So, this is not a review. There are plenty of book reviews and reactions and whatnot, and the book was... fine, I guess? I mean, the pacing's pretty gSo, this is not a review. There are plenty of book reviews and reactions and whatnot, and the book was... fine, I guess? I mean, the pacing's pretty good. I quite enjoyed the denouement. I found the politics aspect naively simplistic and the side characters drawn with McGuire's signature absence of empathy, but it's an entertaining read, particularly while I shelter in place and watch the dominionist, theonomic reconstructionist takeover of my country.
What I want to talk about is the worldbuilding, because that's why I picked up the book. Or more accurately, I want to talk about what I think the worldbuilding illuminates about us.
In the world of Feed, 50% or so of the population died in the first attacks. The zombie-virus is everywhere-- sure, there are the walking dead whose bite or scratch will convert you instantly, but the virus itself is airborne(?), fully endemic, but latent, so most people are asymptomatic but anyone who dies of natural causes will go zombie. Same goes for any sufficiently large animal, because apparently, despite the biological implausibility, the virus is universally zoonotic across all species boundaries but has a minimum weight requirement, so... don't overfeed your cat, I guess. This also means that unlike other zombie scenarios, there is no way to create a safe enclave. Anyone can go zombie at any time.
And yet despite the constant threat of zombies, the high risk of mortality, the loss of half the population and most of the countryside, the world of Feed is startlingly, unimaginatively, similar to our own. Despite what must have been a radical disruption of the global supply chain, the world goes on as normal, and there are even advancements in technology and manufacturing-- sophisticated home monitoring systems; complex tests; hermetic showers; automated sterilization systems. Even in the stories of early times, there are no memories of food shortages or government breakdown; no indication of real political change from a massive disruption in population and society. Who is doing all that manufacturing? How do they handle zombie outbreaks in close-quartered dangerous work? Who is shipping and moving things across the country? Who is doing all that farming and processing and computing and machining? Who is maintaining the telephone lines that weave across a zombie-ridden country and connect the world with high-def video? What happened to the ecological niches when all the big creatures went zombie and cities returned to nature? Why are people facing their own mortality every day wasting precious days in college liberal arts degrees?
I'm not a huge reader of dystopian fiction, but when I do read it, one of the things that constantly surprises, disappoints, but also intrigues me, is our failures of imagination. The aspects of our lives that people assume will remain the same, no matter what else happens. The framework we can't even imagine a world without.
In Grant's case, she couldn't envision the level of government breakdown and distrust that I'd argue we're experiencing today, with a pandemic that (as of posting, but who knows for how long) has taken less than 1% of the population (sound small? not when it affects people you care about), decimated the economy, caused the downfall of the CDC, and sewn distrust and disorder and invigorated a new iteration of a very old, very ugly conspiracy. Grant couldn't imagine a world where cellphone and internet connections became spotty and fall into disrepair as the population succumbs. She couldn't imagine a world where jobs other than subsistence farming become atypical and prized; where short lifespans and necessity have caused the collapse of the public school system and private colleges; where the majority of the US population suffer from food insecurity; where the medical system has failed and fallen; where knowledge is no longer at our fingertips and clever designs can't be trivially converted into mass-produced products; where populations of people are isolated from the rest of the world in terms of both talk and trade; where unity has broken down along with connectivity; where the unconsidered comforts of the upper middle class no longer exist; where truth is no longer objective.
Despite the fifty percent fatality rate, despite the literal zombie apocalypse, despite the constant unmanageable risk of a highly contagious outbreak, the world of Feed just isn't all that different from our own. People do internet entertainment jobs and restaurants and diners do their thing and the rich breed horses and buy up their politicians. We never meet a single farmer or trucker or anyone who would maintain society's lifelines. It's a middleclass world of privilege so deep-seated that it can't recognize itself.
I think it's the failures in imagination that I find the most thought-provoking in apocalyptic fiction, because it tells us so much about ourselves, about the ingrained assumptions in our lives. In the dystopians I envision, I would neither want or be capable of surviving. As I take my night walks and watch the ash spiral out of a reddened sky, I feel more aware of the ways our world is so delicately balanced; so easily disrupted... it takes only a very small apocalypse to bring about a new reality.
All this is to say that Feed is certainly an ironic read right now, but if you're looking for something more satisfying and beautiful and terrible and thought-provoking, I recommend The Girl with all the Gifts or, if you want to read a very self-aware zombie apocalypse millennial critique, Severance....more
Oof, I have complex feelings about this one. So much so that after a ~3-year hiatus from reviewing and Goodreads, I actually wrote a review. I think iOof, I have complex feelings about this one. So much so that after a ~3-year hiatus from reviewing and Goodreads, I actually wrote a review. I think it might still be in progress... I have a lot of roiling thoughts.
Atlas Alone is the fourth (and supposedly final?) book in the utterly fascinating and absorbing Planetfall series. The first in the series is still one of the most powerful books I've read in recent years. Like most great speculative fiction, it isn't so much about technical imaginings or creative worldbuilding --although both are present -- but about people and society, seen at a remove that allows us to examine our own beliefs and prejudices without falling into familiar partisan stances. Planetfall is a glorious, painful, heartrending, personal, bewildering examination of brokenness and grief. Each subsequent book takes place in the same world and is loosely tied to the others, but explores a new facet and centers around a new protagonist, each an unreliable narrator who is struggling and wounded in a changing world. Unfortunately, I personally have found each book progressively weaker, and that trend didn't stop with this book.
Atlas Alone takes place after After Atlas, and since the character set is the same, it really requires the former to fully understand events. It is narrated from the perspective of Dee, who we met in After Atlas as the fierce, practical friend (and protector) of that book's protagonist, Carlos. In this book, we discover just how much of that functional persona is actually a facade.
Dee is the first of the series protagonist whose fury and despair faces outwards as much as it turns inwards. The trauma she has been dragged through is perhaps the most extreme of any character so far, and she has survived by detaching from her emotions, assuming betrayal from all sides, and shaping her anger and pain into something sharp and practical and cold. She "relaxes" by killing everything in sight in hyperrealistic "mersive" games. Dee is, without a doubt, a frightening force to be reckoned with, but I saw her anger and detachment as something born from pain and despair and the desperate need to survive.
A major theme that the book plays with is who we might consider a "lost cause" past saving. I found myself in the interesting position of feeling that I think I see more hope and complexity and humanity in the characters than the author does, and more people worth saving. One aspect that made me deeply uncomfortable is the way that Dee's sexual identity-- she clearly sees herself as asexual-- appears to be tied into her emotional brokenness and trauma. She's cold, distant, violent, calculating, incapable of allowing herself to feel normal emotion or trust... and that's the character who is asexual. I'm not going to go into this one because coolcurry already discusses it better than I ever could, and there are just so many things to unpack.
Unlike previous books, that used shadowy "gov-corp" cabals, new institutions, and created structures as the enemy, in this book, Newman decided to make her baddies something far too easily recognizable: American evangelical Christians. Full disclosure: not only do I identify as ace, but I also grew up in semi-evangelical Christianity before eventually losing my faith for agnosticism, so this book was a double whammy of dehumanization. For an author who seems to pride herself on exploring flaws, I suspect it's not a coincidence that Newman has never fleshed out any religious character past a two-dimensional stereotype. Newman's scorn and disgust comes through in other books, but in this one, multiple critical characters are evangelical Christians, who, in Newman's future, have taken over the government to create a theocracy. As I said, I grew up in the church-- I remember the books and movies. portraying a feared future of religious repression, and the anger and polarization that was stoked by a future that did not happen but that we saw as realistic and imminent. To my eyes, Newman is playing exactly the same trick.
One thing I struggle with and worry about is seeing our polarized society willing to throw out and give up on entire groups of people. To my eyes, so much of the fracturing right now is because we are each operating from totally different sets of facts. Propaganda and belief and the desire to improve the world at any cost can lead to terrible things, but there are flawed and broken humans at the bottom, not unrecognizable monsters.
But it's still Newman, and even though I'm disappointed in the simplicity/banality/from-my-perspective-prejudice-and-unrealism of the solution to the mystery that propelled the last few books, it was still worth the read. Just... please understand that it's blindly perpetuating a set of stereotypes that I think the author should have examined more closely. I think Newman tends to explore issues she herself is familiar with (e.g., OCD, post-natal depression, etc). I suspect her unfamiliarity is why she seems to approach asexuality as a symptom of disorder rather than an intrinsic aspect of a person that is neither good nor bad, just there. In a time where we are polarized into dehumanization of the Other, I'd love to see some attempt to explore and humanize....more
For me, the best speculative fiction seamlessly weaves together novel ideas and perspectives while keeping me enthralled in a good story. Where the StFor me, the best speculative fiction seamlessly weaves together novel ideas and perspectives while keeping me enthralled in a good story. Where the Stars Rise promises just that, providing a wealth of viewpoints that are woefully underrepresented in much of mainstream speculative fiction. The stories range from Melissa Yuan-Innes' "Crash," a futuristic story of a sixteen-year-old's experience on a moon colony, to Ruhan Zhao's "My Left Hand," a short tale of high energy physics, time travel, and fortune tellers, to Gabriela Lee's "DNR", a story of personal tragedy and memory set in a world shattered by climate change and terrible earthquakes.
In this myriad of interesting stories, I think the one I found most memorable was Amanda Sun's gorgeously lyrical "Weaving Silk." In this short vignette, the main character and her sister are scraping together ingredients to make and sell onigiri. As they travel through a Japan wounded by both volcanic eruption and tsunami, she muses on the country's struggles to regain contact with a world that, before Japan was isolated by natural disaster, was itself enmeshed in incipient global warfare. The writing is packed with metaphor, haunting, and utterly gorgeous. A few of my favourite quotes:
"We are her [my mother's] bones, though. We are the tiny eggs left from the gleaming mouth, from the beat of her wings and the curl of her tired legs. We've awoken ravenous among the dark foliage, with only two thoughts in our heads--eat, survive. Eat. Survive. Silkworms, both of us, spinning our cocoons to blind ourselves."
"We are all little cocoons, I think, as I look at the people in the train. We spin threads around ourselves, shutting others out as if we were the only ones struggling to survive. Hungry to survive, destined to die. And yet together, unravelled, our stories form yards and yards of beautiful silken thread."
Each story was unique, but a few common themes wove them together. Perhaps the most common was a sense of difference and separation from the rest of society. For example, Ayla of S.B. Divya's "Looking Up" is hired for a journey to Mars as "one of our most diverse candidates" (sigh) but her cultural heritage combined with her physical disabilities and family history leaves her feeling isolated and adrift. The story is about forgiveness and finding a future while coming to terms with the past. In Diana Xin's "A Visitation for the Spirit Festival", Mrs. Liu finds herself revisiting her past when she travels to see her daughter who had quit her job in Silicon Valley to find her Chinese roots. A literal ghost becomes a metaphor for Mrs. Liu's complex relationship with her memories. "A Star is Born" by Miki Dare is told in a fascinating style, with alternating diary entries of an old woman with Alzheimer's who believes she can time travel to see alternate routes of her past interspersed with "timeline captures" of a Japanese girl dealing with tremendous prejudice in Canada during WWII. Like "Visitation", it deals with themes of tragedy, memory, and acceptance.
Multiple stories centered around people with a foot in two cultures who feel that they belonged to neither. The most memorable for me was "Back to Myan" by Regina Kanyu Wang, where the protagonist is literally a fish out of water. When Kaya's oceanus planet is destroyed, the Union rescues her and brings her up as one of them, to the point of surgically modifying her fins into feet. Brought up to blend in, she goes on a mission to rediscover her roots and finds far darker secrets than she could ever expect. The theme of dual cultures is played straight in Vanilla Rice" by Angela Yuriko Smith, where the child of an internet bride grows up in a world that equates whiteness with worth and chooses to genetically modify her child to appear Caucasian. The child seeks to find a way "to belong in my world, not someone else's."Karin Lowachee's "Meridian" is a scifi take on adoption across cultures, where the protagonist is "saved" and, after a few rounds of foster ships, is eventually "adopted" into a pirate crew.
Some of the stories deal with even more direct prejudice. In Jeremy Szal's "The DataSultan of Streets and Stars" the protagonist and his brother are forced to flee after their father was killed in an anti-Muslim pogrom. Years later, the protagonist is forced into stealing a djinn-bot (universal assistant) he had created in his previous career as a programmer and "dataSultan." "Rose's Arm" by Calvin D. Jim deals with cultural and socioeconomic barriers. In this futuristic world where "the poor pay with their bodies" is anything but metaphorical, Rose Ishikawa struggles seeks to help her ailing father and considers selling her eyes to get a mechanical arm. In Priya Sridhar's "Memoriam", Anish's droid father lands right in the middle of uncanny valley and unsettles religious neighbors.
On of my favourite stories, E.C. Myers' "The Observer Effect", took the idea of being invisible out of the metaphoric sphere. It's a fun jaunt into an Incredibles-like world where the protagonist is positive that one of her coworkers is a retired superhero. It deals with expectations, casual prejudice, and the cultural invisibility of minorities and those with disabilities, all in an entertaining and amusing superhero costume. "The Orphans of Nilaveli" by Naru Dames Sundar also involves literal invisibility. The story takes place in a near-future Sri Lanka where everyone has implants that make the things they don't want to see invisible. Two adopted Tamil children grow up in a world that makes their people literally invisible and find themselves revolting against that blindness.
Another common theme was leveraging cultural traditions, history, and folklore. The most memorable for me was "Decision" by Joyce Chng. Creepy and wild, it weaves together themes of gender fluidity with folklore of a young spider-jinn leaving the nest. "Moon Halves" by Anne Carly Abad is an interesting reimagining of Filipino folklore, where humans participate in a hunting rite that involves hunting and killing an immature Taung Asu (tree spirit.) "Spirit of Wine" by Tony Pi is short, entertaining yarn involving a prefectural exam and a wine spirit. "Minsoo Kang's "Wintry Hearts of Those Who Rise" reads like an early folktale with protagonists who outsmart the rich and greedy, but the story has a mildly disturbing bite at the end. Deepack Bharathan's "Udatta Sloka" is a reimagined origin story of a god that deals with change, death, and the destruction of the Indus Valley Civilization. "Joseon Fringe" by Pamela Q. Fernandes is an alternate history of Sejong the Great that also provides fascinating commentary on the divided Koreas. "The Bridge of Dangerous Longings" by Rati Mehrotra is less directly inspired by folklore. A fantastical tale in a futuristic island cut off from the rest of the world by a bridge that no one has come back from, it deals with themes of violence and rape. I think it might have packed more of a punch had it not answered its own mysteries.
Last but not least, I found myself enjoying Fonda Lee's "Old Souls" as an echo of her wonderful Jade City. The protagonist can see the patterns of everyone's previous lives and wants to escape her own fate. The story is about choice, the need to forget and be able to start over, and patterns, personality, and what makes us innately ourselves. As one character says:
"Our lives are shaped by circumstance; we have patterns, but we do change."
Overall, it's a very interesting collection well worth reading if you're interested in scifi and fantasy a little off the beaten path.
~~I received an advanced reader copy (with huge apologies for how long it took me to read and review) through Netgalley from the publisher, Laksa Media Groups, in exchange for my honest review. Thanks!~~
Well, that was prescient timing. Finished this about a week before "Al Franken, Infamous Groper" exploded across the news.
I've been vaguely interestedWell, that was prescient timing. Finished this about a week before "Al Franken, Infamous Groper" exploded across the news.
I've been vaguely interested in Al Franken because his name has been floated repeatedly as a potential 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, and as long as we're headed in the direction of political farce, there's something delicious about the idea of a 2020 election composed of "SNL" versus "The Apprentice."
I listened to this book on audio, and I have to say that if you plan on reading it, definitely go for audio. Al Franken does the narration, and I think a lot of the jokes just work better when he's reading them. Apart from anything else, his Mitch McConnell voice is hilarious.
When I started the book, I excitedly told a friend who is from MN that I wanted their senator to be my president. As I actually started to delve in deeper, though, my opinion on the matter shifted. Part of it was the partisanship. Anyone who write a book called Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right is perhaps not the best person to bring the country together. But what impressed me more is that he genuinely seems to think that "Democrat" means inherently good and "Republican" means inherently evil, to the point that his plan to save America involves Democrats as supermajority in all branches of government. Anyone who has spent much time with my reviews probably knows where my political leanings are, but I don't think that DNC automatically makes you on the side of the good and the just.
But -- and again I feel quite smug about my prescience, and only wish I'd written this review two weeks ago-- one of my bigger complaints about him actually had to do with his treatment of women during the "Porn-o-rama" fiasco of his first run for office. If you weren't aware, Franken nearly lost the election because of a story that broke about an article he wrote for Playboy magazine called "Porn-o-rama" and featuring a certain amount of degradation of women. Oh, and the rape jokes he made during his time at SNL. Franken, after whining that the Republicans took his jokes out of context and put them through their industrial-strength "dehumorizer", defends himself with the argument that nothing--including rape--should be off-limits for comedy. And even when he talks about his apology for the "Porn-o-rama" thing, he doesn't seem to really get it. He talks about pacifying humorless feminists (TM) without really seeming to understand why anyone is upset.
For the record, I am a humorless feminist. And even though the only side of the story I've heard is Franken's, I was totally unamused and unmollified by his "I'm sorry some people were offended"-type "apology," which is not actually an apology for his actions but rather a regret for our overreaction and too-tender feelings. So anyway, I ended up being vaguely irritated with Franken, all the more so because it seemed to me that he just didn't get it. You don't get to proclaim that you "respect women" and pull out your wife and daughter as exhibits A and B. You don't get to blame it all on context and Republican Dehumorizers. And you don't get to nominate yourself as Defender of Women. It's your actions--and history--that will decide that.
So, long story short, even though I did like him, I'd already given up on Franken as a nominee before the story of his sexual harassment of Tweeden. From what I learned from his book, the idea of him groping an unconscious woman as a joke strikes me as entirely in character, as does his initial "I'm sorry you're a liar and you're making a big deal out of nothing"-style apology. As for his second apology, he did finally get one thing right: it doesn't matter what he remembers or what he intended. And I hope that this time, that lesson sinks in.
It's a sad truth that much of comedy has been at the expense of women and often involves their objectification and degradation, and that rape culture has invaded almost every aspect of our society. Given the current environment and various dark hints, I'm genuinely betting on who will be the next to fall. I worry that prosecuting past non-criminal aggressions will stoke resentments and worsen the inevitable anti-feminist backlash. (Although if we keep pushing in this direction, we might find ourselves with an almost empty and almost entirely female congress, which would be kind of interesting.)
What a magnificent read! A rich mix of characters, political intrigue, and family drama, Jade City kept me engaged from the first page to the last.
ThWhat a magnificent read! A rich mix of characters, political intrigue, and family drama, Jade City kept me engaged from the first page to the last.
The story takes place in the city of Janloon, called "Jade City" by foreigners, and the only home of a very special form of "activated" jade that grants the people who wear it supernatural powers-- if they can avoid the psychological side effects. Traditionally, only the Kekonese, the native people of Janloon, could wear and use jade, but with the Espenian foreigners' creation of a drug, "shine," that mitigates the worst of the side effects, foreigners have an increasing interest in Janloon's jade supply. Although the city is nominally run by the king and his council, in actuality, it is run by the clans, whose fearsome Green Bone warriors skirmish throughout the city and whose weathermen control the commerce. With the patriarch of the No Peak Clan drifting into grumpy senility and the ruthless Mountain Clan progressively ambitious, tensions are becoming increasingly strained within the city. With new drugs on the streets, foreign intervention, and the clans at each others' throats, Janloon is poised on the brink of chaos.
The story follows the four family members at the top of the No Peak Clan: Kaul Lan, the cautious leader of the clan under the shadow of his formidable father; Kaul Hilo, the reckless Horn of the Green Bones; Kaul Anden, a precocious cousin trying to overcome his family's tragic history; and Shae, once a fearsome Green Bone warrior in her own right who renounced the family to live abroad and has now returned and is trying to start over as an ordinary jadeless citizen. With clan instability threatening all of Janloon, each member of the family is tested to their limit.
The story proceeds at a measured pace, fully fleshing out its main characters, from the certifiably crazy Hilo to the reckless yet analytic Shae. Anden's arc, in particular, is a wonderful setup for a sequel that I can't wait to get my hands on. If you're looking for constant adrenaline rushes and fight scenes, this probably isn't the book for you; to me, it sits more on the side of political intrigue and character development than rollercoaster ride. I think what stood out most to me was the worldbuilding, especially the parallels to our own history. The story takes place several decades after some sort of world war in which Kekon did not take part, but in which it was invaded by its neighbors. Now that it has opened its borders to foreigners, its culture and way of life is at risk by the insatiable greed of its industrialized neighbors. It's a surprisingly rich world, and one I can't wait to visit again. Count me in for the sequel!
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook from the publisher, Orbit Books, in exchange for my honest (if terribly delayed!) review.~~
I've been procrastinating on this review for months, to the point that I've even been avoiding all of Goodreads. No matter how it looks, I don't e~2.5
I've been procrastinating on this review for months, to the point that I've even been avoiding all of Goodreads. No matter how it looks, I don't enjoy writing negative reviews, particularly of series that I previously enjoyed. I really wanted to like The Dark Interest. I've relished the rest of the series: I like the magic system that Sloan sets up, the affectionate familiarity with the city of Baltimore, and I even enjoy disliking jerkish antiheroic protagonist, Dorian. The series has routinely gone in directions I didn't experience, often leading to the tarnishing and darkening of Dorian's character. I've found it fun because it's so unexpected.
Sure, there were some rough elements, some moments that made me wince, particularly in the first book. But this book took it to a whole new level, and in ways that can't simply be dismissed as a jerkish protagonist's warped perspective. Fair warning: because some of my issues with the book are major aspects of the plot, there may be spoilers from here on out.
In recent years, Baltimore has been central in a nationwide struggle over race, police brutality, and equal justice. In 2015, following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody (and Tyrone West in 2013), the city erupted into mass protests that led to a declaration of emergency, enforced curfew, deployment of the National Guard, dozens of fires, and hundreds of arrests. For years afterwards, national news was riddled with stories of mass demonstration, civil unrest, and arrests of protesters. Despite it all, all six police officers associated with the tragedy were acquitted or had charges dropped against them. More recently, Baltimore police have been arrested for racketeering and caught on the bodycams they thought were turned off planting evidence to incriminate suspects. Long story short, like many cities in the US, a conversation on equal justice is an inescapable part of the reality of the city.
In The Dark Interest, Sloan brings up that conversation, but in the most tonedeaf way imaginable. A riot erupts when the story starts, and Dorian being Dorian, his major concern is whether his restaurant will be destroyed or whether the riots will generate "a vibrant dinner rush.". Much of the subsequent plot involves the Baltimore riots, without ever quite saying as much. More specifically, he appropriates them as a plot point and attributes the anger to supernatural forces:
"Even though all of this was very real, this uprising wasn't a natural process. Long in coming though it may have been, this violence was engineered. Angry, ancient forces were pushing this city over a tipping point it might not pull back from."
"That's what this Summer of Blood is all about. Don't you see it? They're cranking up the heat."
I'm generally uncomfortable with this sort of twisting and belittling of history, but when the wounds are still so raw and the struggle is still ongoing? There are tragedies it is utterly unacceptable to appropriate, conflicts that it is repugnant to twist and debase and minimize and devalue. America's current conversation about race and justice is one of them.
The problems with this book don't stop there. Much of the story involves the "Jokomo Gang," a Black gang from New Orleans "displaced by Hurricane Katrina". The members are described as "into drugs and guns". Their brand of magic is described by Dorian as follows:
"It's not African voudou. It's Louisiana flavor, which blends lots of horrible shit from the Catholic Church, Santeria, and basically anything else the Dark Choir decided to toss into that gumbo pot."
The practitioners are termed
"Reckless dabblers. They stir up primal beings that rage unrestrained and unstewarded into our world."
The leader, Lasalle, is called a "wannabe crime lord", "a hoodlum", "an outright criminal", and the "lead thug". Lasalle is portrayed as a slow-witted, surly, angry, immature Black man who Dorian actually castigates a "acting like a child." Just in case you're in any doubt about the dog whistles going on here, Dorian later casually accuses the gang of "Get[ting] their free ride in Baltimore."
When the gang confronts Dorian, questioning him about his recent actions, the "good cop" protagonist appears to "save" Dorian by harassing and belittling them without apparent cause, going so far as to refer to them as "boys": "You boys raising a ruckus out here?" If you don't understand why referring to African-American men as "boys" is toothclenchingly offensive, I'm happy to point you to some references. But in the book, this is portrayed as a heroic rescue against a gang of "your basic street thug[s]". At another point, Dorian ends up in a police station and assumes that everyone else behind bars-- all African-American-- are "probably wondering what a man like me was up to in a police station." (emphasis mine). (view spoiler)[Things began less than optimally when Dorian stops a kid--poor and African-American, naturally-- from committing a theft, and they have a conversation in the author's attempt at dialect. It went downhill from there. I was mystified when Dorian jumped to the conclusion that the kid from the intro was running with the Jokomos-- the only thing I can imagine is he assumes all Black kids are muggers and gang members and all of "them" stick together. There is absolutely no other reason to think that. And of course, naturally, a Black kid is the mugger. Of course, there were other things that pissed me off about the book. Dorian has always been a jerk, and his level of jerkhood in this book is over the top. He decides he deserves to run the city because he can trust no one else. He has no principles other than self-preservation. He decides that he "had to betray Choi" to save himself. Why not just take consequences for his own actions rather than destroying someone else's life? At the very least, he shouldn't pretend he was forced into that choice-- he could have chosen to accept responsibility. (hide spoiler)]
I wanted to like this book. I really did. And actually, even though it infuriated me, I found it interesting to explore the perspective of a character so imbued with white privilege that his only thought during a mass protest against police brutality is whether he'll get a dinner rush. But what I have real trouble with is the unexamined nature of much of the prejudice; the thoughtless, caustic nature of the white privilege that imbues it.
Maybe if you understand what this book is going in, you can get past all this, but I couldn't. That doesn't mean I won't give the next book a try; I'm constantly fascinated by how far down Dorian can be dragged, and the ending is a zinger.
Okay, that's all from me. At least now you know why I've been procrastinating and avoiding Goodreads for these last few months.
~~I received this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Curiosity Quills Press, in exchange for my (depressingly) honest review. Quotes were taken from an advanced reader copy and while they may not reflect the final phrasing, I believe they speak to the spirit of the novel as a whole.~~
"Organizing is a fine art. I have worked at it all of my adult life."
Before picking up this book, I had never heard of Louise Thompson Patterson. Whic
"Organizing is a fine art. I have worked at it all of my adult life."
Before picking up this book, I had never heard of Louise Thompson Patterson. Which is a shame, because she was an incredibly fascinating woman who influenced the movers and shakers of the Harlem Renaissance, the American Communist party, and the Civil Rights movement. Louise's story is an unlikely and amazing one, from her eclectic, peripatetic childhood, her tempestuous first marriage, to her struggles with her ability to "pass," her deep friendship with Langston Hughes and her bitter rivalry with Zora Neale Hurston, her leadership that brought together a collaboration with a Jewish organisation to fight for universal rights, her travels behind the Iron Curtain, and her lifelong loyalty to the Communist Party. The book is incredibly thorough and each page, often festooned with casual mentions of dozens of names, reads a bit like a Who's Who of the Harlem Renaissance-- which, unfortunately, would be more entertaining if I actually knew who was who.
The book deftly describes Patterson's life, not only her virtues, but also uncompromisingly explores her flaws. Yet despite learning so much about her life, I am not sure I ever really understood what motivated her, and I absolutely failed to grasp her obstinate faith in the Soviet Union, even to the point of repeatedly switching sides as the Communist policy on the Nazis changed again and again. Perhaps most impressive of all was her ability to survive on a career in political organizing. Patterson was a fascinating complex woman who influenced generation upon generation of civil rights organizers. If you're curious about her life-- and are more well-versed in the history of the time than I am-- this book is well worth a read.
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this book through Netgalley from the publisher, Duke University Press, in exchange for my honest review.~~
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