as "the future" and make grandiose predictions: we'll have flying cars! a eugenics war! robot apocalypse! It's interesting to note that such extrapolation, while often falling very short of the mark, tends to be conservative when it describes the technological platforms through which we acquire these flying cars, supermen, and killer robots. The twenty-first century of the early twentieth century still involved cassette tapes and analog computers. The digital revolution is a true paradigm shift in science fiction just as it has been in the rest of our society, rendering such visions of the present future quaint. For people more open-minded than myself, this is often not a problem. I have difficulty immersing myself in stories that allude to now-obsolete technology as if it were the future—I can do it, as is evident by my enjoyment of the original Star Trek series, but it is difficult. I'm a child of the digital age, and I'm spoiled that way. William Gibson is a special case. His work, too, is vulnerable to the effects of aging. Yet he is rightly called a visionary and a prescient master of this field: after all, he coined the term cyberspace, and his descriptions of virtual reality have influenced its depictions in film and literature ever since Neuromancer first appeared on the scene. So even though Gibson's stories have aged as his future never came to pass, they remain amazing and brilliant. He infused them with ideas and conflicts that continue to grip readers even as the futures these stories depict turn into alternative versions of history. Burning Chrome is a wonderful treasure trove of Gibson's genius. I did not like every story within, but every story is brilliant in its own way. I never liked the film version of Johnny Mneumonic, and the short story, though substantially different, did not change my mind. Gibson throws around some intriguing ideas, but he never really explores them with the depth I'd like. I wonder if I would feel the same way about "Burning Chrome" if I hadn't read Neuromancer: like the novel, it makes computer hacking into an exciting, adrenaline-fuelled experience, as the name "console cowboy" might suggest. And I really enjoyed "Burning Chrome" for the way its narrator judges the relationship between Bobby Quine and Rikki. Unlike "Johnny Mneumonic," Gibson establishes the backstory just enough to justify the main action but not so much that one feels like one is missing out on the larger picture. (But if you do, and you haven't read it, then you really should go get a copy of Neuromancer.) Though "Johnny Mneumonic" is very well-known and "Burning Chrome" lends its title to this entire collection, these were not the most memorable stories for me. Those stories are tame compared to some of the utterly weird stuff that Gibson has displays in between them. From recorded personalities lurking just off stage to a man slowly discovering he might not be human after all, Burning Chrome delivers stories that demonstrate Gibson's grasp on the breadth of what science fiction can accomplish. I'm not sure how to describe "The Winter Market." I could say a recording engineer discovers an artist who, encumbered by an exoskeleton and suffering from a terminal illness, uploads herself to a computer. That's pretty accurate, although it doesn't quite capture the nuances that Gibson infuses into the story. As the main character questions whether the recorded version of Lise's personality is actually "her" (all the while dreading the moment "she" calls him), we're treated to a flashback explanation of how they met and how her detached attitude toward life has made him dissatisfied with his own. It's interesting that so many of Gibson's protagonists are young, dissatisfied males who are down on their luck and fall in with a mysterious woman who owes him no particular allegiance: Johnny Mneumonic, Case (from Neuromancer), Parker, Bobby, the narrator of "The Winter Market," and Deke all fall into this category. They are certainly not the same characters—not even close!—but it's an intriguing recurring motif. "Red Star, Winter Orbit" is one of those stories of a future that never was. Space has been largely abandoned, except for a communist, Russian space station and bubble-like domes inhabited by Americans. But Russia wants to retire its space station, which is bad news for Colonel Korolev, the first man on Mars. Thanks to an accident years ago, Korolev is unable to return to Earth and must live out his remaining days aboard the Russian space station. So when it gets decommissioned, naturally, he isn't very happy. Together with several sympathetic members of the crew, they hatch a plan to leak word to the rest of the world what Russia intends to do to its hero. It's a touching story with a nice twist at the end. In contrast, "Dogfight" is also a touching story but does not have the endearing twist. Deke is the main character, but I hesitate to call him a protagonist. He starts low and falls farther as he seeks pre-eminence in his new obsession, combat with holographic, mentally-directed biplanes. "The Belonging Kind" is a really weird, almost purely psychological tale about a man who meets a shapeshifter in a bar and becomes obsessed with her. I don't want to spoil the ending, although it's a little predictable, just because Gibson and co-author John Shirley do such a good job bringing it about. However, the real star of Burning Chrome has to be "Hinterlands." It's a somewhat dark, depressing vision of how we might join the interstellar community. In "Hinterlands," Russian Colonel Olga Tovyevski accidentally discovers an anomaly near . Her space capsule disappears through it, returning years later with a catatonic Russian on board, trashed communications equipment � a seashell of extraterrestrial origin. Boom, as they say, goes the dynamite. You can imagine what would happen if that occurred today, except you don't have to, because Gibson describes it for us. The world's governments leap into action, and "exobiology suddenly found itself standing on unnervingly solid ground." They soon discover an awful catch to this wormhole phenomenon (which the Americans dub "the Highway"): every pilot returns dead from suicide or mad, and the mad ones usually commit suicide shortly thereafter. So why bother to pay the price of a ticket? Our narrator, Toby, explains: If the first ones to come back had only returned with seashells, I doubt that Heaven [the space station] would be out here. Heaven was built after a dead Frenchman returned with a twelve-centimeter ring of magnetically coded steel locked in his cold hand, black parody of the lucky kid who wins the free ride on the merry-go-round. We may never find out where or how he got it, but that ring was the Rosetta stone for cancer. So now it's cargo cult time for the human race. We can pick things up out there that we might not stumble across in research in a thousand years. Charmian says we're like those poor suckers on their islands, who spend all their time building landing strips to make the big silver birds come back. Charmian says that contact with 'superior' civilizations is something you don't wish on your worst enemy. To me, this paragraph shows why William Gibson is a master of the science fiction field. It's a somewhat chilling interpretation of the role humans might have if we ever enter into contact with a larger, established interstellar community: we'll be the primitive species. We won't necessarily communicate effectively or benignly, but we will acquire advanced technology and then ask for more, and it might very well destroy us. In Star Trek, despite the fact that they are the new kids on the block, humans go on to become the founders of the United Federation of Planets (along with the older, more stoic Vulcans and the volatile Andorians). Science fiction often portrays (warning: TVTropes), which is not surprising considering the species of both the writers and their audience. So it's refreshing when authors take a step back, think critically, and present a different perspective, even one as bleak as this: we're just rats, pushing a button to make food come out. Toby and his lover Charmian, by the way, were rejected as pilots and now serve as "surrogates" on Heaven. They greet the returned pilots—the live ones, that is—and try to help bring them back to something approaching a normal mental state. As Toby explains, they are seldom successful. Whatever happens to pilots who go through the Highway, it breaks them. Yet "Hinterlands" concludes with Toby's laments that he and Charmian were found unsuitable for being pilots and his description of their continual longing to go on this almost-certainly fatal adventure. It's an amazing story, both in concept and in execution, and it alone is worth finding a copy of Burning Chrome. William Gibson fans, put Burning Chrome on your to-read list if it's not already there. And for those of who you haven't read William Gibson, this would be a fine place to start (though I still recommend Neuromancer as well). This anthology is a snapshot of Gibson at his best, from the familiar milieu of his Sprawl world and beyond, to even weirder and more imaginative places. Gibson is a source of great ideas, and he always manages to wrap them in even greater stories. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Jun 06, 2011
not set
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Jun 08, 2011
not set
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Apr 14, 2025
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0648942643
| 9780648942641
| B0DHPVMZ16
| 4.00
| 15
| unknown
| Feb 15, 2025
|
it was ok
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Hot on the heels of writing about why space is awesome, it feels fitting I turn around and consider the downsides of space travel. Well, in this case,
Hot on the heels of writing about why space is awesome, it feels fitting I turn around and consider the downsides of space travel. Well, in this case, it’s more like space labour. Sunward Sky offers a near-future, hard science fiction take on the perils of spending too long away from Earth’s surface. Henry Neilsen weaves social commentary in with mystery, conspiracy, and action. While not entirely successful, in my opinion, this book raises some interesting questions. I received a copy in exchange for a review. Alyssa joins the crew of the eponymous spaceship for the first time. Ostensibly, she has signed on to a labour contract: the crew of Sunward Sky repairs the various satellite constellations in low and medium Earth orbits. These include familiar systems, like GPS and its various sister networks. Without this labour, the satellites would stop functioning—and in a world devastated by climate change and all manner of other, hinted-at disasters, people need communications and positioning more than ever. However, Alyssa has an ulterior motive: she thinks she has the cure to a chronic condition spacers develop if they spend too long in orbit. Soon, Alyssa discovers she has signed up for more than she bargained: there’s a conspiracy on board, one that threatens not only her own life but the security and stability of everyone on Earth. One thing you can’t say about this book is that it’s paced too slowly. From the beginning, Neilsen builds consistently towards the book’s explosive climax. Even before she makes it aboard the ship, Alyssa discovers the first hints of the conspiracy that will soon rock Sunward Sky. I really like how Neilsen DZ’t slow-roll things. I expected Alyssa’s investigation and the thriller aspects of the conspiracy to be the bulk of the novel. Instead, things take a disastrous turn pretty quickly. In the same way, Alyssa proves a decisive, action-oriented protagonist despite lacking much experience in space. After her initial terror at realizing she might be the only one aboard who knows about the conspiracy, she quickly rallies and starts doing something. We love a strong female protagonist written realistically by a male author. I wish I could say something similar for the rest of the cast. In general, the characterization in Sunward Sky feels hasty and underrealized. Each character exist primarily to fill their role in the plot, and they seldom have much more in the way of personality or depth beyond that. This is especially unfortunate given Neilsen’s proclivity for killing off characters: I just don’t feel sad for them the way I would someone I’ve really had a chance to know and connect with. They’re all redshirts. Something similar is amiss with the plot. While the pacing, as I noted, is excellent, the story quickly arcs upwards only to plateau more than climax. Dispensing with the slow-burn mystery in favour of the dramatic disaster story does wonders for the dramatic tension—until it DZ’t, because there’s no other mystery. I suppose the tension is supposed to come from the question of “will they survive?”—and having proved he’s willing to kill off any character, Neilsen has demonstrated the answer isn’t necessarily yes. Alas, I just � didn’t care about how the story turned out. In all of this, the B story about Alyssa’s wonder drug is sidelined. It gets mentioned throughout, and there are awkward flashbacks jammed in here and there. This is a shame, for it’s really the best part of Sunward Sky. Neilsen has extrapolated the current climate of creeping privatization of the aerospace industry, and he’s created a convincing underclass of people essentially doomed to disability. Everything he imagines when it comes to the crew, how they got there, etc., feels super believable. Indeed, if there is anything that will redeem this book for you, it’s Neilsen’s commitment to the “hard� elements of science fiction here. Orbital mechanics, radio communications blackouts, and fuel burn calculations all play an important role in this story—not that you have to understand these things, of course. In any event, Neilsen is working from the same playbook as Andy Weir, so if you liked, say, Artemis, you might also like Sunward Sky. Originally posted on . ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 24, 2025
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Mar 24, 2025
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Apr 12, 2025
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Kindle Edition
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| 1250283639
| 9781250283634
| 1250283639
| 4.01
| 1,093
| Apr 16, 2024
| Apr 16, 2024
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really liked it
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Space is so cool, and I love reading books that explain how we learn the stuff we know about space. That’s exactly what Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger delivers
Space is so cool, and I love reading books that explain how we learn the stuff we know about space. That’s exactly what Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger delivers in Alien Earths. This is the story of how we look for exoplanets—worlds orbiting stars other than our own Sun—and specifically, how we might determine whether those exoplanets can support life similar life on Earth. Along the way we learn, as Kaltenegger did, so much more about life on Earth, its possible origins, and what makes our great blue marble so special. I received a review copy from NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press. Kaltenegger takes us through the steps required to understand the science she does. She starts with essential questions, like the conditions required for a planet to be habitable, to the very concept of “what is life?� She explains some of the basics of merely locating exoplanets, but what this book provides in more detail is the trickier project of ascertaining those planets� habitability. For this, Kaltenegger dives into the science of simulations and describes how she and her interdisciplinary team built physical labs to test and simulate different phenomena. These phenomena are often coincident with life, and by understanding how they occur and what signs—like spectra—they give, Kaltenegger and her team could build computer simulations to help them understand how planets like Earth might appear to a telescope dozens if not hundreds of light-years away. Kaltenegger herself is interesting. An astrophysicist and engineer, she brings a unique perspective that is only enhanced by her natural appreciation for the contributions of other branches of science. Her work requires knowledge of geology and geochemistry, of physics and mathematics and computational methods, of environmental science. I admire her willingness to collaborate and cooperate, and one of the most consistent themes to emerge from Alien Earths is the importance of science as a collaborative effort. The writing and storytelling are serviceable—Kaltenegger tries her best to weave some of her personal life throughout the book, a way of creating a human connection to this cosmic story. It’s neat, and I especially hope that younger women and girls who read this are inspired by her story. However, if you are looking for a gripping narrative to go with your pop science, you won’t find it here: Alien Earths is much more descriptive and expository. That’s not a bad thing! Indeed, my favourite thing about this book is just how enthusiastic Kaltenegger is about life her on Earth! Whether we’re talking the extremophiles who live around the smoke-stack like vents on the ocean floor to the tardigrades all the way to extinct megafauna and everything in between, Kaltenegger is here for it. Her enthusiasm is infectious and demonstrates how important this science is: by looking for life out there, we better understand the story of life here. I’m a smart cookie, yet frankly, I’m not sure I could ever be an astronomer or astrophysicist. It is miraculous to me that someone can stare at data coming in from a telescope, at the wobbling of a blurry little point of light or spectral lines, etc., and conclude, “Planet.� Let alone the follow-up conclusion of “could be Earth-like!� Like, wow. Honestly, the things that scientists can do these days—not just with our technology but with our sheer imaginative design of experiments � it’s staggering. And humbling. Alien Earths is more than informative; it is a reminder of the value of science, collaboration, and deep thought. It is a love letter to life here on Earth in all its diversity, and it’s a thoughtful exploration of the question we’ve been asking since we could ask questions: are we alone? Originally posted on . ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 19, 2025
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Mar 23, 2025
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Apr 10, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 195753737X
| 9781957537375
| 195753737X
| 4.22
| 117
| unknown
| Feb 02, 2023
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liked it
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Somehow I’ve never heard of the “weird west� subgenre and now it’s everywhere on my book social feed. So it goes. It’s not my usual niche, but Melinda
Somehow I’ve never heard of the “weird west� subgenre and now it’s everywhere on my book social feed. So it goes. It’s not my usual niche, but Melinda West: Monster Gunslinger, by K.C. Grifant, looked interesting enough to branch out. I received a review copy via NetGalley. The eponymous Melinda West is, as the title suggests, a monster gunslinger. That is, she is a gunslinger who kills monsters, not a monster who slings a gun. Her partner Lance is also her partner in life. The two of them have just about saved up enough to retire when something happens that forces them to take on one last job going up against an enemy craftier and more dangerous than they have ever dealt with. The stakes? Nothing short of the souls of Lance and Melinda and Lance’s friend. Since this isn’t my usual haunt, it’s hard for me to compare this to other entries within the weird west. I’ve certainly read a few other entries in this, though none jumps out at me. Rather, I’ll just look at this through the lens of other paranormal fantasy stories. Let’s consider the world Grifant builds here, the characters we’re supposed to cheer for, and the success of the plot overall. Melinda lives on a frontier known as the Edge, some kind of anomaly that spits out monsters. Most of the monsters are nuisances more than anything, yet some are very dangerous—that’s how she and Lance have made their money. Beyond this and some magic, however, the vibe is more western than fantasy, with frontier towns and gunslinger showdowns and train battles. Not my style, but probably great for other readers! Melinda and Lance are pretty good main characters, although Lance DZ’t get much development in this book. Instead, Grifant focuses mostly on Melinda and her stubborn nature. This works really well as the moral centre of the book: at each turn, the antagonist offers Melinda a chance to surrender, and her refusal is what powers us into the next phase of the plot. The plot overall is � fine. I really like Grifant’s writing style and how she balances exposition with suspense, slowly unspooling the mystery of the enemy behind everything. It kept me reading! However, I also wouldn’t describe the plot as all that complex. Melinda West: Monster Gunslinger is perfectly fine fare. I already have the sequel, so I will read that soon, and it might make the series grow on me—that is often the case with these kinds of genre works. Even if it is DZ’t, I would still recommend this book to people who already like this genre. Originally posted on . ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 17, 2025
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Mar 18, 2025
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Apr 05, 2025
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Paperback
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| 1443451606
| 9781443451604
| 1443451606
| 3.68
| 1,170
| Sep 10, 2024
| Sep 10, 2024
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really liked it
|
Mmm, mmm, mmm. Heather O’Neill can serve it. As I reflected in my review of
When We Lost Our Heads
, her skill as a writer has only deepened and ma
Mmm, mmm, mmm. Heather O’Neill can serve it. As I reflected in my review of
When We Lost Our Heads
, her skill as a writer has only deepened and matured since its precocious and sublime debut almost two decades ago. The Capital of Dreams wasn’t as revelatory or enchanting for me, yet it was still a fascinating work of storytelling. Sofia is a fourteen-year-old girl living in the Capital of Elysia, a fictional European country in a state of war against an Enemy in a thinly veiled WWII analogue. She finds herself lost in the Elysian countryside, a talking goose her only companion. The two of them wander as Sofia seeks out the mysterious Black Market. She hopes to recover her mother’s manuscript, which her mother dispatched to safety along with Sofia, only for Sofia to lose it in the ensuing chaos. Despite not having the warmest relationship with her mother, Sofia clings to the hope that she can somehow find the manuscript at the Black Market and then return triumphant to the Capital. Of course, that isn’t how it works. Once again I find myself reading a book that feels strangely appropriate for our current political climate. The Enemy are portrayed as fascist aggressors (although, to be fair, more of that feels inferred from the book’s parallels to real-world history than actually stated in the text). The book’s secondary conflict is Sofia and her mother versus the Enemy’s patriarchal oppression of Elysian culture, particularly their openness to sex. Part of Sofia’s journey is, in some ways, her sexual awakening and coming of age. Through various encounters with boys around her age, a slightly older girl she once knew, and other characters, Sofia is exposed to different ideas about relationships and values. In many ways, this book reminded me of The Curse of Pietro Houdini , which also features a child as a protagonist. Substitute Pietro for the smart-talking goose, and it’s basically the same story! OK, not really. Still, the mood is similar. Both O’Neill and Miller manage to capture the bizarre normalcy of civilian life under an occupying force. Even as Sofia wanders from place to place, she is never safe, yet there are few moments where she is in actual danger. Rather, it’s the omnipresent threat of danger, and her own relative powerlessness, that adds tension to the story. Meanwhile, O’Neill uses this setting to ponder girlhood, womanhood, motherhood, and the narratives we create about these states of being. Clara and Sofia’s relationship is so rocky because Clara didn’t want a child. I love the complexity with which O’Neill draws these characters: there are moments where Clara expresses genuine love for her daughter as well as moments that are chilling, borderline cruel. All of this is filtered through the limited third-person perspective of Sofia’s memories, usually relayed through Sofia’s mouth to the goose, so of course, we don’t get an unbiased view of Clara. Nevertheless, O’Neill’s illustration is very much her classic characterization of a parent–child relationship where neither quite seems to have a hang on what is going on. Similarly, the rest of the characters we meet along the way bear O’Neill’s trademark stamp of archetype and allegory. From the philosophical goose sidekick to the two boys Sofia meets early on to Celeste and, of course, Sofia’s final meet-cute with her very own manic pixie dreamgirl � all of these characters exist really just to help Sofia develop. In the end, O’Neill tells us that Sofia has to be brave enough to step into the new future ahead instead of clinging to what she left behind—mother, manuscript—a bittersweet message of optimism through gritted teeth. I won’t say that I loved The Capital of Dreams as much as some of O’Neill’s previous works, especially When We Lost Our Heads. This was an enjoyable read, one I might revisit one day but not any time soon, and one I highly recommend for fans of O’Neill or dreamy literary fiction in general. While I’m not sure it really says anything new or bombastic, it has a journeyman feel to its craft that is sure to satisfy your literary craving. Originally posted on . ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 13, 2025
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Mar 16, 2025
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Apr 02, 2025
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 151791910X
| 9781517919108
| 151791910X
| 4.62
| 8
| Mar 25, 2025
| Mar 25, 2025
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it was amazing
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Most of you probably know already: Star Trek is my first science-fiction love. Before Stargate, before Buffy, before even Supergirl, I grew up in the
Most of you probably know already: Star Trek is my first science-fiction love. Before Stargate, before Buffy, before even Supergirl, I grew up in the nineties watching the bright primary colours of TOS on a 13-inch CRT TV. I eschewed for a long time the muted, overly polished sequel series—the simplicity of the 1960s original made more sense to my kid brain. Yet I eventually succumbed (DS9 is my favourite, though TNG is an easier rewatch), and I was hooked. My first online community when I joined the internet at fourteen was a Star Trek roleplaying community. So any time I get to read an academic book about Trek, I will do so. Late Star Trek is such a book: a work of primary criticism, grounded in reference to primary and secondary sources, that explores the era of “Nu Trek,� starting with the connective tissue of Enterprise and going all the way through the Kelvinverse movies into Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy. It’s forthright and honest and insightful, and it’s exactly the kind of analysis I love reading about science fiction. I received an eARC from NetGalley and the University of Minnesota Press in exchange for a review. Adam Kotsko is—and I say this as the utmost compliment—a huge nerd. Like, he spends time in the introduction explaining how he rose to the rank of Commander in r/DaystromInstitute because of how much time he has spent in the trenches there. Respect. It’s not a competition, but because it is relevant I want to highlight how Kotsko has clearly spent more time in the world of tie-in media—especially the novels and comics—than I have. (Though, nary a mention of any of the tie-in video games except for Star Trek: Online. Hath thou no respect for Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Fallen, Adam???) Indeed, one of the tensions Kotsko explores here is how the revival of Star Trek’s Prime timeline beginning with DISCO but felt more deeply with PIC overwrote the “Beta canon� of the novelverse and how the novelverse itself reacted to that by trying to deal with this in-universe (god, I love science fiction writers so much). More broadly, however, Late Star Trek encapsulates, as its subtitle implies, the ways in which the weight of the franchise has changed how people write and produce Trek in this era. Although canon and continuity are one dimension Kotsko analyzes, they aren’t his primary focus. Instead, he examines how cultural shifts—in values but also in more mundane things like the nature of the television industry and capitalism—have placed different constraints on modern Trek producers. While TOS might have suffered from increasingly constrictive budgets and flagging support from its network, it was unburdened by the expectations of fifty years of franchise. In this way, Kotsko argues that what he calls “late Star Trek� can measure its successes and failures not only by how its stories are received by fans (new and old alike) but by how well its multiplicity of series has weathered the ups and downs of a streaming era marked as much by corporate cynicism as by corporate greed. Early on, Kotsko makes an interesting claim that gave me pause (emphasis mine):
At first I was like, “Nah,� but then I pondered, nay, I ruminated, upon this proposition and eventually had to concede Kotsko has a point. As he argues, pretty much every installment of the franchise post-ENT has, in one way or another, foregrounded our twenty-first-century obsession with terrorism. And I think this observation is as fascinating as it is true simply because it’s not one that I have really seen before in my perusal of Trek commentary. Late Star Trek goes on to analyze each aspect of the modern franchise. It begins with a post mortem of the much-panned ENT. Kotsko is more sympathetic to this series than I am—I always have at least once Trek series rewatch on the go, and it has never been ENT! Nevertheless, I see his point. From there, he examines the novelverse that took off during the dark times between ENT and DISCO, and he also devotes a chapter to the Kelvinverse movies. Then he gives DISCO and PIC their own chapters, respectively, before a single chapter looking at the “minor triumphs� of Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds. The book is pretty much up to date on all new Trek stories, though Kotsko notes his coverage of season 5 of DISCO is lighter because the book went to press just as this final season was airing. I’m glad for this, particularly given how the reveal about Crewman Daniels from ENT in the finale of DISCO corroborates Kotsko’s argument that one of DISCO’s primary legacies will be the way it cemented ENT into the Trek canon in a way that ENT itself could not have achieved were it still the final Trek television property. The only thing it really can’t comment on is the critical and commercial failure of Section 31, though given Kotsko’s critique of the over-reliance on this shadowy organization in the book (I concur, btw), I can guess what he might have to say about it. This method of organization works great, and Kotsko’s writing is similarly fluent and easy to follow. Though academic and well-supported by references to various scholars, fan writers, and the primary texts themselves, Late Star Trek reads more like fan commentary than a dense academic text, and that’s all to the good. Basically, if you like reading hot takes on clickbait-heavy pop culture sites, Late Star Trek is exactly that—just much longer and with fewer ads. I was pleased by how much I agreed with Kotsko despite notable points of disagreement too. For example, his critique of DISCO writing itself out of Trek canon (almost) with its constant, insecure need to reinvent itself culminating its flight into the timeline’s far future matches a lot of my feelings about this series. On the other hand, he is far more forgiving of the first season than I am—I famously back when it premiered, though my stance and culminated in on the series. Similarly, Kotsko echoes some of , and though I did not write about it, I seem to be in the minority of fans who share Kotsko’s view that the third season’s fan service was, shall we say, cringey, and might be one of the weakest Trek seasons of this entire era. All of this is to say, there is plenty in this book to think about, agree with, or disagree with. This is a book written by an avid fan for avid fans. It is a labour of love that pulls no punches when it dissects the quality of various series� storytelling even as, overall, it clearly stakes a position that the current era of Trek is a good thing. Indeed, as I have said before, it blows my mind we live in a world where there is more new Trek broadcasting these days than at any other point in the franchise’s history. However, too often the criticism of newer Trek has been simplistic: this or that series is garbage; this or that series if for “real fans� versus the “new fans� or “fake fans� or whatever gatekeeping nonsense has seized a small yet vocal minority of the fandom. In reality, criticism needs nuance. No series—not even ENT!—is without its redemptive qualities. Similarly, being a fan of the franchise does not mean one must hold one’s tongue in criticizing any or all of the new series. Late Star Trek boldly goes forward with this mindset, and the result is a rewarding read for any Star Trek fan. Originally posted on . ...more |
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Mar 06, 2025
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Mar 08, 2025
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Mar 23, 2025
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Paperback
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| 0316572519
| 9780316572514
| 0316572519
| 3.76
| 1,245
| Mar 18, 2025
| Mar 18, 2025
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liked it
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A few weekends ago, I discovered the first season of Halo was on Netflix and virtually binged it. It was better than I expected—for my expectations we
A few weekends ago, I discovered the first season of Halo was on Netflix and virtually binged it. It was better than I expected—for my expectations were low—and exactly what I craved: something visually stimulating, with a clear story, yet ultimately not all that � meaningful, I guess? “Mid� is probably the right term all the kids are using these days. Anyway, The Third Rule of Time Travel is just like that. Like the Halo series, its production values are too high to be called “pulp”—this is a book that takes itself seriously both as science fiction and literature—yet its execution is decidedly mid. That’s no shade to Philip Fracassi, who has clearly taken the time (pun intended) to craft a fun little time travel story. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Orbit in return for a review. Beth Darlow is a physicist carrying on the project she began with her late husband, Colson: a time machine. So far, the machine can send a traveller mentally into their own past for ninety seconds. Still grieving and under pressure to deliver something marketable, Beth subjects herself to the stress of reliving some of her worst moments in her life. Then, things start going wrong. We love to see a woman in STEM as the protagonist! The Third Rule of Time Travel also reminds me of Boss Level on Netflix, a time-loop movie. Both have about the same level of character depth, especially when it comes to their villains. Both have the protagonist somewhat motivated by the death of their significant other, who is a physicist working on a time machine of sorts. Yet Boss Level unapologetically embraces trite action-hero tropes with a fridged damsel and a buff, macho male protagonist. In contrast, Fracassi here has killed off the husband, and Beth is every bit the physicist and hero this book needs. Now, Beth is a little spiky and seems to have traits of a male author trying to write his breast. Lots of emphasis on Beth’s maternal drive, her Power of Love for Isabel overcoming some of the worst shenanigans of the book. Similarly, constant allusion to how Beth is isolated at work, the only woman in STEM there apparently, and she has to keep her temper under control lest she be seen as a hotheaded and irrational lady scientist by all the men! It’s not subtle at all and feels very much like a man trying to telegraph, far too loudly, “Look, women readers, I too have empathy for your struggle against patriarchy.� Thanks, I guess? I assure you, however: I mock out of love. The Third Rule of Time Travel has a lot to recommend it. Although I won’t go so far as to describe any of its time-travel mechanics as original or particularly mind-bendy, Fracassi overall makes use of some interesting ideas. The debriefing mechanic in particular is one that, once explained in the story, initially sounds really impossible but is actually based on fairly simple ideas about light cones and worldlines. I don’t know, I’ve read quite a few literary time-travel novels that are apathetic to how their time travel actually works, so it’s nice to see one that at least pretends to care. Other than that, this book follows much the same arc as most of those novels: main character can travel through time; main character discovers time travel kind of sucks and is really dangerous; main character deals with fallout of time travel, usually by seeking to undo damage; main character discovers the real family is the family she had at home all along. If you’ve read The Time Traveler’s Wife or Oona Out of Order or watched About Time or any such movies with pretensions to Big Ideas But Make It Timey-Wimey, then you get the vibe. However, Fracassi also can’t resist shoehorning in a thriller subplot with delightfully cartoonish characters. I kept laughing every time the evil boss shows up because he’s so transparently inconsistent and exists solely to make Beth’s life worse. The climax of the novel feels very forced and awkward as the story contorts itself from psychological thriller into action thriller, almost s if its own timeline is being rewritten. This culminates in a classic kind of resolution for this type of science-fiction-by-association: the What the Bleep Do We Know?–style syncretic speculation that it’s all connected, man, and if we could slip the bonds of our linear temporal existence we would, like, see the time knife. The moment between Beth and Colson is meant to be incredibly emotional, a fulfillment of hundreds of pages leading up to it � and yet. So here’s the bottom line: this book is fine. I came to it off of DNFing a different book that was dull. So yes, I’m critical of The Third Rule of Time Travel’s overall quality as a story. Yet I’ll happily share that I devoured this book in a single day over about two sittings. Like that first season of Halo, this book is flashy and easy on the eyes and aspires to be more than it is. That DZ’t mean it succeeds. But it’s fun to watch it try. Originally posted on . ...more |
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Mar 06, 2025
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Mar 06, 2025
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Mar 23, 2025
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Paperback
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| 1645661881
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| 1645661881
| 3.67
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| Mar 04, 2025
| Mar 04, 2025
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liked it
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What would you do if someone stole your heart? Literally, actually took it from your body but you didn’t die? Because hearts power their magic. Such a
What would you do if someone stole your heart? Literally, actually took it from your body but you didn’t die? Because hearts power their magic. Such a perfect premise for a story, and Andrea Eames explores it well in A Harvest of Hearts. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Erewhon Books in return for a review. Foss is a simple country girl, daughter of the village butcher. Then one day, a sorcerer comes and snags her heart. She journeys to the city to look for him and demand it back, ending up as his housekeeper, where she unravels the mysteries of this kingdom and the sorceresses who keep harvesting hearts. The truth is darker and bleaker than you probably want to know, yet to Foss, it is literally about her life. Let me start with some criticism. A Harvest of Hearts is too long. This would work a lot better as a novella. It has a fairy tale quality and reminds me of The Wizard of Oz (and actually some of Baum’s less well-known sequels to that original story). However, the characterization and pacing leaves a lot to be desired. Eames’s writing style is exposition-heavy at the start, which is not my jam at the moment. It was hard for me to get into the story, stay interested, and care a lot about the stakes. Even as those stakes became higher, I felt like I was only caring about Foss because she’s the protagonist and what’s happening to her is objectively bad, versus, you know, actually being interested in the story. Part of that might be because the actual plot feels fairly predictable. I had figured out who the king was, what was going on with Sylvester, the whole backstory of the kingdom, from about � oh, I don’t know by the time Foss got to the city? Nothing at all about this book surprised me. While I don’t object to that on principle, I expect the execution to be correspondingly astounding, and that’s not happening here. On the other hand, I finished it. There’s sweet moments. Foss and Sylvester’s relationship truly grows from nothing and deepens into something real and special. And then there’s Cornelius—oh, Cornelius! I would die for Cornelius. He’s excellent. He is everything a talking cat should be. A Harvest of Hearts stands out because of its original premise and the chemistry of the two main characters. Eames has the storybook aesthetic for worldbuilding down, albeit in a way that is heavier on exposition than I would like. This is a fun yet weighty story with a lot to recommend it. That being said, it wasn’t quite for me. Originally posted on . ...more |
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Feb 13, 2025
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Mar 02, 2025
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Mar 13, 2025
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| 0756418445
| 9780756418441
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| 4.14
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| unknown
| Mar 04, 2025
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liked it
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A couple years ago, I read
Dragonfall
, and I was lukewarm on picking up the sequel. When I had the opportunity for an eARC via NetGalley, however,
A couple years ago, I read
Dragonfall
, and I was lukewarm on picking up the sequel. When I had the opportunity for an eARC via NetGalley, however, I decided to give it a shot. I’m pleased to report Emberclaw is a strong conclusion to this duology (more of these, by the way). L.R. Lam improves on the first entry, and while I still don’t think I am quite their ideal reader, I definitely enjoyed this dragon tale. Spoilers for the first book but not this one. Arcady and Everen are (were?) joined by magic. One human, one dragon. With Everen exiled back to Vere Celene, Arcady is left to pick up the pieces of their con game: they want to infiltrate magic school and figure out who framed their ancestor. But there’s another dragon in Loc, and he’s hellbent on manipulating events to get Everen back here. So while Arcady tries to conceal their identity and lie low, this dragon’s handpicked assassin, Soren, cozies up to them and is ready to strike. Basically, what makes this book so delicious is the way Lam has given everyone overlapping yet oft-conflicting motivations and desires. Arcady and Everen have a natural spark of attraction, yet they are different species and have different loyalties. Magnus similarly has his own motives—which initially don’t seem all that bad, and it’s just his methods that are objectionable, though this changes as the book goes on and his true depravity becomes clear. Soren really just wants to be loved. Sorry, girl. This book feels like it’s more Arcady and Soren’s than Everen’s, which I am not sorry about. He’s kind of boring. I don’t think that is Lam’s fault—I’m just not a fan of his personality. In contrast, Arcady feels a lot more dynamic, and Soren’s tragic face turn story arc is beautiful. Whereas the first book was a heist plot, this one is your typical quest trope: Arcady and Soren are competing in a wizards cup kind of competition to get tuition and prove they are magical badasses. It’s not nearly that straightforward, of course, but it is a good enough framework for Lam to use to build the overall story. In the end, like the first book, Emberclaw didn’t wow me. I think Lam is one of those fantasy authors whose stories or writing style just aren’t for me—no shade on their ability as a writer, just not my cup of tea. If you love dragons or just want a complex fantasy story with a tiny bit of spice/romance and a lot of betrayal, then you should check out this duology. Originally posted on . ...more |
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Feb 18, 2025
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Feb 23, 2025
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Mar 13, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 1250276624
| 9781250276629
| 1250276624
| 4.34
| 641
| unknown
| Sep 19, 2023
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really liked it
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This was a tougher read than I expected. I was about to write “not being a sports girlie myself� but stopped because I do play sports now—but I only g
This was a tougher read than I expected. I was about to write “not being a sports girlie myself� but stopped because I do play sports now—but I only got into that last summer, and it’s recreational, co-ed, and very inclusive. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting Fair Play to hit me as hard as it did considering it’s about transgender issues. Katie Barnes covers the debates around the inclusion of trans people in sports with sensitivity and dedication. What I most value about this book is something many other reviewers seem to have disliked: an emphasis on feelings over facts. Barnes is a sports journalist by trade and a former participant in women’s sports. They are also nonbinary. They use all these experiences to shape Fair Play, which ultimately revolves around the question of how to include gender-nonconforming and -expansive athletes in sports segregated by sex/gender. The book starts with a brief history of sex segregation in sports and some of the controversies over inclusion of women in men’s sports, etc., before quickly focusing on the last twenty years and how the question of trans people’s participation has been politicized as trans people ourselves have become more visible. The book is organized like a series of case studies; each chapter covers either a specific athlete who became a flashpoint for controversy or a related topic. At the end, Barnes offers up their own views, as well as an epilogue that gives the most up-to-date status of gender policies at the time the book went to press. Fair Play focuses almost exclusively on American sports and politics, venturing into international territory only insofar as it starts mentioning the Olympics or international sports bodies. Barnes covers South African runner Caster Semenya, for example, as a notable controversy over differences in sex development in athletes. This is an exception in a book that otherwise focuses on high school and college sports. As a Canadian, it mostly got me wondering about trans inclusion policies in my country (I know some premiers have taken up the transphobia from our neighbour to the south and started talking about restrictive policies). Nevertheless, this information is useful given how much influence domestic American policies still have on the global athletic scene. Similarly, it’s important to note that even though this book is less than two years old, parts of it are already out of date. The second Trump administration has, in its first month at the date I am writing this review, already taken a hard aim at transgender participation in society, including sports. Barnes anticipates this in their epilogue, which is literally subtitled, “The March Toward Restriction.� They and trans advocacy organizations knew what was coming even though it wasn’t a forgone conclusion at the time that Trump would be reelected. As it is, most of Fair Play is relevant as an informative chronology and analysis of “how we got to here.� The rawness of connecting this book’s coverage to what is currently in the news is one reason why I found this to be a tougher read than I expected. I mistakenly assumed my privilege as a white, well-educated trans woman living in a tiny corner of northern Ontario would insulate me from feeling some kind of way about the trans kids whose athletic aspirations are being crushed, or the trans athletes who are having to choose between being their authentic selves or staying in the closet to participate in the sport they love. Oops. Guess I am not so hard-hearted after all. And this is why, unlike some reviewers, I am so pleased Barnes chooses to focus on storytelling over statistics. That is to say, we know from extensive research that facts are not as effective at changing people’s minds. You say you want data—you really don’t. As Barnes notes, there is a dearth of data on trans people in sports and how sex-linked hormones like testosterone affect the performance of trans people who are taking hormone therapy. Few people have chosen to do the research; fewer still have received funding; for some reason, there aren’t enough trans athletes to study sometimes (funny how that works, huh?). I saw one reviewer insist transphobes would somehow drop their objections to the inclusion of trans people in women’s sports if only there were more data to back up the idea we aren’t a threat � and I am here to tell you, definitively, that won’t happen. Transphobic people are not transphobic because they lack data. They are transphobic because they don’t see trans people as authentic, and no amount of facts will change that. For the record, I think it’s great that Barnes parlays with the facts as much as possible, if only to belie the moral panic. It is very important to repeat how few openly trans athletes are playing sports in high school and college right now, let alone at a professional level, and how none is dominating their sport in the way transphobes claim. The idea that any sports, including women’s sports, is under threat by the inclusion of trans people is categorically false by any metric. That being said, I deeply believe this is a situation where feelings matter over facts, and to that end I appreciate the tack Fair Play takes. Over and over, Barnes says, “I am going to give you all the details from the beginning.� They cut through the sound bites most of us probably heard about Semenya or Thomas or Yearwood. They relate everything, chronologically, and illuminate their audience about the more obscure collegiate or international rules we might not be aware of if we don’t follow sports. To say this humanizes these athletes is, um, depressing but also very accurate. And that is what we need. The chapter that stuck most with me is Chapter 8: “The Breakup in Women’s Sports,� wherein Barnes discusses women’s sports activists Pat Griffin, Donna Lopiano, Felice Duffy, Doriane Coleman, and Nancy Hogshead-Makar. All these cis women (some queer) meeting to talk about trans participation in sports without trans people in the room, a fact Barnes notes, even as they laud some of these women for their role in blazing a trail for women’s and girls� sports in the latter half of the twentieth century. This is the fundamental tension at the heart of the debate over trans people in sports: sex segregation in sports is rooted in misogyny, yet simply eliminating it would eliminate opportunities for women and girls, and no one wants that. So these activists are, in some dimensions, doing important work. Yet some of them are also incredibly transphobic. (Two things can be true!) Barnes quotes Griffin, who says, “I think, fundamenally, [Lopiano, Coleman, and Hogshead-Makar] don’t see transgender women as women�. I think they see them as men.� Indeed, not a day after reading that chapter, I saw someone sharing a screenshot from a recent New York Times article wherein Coleman says, of Trump’s newest executive orders, that they are “both wrong on the substance and understandably scary for trans people.� In other words, while Coleman is literally getting what she wants (trans women banned from women’s sports), she worries it’s coming across as mean. Because she wants her bigotry to feel more palatable. I don’t know. Barnes is so much more professional in this book than I think I could be in their shoes. They are trying really hard to extend grace to the Colemans of the world to whom they feel a debt of gratitude for carving out women’s sports. I get it. I want to agree with Barnes that this is a nuanced issue, one where policies need to be flexible yet realistic. I definitely agree with them that neither they nor I have enough expertise to opine on what kinds of hormonal level restrictions (if any) should exist at elite levels. However, over and over, as I read this book, I couldn’t shake the one unmistakable feeling rising within me, which is simply that the majority of people who oppose the inclusion of trans women in women’s sports do so because they see us as men. Full stop. No amount of hormone therapy, of testosterone reduction, of living as our authentic gender for any period of time, will ever change that for them. That is why Fair Play rightly focuses on the personal stories of trans athletes. Because the majority of Americans reading this book are doing so in a climate where they have been misled about the dangers trans people pose to society. They have been conditioned not to see us as human. So as much as I hate it, the stories humanizing us are the way to go right now. Trans people belong in sport. Trans women deserve to participate in women’s sports. The idea of sex-segregated sports deserves reexamination and perhaps revision in a way that still acknowledges the effects of patriarchy on sports participation. At the same time, none of this can happen as long as trans people are forced to fight merely for survival. Fair Play is a comprehensive and careful look at gender policies in sports in the US. Beyond that, however, it touches a nerve—it did for me as a trans woman, but I hope it does so for cis readers too. Barnes reminds us that participation in sport, especially for children, should not be about winning or losing. Sport is a fundamental human experience, and we need to keep it that way. Originally posted on . ...more |
Notes are private!
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Feb 10, 2025
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Feb 16, 2025
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Mar 10, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 1250341086
| 9781250341082
| 1250341086
| 4.19
| 4,782
| Mar 04, 2025
| Mar 04, 2025
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it was amazing
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Every so often I read a story that reminds me why I love stories and why I love reading in particular. Film and television are great—I watch a lot of
Every so often I read a story that reminds me why I love stories and why I love reading in particular. Film and television are great—I watch a lot of both—yet there’s something about the collaboration of imagination between writer and reader that makes a book absolutely magical for its ability to transport the reader elsewhere. I read the eARC of The River Has Roots curled up on my couch on a Sunday afternoon, curled up on my couch under a blanket. It’s not a long novella. Yet I was present for every moment of it, and when it was finished, I immediately emailed my local bookshop to preorder a hardcover edition—I hear it has fancy illustrations! Amal El-Mohtar has written something exquisitely beautiful here, and I won’t stop singing its praises. At its heart, The River Has Roots is a faerie tale, a cautionary tale. It’s a feminist one, for it is not only a cautionary tale about the vicious avarice of men but also about how sisterhood and solidarity can stand up against patriarchal pressures to conform. It’s a story steeped in story, succumbing to sadness only to lift us up back into grace and, ultimately, hope. I’m not usually one for extensive exposition at the beginning, yet I didn’t even mind it here. The narrator’s introductions to Esther and Ysabel, to Thistleford and the Professors, to the very concept of Faerie and the eponymous river that wends its way through title and book alike � as I said above, El-Mohtar’s descriptions captivated me and transported me to this place. I love how the actual setting is incredibly ambiguous: it’s vaguely English, of course, but not in any identifiable way, and in this way it remains true to the powerful ambiguity of faerie tales. What’s unambiguous is the love between Esther and Ysabel, which is the driving force of the entire novella. The way Esther transcends what she experiences purely because of her love for her sister is beautiful. El-Mohtar reminds us that sometimes bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it—and sometimes we bear costs we ourselves did not incur. Yet at the end of the day, we always have choices. Ours is not to control completely our fates but rather to make the most of what we are given, and Esther displays that admirably here. She takes her turn of tragedy and instead of turning inwards or despairing instead resolves only to go on as she did before: by loving Ysabel and staying true to her promise. The anxiety between the sisters really hit me. I could see myself in both Esther and Ysabel. I have been the one who clings on to a friend, demanding we’ll be together forever, even though they can’t possibly promise me that. I have been the one who finds myself discovering new levels to my life, never quite outgrowing or abandoning those around me yet certainly � changing the way I relate to them. In traditional faerie tales, the characters are archetypes, and it is their static nature that makes them suitable vessels. Despite this story’s short length, El-Mohtar allows the Hawthorn sisters to change and learn, and it ultimately deepens the bond between them. In contrast, the romance between Esther and Rin feels like a perfunctory item at best, but as an aromantic person that’s how all romance feels for me. I’m actually grateful that romance takes a secondary role to sisterhood and friendship in this story. Indeed, Esther and Rin’s entire attraction is so unconventional and removed from the physical and the material, and I appreciate that so much. Whether or not El-Mohtar had these considerations in mind when writing, what she’s done here is tell a love story that DZ’t make me, as an aroace person, feel erased or unimportant. I might not express my affection for someone in the same way Rin does for Esther; however, I can identify with the intense significance they place on Esther’s existence. I can project my own feelings of love on Rin and Esther’s love in a way seldom available to me in more conventional stories, and this was an unexpected and beautiful bonus. Likewise, I was surprised by my visceral reaction to Samuel’s sudden and explosive violence against a woman who dares defy him. I don’t know if it’s the setting or whatnot but it reminded me of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. We are so desensitized to violence against women that even though I saw his actions coming, I was still shocked by the cold and calculating brutality of it. And of course as the river changes course and takes Esther on to her next chapter, as Rin searches for her madly and finds her only to realize they have to let her make an impossible choice � I found myself crying. Crying for Esther, but more broadly, for what men so often do to women, and the choices they force us into making. As the title implies, connection to the land is also an incredibly important theme herein. It’s the land and water that save Esther. The magic of the land, singing to the land, is what sustains the Professors and blesses Thistleford. Samuel is a villain not just for his misogyny but for his settler-colonial attitude towards the land, viewing it only as something to be tamed and parcelled up and bought and sold and divided again for profit. He is everything the traditional European folktales championed, and El-Mohtar subverts that here cleverly and creatively. It’s all these threads that make The River Has Roots so beautiful. The way El-Mohtar embraces the aesthetics of European folklore while breaking out of its tropes in favour of a cornucopia of postcolonial and feminist ideas from across different cultures. The playfulness of the prose. The promises built into each page, finally delivered at the climax and into the conclusion. The openness and fluidity of this narrative, its characters, its ideas. I really hesitate to throw around words like “perfect� in my reviews. It feels hyperbolic and suggests a kind of absolute kind of reception that no story can hope to achieve. All literature has flaws or readers it won’t reach, and that is OK. But � damn. The River Has Roots is as close to perfect a story as I think I have read in a long while. It’s easily in the running for one of the best stories I’ll read in 2025, and we aren’t even a quarter into the year! If anything I have said in this review resonates remotely with you, then do yourself a favour and run—don’t walk—to a copy of this in your library or local bookshop. It is sublime and beautiful, and it might destroy you, but it will restore you as well. Originally posted on . ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 16, 2025
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Feb 16, 2025
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Mar 06, 2025
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Hardcover
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| ALOK
*
| 0593094654
| 9780593094655
| 0593094654
| 4.48
| 12,585
| Jun 02, 2020
| Jun 02, 2020
|
liked it
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I picked this up on a whim at my local indie bookshop. It’s a trim and cute little volume, definitely pocket-sized (and yes, many of my dresses have p
I picked this up on a whim at my local indie bookshop. It’s a trim and cute little volume, definitely pocket-sized (and yes, many of my dresses have pockets). Beyond the Gender Binary is an essay about exactly that: what does it mean to be nonbinary? Furthermore, how can our society itself move beyond the idea of binary gender? Alok Vaid-Menon relates some anecdotes from their own life while passionately breaking down the myths, stereotypes, and common nonstarter arguments against a more expansive and inclusive approach to gender. Many people labour under the misconception that moving our society in a less binary direction means everyone needs to ditch gender and become nonbinary. I say this because I thought that way once, long long ago. I had to take a dreary sociology course in first-year university, and the professor had us read The Left Hand of Darkness and discuss (in an online forum) whether gender was necessary in our society. I passionately argued, as far as I can recall, that eliminating gender was not as desirable as eliminating gender roles and stereotypes. Maybe eighteen-year-old Kara deep down sensed that strong internal gender identity that even then was yearning to tell her she was actually a woman, I don’t know. I just remember bristling at the thought of a blanket agender society. This is not, of course, what Vaid-Menon or any gender activist is arguing! They address this in Beyond the Gender Binary, as does pretty much every nonbinary, agender, or genderqueer person who has a conversation with ignorant schlubs like myself. Rather, Vaid-Menon points out how dismantling the gender binary involves challenging our assumptions about what gender means and how we have baked it into everything from conversation to cooking to clothes. At sixty-five A5-size pages, this essay is not a long or difficult read. It’s not really meant for trans people or even cis people who are relatively aware of the current state of this discourse. The target audience is likely cis people who are curious but who have also heard a lot of misinformation, or who want to arm themselves with a little more knowledge. Vaid-Menon DZ’t go into detail while debunking any of these myths, however, so if you are looking for facts, statistics, or a more thorough explanation, you’ll want to read further. Ultimately, this is the kind of essay that probably works better as a digital artifact to be shared in inboxes and on feeds. Nevertheless, the print edition is still cute, and the words are still full of conviction and power. Originally posted on . ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 08, 2025
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Feb 08, 2025
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Mar 02, 2025
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Paperback
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| 1668034905
| 9781668034903
| 1668034905
| 4.27
| 1,830
| Jun 01, 1979
| May 14, 2024
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it was amazing
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Ursula K. Le Guin is the GOAT. I think the only one who rivals her in my esteem of science fiction and fantasy authors is Octavia Butler. I say this n
Ursula K. Le Guin is the GOAT. I think the only one who rivals her in my esteem of science fiction and fantasy authors is Octavia Butler. I say this not to claim to be an expert on either author or even that I like their work beyond any other SFF author � but those two gals just � have something. So naturally, when I heard that The Language of the Night had been revised and reissued with a new introduction, etc., I jumped on it. This is a collection of essays by Le Guin from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Some first appeared in print form; others are transcripts, edited by Le Guin or another, of talks she has given at various events. A couple even have annotations or updates presented as footnotes or even side-by-side! Professor Susan Wood has organized the essays thematically and provided a brief introduction to each theme: “Le Guin Introduces Le Guin� (cute), “On Fantasy and Science Fiction,� “The Book Is What Is Real,� “Telling the Truth,� and “Pushing at the Limits.� It is a book packed with introductions. This new edition has an introduction by Ken Liu, followed by a preface written by Le Guin in 1989 for the ten-year-anniversary edition, followed by the original introduction by Wood. Then you have Wood’s mini intros before each theme. Plus, several of the essays are themselves introductions Le Guin wrote to some of her novels! As a result, The Language of the Night takes on a fun, nesting-doll-esque atmosphere. I love the title to this collection, and I think it’s very appropriate. One thing that shines above all else? Le Guin’s love for, passion about, the SFF genres. Like, this should come as no surprise to anyone remotely familiar with her—but it is one thing to read her books versus hearing her talk about the art and craft of writing SFF. She travels through the genre with such purpose and poise, acknowledging the tension between commercial and artistic endeavours. SFF has historically been a genre of pulp, and writing it a craft rather than an art. Le Guin has no time for this, however; indeed, it is notable how deliberately she avoids engaging with literary fiction as an appreciable genre. To her, SFF is art, should be seen as art, and indeed, SFF authors have a responsibility to take their genre seriously as art. There’s a trace of restrained anger in some of her essays, the tone of a woman very much aware she is one of the few in her field, so used to having to talk to (and be talked at in return) men, yet schooling all of us all the same with her elegant and erudite arguments. This is why Le Guin is the GOAT. She DZ’t let anyone off the hook. Not the readers, not the writers, not the publishers. Certainly not herself. Her constant allusions to Soviet Russia and its science-fiction authors feel almost prescient reading this now in the censorship-heightened atmosphere of 2024/2025. Living through the Cold War, Le Guin understands the stakes for creative freedom and self-expression and the unique way SFF is positioned to deal with these issues. She is happy to critique Tolkien and his contemporaries for their sexism, racism, jingoism, etc., while at the same time hold them up as truly fascinating storytellers. In short, The Language of the Night demonstrates the dexterity I think is typical of Le Guin’s writing. She knows language, and she knows story, and I think it’s the mastery of these two skills in harmony that makes someone stand out as a writer. You might have one or the other and be good, but you need both to be great. And you need a third thing—a kind of ruthless intuition, a sensitivity to the politics of personhood, that Le Guin and Butler both embody in their works in a way that makes them GOATs. I took my time reading this collection, starting it at the end of August 2024 and picking it up and putting it down all throughout the last half year. I have lingered on Le Guin’s language and deliberated on her declarations. I’m not sure I agree with everything she has to say, but I loved hearing her say it. I loved her discussion of how she might have approached gender in The Left Hand of Darkness differently had she written it ten years later—I think when we put certain books from previous eras on a pedestal, we freeze their author in amber and have trouble acknowledging that the author’s views might have changed or their language might have evolved in the years since the book became a classic, and this novel is a fantastic example. To see this cross-section of Le Guin’s thoughts through three decades, hear her acknowledge where her views have changed or which ones have stayed the same, is truly fascinating. Though billed as “essays on writing, science fiction, and fantasy,� one might also call it “essays on writing science fiction and fantasy.� But to be clear, this is not a book that teaches you writing. Nor is it a definitive examination of SFF as a genre or even a particularly opinionated tour of how to write good SFF. (Though, as always, I will forever stan Le Guin for criticizing the more masculine or macho strains of SFF without forever pigeonholing the genre and cynically distancing herself from it like, say, Margaret Atwood, boo.) So if you are coming here hoping for Le Guin’s secrets, I don’t think you’ll find any. Lots of discussion of Frodo and Mrs. Dalloway and Tolkien and Woolf and Solzhenitsyn though! The Language of the Night is the perfect kind of book for a millennial like me. I was born in the year Le Guin wrote her introduction to the ten-year edition. I grew up on flashy nineties science fiction on TV and reading everything from pulpy classics to the more cerebral parts of the genre. I have followed SFF through its modern ups and downs, the trends towards literary fiction and the swing of the pendulum back to doorstopper fantasy now reified into big-budget TV shows by Amazon and the like. What a time to be alive. And a time that never would have come to pass, were it not for Le Guin and her contemporaries. This window is a valuable portal into an era of which I was not a part, and one that I think modern readers would do well to learn about and understand. Originally posted on . ...more |
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1
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Aug 26, 2024
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Feb 08, 2025
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Mar 02, 2025
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Paperback
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| 1803368632
| 9781803368634
| 1803368632
| 3.90
| 291
| unknown
| Feb 25, 2025
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it was ok
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When I found Gareth L. Powell a few years ago, I was excited. More space opera, just as I was starting to bend back towards the subgenre! Yet the two
When I found Gareth L. Powell a few years ago, I was excited. More space opera, just as I was starting to bend back towards the subgenre! Yet the two books I read by him, while they have become fonder memories in my mind, didn’t stay with me the way I thought they might. Future’s Edge seems doomed to repeat this fate, for it has all the makings of an excellent space opera without any of the heat or edge that would make it truly great. Thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for the eARC. Ursula Morrow is an archaeologist. However, a mishap with a dormant device from an alien species ships her back to Earth. Altered at a genetic level, Ursula endures prodding and poking before finally being released on her own recognizance—only for mysterious, implacable aliens to destroy Earth that very day. Bad luck! Now living on a backwater refugee planet, Ursula tends bar and ponders what the future might hold. Then a man from her past arrives in town claiming she holds the key to humanity’s—nay, sentient life in this arm of the galaxy’s—salvation. Future’s Edge feels like it’s riffing, intentionally or otherwise, on so many other science-fiction stories. Titan A.E.: Earth being destroyed, humanity scattered, ragtag band of misfits looking for a weapon that can turn the tide against a mysterious alien enemy. Revelation Space: the Cutters are basically the Inhibitors. Andromeda, Wayfarers, or any number of ship AI-embodied-as-gynoids stories: Crissy. And yes, fundamentally, most science fiction is a remix of old tropes because nothing is original � yet Future’s Edge feels like that, even more so. Powell even has Ursula hang a lampshade on being the namesake of Ursula K. Le Guin! Whether this annoys or delights you (or, frustratingly, both in my case) is up to your sensibilities. I found this book charming, if somewhat predictable and unsatisfying in the neat and tidy way everything gets wrapped up. There was precisely one moment of devastating emotional attachment me for me (if you read the book, I think it’ll be obvious what I am referring to, but basically it involves one character sacrificing themself for another)—yet I honestly don’t enjoy how the final act alters that sacrifice. If I had to pinpoint a particular highlight of the story, it’s a sequence where Ursula gets to hang out with Crissy’s avatar and they bond. She’s Jack’s ex; Crissy is Jack’s wife, and Powell plays everything exactly the way you would expect—delightful, yet also part of the book’s problem. Put simply, this book is too safe. Powell DZ’t take any risks here with his storytelling. From the Cutters to the mysterious alien weapon at the heart of the book’s climax (the Crucible from Mass Effect anyone?) to Ursula’s own ambivalence about her alien alterations, this is a story steeped in science-fictional tropes yet unmoored from any particularly compelling logic of its own design. It’s paint by numbers. Now, paint by numbers can be satisfying! I really don’t want to damn this book with faint praise, because I think it’s good and well worth your attention if you like space opera with a hint of melodrama. At the same time, I struggle to string together any superlatives about this book. It’s fine, good even. But it’s safe, unassuming, and DZ’t ask you to think too hard about anything. Comfort food? I guess. A tasty snack, yet one that has me looking around for a more substantial meal. Originally posted on . ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 08, 2025
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Feb 09, 2025
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Mar 02, 2025
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Paperback
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| 0063038838
| 9780063038837
| 0063038838
| 3.24
| 9,241
| May 04, 2021
| May 04, 2021
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liked it
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If you have been reading my reviews for a while, you’ll know I keep calling for more books with trans characters where the main focus is not on them c
If you have been reading my reviews for a while, you’ll know I keep calling for more books with trans characters where the main focus is not on them coming out—or even on them being trans. So of course, I was very much interested in Meet Cute Diary, by Emery Lee. With multiple trans and queer characters, this book plays with some common romance tropes—like fake dating—while acknowledging the challenges these tropes, and romance in general, pose for trans people. Though at times uneven and flawed, this is an enjoyable young adult novel with good heart to it. Noah is a teenager just starting his transition. His parents are in the process of uprooting him from everything he knew in Miami, Florida, to move to California for work. So he’s spending the summer in Denver, Colorado, where his brother attends university. Noah runs the Meet Cute Diary blog, where he posts stories ostensibly of meet cutes featuring trans youth. His dark secret? The diary is fake. None of the stories is real, and Noah himself has never been in a relationship! When an anonymous enemy starts exposing the diary’s duplicity, Noah determines the best course of action is to fake-date a cute boy he met in a bookstore. You know, like you do. A lot of the reviews I’ve read pan Meet Cute Diary because Noah is a whiny or unlikeable protagonist. And, hey, I get it. He’s self-centred and is prone to making bad decisions. But he’s also still just a kid! Part of me wonders if we would be this hard on him if he were cis—that is, I think our hunger for more trans representation means we sometimes want all that representation to be “good� not just in terms of quality but in character. I, for one, love that Noah is messy and flawed. Even though I have never been attracted to someone or tried to date, I still see echoes of my youth in Noah’s behaviour. I know what it’s like, for example, to anxiously wonder if my best friend is mad at me because she hasn’t called or texted in days. (Maybe I am just telling on myself as being a bad person? I don’t know!) No, Noah isn’t likeable. Would I have liked a more likeable protagonist? Sure. But I think Lee has given us a realistic teenager (who happens to be trans), and I respect that. Meet Cute Diary walks a fine line when it comes to being a book about being transgender. On the one hand, Noah’s transition is still fresh and sharp. He’s sensitive to it. The diary itself is obviously dedicated to trans people. On the other hand, Lee has done eir best to normalize Noah’s status. No one in this book makes a huge deal out of Noah being trans. Brian and Noah’s relationship is incredible, from Brian’s unwavering dedication to his younger brother to the way he is still willing to give Noah shit when Noah deserves it! Similarly, Devin’s questioning, the way e changes personal pronouns a couple of times, is slick and beautiful. There is some great praxis at work here. Honestly, where the book lets me down is simply the fact that I’m not a romance girlie and things like the fake-dating trope just fall flat for me. To Lee’s credit, e tries to avert this trope (no spoilers though). Yet I feel like that complexity is undermined by the trite coincidences that crop up concerning Devin’s identity as well as the resolution and Devin’s destination. I respect the desire to provide, if not an HEA, then the possibility of one—but from the moment the penny dropped on who Devin is, I confess to allowing myself a single eye-roll before turning the page. Meet Cute Diary is equal parts quirky and charming. It can be frustrating—the eponymous diary fades into the background for much of the story despite being built up as a big deal, though I admit I liked the resolution of its subplot. It can also be sweet—as seen with Noah and Brian, or even just with the way Noah navigates his feelings for Devin. Speaking as someone who continues to hold most romance at arm’s length, I respect how Lee tries eir best to use genre tropes while also deconstructing some of their more harmful manifestations. In this way, combined with the trans rep, this novel feels very fresh. Originally posted on . ...more |
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Jan 28, 2025
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Feb 02, 2025
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Mar 02, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 0593083334
| 9780593083338
| 0593083334
| 4.20
| 7,878
| Mar 10, 2020
| Mar 10, 2020
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it was ok
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This was a birthday gift for a friend who is a fierce feminist. She lent me
Men Explain Things to Me
so many years ago, and when I was pondering w
This was a birthday gift for a friend who is a fierce feminist. She lent me
Men Explain Things to Me
so many years ago, and when I was pondering what book to buy her for her birthday, Rebecca Solnit came to mind. I was delighted to discover Solnit had penned a memoir. My friend is in between my age and Solnit’s, and so I am curious to hear her thoughts on Solnit’s reflections of coming of age in the late seventies and how that compares to her youth a couple decades later. As someone who came of age in the 2000s, I was struck, as I often am by memoirs of Solnit’s generation, by the bohemian sense of wanderlust present in these pages. Recollections of My Nonexistence is a memoir only in the loosest sense of the word. If you are looking for something more autobiographical, you’ll be disappointed: Solnit provides only the barest glimpses into the overall chronology of her life here, with little mention of her childhood, teens, or her career at all. She focuses instead on place and space, on relationalities. This is valid, by the way, and not a criticism on my part (we will get to those!), yet something I wanted to point out up front. Much like the book’s title, its chapters are themselves more notable for how much time Solnit spends not talking about herself. Or rather, Solnit meditates on the intersections of art, politics, writing, and feminism—and how her entire life has been spent trying to find voice amid violence:
This passage from an early chapter speaks to me for so many reasons. First and most trivially � as an editor I really want to just reach into that sentence and deconstruct it because, wow, Solnit’s stream-of-consciousness style is a bit painful for me to read. I think that’s a large part why I struggled to embrace this book more despite so appreciating its thesis. Second, this passage speaks to why I personally believe feminism is so important. Despite the gains women have made, despite the freedoms some of us experience (albeit perhaps in limited, uneven ways) � fundamentally, we still live under patriarchy and under the threat of male violence. Our individual social capital has increased, yet our society has not actually fundamentally changed—if anything, the successes wrought by the capitalist arm of late-second- and third-wave feminism mean that we more often blame women (i.e., through slut shaming or victim blaming) when men silence them. So, Solnit’s words resonate deeply within me, despite being a trans woman thirty years her junior: women’s self-expression remains curtailed, limited, and always at threat. Solnit connects this idea in an interesting way to her embodiment as a woman, the way she moves through the world. She alludes to her book on walking (which I haven’t read), essentially comparing her challenges with walking solo as a woman to being a woman writer—in both pursuits, her autonomy is curtailed not by law or even culture but by the omnipresent spectre of violence against women, whether it’s physical violence or misogyny disguised as critique. The final chapter of the book, written prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, connects dots that were apparent even back then. Reading it in 2025, it’s tempting to call Solnit prescient when it comes to the rise of authoritarianism in the US—but I think it’s more the case that she’s simply reading the writing on the wall. She has seen this play out before, with Reagan and AIDS, with Bush and Iraq, and she’s less sounding an alarm as saying, “Here we go again.� There is a fatigue in her words, and while she is not defeated nor discouraged, she is frustrated that so little actual progress seems to have been made. I’m frustrated too! I’d give this book a higher rating but for some things that made it less enjoyable. As I mentioned earlier, Solnit’s prose is lyrical and extemporaneous in a way that DZ’t work for me. Additionally, as much as I agree with what she says here, I also don’t feel like I learned all that much. The insights I sought didn’t materialize. Solnit is an incredibly powerful writer, quite skilled at getting her message across—but it didn’t feel like a message I hadn’t heard before. Recollections of My Nonexistence has its interesting moments. In particular, I think most women will be recognize in Solnit’s experiences some of their own confrontations with our society’s misogyny and hostility towards women. At the same time, it DZ’t deliver the kind of wisdom I was hoping for. Maybe that’s on me and my expectations though. Originally posted on . ...more |
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1
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Jan 13, 2025
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Jan 31, 2025
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Feb 16, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 0316580821
| 9780316580823
| 0316580821
| 3.85
| 521
| Jan 28, 2025
| Jan 28, 2025
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liked it
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One of the unwritten fantasy novels in rattling around in my brain involves a society where people without magic face discrimination and fear. It’s no
One of the unwritten fantasy novels in rattling around in my brain involves a society where people without magic face discrimination and fear. It’s not an original idea, definitely been done before, and it will be done again. So to see Annabel Campbell use this trope in The Outcast Mage is both reassuring and enjoyable! Part bildungsroman, part political thriller, Campbell’s debut isn’t pitch perfect—but it’s got some good moves. Thanks to publisher Orbit and NetGalley for the eARC. Naila is a mage in training—except she might not be. A mage, that is. She might be a “hollow,� a pejorative term for someone who isn’t a mage. In Amoria, the city of her birth, mages and non-mages live in tenuous detente—one that a hawkish mage is threatening to upset. Naila is almost expelled from wizard school, but Haelius—a hollow-born wizard, and Amoria’s most powerful mage in generations—intervenes and undertakes to teach her personally. As Naila struggles to learn even the most basic magic, sinister events conspire to discredit Haelius, cast Naila out of Amoria, and destabilize not just the city’s political structure but its physical structure as well. This city of glass just might shatter. The world of The Outcast Mage is exciting and lush. I love the dynamics Campbell has created, with mages versus non-mages, and of course within the ranks of the mages we have the mage-born and the hollow-born. Beyond Amoria are hints of a vaster world full of kingdoms and empires on the up or down. Campbell expertly finds that balance between essential exposition and avoiding too much infodumping. As a result, I was pretty hooked on the magic system, the lore—all that worldbuilding. Alas, I was less invested in the characters. Naila is � fine. Haelius is � fine. Larinne is � fine? The conflicts are pretty good—I enjoy the gradual teacher–student trust building between Haelius and Naila, as well as Larinne’s conflict with her sister. Ultimately, however, I just had a hard time getting excited by any of these characters� journeys. Even Naila, who arguably has the most growth in the story and eventually sets off on a very epic quest of sorts, never fully embodies the kind of protagonist I need. It isn’t about action per se—all these characters have a decent amount of agency and the ability to make grievous mistakes. But it is about impact. None of the characters ever does something that makes me go, “Whoa!� and notice their growth. Aspects of the plot of The Outcast Mage feel super timely for 2025. This is a story about rising fascism, complete with secret police and brownshirt thugs and politicians like Larinne who have to wrestle with the temptation to comply in advance. Sound familiar? I couldn’t help but project a lot of my anxieties onto this book and feel vaguely uplifted by the motifs of resistance Campbell infuses into each page. This is a book that champions mutual aid, resistance in many forms, and the need for intersectional and intergeneration allies. Yet the story just takes forever to get going. Not only was I impatient for the penny to finally drop on Naila’s magic sitch (which is totally on me), but I needed the political situation to develop more rapidly than it did. The minutiae, the endless scenes going back and forth between different settings as we learn about how much people hate Naila or Haelius or whatever � I don’t know. There’s a rock-and-roll arrangement of this story that punches up the pacing while keeping the essential melody, and I would love to hear it. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have a hefty respect for The Outcast Mage. This is a great debut novel: Campbell is clearly both a creative storyteller and an ambitious one. Yet I’m not waiting on the edge of my seat for the sequel the way I’d like to be. Hey, that was how I felt with Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne and here we are three years later with me proclaiming its trilogy conclusion as one of the best fantasy novels I read in 2024. So maybe The Outcast Mage is on a similar trajectory? Only time will tell. For now, this is a novel with both flaws and flair, and I’ll leave it up to you to decide which facets are which. Originally posted on . ...more |
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Jan 23, 2025
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Jan 27, 2025
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Feb 16, 2025
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| 4.21
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not set
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Apr 24, 2025
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| 3.36
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liked it
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Apr 04, 2025
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Apr 21, 2025
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| 3.52
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did not like it
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Mar 27, 2025
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Apr 21, 2025
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| 4.06
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really liked it
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Jun 08, 2011
not set
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Apr 14, 2025
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| 4.00
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it was ok
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Mar 24, 2025
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Apr 12, 2025
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| 4.01
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really liked it
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Mar 23, 2025
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Apr 10, 2025
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| 4.22
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liked it
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Mar 18, 2025
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Apr 05, 2025
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| 3.68
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really liked it
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Mar 16, 2025
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Apr 02, 2025
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| 4.62
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it was amazing
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Mar 08, 2025
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Mar 23, 2025
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| 3.76
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liked it
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Mar 06, 2025
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Mar 23, 2025
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| 3.67
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liked it
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Mar 02, 2025
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Mar 13, 2025
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| 4.14
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liked it
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Feb 23, 2025
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Mar 13, 2025
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| 4.34
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really liked it
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Feb 16, 2025
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Mar 10, 2025
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| 4.19
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it was amazing
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Feb 16, 2025
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Mar 06, 2025
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| ALOK
*
| 4.48
|
liked it
|
Feb 08, 2025
|
Mar 02, 2025
|
||||
|
| 4.27
|
it was amazing
|
Feb 08, 2025
|
Mar 02, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 3.90
|
it was ok
|
Feb 09, 2025
|
Mar 02, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 3.24
|
liked it
|
Feb 02, 2025
|
Mar 02, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.20
|
it was ok
|
Jan 31, 2025
|
Feb 16, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 3.85
|
liked it
|
Jan 27, 2025
|
Feb 16, 2025
|
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