tachyondecay's reviews
1922 reviews
The Peripheral by William Gibson
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
William Gibson is one of those authors whose books I think I like a lot more than I do. Likely because his fingerprints are all over science fiction these days, some subgenres more than others of course. There’s no denying that he is a brilliant inventor of ideas and extrapolator of futures. But I think there is probably a reason it has taken me so long to finally read The Peripheral. I kept telling myself, since the day it came out, that I needed to “catch up” on his previous novels—which I think I did, at some point, and then I just never got around to buying this one. So I finally borrowed it from the library. It’s all right.
Gibson continues his tradition—which I am all in favour of, by the way—of writing female protagonists in cutthroat plots that will make the hair on your arms stand up with Flynne. She lives ten minutes into the future, in a poor, hollowed-out county in the United States. Technology has crept along but not in any way that has benefited the citizens of this county, who subsist on welfare and money from an economy propped up largely by illicit trade in drugs. When Flynne subs for her brother, Burton, as a security guard in what she thinks is a video game, her world ends. The game is actually a window into a future—the future, once upon a time, but no longer so because its interaction its past has sent Flynne’s timeline careening down a new, unknown path. In this future, Wilf Netherton gets sucked into helping questionable friends and even more questionable allies. He must help Flynne acclimate and then identify a killer, even as his and his allies’ intervention reshapes Flynne’s life as she knows it.
From a narrative perspective, this is a lot to like (or dislike) about The Peripheral based on your preferences. Generally speaking: if you like Gibson, you will like this; if his other stuff hasn’t worked for you, I’m not sure this would change your mind. It’s slightly (and I do mean only slightly) more grounded in meatspace than novels like Neuromancer—likely a tacit acknowledgement that virtual reality is almost certainly being supplanted by augmented reality in everyday usage.
Like much of Gibson’s writing, this book eschews a ton of exposition. We are thrown into both Flynne’s world and Netherton’s without much backstory and asked to pick up the pieces ourselves. The chapters are short, sometimes even staccato, always alternating faithfully between these two characters’ limited third-person perspective. Many of the chapters are rich with dialogue, usually back and forth between two characters, always referencing events, people, and technologies that we must parse without much context. It’s frustrating in that exhilarating way good writing can be.
I do like how Gibson handwaves with alacrity and little fanfare the central novum that is the synced timelines. Just take it on faith, basically, that this technology exists and works in this way. Once you do that, everything else kind of falls into place. It’s a neat idea, a different version of time travel I haven’t seen explored much elsewhere, and that helps hold the attention. The way that events from either time period can affect the other bidirectionally even though the past is no longer the antecedent of this future is pretty cool. You can tell Gibson has put a lot of thought into the economics of both of these time periods, can see the places the scaffolding must have been before he took it down and tucked it tidily away so that all that was left was story.
As far as story goes, that’s where I get to the “it’s all right” part of my critique. Flynne was cool. Netherton is a self-aware asshole, so that’s something at least. I figured out Lowbeer’s angle pretty quickly. Like, the characters are neat in a cookiecutter checkbox kind of way. But despite the science-fictional plot devices, the story itself is a fairly straightforward thriller, and the climax and resolution aren’t all that engaging. Flynne is in danger for maybe two point seven seconds, I don’t know, and then it’s all right again. Which is probably the point, now that I think about it—Gibson wants us thinking about how past affects present affects future, not about the survival of a single individual (who is, as the story stresses to us, wholly unremarkable to the future were it not for being in the wrong place at the wrong time).
There are some deeper questions about the ethics of messing with stubs (as these continuua are called), and Gibson only scratches the surface of those questions, often with throwaway lines that don’t go deeper than that. As is often the case with Big Ideas books, The Peripheral feels frustratingly incomplete despite being, for all intents and purposes, a complete and self-contained, standalone novel. I liked it. I was annoyed by it. So it goes with the works of William Gibson.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Gibson continues his tradition—which I am all in favour of, by the way—of writing female protagonists in cutthroat plots that will make the hair on your arms stand up with Flynne. She lives ten minutes into the future, in a poor, hollowed-out county in the United States. Technology has crept along but not in any way that has benefited the citizens of this county, who subsist on welfare and money from an economy propped up largely by illicit trade in drugs. When Flynne subs for her brother, Burton, as a security guard in what she thinks is a video game, her world ends. The game is actually a window into a future—the future, once upon a time, but no longer so because its interaction its past has sent Flynne’s timeline careening down a new, unknown path. In this future, Wilf Netherton gets sucked into helping questionable friends and even more questionable allies. He must help Flynne acclimate and then identify a killer, even as his and his allies’ intervention reshapes Flynne’s life as she knows it.
From a narrative perspective, this is a lot to like (or dislike) about The Peripheral based on your preferences. Generally speaking: if you like Gibson, you will like this; if his other stuff hasn’t worked for you, I’m not sure this would change your mind. It’s slightly (and I do mean only slightly) more grounded in meatspace than novels like Neuromancer—likely a tacit acknowledgement that virtual reality is almost certainly being supplanted by augmented reality in everyday usage.
Like much of Gibson’s writing, this book eschews a ton of exposition. We are thrown into both Flynne’s world and Netherton’s without much backstory and asked to pick up the pieces ourselves. The chapters are short, sometimes even staccato, always alternating faithfully between these two characters’ limited third-person perspective. Many of the chapters are rich with dialogue, usually back and forth between two characters, always referencing events, people, and technologies that we must parse without much context. It’s frustrating in that exhilarating way good writing can be.
I do like how Gibson handwaves with alacrity and little fanfare the central novum that is the synced timelines. Just take it on faith, basically, that this technology exists and works in this way. Once you do that, everything else kind of falls into place. It’s a neat idea, a different version of time travel I haven’t seen explored much elsewhere, and that helps hold the attention. The way that events from either time period can affect the other bidirectionally even though the past is no longer the antecedent of this future is pretty cool. You can tell Gibson has put a lot of thought into the economics of both of these time periods, can see the places the scaffolding must have been before he took it down and tucked it tidily away so that all that was left was story.
As far as story goes, that’s where I get to the “it’s all right” part of my critique. Flynne was cool. Netherton is a self-aware asshole, so that’s something at least. I figured out Lowbeer’s angle pretty quickly. Like, the characters are neat in a cookiecutter checkbox kind of way. But despite the science-fictional plot devices, the story itself is a fairly straightforward thriller, and the climax and resolution aren’t all that engaging. Flynne is in danger for maybe two point seven seconds, I don’t know, and then it’s all right again. Which is probably the point, now that I think about it—Gibson wants us thinking about how past affects present affects future, not about the survival of a single individual (who is, as the story stresses to us, wholly unremarkable to the future were it not for being in the wrong place at the wrong time).
There are some deeper questions about the ethics of messing with stubs (as these continuua are called), and Gibson only scratches the surface of those questions, often with throwaway lines that don’t go deeper than that. As is often the case with Big Ideas books, The Peripheral feels frustratingly incomplete despite being, for all intents and purposes, a complete and self-contained, standalone novel. I liked it. I was annoyed by it. So it goes with the works of William Gibson.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
challenging
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Yes, every once in a while I manage to snag a book that isn’t an ARC soon after its release (and actually read it)—all of this helped by my lovely public library, for they had a copy but of course there are holds on it, so I have to read it right away! Yellowface is quite the departure from Babel, the only other R.F. Kuang book I’ve read to date. But my understanding, from what I have read about her work and the book, is that this is on purpose; she likes to change up genre and try something new all the time. Neat. As far as how this works as a novel: it’s a bit inside baseball, but otherwise it is a very fun and frustrating read.
June Hayward watches her not-particularly-close friend die and then takes her friend’s just completed first-draft manuscript. She polishes it up, submits it under her own name, and ends up publishing her second novel under the more ethnically ambiguous name of Juniper Song. This sprawling epic about the unsung history of Chinese labourers in World War I nets June the praise and recognition she has always craved. But as suspicions and accusations over the true authorship of the novel mount, June finds her own mental health deteriorating. The publishing industry is not a healthy or friendly one in this novel, as it is likely not in real life.
While this novel lacks the epic scope or fantastical elements of Babel, there are still so many layers to unpack here. I’m going to do my best, with the caveats that I am white, Canadian, and in no way a part of the publishing industry. Most of what I know about publishing I glean from the tweets of authors, agents, and industry professionals.
First let’s talk about the obvious (and perhaps most controversial) layer: the central question of who is allowed to tell a story? This conversation continually arises like a phoenix from its own, smoldering embers. The #OwnVoices label is a part of it but also problematic in the way it can reduce authors to their identities and also even pressure authors to come out. Kuang cuts straight to the heart of the matter by asking us what informs an author’s identity. Is it just heritage? Athena Liu was ethnically Chinese, but she didn’t speak Mandarin and wasn’t particularly connected to the story she was telling about Chinese labourers a century ago. Neither is June—but by the time she is done massaging Athena’s manuscript, she has done just as much, if not more, research than Athena herself. Does that make June the more qualified voice for this story? Do either of them have the right to tell this story, or is it nearly as ghoulish as Athena’s reported behaviour with Korean veterans?
If you’re expecting Yellowface to give you an answer, don’t hold your breath. The whole point is that there isn’t an easy answer. Indeed, the “right” answer tends to vacillate depending on the calculus of optimizing publisher profit and reputation. June, for a time at least, manages to ride that curve quite well—until she doesn’t.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I predict that June Hayward will go down in the history of famous unsympathetic and unreliable narrators, right alongside stinkers like Humbert Humbert. This is the second layer to Yellowface. Indeed, given how much of the book is June talking directly at the reader (often justifying her current flavour of feelings), you need to want to read a book with this kind of protagonist. This is not an action thriller, nor is it a story about personal growth. This is not a novel about redemption or even about receiving comeuppance. This is a novel about justifying one’s selfishness in the name of restoring a shattered American Dream.
Kuang brings a darkly incisive flavour of humour to her commentary on racism within publishing. June is constantly spouting racist observations to the reader in a way that confirms she is utterly ignorant of her racism. Her comment, “Candice exists entirely to complain about microaggressions,” and later the way she describes an event attendee who challenges her as “dressed like a right-wing meme of a social justice warrior…. Look, we’re all liberals here. But come on,” made me laugh out loud. June is peak white woman throughout most of this book, and it is wonderful as it is terrifying. See, June knows that what she did with Athena’s manuscript is unethical. She knows enough to lie about it, to hide it, and to feel a modicum of shame. But she also thinks she deserves success, that her personal allocation of success was unfairly reallocated to minority voices, and therefore, her actions are just a levelling of the scale. Kuang perfectly encapsulates the way that internalized white supremacy teaches white people who have experienced hardship to project their dissatisfaction with the system onto racialized people and groups who are themselves also targets of oppression.
Look, as a white woman reading this, I definitely felt uncomfortable, and I hope that is the point. June is constantly able to brush away and evade consequences for her bad behaviour—the chapter where she’s teaching at a writer’s retreat is a great example. I keep thinking, “this is it, this is where someone will finally hold her accountable” only for it not to happen in that moment, because of course why would it. It feels unrealistic only because that’s the closure we’re conditioned by stories to expect whereas in the real world that Kuang emulates here such closure seldom occurs. White women get away with a lot.
I do wish Yellowface had explored the unreliability angle of June’s narration a bit more. There are tantalizing hints here and there that maybe June isn’t telling us everything the way it actually happened. Nevertheless, Kuang largely leaves it up to the reader to fill in the blanks on that score. I personally think the ending is meant to suggest that June is more adept at controlling the narrative than we might have credited her throughout the novel—it is almost enough to kind of beg a second reading, just to see if knowing the ending makes a difference in how we interpret what came before. Clever, that.
Some parts of this book are intensely of-the-moment, and I’m curious to see how well they age as the years pass. I’m thinking, in particular, of the role of social media. Almost all of the negative publicity June receives comes from social media, or from social media posts that amplify a few critical articles. As someone who (still) spends way too much time on Twitter, so much of this was familiar, and everything that happens here felt realistic and awful. But I will be curious to see how we look back on this period. A part of me hopes that we will find a better successor to social media and that this will be one of the least relatable aspects of the book.
The final layer I want to discuss is simply the way Kuang addresses the intersection of creative arts and business. Publishing is a mechanism for writers to share their ideas with the world. It’s also a commercial industry. June, like many authors, faces the pressure to keep writing and publishing new material. She also struggles with coming up with ideas—a very common issue that, in and of itself, does not make one a bad writer. June herself is obviously not a victim of racism, but she is a victim of capitalism. The pressures of making a living, not having affordable healthcare, etc.—these are all relatable issues that many Americans (and Canadians) face these days. They don’t excuse June’s behaviour, but they do help us make sense of it. In addition to chronicling racism in the industry and the toxic nature of social media, Kuang reminds us that people seldom become villains on purpose but rather because it feels like the best way out of their bad situation.
Yellowface is a solid, entertaining, and thoughtful story. I’m not sure how much interest it will hold for readers who aren’t as into books about books and publishing as I happen to be. Then again, I think a lot of avid readers are interested in those things, so maybe it’s a nonissue. All I can really say is that I’ll keep my eye on whatever Kuang comes out with next. She demonstrates versatility and creativity but, above all, she is always willing to shine a light on the parts of our society we’d rather not critique.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
June Hayward watches her not-particularly-close friend die and then takes her friend’s just completed first-draft manuscript. She polishes it up, submits it under her own name, and ends up publishing her second novel under the more ethnically ambiguous name of Juniper Song. This sprawling epic about the unsung history of Chinese labourers in World War I nets June the praise and recognition she has always craved. But as suspicions and accusations over the true authorship of the novel mount, June finds her own mental health deteriorating. The publishing industry is not a healthy or friendly one in this novel, as it is likely not in real life.
While this novel lacks the epic scope or fantastical elements of Babel, there are still so many layers to unpack here. I’m going to do my best, with the caveats that I am white, Canadian, and in no way a part of the publishing industry. Most of what I know about publishing I glean from the tweets of authors, agents, and industry professionals.
First let’s talk about the obvious (and perhaps most controversial) layer: the central question of who is allowed to tell a story? This conversation continually arises like a phoenix from its own, smoldering embers. The #OwnVoices label is a part of it but also problematic in the way it can reduce authors to their identities and also even pressure authors to come out. Kuang cuts straight to the heart of the matter by asking us what informs an author’s identity. Is it just heritage? Athena Liu was ethnically Chinese, but she didn’t speak Mandarin and wasn’t particularly connected to the story she was telling about Chinese labourers a century ago. Neither is June—but by the time she is done massaging Athena’s manuscript, she has done just as much, if not more, research than Athena herself. Does that make June the more qualified voice for this story? Do either of them have the right to tell this story, or is it nearly as ghoulish as Athena’s reported behaviour with Korean veterans?
If you’re expecting Yellowface to give you an answer, don’t hold your breath. The whole point is that there isn’t an easy answer. Indeed, the “right” answer tends to vacillate depending on the calculus of optimizing publisher profit and reputation. June, for a time at least, manages to ride that curve quite well—until she doesn’t.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I predict that June Hayward will go down in the history of famous unsympathetic and unreliable narrators, right alongside stinkers like Humbert Humbert. This is the second layer to Yellowface. Indeed, given how much of the book is June talking directly at the reader (often justifying her current flavour of feelings), you need to want to read a book with this kind of protagonist. This is not an action thriller, nor is it a story about personal growth. This is not a novel about redemption or even about receiving comeuppance. This is a novel about justifying one’s selfishness in the name of restoring a shattered American Dream.
Kuang brings a darkly incisive flavour of humour to her commentary on racism within publishing. June is constantly spouting racist observations to the reader in a way that confirms she is utterly ignorant of her racism. Her comment, “Candice exists entirely to complain about microaggressions,” and later the way she describes an event attendee who challenges her as “dressed like a right-wing meme of a social justice warrior…. Look, we’re all liberals here. But come on,” made me laugh out loud. June is peak white woman throughout most of this book, and it is wonderful as it is terrifying. See, June knows that what she did with Athena’s manuscript is unethical. She knows enough to lie about it, to hide it, and to feel a modicum of shame. But she also thinks she deserves success, that her personal allocation of success was unfairly reallocated to minority voices, and therefore, her actions are just a levelling of the scale. Kuang perfectly encapsulates the way that internalized white supremacy teaches white people who have experienced hardship to project their dissatisfaction with the system onto racialized people and groups who are themselves also targets of oppression.
Look, as a white woman reading this, I definitely felt uncomfortable, and I hope that is the point. June is constantly able to brush away and evade consequences for her bad behaviour—the chapter where she’s teaching at a writer’s retreat is a great example. I keep thinking, “this is it, this is where someone will finally hold her accountable” only for it not to happen in that moment, because of course why would it. It feels unrealistic only because that’s the closure we’re conditioned by stories to expect whereas in the real world that Kuang emulates here such closure seldom occurs. White women get away with a lot.
I do wish Yellowface had explored the unreliability angle of June’s narration a bit more. There are tantalizing hints here and there that maybe June isn’t telling us everything the way it actually happened. Nevertheless, Kuang largely leaves it up to the reader to fill in the blanks on that score. I personally think the ending is meant to suggest that June is more adept at controlling the narrative than we might have credited her throughout the novel—it is almost enough to kind of beg a second reading, just to see if knowing the ending makes a difference in how we interpret what came before. Clever, that.
Some parts of this book are intensely of-the-moment, and I’m curious to see how well they age as the years pass. I’m thinking, in particular, of the role of social media. Almost all of the negative publicity June receives comes from social media, or from social media posts that amplify a few critical articles. As someone who (still) spends way too much time on Twitter, so much of this was familiar, and everything that happens here felt realistic and awful. But I will be curious to see how we look back on this period. A part of me hopes that we will find a better successor to social media and that this will be one of the least relatable aspects of the book.
The final layer I want to discuss is simply the way Kuang addresses the intersection of creative arts and business. Publishing is a mechanism for writers to share their ideas with the world. It’s also a commercial industry. June, like many authors, faces the pressure to keep writing and publishing new material. She also struggles with coming up with ideas—a very common issue that, in and of itself, does not make one a bad writer. June herself is obviously not a victim of racism, but she is a victim of capitalism. The pressures of making a living, not having affordable healthcare, etc.—these are all relatable issues that many Americans (and Canadians) face these days. They don’t excuse June’s behaviour, but they do help us make sense of it. In addition to chronicling racism in the industry and the toxic nature of social media, Kuang reminds us that people seldom become villains on purpose but rather because it feels like the best way out of their bad situation.
Yellowface is a solid, entertaining, and thoughtful story. I’m not sure how much interest it will hold for readers who aren’t as into books about books and publishing as I happen to be. Then again, I think a lot of avid readers are interested in those things, so maybe it’s a nonissue. All I can really say is that I’ll keep my eye on whatever Kuang comes out with next. She demonstrates versatility and creativity but, above all, she is always willing to shine a light on the parts of our society we’d rather not critique.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Give me more books like this. Directly. Into. My eyeballs. Please. A Snake Falls to Earth satisfied so many cravings I didn’t know I was having! It’s the perfect blend of humour, compassion, tension, and more. Darcie Little Badger impressed me with Elatsoe, but this novel has truly blown me away. It’s going to be one of my favourites for this year—and this has been a good year of reading for me in general.
Nina is a Lipan Apache girl living in Texas, obsessed with stories and in particular translating one told by her great-great-grandmother prior to death. Oli is a cottonmouth living in the Reflecting World, whereto almost all animal people immigrated after the end of the time when humans and spirits shared Earth. Oli’s compassion for a friend eventually motivates him to make the perilous journey to Earth (hence the title of the book), while Nina tries to understand the magic that seems to be connected both to her grandmother and the family’s land. These two will need to help each other as enemies supernatural and mundane threaten to pull apart their respective families.
The book alternates between Nina’s third-person chapters and Oli’s first-person chapters. Years occasionally pass between chapters, with Nina nine years old at the beginning and sixteen by the time we reach the climax. Little Badger shows Nina growing up, becoming entranced with storytelling and a TikTok/YouTube-like app called St0ryte11er. Her chapters don’t feel any less intimate for being in third person: you can feel her brashness warring with her common sense. She wants to share her great-great-great-grandmother’s stories yet is also intensely aware of the need for privacy and understands that just because an app says something is marked “private” doesn’t make it truly private or safe. She also cares. A lot. About the planet, about her family, and later, about the visitors she hosts from the Reflecting World.
Oli is a beautiful contrasting character. Also very caring and ingenious (though he wouldn’t agree with you), he is so cautious by nature. His coyote friends have to drag him along on minor adventures, but he is most satisfied with basking on his rock and chatting with his toad friend, Ami. For Oli to leave his home—and in particular for a destination as exotic and dangerous Earth—represents a huge change that could only be motivated by the most urgent need.
I loved reading each character’s individual story and seeing Little Badger draw their threads closer with each subsequent chapter. It’s a masterful display of craft. Her writing perfectly balances description, exposition, and narration. Her explanation of the Reflecting World is enough to help me understand how it works in her narrative without becoming too overwhelming. Similarly, we learn a lot about Nina’s family and backstory in a short time; even though her mom is largely absent in person, text messages establish the two’s deep, personal relationship.
I also love how Little Badger has written a story that is deeply, inextricably grounded in Lipan Apache storytelling and knowledge yet also a part of the present/near future. (Nina’s adolescence is in a Texas even more prone to extreme weather than now, and her AI assistant is a bit more useful than the one in my pocket, so this book might be five minutes into the future.) She reminds me of Eden Robinson, who does much the same in her novels like Son of a Trickster. Too often when we talk about stories by contemporary Indigenous authors, we only hype and praise those which focus on the past, especially on the most traumatic episodes of the colonial past. Those stories have value. Yet vibrant new stories have value too, and that’s what Little Badger gives us here. A Snake Falls to Earth is respectful of Lipan Apache traditions while also propelling and projecting those traditions along a future vector. That’s powerful.
Lastly, I didn’t expect to cry at the end. Like, I was enjoying the story and could not put it down—I was very invested in how Nina and Oli would help each other solve their respective problems. But I didn’t realize how emotionally invested I had become until the very end of the book, where I teared up as the two of them said goodbyes. I had spent so much time with them, and through Little Badger’s careful characterization and precise worldbuilding, I felt like I really knew them. I was sad to see the story end yet so relieved by how it was ending.
This is a beautiful book. There’s no other way to describe it. From the writing to the structure to the cover art and design by Mia Ohki and Jade Broomfield, respectively, this book is beautiful. I’m so happy I finally picked it up off my shelf to read it this summer.
A Snake Falls to Earth is everything a second novel should be, building on the success of Little Badger’s first novel while also showcasing the growth of her storytelling style. I’m excited to see what she brings us next.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Nina is a Lipan Apache girl living in Texas, obsessed with stories and in particular translating one told by her great-great-grandmother prior to death. Oli is a cottonmouth living in the Reflecting World, whereto almost all animal people immigrated after the end of the time when humans and spirits shared Earth. Oli’s compassion for a friend eventually motivates him to make the perilous journey to Earth (hence the title of the book), while Nina tries to understand the magic that seems to be connected both to her grandmother and the family’s land. These two will need to help each other as enemies supernatural and mundane threaten to pull apart their respective families.
The book alternates between Nina’s third-person chapters and Oli’s first-person chapters. Years occasionally pass between chapters, with Nina nine years old at the beginning and sixteen by the time we reach the climax. Little Badger shows Nina growing up, becoming entranced with storytelling and a TikTok/YouTube-like app called St0ryte11er. Her chapters don’t feel any less intimate for being in third person: you can feel her brashness warring with her common sense. She wants to share her great-great-great-grandmother’s stories yet is also intensely aware of the need for privacy and understands that just because an app says something is marked “private” doesn’t make it truly private or safe. She also cares. A lot. About the planet, about her family, and later, about the visitors she hosts from the Reflecting World.
Oli is a beautiful contrasting character. Also very caring and ingenious (though he wouldn’t agree with you), he is so cautious by nature. His coyote friends have to drag him along on minor adventures, but he is most satisfied with basking on his rock and chatting with his toad friend, Ami. For Oli to leave his home—and in particular for a destination as exotic and dangerous Earth—represents a huge change that could only be motivated by the most urgent need.
I loved reading each character’s individual story and seeing Little Badger draw their threads closer with each subsequent chapter. It’s a masterful display of craft. Her writing perfectly balances description, exposition, and narration. Her explanation of the Reflecting World is enough to help me understand how it works in her narrative without becoming too overwhelming. Similarly, we learn a lot about Nina’s family and backstory in a short time; even though her mom is largely absent in person, text messages establish the two’s deep, personal relationship.
I also love how Little Badger has written a story that is deeply, inextricably grounded in Lipan Apache storytelling and knowledge yet also a part of the present/near future. (Nina’s adolescence is in a Texas even more prone to extreme weather than now, and her AI assistant is a bit more useful than the one in my pocket, so this book might be five minutes into the future.) She reminds me of Eden Robinson, who does much the same in her novels like Son of a Trickster. Too often when we talk about stories by contemporary Indigenous authors, we only hype and praise those which focus on the past, especially on the most traumatic episodes of the colonial past. Those stories have value. Yet vibrant new stories have value too, and that’s what Little Badger gives us here. A Snake Falls to Earth is respectful of Lipan Apache traditions while also propelling and projecting those traditions along a future vector. That’s powerful.
Lastly, I didn’t expect to cry at the end. Like, I was enjoying the story and could not put it down—I was very invested in how Nina and Oli would help each other solve their respective problems. But I didn’t realize how emotionally invested I had become until the very end of the book, where I teared up as the two of them said goodbyes. I had spent so much time with them, and through Little Badger’s careful characterization and precise worldbuilding, I felt like I really knew them. I was sad to see the story end yet so relieved by how it was ending.
This is a beautiful book. There’s no other way to describe it. From the writing to the structure to the cover art and design by Mia Ohki and Jade Broomfield, respectively, this book is beautiful. I’m so happy I finally picked it up off my shelf to read it this summer.
A Snake Falls to Earth is everything a second novel should be, building on the success of Little Badger’s first novel while also showcasing the growth of her storytelling style. I’m excited to see what she brings us next.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
C.L. Polk is fast becoming one of my favourite fantasy authors (love that they are Canadian to boot, eh). Even Though I Knew the End is everything I want in a novella: fast pace, great worldbuilding, and a protagonist I can get behind without too much exposition.
Helena, aka Elena, was once in training to be a “mystic,” one of few women accepted to the very sexist Brotherhood. Then she made a demonic deal, sold her soul. Ten years on, Helena has scraped by as a private investigator, but her deal is coming due. Only one last job can possibly save her soul—giving her more time with the woman she loves—but it will be a dangerous one. Chicago in the 1930s is not a great place to be queer, to be a woman, or indeed, to be hunting a “vampire” serial killer.
Probably the best aspect of this book is the effortless genre blending. Polk mixes urban fantasy with crime noir—something many writers attempt yet few truly pull off. This book scratched the itch I’ve had since I left behind The Dresden Files. Helena has a hardboiled exterior with the same down-on-her-luck attitude wielded by a lot of private investigators. The additional layers of magic and mayhem, demons and deals, makes the book more appealing to readers like myself.
I also really enjoyed Helena’s doomed love story with Edith. I described this as a “love tragedy” to a friend. It isn’t a romance per se, for it lacks the classic happily-ever-after—I would describe the ending as “happy for now.” Indeed, the ending rather surprised me! Maybe it shouldn’t have, considering the title. I won’t spoil it. But it speaks both to the theme of the power of love as well as the obstinacy of people. Polk also exploits one of the virtues of the novella form, which is that it functions well for standalone stories. With no need to worry about continuation, they can draw Helena’s story to a close. Would I read more set in this universe or with these characters? Yes, though to be honest it wasn’t quite as engrossing as Polk’s secondary fantasy novels like Witchmark.
This is a cute (in a dark way), clever (in every way) novella. It’s easy to read in a single afternoon yet packed full of emotions, drama, and mystery. Highly recommend to fans of Polk and urban-fantasy fans in general.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Helena, aka Elena, was once in training to be a “mystic,” one of few women accepted to the very sexist Brotherhood. Then she made a demonic deal, sold her soul. Ten years on, Helena has scraped by as a private investigator, but her deal is coming due. Only one last job can possibly save her soul—giving her more time with the woman she loves—but it will be a dangerous one. Chicago in the 1930s is not a great place to be queer, to be a woman, or indeed, to be hunting a “vampire” serial killer.
Probably the best aspect of this book is the effortless genre blending. Polk mixes urban fantasy with crime noir—something many writers attempt yet few truly pull off. This book scratched the itch I’ve had since I left behind The Dresden Files. Helena has a hardboiled exterior with the same down-on-her-luck attitude wielded by a lot of private investigators. The additional layers of magic and mayhem, demons and deals, makes the book more appealing to readers like myself.
I also really enjoyed Helena’s doomed love story with Edith. I described this as a “love tragedy” to a friend. It isn’t a romance per se, for it lacks the classic happily-ever-after—I would describe the ending as “happy for now.” Indeed, the ending rather surprised me! Maybe it shouldn’t have, considering the title. I won’t spoil it. But it speaks both to the theme of the power of love as well as the obstinacy of people. Polk also exploits one of the virtues of the novella form, which is that it functions well for standalone stories. With no need to worry about continuation, they can draw Helena’s story to a close. Would I read more set in this universe or with these characters? Yes, though to be honest it wasn’t quite as engrossing as Polk’s secondary fantasy novels like Witchmark.
This is a cute (in a dark way), clever (in every way) novella. It’s easy to read in a single afternoon yet packed full of emotions, drama, and mystery. Highly recommend to fans of Polk and urban-fantasy fans in general.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Can this be School? by Deb O'Rourke
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
The rallying cry of so much reactionary thought in politics and education is, of course, “But this is the way we have always done it.” This is seldom true. So much of our modern systems emerged from the paradigm shift that was the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays, of course, you have the tech bros at the opposite end of the spectrum claiming that their innovation is the next paradigm shift, that crypt or “AI” or whatever will prompt a dramatic reorganization of society. Maybe, but I doubt it. In any event, the trick, as it usually is with these things, is to figure out the way forward between those two extremes. Too much change all the time is chaotic and unworkable. But to insist that we can never change up a system, even when we readily admit its flaws, is unethical. In Can this be School?: Fifty years of democracy at ALPHA, Deb O’Rourke chronicles the history of a prominent alternative school in Toronto. ALPHA is an exemplar—for those crying “we have always done it this way,” ALPHA’s half-century of operation belies their implicit claim that alternative schools are new or a fad. O’Rourke believes ALPHA offers lessons learned for any other school boards or communities seeking to rethink mass education. The author and publisher provided me with a review copy.
Told roughly chronologically, this book presents eighteen chapters of history, quotations from interviews with former students and parents, and meticulous research that documents not only ALPHA’s genesis but the political and cultural forces at work in Toronto in the sixties and seventies that allowed for that genesis in the first place. This is sourced and structured like a thesis (which it was originally), though it has a more personal and admiring tone than a thesis might have—O’Rourke was a parent and employee of ALPHA for a time and obviously believes in the school’s mission. That being said, she freely catalogs the school’s failures as well as its successes—though it’s worth noting that even the idea of categorizing such things into failure and success is suspect if the framework we are using is the one established by over a century of mass schooling.
I come to this book as somewhat of an alternative educator with over ten years (cannot believe I can write that) of teaching experience. Trained here in Canada, I taught in England for the first two years of my career before returning home. Then I was hired at the adult high school. It’s on the opposite end of the age spectrum from ALPHA but otherwise is very similar: part of our school board yet unlike the other high schools, always slightly misunderstood by other stakeholders in the education system. Indeed, the concerted effort not to discuss alternative education in our media and everyday conversation is, when you pause to think about it, rather astounding. If it is mentioned, it is almost always in the context of critical discussions about homeschooling. Every few years you get a “gee, whiz” article about an alternative school like an Africentric one, or a school established by a First Nation—almost always acting as if this is a brand-new phenomenon rather than the latest instance in a long line of resistance. Nobody talks about adult education that is not post-secondary, and few people outside of education talk about alternative schools.
In spite of my longstanding involvement in alternative education, it should give you an idea of how vast the province of Ontario is that here in Thunder Bay I had never heard of ALPHA down in Toronto. Thus, I went into this book expecting to be sympathetic to the concept but also skeptical. Given its longevity and the glowing reviews it receives from former students and parents, why has ALPHA’s success not been replicated more? Why does it persist when other efforts have failed? Or is it too good to be true, and will I have to read between O’Rourke’s lines to discover the sinister conspiracy afoot to mould young minds into radical progressives bent on establishing a new world order? (OK, probably not that last one.)
A few running themes emerge over the course of the book: the importance of parental involvement and commitment, the impossibility of being everything to everyone, and the challenges of maintaining true independence and alternative ideals in a system not designed for them.
ALPHA’s successes and failures correlated quite a bit with its ability to involve parents in the day-to-day running of the school. O’Rourke chronicles the value found in Meeting, an all-hands affair at the end of each school day attended by parents but coordinated by the students. When ALPHA lost its ability to do full-day kindergarten, it was a blow to Meeting because parents who might otherwise be picking up their youngest ones would have trouble attending. In a school where freedom of activity for students is such a big part of its DNA, having enough volunteers to supervise and assist, when necessary, is huge.
This has opened up ALPHA and other alternative schools in its vein to accusations of elitism, something O’Rourke addresses here. It’s true that ALPHA’s model specifically works best for middle-class families whose parents have the flexibility to volunteer in some way. It’s also true that ALPHA had, for a time, difficulty attracting nonwhite students and families. I appreciate O’Rourke’s willingness to engage with these shortcomings and discuss them honestly, for I think it can be damaging to alternative schooling movements—especially progressive ones—to make antiracism an afterthought in their missions. O’Rourke documents how ALPHA has, over the decades, sought to improve its admissions process and otherwise expand. At the same time, she also emphasizes that ALPHA is not the be all end all of alternative schooling.
That’s an important point that I often think gets lost in these discussions of reforming or revolutionizing education. The whole point is to get rid of mass education in favour of something that I would argue is more compassionate (holistic is another good, albeit somewhat loaded, term). Different communities are going to have different needs and desires; a single model (especially one predicated on Eurocentric ideals and ideas of intelligence and learning) cannot satisfy all of them.
These models prove themselves time and again. Yet the proliferation of alternative schools within the Toronto District School Board at the same time that they tend to fly under the radar of the public’s awareness attests to the disconnect and discomfort that even the board itself has with these models. O’Rourke looks at this through her own memories as a young radical and the writings of her contemporaries, along with documentation from school board meetings, reports, etc. As a younger teacher, I found this recounting invaluable. I grew up during the Mike Harris government of the nineties. As Ford’s government recapitulates, quite literally, the neoliberal “back to basics” model that Harris and Snobelen introduced when I was a child, Can this be School? feels more and more relevant to the here and now. These battles in education are cyclical, each generation fighting the same fight, gaining or giving ground as economic and cultural pressures allow. Consequently, it is vital that we do not forget our history so that we can learn from our successes and avoid repeating the mistakes from the previous cycle.
In this sense, Can this be school? succeeds. It is not quite a blueprint nor is it quite an oral history, but it has elements of both. It doesn’t quite offer a structural analysis of what else, outside of education, in our society must change to make alternative schooling more palatable and practical on a larger scale. However, what it does offer is detail and salient analysis of a single alternative school in the context of the larger alternative-schooling movement. ALPHA is not the only way to do alternative school; nevertheless, I would say this book goes on the required reading list for alternative schooling. I found it reassuring—so much of what O’Rourke describes of ALPHA is present, albeit in more adult-friendly forms, in my praxis, so there was a little preening happening as I read this on my deck. I also found it galvanizing. I can’t speak to how a parent or interested party who isn’t a teacher would find it, but for teachers less familiar with alternative education, I think this book is a good place to start. It’s up to date, complete, and careful to acknowledge that this could be school—but the choice is ultimately up to the communities a school will serve.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Told roughly chronologically, this book presents eighteen chapters of history, quotations from interviews with former students and parents, and meticulous research that documents not only ALPHA’s genesis but the political and cultural forces at work in Toronto in the sixties and seventies that allowed for that genesis in the first place. This is sourced and structured like a thesis (which it was originally), though it has a more personal and admiring tone than a thesis might have—O’Rourke was a parent and employee of ALPHA for a time and obviously believes in the school’s mission. That being said, she freely catalogs the school’s failures as well as its successes—though it’s worth noting that even the idea of categorizing such things into failure and success is suspect if the framework we are using is the one established by over a century of mass schooling.
I come to this book as somewhat of an alternative educator with over ten years (cannot believe I can write that) of teaching experience. Trained here in Canada, I taught in England for the first two years of my career before returning home. Then I was hired at the adult high school. It’s on the opposite end of the age spectrum from ALPHA but otherwise is very similar: part of our school board yet unlike the other high schools, always slightly misunderstood by other stakeholders in the education system. Indeed, the concerted effort not to discuss alternative education in our media and everyday conversation is, when you pause to think about it, rather astounding. If it is mentioned, it is almost always in the context of critical discussions about homeschooling. Every few years you get a “gee, whiz” article about an alternative school like an Africentric one, or a school established by a First Nation—almost always acting as if this is a brand-new phenomenon rather than the latest instance in a long line of resistance. Nobody talks about adult education that is not post-secondary, and few people outside of education talk about alternative schools.
In spite of my longstanding involvement in alternative education, it should give you an idea of how vast the province of Ontario is that here in Thunder Bay I had never heard of ALPHA down in Toronto. Thus, I went into this book expecting to be sympathetic to the concept but also skeptical. Given its longevity and the glowing reviews it receives from former students and parents, why has ALPHA’s success not been replicated more? Why does it persist when other efforts have failed? Or is it too good to be true, and will I have to read between O’Rourke’s lines to discover the sinister conspiracy afoot to mould young minds into radical progressives bent on establishing a new world order? (OK, probably not that last one.)
A few running themes emerge over the course of the book: the importance of parental involvement and commitment, the impossibility of being everything to everyone, and the challenges of maintaining true independence and alternative ideals in a system not designed for them.
ALPHA’s successes and failures correlated quite a bit with its ability to involve parents in the day-to-day running of the school. O’Rourke chronicles the value found in Meeting, an all-hands affair at the end of each school day attended by parents but coordinated by the students. When ALPHA lost its ability to do full-day kindergarten, it was a blow to Meeting because parents who might otherwise be picking up their youngest ones would have trouble attending. In a school where freedom of activity for students is such a big part of its DNA, having enough volunteers to supervise and assist, when necessary, is huge.
This has opened up ALPHA and other alternative schools in its vein to accusations of elitism, something O’Rourke addresses here. It’s true that ALPHA’s model specifically works best for middle-class families whose parents have the flexibility to volunteer in some way. It’s also true that ALPHA had, for a time, difficulty attracting nonwhite students and families. I appreciate O’Rourke’s willingness to engage with these shortcomings and discuss them honestly, for I think it can be damaging to alternative schooling movements—especially progressive ones—to make antiracism an afterthought in their missions. O’Rourke documents how ALPHA has, over the decades, sought to improve its admissions process and otherwise expand. At the same time, she also emphasizes that ALPHA is not the be all end all of alternative schooling.
That’s an important point that I often think gets lost in these discussions of reforming or revolutionizing education. The whole point is to get rid of mass education in favour of something that I would argue is more compassionate (holistic is another good, albeit somewhat loaded, term). Different communities are going to have different needs and desires; a single model (especially one predicated on Eurocentric ideals and ideas of intelligence and learning) cannot satisfy all of them.
These models prove themselves time and again. Yet the proliferation of alternative schools within the Toronto District School Board at the same time that they tend to fly under the radar of the public’s awareness attests to the disconnect and discomfort that even the board itself has with these models. O’Rourke looks at this through her own memories as a young radical and the writings of her contemporaries, along with documentation from school board meetings, reports, etc. As a younger teacher, I found this recounting invaluable. I grew up during the Mike Harris government of the nineties. As Ford’s government recapitulates, quite literally, the neoliberal “back to basics” model that Harris and Snobelen introduced when I was a child, Can this be School? feels more and more relevant to the here and now. These battles in education are cyclical, each generation fighting the same fight, gaining or giving ground as economic and cultural pressures allow. Consequently, it is vital that we do not forget our history so that we can learn from our successes and avoid repeating the mistakes from the previous cycle.
In this sense, Can this be school? succeeds. It is not quite a blueprint nor is it quite an oral history, but it has elements of both. It doesn’t quite offer a structural analysis of what else, outside of education, in our society must change to make alternative schooling more palatable and practical on a larger scale. However, what it does offer is detail and salient analysis of a single alternative school in the context of the larger alternative-schooling movement. ALPHA is not the only way to do alternative school; nevertheless, I would say this book goes on the required reading list for alternative schooling. I found it reassuring—so much of what O’Rourke describes of ALPHA is present, albeit in more adult-friendly forms, in my praxis, so there was a little preening happening as I read this on my deck. I also found it galvanizing. I can’t speak to how a parent or interested party who isn’t a teacher would find it, but for teachers less familiar with alternative education, I think this book is a good place to start. It’s up to date, complete, and careful to acknowledge that this could be school—but the choice is ultimately up to the communities a school will serve.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
I AM AI: A Novelette by Ai Jiang
challenging
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
The system doesn’t care. This is a lesson some of us learn sooner than others—and a few don’t ever have to learn it at all. In this timely novelette, Ai Jiang looks down the uncaring maw of capitalism in the form of the exploitation of workers “competing” with artificial intelligence. I AM AI rides the echoes of cyberpunk decades past into a future that is not far off, in many ways, from our distinctly dystopian present. I received an eARC from the author in exchange for a review.
The eponymous Ai lives ten minutes into the future (though some exposition in the story might place it about a thousand years hence). Her city exists under the monopolistic thumb of a megacorp, and she ekes out a living posing as an AI writing program. She is also a cyborg. Her enhancements allow her to interface more efficiently with the terminals at the cyber cafe where she fulfills her commissions; she can also power the entire block of housing units where she lives with her aunt. But Ai’s battery is faulty and needs an upgrade that means replacing her entire heart. And money is, as ever, tight.
Jiang uses Ai’s battery level as a ticking clock to keep the tension high. This combines with the shorter novella form to create a pressure cooker of a plot. As her battery ticks down closer and closer to zero, Ai rushes—to work, to her mechanic, away from the aunt who is so obsessed with plugging her alarm clock into Ai. Her distress might be manifesting in science fictional ways, yet it will feel familiar to many readers: it is the palpable sensation of slipping further down the slope into abject destitution. Ai is desperate, and desperate people do things they might later regret.
Her obsession with dismantling her humanity makes sense when you look at what she is up against. She is posing as an AI and competes against actual AI writing companies because her scripts turn out better (no shit). Nevertheless, she can’t beat the speed of these other companies, and it turns out she can’t compete on price either. These pressures mean Ai must make the age-old choice between quality and alacrity. Capitalism moves hand in hand with enshittification: you can’t get it good, but you can get it fast, and you can get it cheap, so isn’t that better?
Despite being a shorter work, I AM AI casts a sprawling network of tendrils back through science fiction and history. Its most obvious antecedents to me are classic cyberpunk, from which a lot of our ideas of dystopian cyborgs originated. Ai would be right at home in Chiba City with Case from Neuromancer. But Jiang’s writing also looks at the history of labour and the precariousness of the working class. Ai’s steps away from humanity, her drumbeat decisions to replace more and more of herself with machinery, are born from good intentions—the road to hell and all that. She needs to earn more money to live, not just for herself, but for her family and friends. This reminds me of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, solidifying now in the gig economy and the sprawling human labour forces around the world, of workers leaving their families to put in lengthy days only to send money home so their families could live. In the stories that spiral throughout human history, those in power always find a way to create coercive structures that make the working class feel like they have “no choice” but to do what is most expedient, to take on the labour that will earn them the most money in the last time, even if it is ultimately dehumanizing and destructive.
I felt uncomfortable reading this book. I didn’t want to like it, for I was uncomfortable with how comfortable Ai seemed to be with her decisions. I love when science fiction does that! But as I sat with it, read over Jiang’s careful monologues from Ai and read in between the lines of dialogue between her and those close to her, I shifted my perspective. I started to see Ai’s cybernetic nature as a metaphor for what we are doing with digital tech, if not in our own bodies than in the extensions we put in our pockets and increasingly invite into our homes. How many of us answer emails late at night, pick up calls from work after hours, constantly check our phones and say, “Just one more task, just one more thing … well I really need to do this or else it will look bad at my next review….” Whether or not we ever reach the level of integration Ai experiences in this book, the ideology that drives such integration exists here and now. That is the chilling mirror I AM AI holds up to our reality.
What we are currently calling artificial intelligence is overhyped, of course. Yet it still poses a threat to creative endeavours, such as writing. Jiang’s clever use of genre and history, along with her powerfully descriptive writing, allows her to pack a lot into this novella. I AM AI is deceptive and multilayered. It might make you feel uncomfortable. It will certainly make you think about the cost of competing, and whether or not maybe the answer is—to borrow from a classic—not to play the game at all.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
The eponymous Ai lives ten minutes into the future (though some exposition in the story might place it about a thousand years hence). Her city exists under the monopolistic thumb of a megacorp, and she ekes out a living posing as an AI writing program. She is also a cyborg. Her enhancements allow her to interface more efficiently with the terminals at the cyber cafe where she fulfills her commissions; she can also power the entire block of housing units where she lives with her aunt. But Ai’s battery is faulty and needs an upgrade that means replacing her entire heart. And money is, as ever, tight.
Jiang uses Ai’s battery level as a ticking clock to keep the tension high. This combines with the shorter novella form to create a pressure cooker of a plot. As her battery ticks down closer and closer to zero, Ai rushes—to work, to her mechanic, away from the aunt who is so obsessed with plugging her alarm clock into Ai. Her distress might be manifesting in science fictional ways, yet it will feel familiar to many readers: it is the palpable sensation of slipping further down the slope into abject destitution. Ai is desperate, and desperate people do things they might later regret.
Her obsession with dismantling her humanity makes sense when you look at what she is up against. She is posing as an AI and competes against actual AI writing companies because her scripts turn out better (no shit). Nevertheless, she can’t beat the speed of these other companies, and it turns out she can’t compete on price either. These pressures mean Ai must make the age-old choice between quality and alacrity. Capitalism moves hand in hand with enshittification: you can’t get it good, but you can get it fast, and you can get it cheap, so isn’t that better?
Despite being a shorter work, I AM AI casts a sprawling network of tendrils back through science fiction and history. Its most obvious antecedents to me are classic cyberpunk, from which a lot of our ideas of dystopian cyborgs originated. Ai would be right at home in Chiba City with Case from Neuromancer. But Jiang’s writing also looks at the history of labour and the precariousness of the working class. Ai’s steps away from humanity, her drumbeat decisions to replace more and more of herself with machinery, are born from good intentions—the road to hell and all that. She needs to earn more money to live, not just for herself, but for her family and friends. This reminds me of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, solidifying now in the gig economy and the sprawling human labour forces around the world, of workers leaving their families to put in lengthy days only to send money home so their families could live. In the stories that spiral throughout human history, those in power always find a way to create coercive structures that make the working class feel like they have “no choice” but to do what is most expedient, to take on the labour that will earn them the most money in the last time, even if it is ultimately dehumanizing and destructive.
I felt uncomfortable reading this book. I didn’t want to like it, for I was uncomfortable with how comfortable Ai seemed to be with her decisions. I love when science fiction does that! But as I sat with it, read over Jiang’s careful monologues from Ai and read in between the lines of dialogue between her and those close to her, I shifted my perspective. I started to see Ai’s cybernetic nature as a metaphor for what we are doing with digital tech, if not in our own bodies than in the extensions we put in our pockets and increasingly invite into our homes. How many of us answer emails late at night, pick up calls from work after hours, constantly check our phones and say, “Just one more task, just one more thing … well I really need to do this or else it will look bad at my next review….” Whether or not we ever reach the level of integration Ai experiences in this book, the ideology that drives such integration exists here and now. That is the chilling mirror I AM AI holds up to our reality.
What we are currently calling artificial intelligence is overhyped, of course. Yet it still poses a threat to creative endeavours, such as writing. Jiang’s clever use of genre and history, along with her powerfully descriptive writing, allows her to pack a lot into this novella. I AM AI is deceptive and multilayered. It might make you feel uncomfortable. It will certainly make you think about the cost of competing, and whether or not maybe the answer is—to borrow from a classic—not to play the game at all.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Many a moon ago I read a duology (plus inciting novella) from Guy Haley called Reality 36 and Omega Point. It features, among other things, a dynamic duo of an AI and a cyborg as private investigators. I predictably loved it. I thought Emergent Properties, by Aimee Ogden, might give me some of the same flavour—and I was partly right. Thank you to NetGalley and publisher Tor for the eARC.
Scorn is one of the earliest sentient AIs and one of few AIs emancipated from their creators. Scorn’s creators are a couple of scientists ze calls Mum and Maman; once a powerhouse team, they have since divorced and fallen into a cycle of very public acrimony. Scorn has tried to stay out of it, ducking zir purpose as a space-exploration AI to become an investigator instead. When the story starts, a backup of Scorn has just been restored—missing the last ten days of memories! Ze must retrace zir steps, and fast, not only to get to the bottom of the mystery but also figure out who might have had it out for zir—and why.
Lots of stuff to recommend this book to lovers of science fiction. First, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The plot is brisk. Despite that, Ogden does a lot of worldbuilding. Scorn explains the basics of this world, which is cyberpunk dusted with a bit of failed singularity: corporations have replaced failed nation-states, and AI exists, but most of it is not particularly powerful. Scorn is an exception, a fact that definitely makes zir lonely. We also meet a few other examples of AIs of various levels of complexity, including a “sibling” of Scorn’s.
The actual mystery and its resolution is predictable, in my opinion. The culprit was (to me) fairly obvious, the climax pretty clearly telegraphed early on. Since this is a novella I will cut it a bit more slack, simply because it is meant to be shorter and shallower than a full novel. If execution over originality is your desire (and mystery, like romance, often encourages that desire), then this book will work fine for you.
Indeed, Ogden has prioritized a fun and sympathetic protagonist over the mystery. And that’s fine. Scorn is cool. Ze is an exhausted, hardworking, somewhat sarcastic AI. I liked how Ogden clearly took time to consider how to write an AI in first person. At a few points, Scorn mentions things like locking zir sarcasm subroutines behind a time-delay lock, so ze will be less sarcastic for a certain period of time. Ogden acknowledges how the vast differences between Scorn’s experience and those of a vanilla human—both in terms of embodiment but also how we process stimuli—would make Scorn think and act differently.
Emergent Properties is a great science-fiction novella that’s pretty much what it says on the tin. Don’t go in expecting the moon—do go in expecting an intense visit to the moon!
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Scorn is one of the earliest sentient AIs and one of few AIs emancipated from their creators. Scorn’s creators are a couple of scientists ze calls Mum and Maman; once a powerhouse team, they have since divorced and fallen into a cycle of very public acrimony. Scorn has tried to stay out of it, ducking zir purpose as a space-exploration AI to become an investigator instead. When the story starts, a backup of Scorn has just been restored—missing the last ten days of memories! Ze must retrace zir steps, and fast, not only to get to the bottom of the mystery but also figure out who might have had it out for zir—and why.
Lots of stuff to recommend this book to lovers of science fiction. First, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The plot is brisk. Despite that, Ogden does a lot of worldbuilding. Scorn explains the basics of this world, which is cyberpunk dusted with a bit of failed singularity: corporations have replaced failed nation-states, and AI exists, but most of it is not particularly powerful. Scorn is an exception, a fact that definitely makes zir lonely. We also meet a few other examples of AIs of various levels of complexity, including a “sibling” of Scorn’s.
The actual mystery and its resolution is predictable, in my opinion. The culprit was (to me) fairly obvious, the climax pretty clearly telegraphed early on. Since this is a novella I will cut it a bit more slack, simply because it is meant to be shorter and shallower than a full novel. If execution over originality is your desire (and mystery, like romance, often encourages that desire), then this book will work fine for you.
Indeed, Ogden has prioritized a fun and sympathetic protagonist over the mystery. And that’s fine. Scorn is cool. Ze is an exhausted, hardworking, somewhat sarcastic AI. I liked how Ogden clearly took time to consider how to write an AI in first person. At a few points, Scorn mentions things like locking zir sarcasm subroutines behind a time-delay lock, so ze will be less sarcastic for a certain period of time. Ogden acknowledges how the vast differences between Scorn’s experience and those of a vanilla human—both in terms of embodiment but also how we process stimuli—would make Scorn think and act differently.
Emergent Properties is a great science-fiction novella that’s pretty much what it says on the tin. Don’t go in expecting the moon—do go in expecting an intense visit to the moon!
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Where the Light Goes by Sara Barnard
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
That’s fine. It’s OK, Sara Barnard. I didn’t need those tears on the inside of my body. Oh wow. Cool. Your novels always sneak up on me, both in the sense that I often don’t hear about them until they’re just being published, and also in the sense that the first half or so of the story often undersells itself until it builds to a final, incredible crescendo. Where the Light Goes continues this trend in a big way. I didn’t think I would give this book five stars—unlike Fierce Fragile Hearts, which I identified with very closely, Where the Light Goes is about losing a sister to suicide—fortunately, I haven’t endured any loss like that. I was expecting to find this book beautiful from a distance. But no, you just had to tiptoe around all my emotional defences and tap me on the shoulder, then when I turned around to look you tapped me on the other shoulder, and finally you whispered, “Got you,” before delivering that exquisitely heartbreaking final sequence.
Emmy Beckwith is sixteen years old. Her older sister, Beth, is known to the rest of the world as Lizzie Beck, one quarter of a surprisingly successful girl pop group, The Jinks. After Beth dies by suicide, Emmy of course is left with unanswered questions, grief, and the heavy hypocrisy of media and people in Beth’s life who knew her more as Lizzie. The book counts the number of days since Beth’s death. Emmy and her immediate family grapple with what it means to lose a daughter but also to lose the person who provided the family’s connection to fame and fortune.
I wasn’t prepared for the staccato style of writing Barnard employs here—but I kind of loved it? And I say this as someone who is generally rather harsh when writers deviate from the conventional chapter-and-paragraph form of the modern novel; the further I get out of my heady days of university literature, the more I just crave that conventional storytelling. However, in this case, I think the choice works very well in capturing Emmy’s volatile emotions and memories. The same goes for interspersing news report excerpts, transcripts from interviews, WhatsApp conversations, etc. Where the Light Goes feels like an attempt at adapting and pushing the novel form in a direction that might appeal more and more to the youngest generation of young adult readers. In the past I have been skeptical of authors including these kinds of devices because they can feel gimmicky. Here, however, it just works.
The style also feels very appropriate given the chunking that often accompanies grief. I have the privilege of never having lost anyone as close to me as Emmy was to her sister. So I took my time sitting with what Emmy felt and how she acted. Writing grief, portraying it deeply without shading into melodrama, is a tall order. Barnard really captures how emotions can turn on a dime. How you can be rude to friends and family, do things you might regret, before turning around and needing someone a minute later. Add on top of this the hormones and stress of being a sixteen-year-old girl, of having a famous sister … well, it’s a lot.
I have often been in the role of Grey and Emmy’s other friends. Between reading this book and writing this review, my ride-or-die’s father died. She’s far away from me, so there isn’t much I can do. I sent her a short text, much like Grey does to Emmy, knowing that she didn’t need one more person blowing up her phone right now. Sometimes the hardest thing to do as a friend is to wait.
Lurking beneath these character studies in grief is the even more insidious theme of how celebrity twists relationships. Obviously we see this in how media outlets capitalize on Beth’s death for content in the same way they used her while she was alive. However, the more fascinating example to me is between Emmy and her dad. As The Jinks’ manager, Emmy’s dad must process Beth’s death in two ways. He has lost his daughter, yes. But with the fate of the band uncertain, he is also facing losing his job. The way that this creates some intra-family strife is very fascinating. I love how Barnard manages to portray all three of the Beckwiths with such grace and roundness. None of them are bad people. Emmy’s mum is upset with Malcolm at times, but she also understands why he acts the way he does. Vice versa for Emmy talking with her mum, or with her dad. Again, it’s the way that Barnard navigates through this turmoil without tipping over into melodrama that truly impresses me.
And that ending. Yeah, that’s how this book needed to end. I cried. The transcript especially, the way that Barnard privileges us with the glimpse forward so we can see how Emmy continues to deal with this event … it’s great.
Where the Light Goes deals with extremely heavy themes around suicide, drug use, and fame. It is an intense book. But it is also a Sara Barnard book—I don’t think she has a gear other than “intense,” nor do I want one from her. If Courtney Summers is the Queen of YA Devastation, Sara Barnard is the Duchess of YA Anguish. She tells stories that always land on the sadder side of real in a way that remind us that sadness isn’t something we can run from, only through.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Emmy Beckwith is sixteen years old. Her older sister, Beth, is known to the rest of the world as Lizzie Beck, one quarter of a surprisingly successful girl pop group, The Jinks. After Beth dies by suicide, Emmy of course is left with unanswered questions, grief, and the heavy hypocrisy of media and people in Beth’s life who knew her more as Lizzie. The book counts the number of days since Beth’s death. Emmy and her immediate family grapple with what it means to lose a daughter but also to lose the person who provided the family’s connection to fame and fortune.
I wasn’t prepared for the staccato style of writing Barnard employs here—but I kind of loved it? And I say this as someone who is generally rather harsh when writers deviate from the conventional chapter-and-paragraph form of the modern novel; the further I get out of my heady days of university literature, the more I just crave that conventional storytelling. However, in this case, I think the choice works very well in capturing Emmy’s volatile emotions and memories. The same goes for interspersing news report excerpts, transcripts from interviews, WhatsApp conversations, etc. Where the Light Goes feels like an attempt at adapting and pushing the novel form in a direction that might appeal more and more to the youngest generation of young adult readers. In the past I have been skeptical of authors including these kinds of devices because they can feel gimmicky. Here, however, it just works.
The style also feels very appropriate given the chunking that often accompanies grief. I have the privilege of never having lost anyone as close to me as Emmy was to her sister. So I took my time sitting with what Emmy felt and how she acted. Writing grief, portraying it deeply without shading into melodrama, is a tall order. Barnard really captures how emotions can turn on a dime. How you can be rude to friends and family, do things you might regret, before turning around and needing someone a minute later. Add on top of this the hormones and stress of being a sixteen-year-old girl, of having a famous sister … well, it’s a lot.
I have often been in the role of Grey and Emmy’s other friends. Between reading this book and writing this review, my ride-or-die’s father died. She’s far away from me, so there isn’t much I can do. I sent her a short text, much like Grey does to Emmy, knowing that she didn’t need one more person blowing up her phone right now. Sometimes the hardest thing to do as a friend is to wait.
Lurking beneath these character studies in grief is the even more insidious theme of how celebrity twists relationships. Obviously we see this in how media outlets capitalize on Beth’s death for content in the same way they used her while she was alive. However, the more fascinating example to me is between Emmy and her dad. As The Jinks’ manager, Emmy’s dad must process Beth’s death in two ways. He has lost his daughter, yes. But with the fate of the band uncertain, he is also facing losing his job. The way that this creates some intra-family strife is very fascinating. I love how Barnard manages to portray all three of the Beckwiths with such grace and roundness. None of them are bad people. Emmy’s mum is upset with Malcolm at times, but she also understands why he acts the way he does. Vice versa for Emmy talking with her mum, or with her dad. Again, it’s the way that Barnard navigates through this turmoil without tipping over into melodrama that truly impresses me.
And that ending. Yeah, that’s how this book needed to end. I cried. The transcript especially, the way that Barnard privileges us with the glimpse forward so we can see how Emmy continues to deal with this event … it’s great.
Where the Light Goes deals with extremely heavy themes around suicide, drug use, and fame. It is an intense book. But it is also a Sara Barnard book—I don’t think she has a gear other than “intense,” nor do I want one from her. If Courtney Summers is the Queen of YA Devastation, Sara Barnard is the Duchess of YA Anguish. She tells stories that always land on the sadder side of real in a way that remind us that sadness isn’t something we can run from, only through.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies by Jessica Wilson
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Bodies are complicated. In addition to the indignity of merely having one, the way it constantly needs maintenance and has such a limited warranty, bodies are one of the primary ways we interact with our world. And our world is racist. It’s Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women’s Bodies is Jessica Wilson’s attempt to sort through how anti-Black racism permeates diet culture and eating-disorder treatment when it comes to Black women. I found it super insightful and easy to read; Wilson is making a valuable contribution to what should be a much larger conversation. I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for a review.
First, my positionality in the conversation on body image, body liberation, and most importantly, race and racism. I’m a white woman, and I am tall and thin. I have the economic purchasing power to ensure I can buy the Healthy foods and products we’re supposed to buy, and I have the privilege of looking such that when I choose to buy junk food, people don’t roll their eyes or mutter under their breath as I do so. My upbringing, education, and access to opportunities and healthcare—none of these things have been adversely impacted by racism; if anything, I am the beneficiary of white supremacy in our society. My identity as a transgender woman complicates this story of privilege. As Wilson herself notes in this book, queer bodies also get policed. I have a complicated relationship with my body and how I am read (or not read) as conforming to feminine beauty standards. But mine is a white queer body, not a Black queer body; I don’t intend to equate my struggles with body image to the struggles faced by Black women and people of marginalized gender experiences.
As I hope I made clear in my introduction, I loved this book. However, I’m also not the best qualified to critique it—Wilson explicitly states in her introduction that this book is intended for Black women. So I just want to foreground the voices of some Black reviewers: Christina, Sarah, and Nariah on Goodreads. As I discuss my impressions of this book, keep in mind that my opinion and perspective aren’t as attuned to what Wilson is trying to accomplish as those of her target audience.
When I started reading It’s Always Been Ours, I was expecting a book that discussed medical anti-Black racism and threw lots of facts about Black women’s bodies at me. I thought we would get a lot of history of anti-fatness and wellness culture. Indeed, these elements run through the book. However, Wilson more explicitly and emphatically grounds her narrative in discussions of white supremacy and the need to dismantle it. In other words, this book is actually very aligned with a lot of the antiracist reading I’ve been doing, a perfect addition to that shelf, if you will.
Wilson is critical of any analysis of eating disorders and diet culture that acknowledges racism’s role in these issues as only one of many factors. She observes,
First, my positionality in the conversation on body image, body liberation, and most importantly, race and racism. I’m a white woman, and I am tall and thin. I have the economic purchasing power to ensure I can buy the Healthy foods and products we’re supposed to buy, and I have the privilege of looking such that when I choose to buy junk food, people don’t roll their eyes or mutter under their breath as I do so. My upbringing, education, and access to opportunities and healthcare—none of these things have been adversely impacted by racism; if anything, I am the beneficiary of white supremacy in our society. My identity as a transgender woman complicates this story of privilege. As Wilson herself notes in this book, queer bodies also get policed. I have a complicated relationship with my body and how I am read (or not read) as conforming to feminine beauty standards. But mine is a white queer body, not a Black queer body; I don’t intend to equate my struggles with body image to the struggles faced by Black women and people of marginalized gender experiences.
As I hope I made clear in my introduction, I loved this book. However, I’m also not the best qualified to critique it—Wilson explicitly states in her introduction that this book is intended for Black women. So I just want to foreground the voices of some Black reviewers: Christina, Sarah, and Nariah on Goodreads. As I discuss my impressions of this book, keep in mind that my opinion and perspective aren’t as attuned to what Wilson is trying to accomplish as those of her target audience.
When I started reading It’s Always Been Ours, I was expecting a book that discussed medical anti-Black racism and threw lots of facts about Black women’s bodies at me. I thought we would get a lot of history of anti-fatness and wellness culture. Indeed, these elements run through the book. However, Wilson more explicitly and emphatically grounds her narrative in discussions of white supremacy and the need to dismantle it. In other words, this book is actually very aligned with a lot of the antiracist reading I’ve been doing, a perfect addition to that shelf, if you will.
Wilson is critical of any analysis of eating disorders and diet culture that acknowledges racism’s role in these issues as only one of many factors. She observes,
When we relegate racism to “the roots” of diet culture, we send the message that, sure, racism may have played a role in the development of the quest to shrink our bodies, but if we are able to dismantle diet culture, then racism will, by proxy, be destroyed as well. That’s not it. Diet culture is not the driving force behind the ways our bodies are under surveillance by society.
This hit me because I am absolutely guilty of minimizing racism in this way. Look, language is complicated. The terms we use to describe the struggle are always evolving. Sometimes—especially, I think, those of us who are more verbose—we trip ourselves up in our desire to be as expansive in our terms as we can be. When that happens, we actually end up erasing important differences (a good example of this is the tendency to lump together very disparate experiences under the umbrella label of “BIPOC”). So I appreciated Wilson’s adamant stance that we treat racism as baked in to diet culture. In other words, there should be no conversation about Black women’s bodies that does not explicitly centre the role of white supremacy in creating the standards for those bodies.
This thesis might seem obvious. Yet Wilson shares many stories from her experience as an eating-disorder specialist that belies this. Most of her patients come to her seeking quick fixes, reassurance, granular plans to adjust their eating habits to help them feel better about their bodies. They resist doing the work she asks them to do to dig deeper. Similarly, her colleagues (particularly her white colleagues) resist her attempt to discuss diet culture and eating disorders in this way. In other words, there is a deep, structural desire to maintain the status quo.
Although Wilson’s intimate narrative positions her as the brave rebel and maverick in this scenario, she undercuts self-aggrandizement by sharing examples of her own development along this axis. She critiques her performance in her first two years as a dietitian, recapitulating this at the end of the book by sharing how a longtime client of hers noted that, years ago, her advice would have been dramatically different. In this way, Wilson reminds us that no one comes to antiracism work already knowing all the answers. Doesn’t matter how you are racialized. We all internalize white supremacist ideals as we grow up, and it takes work to unlearn that (that is exactly what getting “woke” meant, after all, before the right decided to appropriate and distort the term). Wilson’s very personal and careful anecdotes of her experiences both as a practitioner and a Black woman are the heart of this book. To others in positions of power (and I count myself as one of these in my role as an educator), she is saying that every day is another opportunity for you to do better. To the Black women reading this book, she concludes on a note of celebrating Black joy. She wants Black women to know that their bodies—whatever their shape or size—are not a problem.
On that note, however, I was also happy to read such a deep and incisive critique of the body positivity/fat liberation movements. I have heard a little bit about this here and there, particularly how it intersects with Instagram. Basically, there is a fine line between advocating for a positive view of one’s body, especially when one is fat, versus enforcing a kind of toxic positivity that can backfire. Wilson draws on the experiences of activists in this space. While none of what she has to say in these chapters strikes me as particularly new, it’s all a very useful summary of these issues.
Again, I’m a very thin woman. I won’t pretend I don’t have body image issues or a complicated relationship with food. But I can generally find clothes that fit me, and people don’t look askance when I wolf down a cheeseburger. It’s Always Been Ours establishes how, for Black women of any size and shape, food is just another item on the list of mental gymnastics they complete each day. Hair too kinky? Eating too much or too little? Clothing too tight or too loose? When you add anti-Black racism on top of misogyny, you get misogynoir, as Moya Bailey coined, and it’s a hell of a thing.
Speaking of new vocabulary, this book introduced me to the term food apartheid. This term complements and builds on the idea of a food desert (which I was already aware of); as Wilson explains, it clarifies that such areas are not naturally occurring but rather deliberately constructed as a result of racism. Neat! (The learning, not the racism.)
It’s Always Been Ours is moving, well organized, funny, and helpful. This is a book about racism. Its language is more accessible than that of an academic press book, its stories more personal. But it is a book about how our society polices Black women and what Wilson thinks we should do about it (hint: resist). She challenges us to do better instead of simply going along with the narrative of the status quo because it is easier and lets us stay comfortable in the power we have. I’m glad I picked this one up!
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
This thesis might seem obvious. Yet Wilson shares many stories from her experience as an eating-disorder specialist that belies this. Most of her patients come to her seeking quick fixes, reassurance, granular plans to adjust their eating habits to help them feel better about their bodies. They resist doing the work she asks them to do to dig deeper. Similarly, her colleagues (particularly her white colleagues) resist her attempt to discuss diet culture and eating disorders in this way. In other words, there is a deep, structural desire to maintain the status quo.
Although Wilson’s intimate narrative positions her as the brave rebel and maverick in this scenario, she undercuts self-aggrandizement by sharing examples of her own development along this axis. She critiques her performance in her first two years as a dietitian, recapitulating this at the end of the book by sharing how a longtime client of hers noted that, years ago, her advice would have been dramatically different. In this way, Wilson reminds us that no one comes to antiracism work already knowing all the answers. Doesn’t matter how you are racialized. We all internalize white supremacist ideals as we grow up, and it takes work to unlearn that (that is exactly what getting “woke” meant, after all, before the right decided to appropriate and distort the term). Wilson’s very personal and careful anecdotes of her experiences both as a practitioner and a Black woman are the heart of this book. To others in positions of power (and I count myself as one of these in my role as an educator), she is saying that every day is another opportunity for you to do better. To the Black women reading this book, she concludes on a note of celebrating Black joy. She wants Black women to know that their bodies—whatever their shape or size—are not a problem.
On that note, however, I was also happy to read such a deep and incisive critique of the body positivity/fat liberation movements. I have heard a little bit about this here and there, particularly how it intersects with Instagram. Basically, there is a fine line between advocating for a positive view of one’s body, especially when one is fat, versus enforcing a kind of toxic positivity that can backfire. Wilson draws on the experiences of activists in this space. While none of what she has to say in these chapters strikes me as particularly new, it’s all a very useful summary of these issues.
Again, I’m a very thin woman. I won’t pretend I don’t have body image issues or a complicated relationship with food. But I can generally find clothes that fit me, and people don’t look askance when I wolf down a cheeseburger. It’s Always Been Ours establishes how, for Black women of any size and shape, food is just another item on the list of mental gymnastics they complete each day. Hair too kinky? Eating too much or too little? Clothing too tight or too loose? When you add anti-Black racism on top of misogyny, you get misogynoir, as Moya Bailey coined, and it’s a hell of a thing.
Speaking of new vocabulary, this book introduced me to the term food apartheid. This term complements and builds on the idea of a food desert (which I was already aware of); as Wilson explains, it clarifies that such areas are not naturally occurring but rather deliberately constructed as a result of racism. Neat! (The learning, not the racism.)
It’s Always Been Ours is moving, well organized, funny, and helpful. This is a book about racism. Its language is more accessible than that of an academic press book, its stories more personal. But it is a book about how our society polices Black women and what Wilson thinks we should do about it (hint: resist). She challenges us to do better instead of simply going along with the narrative of the status quo because it is easier and lets us stay comfortable in the power we have. I’m glad I picked this one up!
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson
adventurous
emotional
funny
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
What do you mean I have to wait a year for Book 3?? I guess I’ll manage, but I have spoiled myself by waiting a year to read Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, resulting in almost no wait between it and The Shadow Cabinet. Juno Dawson has created an excellent new urban fantasy series. However, I am going to be harder on this book than the first one for precisely that reason: she has set me up to expect great things from her!
As always, spoilers for the first book but not for this one.
The Shadow Cabinet picks up a few months after the end of the first book. Following the disastrous events that culminated in the execution of Helena Vance, previous High Priestess of HMRC, Niamh Kelly is poised to be crowned the new High Priestess. Except she isn’t Niamh Kelly—she is actually her evil twin sister, Ciara, who has swapped bodies. Ciara tries to conceal, with varying degrees of success, this veritable soap operatic twist while she uses her newfound consciousness and freedom to seek out Dabney Hale, disgraced warlock with delusions of grandeur. Leonie is on the case! Meanwhile, Theo and Holly push the bounds of their magic, Elle worries about how her magical life might impinge on the stability of her mundane one, and there’s something going on with simple, uncomplicated Luke.
This book took longer to get going, in my opinion, than the first one. Despite plenty happening, it felt like for several chapters nothing was happening. I honestly was much more invested in the smaller personal arcs of Ciara, Elle, Theo, etc., than I was Leonie’s cross-country hot pursuit of Hale and his evil plan for world domination. Yawn. It’s not a terrible plot as far as Bond-level plots go; nevertheless, Dawson’s ability to write interesting, complicated interpersonal dynamics is what The Shadow Cabinet showcases best. There is no better evidence of this than Ciara.
Look, I will level with you: an easy seventy-five percent of my reservations about this book have to do with how salty I am that Ciara replaced Niamh as one of the viewpoint characters. So you can imagine how frustrated I became when Dawson actually made me start liking Ciara or at least empathizing with her? As if she was a real human being with complex motives rather than an evil monster? What is this, 2020? I thought I was done with empathy, but no, apparently I still have a shred of it left over from somewhere. No, I never stopped hoping Niamh would somehow return from the dead to reclaim her body—at the same time, I started hoping that there would be redemption for Ciara. In fact, my prediction was that Ciara would eventually sacrifice herself to save the world (if not also Niamh). I won’t tell you if this prediction came true!
The same complex dynamics play out in the relationship between Theo and Holly. Theo’s transness was a key point of both plot and character development in the first book, which culminated in Theo’s literal transmogrification: her body changed into one we would typically associate with a cis woman. This complicates things a hell of a lot, and I want to take a moment to unpack this as a trans woman reading a book written by a trans woman.
First, I respect the hell out of Dawson for going this route and engaging with these ideas. My thoughts are messy because this is a messy thing complicated by internalized transphobia and internalized ideas of a gender binary. Theo’s reaction to her new body is given to us in Chapter 9:
As always, spoilers for the first book but not for this one.
The Shadow Cabinet picks up a few months after the end of the first book. Following the disastrous events that culminated in the execution of Helena Vance, previous High Priestess of HMRC, Niamh Kelly is poised to be crowned the new High Priestess. Except she isn’t Niamh Kelly—she is actually her evil twin sister, Ciara, who has swapped bodies. Ciara tries to conceal, with varying degrees of success, this veritable soap operatic twist while she uses her newfound consciousness and freedom to seek out Dabney Hale, disgraced warlock with delusions of grandeur. Leonie is on the case! Meanwhile, Theo and Holly push the bounds of their magic, Elle worries about how her magical life might impinge on the stability of her mundane one, and there’s something going on with simple, uncomplicated Luke.
This book took longer to get going, in my opinion, than the first one. Despite plenty happening, it felt like for several chapters nothing was happening. I honestly was much more invested in the smaller personal arcs of Ciara, Elle, Theo, etc., than I was Leonie’s cross-country hot pursuit of Hale and his evil plan for world domination. Yawn. It’s not a terrible plot as far as Bond-level plots go; nevertheless, Dawson’s ability to write interesting, complicated interpersonal dynamics is what The Shadow Cabinet showcases best. There is no better evidence of this than Ciara.
Look, I will level with you: an easy seventy-five percent of my reservations about this book have to do with how salty I am that Ciara replaced Niamh as one of the viewpoint characters. So you can imagine how frustrated I became when Dawson actually made me start liking Ciara or at least empathizing with her? As if she was a real human being with complex motives rather than an evil monster? What is this, 2020? I thought I was done with empathy, but no, apparently I still have a shred of it left over from somewhere. No, I never stopped hoping Niamh would somehow return from the dead to reclaim her body—at the same time, I started hoping that there would be redemption for Ciara. In fact, my prediction was that Ciara would eventually sacrifice herself to save the world (if not also Niamh). I won’t tell you if this prediction came true!
The same complex dynamics play out in the relationship between Theo and Holly. Theo’s transness was a key point of both plot and character development in the first book, which culminated in Theo’s literal transmogrification: her body changed into one we would typically associate with a cis woman. This complicates things a hell of a lot, and I want to take a moment to unpack this as a trans woman reading a book written by a trans woman.
First, I respect the hell out of Dawson for going this route and engaging with these ideas. My thoughts are messy because this is a messy thing complicated by internalized transphobia and internalized ideas of a gender binary. Theo’s reaction to her new body is given to us in Chapter 9:
This body. This amazing new body. It made no sense, but it was incredible.
Over the summer, she and Holly had watched The Little Mermaid, and Theo knew just how Ariel felt when she looked down and saw her legs for the first time. Only in this case it was a vulva.
Any trans person who uses gender-affirming care to help them feel more aligned with their body will recognize something in these words. Transition is literally a journey of rediscovery. When one has access to the care one desires, it is also a journey of wonder. Waking up each morning and feeling a little bit more like yourself because of how you look in the mirror, how your limbs move, how you smell, etc.—it’s not something to be taken for granted. It is a revelation.
Down the page, however, we start to get into the more complicated part of Theo’s experience:
Down the page, however, we start to get into the more complicated part of Theo’s experience:
She also felt guilt. The day of her first menstruation could have been momentous, and it was in a small way. At the same time, she mostly felt bad for the countless other mundane trans girls who may never truly get all they wished for.
(“Mundane” in this sense simply means not a witch.) Dawson gives voice to this again in this chapter, first with Theo musing to herself: “There; that stab of guilt again. She was too trans and not trans enough” and then with Holly, a bit later in the chapter, asking, “Do you still consider yourself transgender?” and Theo answering in the affirmative.
Theo’s transformation allows her the ultimate kind of passing privilege, the ultimate way to live “stealth” should she choose. It is very similar to Danny’s in Dreadnought, another great book with a trans character written by a trans woman. Fantasy allows both Dawson and Daniels to pose a hypothetical question about the nature of being transgender: what is it that actually makes one trans? Theo says, “I was born one way, and now … I’m another.” Is that all? A surface reading of this arc might open Dawson to charges of transmedicalism. However, I actually see the opposite here—reaffirming Theo’s understanding of herself as trans reinforces the idea that biology is not destiny and that one’s genitals do not make one a woman. This was a stance Dawson already loudly proclaimed in Her Majesty’s Royal Coven with Theo’s power level pretransmogrification already at witchy levels rather than warlock levels (the magic knows!). Instead, through Theo Dawson offers us one reading of a transition story—it won’t be every trans woman’s story, but it aligns with some women’s visions of themselves. Theo is still trans because she identifies that way—however, she also acknowledges that she has privileges many trans women don’t, and this affects how society relates to her along the axis of gender identity.
All of this is to say that I really like how Dawson explores these ideas. Theo figures much less prominently in this book than the previous one, something that disappointed me. However, what Theo we get in this story is very good. I admire Dawson for tackling big questions around what it means to be transgender, how we decide these things for ourselves, and how society polices these ideas.
As far as the other viewpoint characters go—honestly, there are just too many. Leonie and Elle again from the first book, but then Dawson tosses in Luke and even a few Chinara chapters? I can’t. Let’s do a quick Kara Kharacter Review Lightning Round.
Leonie: love her arc of realizing she needs to stop sidelining Chinara. Love the open relationship stuff and her need to find her brother. Again, I think she suffers from the dilution caused by so many POV—neither the overall plot with Hale nor Leonie’s journey receive the time and nuance they deserve.
Luke: suddenly turned into the fucking Riley (of Buffy) of this series. Do not like. I don’t see him redeeming himself in my eyes any time soon. Indeed, his role in the climax reminded me too much of Xander at the end of Season 6. (More thoughts on that in a few months on Prophecy Girls.)
Chinara: Barely a POV character, clearly a badass, would read a whole book about her but her inclusion here feels extraneous.
Would have appreciated more Theo, more Holly, even more Elle—honestly Elle is the unsung hero of this story, intentionally so, and I love her for it. Not every witch needs to be glamorous or 100. Elle’s got a heart of gold and must be protected at all costs—even Ciara thinks so!
The Shadow Cabinet is a rad sequel. Did I love it in the same way that I loved the first book? No, for the first book was new and shiny. However, there is no second-book syndrome here. This is an action-packed story with wonderful character development, and if parts of the plot are a bit clunky or predictable or the pacing is off … well, I read literally seventeen installments of The Dresden Files, and this is already way better. So there. If you like witchy stuff and all the juicy drama from the early-2000s TV shows Dawson clearly grew up on, this series is for you.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Theo’s transformation allows her the ultimate kind of passing privilege, the ultimate way to live “stealth” should she choose. It is very similar to Danny’s in Dreadnought, another great book with a trans character written by a trans woman. Fantasy allows both Dawson and Daniels to pose a hypothetical question about the nature of being transgender: what is it that actually makes one trans? Theo says, “I was born one way, and now … I’m another.” Is that all? A surface reading of this arc might open Dawson to charges of transmedicalism. However, I actually see the opposite here—reaffirming Theo’s understanding of herself as trans reinforces the idea that biology is not destiny and that one’s genitals do not make one a woman. This was a stance Dawson already loudly proclaimed in Her Majesty’s Royal Coven with Theo’s power level pretransmogrification already at witchy levels rather than warlock levels (the magic knows!). Instead, through Theo Dawson offers us one reading of a transition story—it won’t be every trans woman’s story, but it aligns with some women’s visions of themselves. Theo is still trans because she identifies that way—however, she also acknowledges that she has privileges many trans women don’t, and this affects how society relates to her along the axis of gender identity.
All of this is to say that I really like how Dawson explores these ideas. Theo figures much less prominently in this book than the previous one, something that disappointed me. However, what Theo we get in this story is very good. I admire Dawson for tackling big questions around what it means to be transgender, how we decide these things for ourselves, and how society polices these ideas.
As far as the other viewpoint characters go—honestly, there are just too many. Leonie and Elle again from the first book, but then Dawson tosses in Luke and even a few Chinara chapters? I can’t. Let’s do a quick Kara Kharacter Review Lightning Round.
Leonie: love her arc of realizing she needs to stop sidelining Chinara. Love the open relationship stuff and her need to find her brother. Again, I think she suffers from the dilution caused by so many POV—neither the overall plot with Hale nor Leonie’s journey receive the time and nuance they deserve.
Luke: suddenly turned into the fucking Riley (of Buffy) of this series. Do not like. I don’t see him redeeming himself in my eyes any time soon. Indeed, his role in the climax reminded me too much of Xander at the end of Season 6. (More thoughts on that in a few months on Prophecy Girls.)
Chinara: Barely a POV character, clearly a badass, would read a whole book about her but her inclusion here feels extraneous.
Would have appreciated more Theo, more Holly, even more Elle—honestly Elle is the unsung hero of this story, intentionally so, and I love her for it. Not every witch needs to be glamorous or 100. Elle’s got a heart of gold and must be protected at all costs—even Ciara thinks so!
The Shadow Cabinet is a rad sequel. Did I love it in the same way that I loved the first book? No, for the first book was new and shiny. However, there is no second-book syndrome here. This is an action-packed story with wonderful character development, and if parts of the plot are a bit clunky or predictable or the pacing is off … well, I read literally seventeen installments of The Dresden Files, and this is already way better. So there. If you like witchy stuff and all the juicy drama from the early-2000s TV shows Dawson clearly grew up on, this series is for you.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.