"Only a lunatic would live on the Moon. The Moon is a dead rock--eighty-one quintillion tons of dead rock. It's been dead for nearly four billion years
"Only a lunatic would live on the Moon. The Moon is a dead rock--eighty-one quintillion tons of dead rock. It's been dead for nearly four billion years. And--inasmuch as a dead rock wants anything--it wants you dead too."
So opens The Dark Side, a bold, brash, larger-than-life adventure with the aforementioned lunatics on the dark side of the moon. Exploding goats, discussions of democratic murder, bouncing chases across rooftops--bouncing because of the lower gravity, of course--, men with bowie knives popping up to interrupt informants as they open their mouths to tattle on the villain, rough terrain vehicle chases across moon craters… this book's got it all.
In some ways, The Dark Side reminded me of Douglas Adams, if Douglas Adams decided to borrow plot points from Guillermo de Toro and James M. Cain. Like Hitchhiker's Guide, the tone of the book is conversational, repeatedly breaking the fourth wall with explanatory asides to the reader, apparently with the assumption that the reader is a prospective tourist to the moon. The whimsical and punny character names-- Q.T. Brass, Johnny D-Tox, Dash Chin, Prince Oda Universe, etc-- reminded me of Adams as well.
However, there is one sharp difference: the level of gore. Since Purgatory started life as a penal colony, the number of immoral characters isn't much of a surprise, but the details of some of their atrocities are still horrifying. Don't get attached to the characters of The Dark Side because in almost every case, here's what's going to happen: the character will be introduced, be humanized (or possibly dehumanized) through a backstory, and then suffer a grisly fate. All within a few pages. Rinse and repeat. Sure, Adams has a pretty high death toll in Dirk Gently and Hitchhiker's Guide, but Adams' deaths are comparatively gentle and mostly happen offscreen, with a whale and a pot of petunias suffering some of the most graphic on-page deaths. (I still feel badly for the whale.) Like Adams or early Pratchett, I think O'Neill is using death as comic relief, but it's something I have difficulty appreciating, particularly since the deaths are often wincingly, breath-catchingly graphic. Unfortunately for me, I don't find death--even the death of sperm whales falling towards a planet--all that funny.
At the same time, O'Neill really, really gets the hardboiled/noir vibe. He's got the cheerfully immoral city, the almost admirably egotistical gangster kingpins, the enigmatic femme fatales, the sly wit, and the jaded but earnest detective. Example quintessential hardboiled quote:
"He's come to trust the droids implicitly. It's an illusion, of course, because he knows very well that robots can be programmed to betray, but in his experience humans are always programmed to betray."
Our protagonist, Damien Justus--pronounced like "Eustace," although no one on the moon seems to believe him-- has just been transferred to the city of Sin, part of Purgatory, on the dark side of the moon. (They tell it like it is in Purgatory. Motto of the city: "There's nothing better than living in Sin.") On his first day of work, he gets a bombing, and while no one on his team seems all that bothered, Justus quickly realizes that the murder may be tangled up in something much, much larger: a conspiracy that will put him in the middle of a power struggle between mob boss Fletcher Brass and his daughter, QT Brass. All too soon, Justus is fencing with the Brass family and their shared "art of preemptive candor" while dodging bullets, escaping hits, and investigating an ever-increasing pile of bodies. Even as Justus remains mired in Sin, a psychotic android is on its way to the city, swiftly internalizing Fletcher' Brass's "Brass Code" into its new moral system:
"Never bang your head against a wall. Bang someone else's."
If you're in the mood for a crazy, colorful, flamboyant noir space adventure, The Dark Side may be for you.
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook from the publisher, Simon & Schuster, in exchange for my 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.~~
Mike Carey has a real genius for making me care about characters that I don't want to care about. No matter how unprincipled or corrupt they are, no mMike Carey has a real genius for making me care about characters that I don't want to care about. No matter how unprincipled or corrupt they are, no matter how destructive their decisions, no matter how foreordained their fates, I end up empathizing with them despite myself. In Fellside, he exploits this talent more ruthlessly than ever before.
Fellside is a very different book than anything else I've read by Carey. Yes, like 90% of his other books, it involves ghosts. Yes, like several of his most recent books, it's in some ways a story about stories, with the narrative woven in and around the life stories of the characters. But Fellside is darker, grittier, and grimmer than any book that came before. Much of this has to do with the cast of characters. The narrative switches between the perspectives of a convicted childkiller, a corrupt guard, a viciously sanctimonious nurse, a pliable and defeated doctor, and more. And the worst of all of it is that I ended up caring about almost all of them, aching as they made destructive choice after destructive choice. (view spoiler)[Jess was the worst. She made so many stupid decisions, from going with the armed guard to failing to shut Devlin into the prison. I was shocked by the ending, partly because I thought life would, for Jess, be harder than death, and a more bittersweet ending. I was also a bit fascinated by Alex: although he is at the center of the story, in some ways, he's the eye of the maelstrom: we end up knowing no more about him than we did at the opening of the story. (hide spoiler)]Fellside deals punch after punch to the gut, then somehow transforms itself into something heartwrenching but also bittersweet and oddly beautiful.
I can't describe much of the plot; I don't want to even give my usual blurb for fear that details will lessen the book's impact. While there is an overall mystery, it isn't the driving force behind the plot. Instead, the story is composed of smaller arcs and the slow complex entangling of the characters' lives. While I did guess the solution to the mystery, the ending took me utterly by surprise. Most of the narrative is an exploration of morality through the microcosm of Fellside prison. Some of my favourite quotes:
“The facts are in the outside world. You can verify them with your senses or with objective tests. The truth is something that people build inside their heads, using the facts as raw materials. And sometimes the facts get bent or broken in the process. [...] Justice? Justice is even more problematic than truth. It’s an emergent property of a very complicated system. [...] It’s neither an ingredient in the pie nor the pie itself. It’s the smell that rises up out of the pie if you’ve cooked it right. We don’t aim for justice, Ms Moulson. We perform our roles and justice happens."
"Doing time, she thought inconsequentially. As though time were a drug. If it was, she might have dosed herself more carefully."
"The dead were dreams that dreamed themselves alive. Maybe the living were too. Another time for that."
Fellside itself is startlingly different than Carey's other works. While I'm not quite sure its audience is a perfect match for fans of The Girl with All the Gifts or The Steel Seraglio, if you're in the mood for a uniquely dark, peculiarly gripping story, Fellside is well worth a look.
~4.5
~~I received this ebook from the publisher, Orbit Books, in exchange for my honest review. Thank you! 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.~~
"The only way to counter the invisibility we often feel is to truly see others, and let them see us." -- Dr. Adrienne Keene
Indigenous peoples in conte
"The only way to counter the invisibility we often feel is to truly see others, and let them see us." -- Dr. Adrienne Keene
Indigenous peoples in contemporary culture tend to be exoticized, marginalized, or both. There's a pervasive sense that to "really" be Native American, you have to forswear all modern culture. As Lisa Charleyboy, one of the editors of Urban Tribes puts it:
"[We've] grown up being told that we can't really be Native if we are living a "modern" life in the city. There's this deeply held notion that in order to be authentically Indigenous, one must live on a reservation, or one's traditional territory, and have a deep connection to one's land."
This book provides a different perspective. Through interviews, art, poems, and more, Urban Tribes provides a portrait of what one interviewee, Jessica Bolduc, terms Edgewalkers: Native Americans who live in an urban environment while still embracing their cultural heritage. [image]
Urban Tribes is a gorgeous book, chock full of art, images, and portraits of the interviewees. One of my favourite sections was a series of photos of LA's Indian Alley. The book also confronts many of the issues plaguing the community: the violence perpetrated on Indigenous women and students, the struggle to have art inspired by ethnicity viewed as relevant rather than, to quote Nicholas Galanin, "belonging in a natural history museum with dinosaur bones", and the burden of acting as an exemplar in universities and the workplace. As Dr. Adrienne Keene puts it:
"We are not just in college for ourselves. We are there for our communities and our people, and there is an expectation that we will use our degree to help make change. But this is an enormous pressure. Especially when the paths to giving back aren't clear and instead are paved with resistance from our own communities."
[image]
The part that affected me the most was a lyrical, passionate poem by Roanna Shebala. In part:
Throw on a war bonnet Tell me it's fashion Tell me how imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Go to your local truck stop. Buy some dream catchers made from China. Hang them on your rearview mirror of Your Jeep Grand Cherokees, Your Pontiacs, Your Winnebagos As you drive down I-40 your vehicles catch the dreams Road killed by Manifest Destiny."
[image] The only thing lacking for me was context. While each speaker's tribe (or tribes) are identified, I don't have the contextual information of what this means, particularly since most of the interviewees are Canadian and my knowledge of native Canadian history is particularly deplorable. The book creates a portrait of a more unified experience, without exploring cultural differences between tribes. All the same, it's a thoughtful, interesting, beautifully constructed and artistic book, and some of the works have continued to haunt me, particularly Roanna Shebala's poem:
Applaud the Cleveland Indians' Chief Wahoo's bright white choppers Casting reflections On how to Love you some Indians.
Go paint the town! Double coat over history. Whitewash the red bricks of the reservations. Let's have Indian Day at our schools Use November to teach students the Turkey dance with color construction paper headdresses and teepees.
Now go home Wash off the paint."
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Annick Press Ltd, in exchange for my honest review.~~...more
"There’s no afterlife but the one we build ourselves.”
Central Station is one of the most breathtakingly, bewilderingly, mindbendingly imaginative stor
"There’s no afterlife but the one we build ourselves.”
Central Station is one of the most breathtakingly, bewilderingly, mindbendingly imaginative stories I've read in some time. In terms of sheer breadth and volume of ideas, it reminds me of Hannu Rajaniemi, but Tidhar's style is far more lyrical and dreamlike. The story takes place in in a future Tel Aviv, now the site of Central Station. Adaptoplant neighborhoods blossom and twist around each other. Robotniks, the lost souls of forgotten wars, wander the streets and beg for spare parts. These soldiers, once resurrected to fight again and again as cyborgs, were shunted aside and now survive by selling the Crucifixation drug that once gave them a euphoric sense of faith in their cause. Babies created with gene-ripped Armani-knockoff blue eyes send a few prayers to St Cohen of the Others. Data vampires prey on the unwary, stripping them of exomemory. And surrounding it all is the ubiquitous Conversation, the universal talk of humans and robotniks and aliens and the almost omnipotent artificial intelligences of the Others, all connected through a web of virtual reality so dense that it permeates the real.
Central Station is a gorgeous book, but don't go into it expecting something that it's not. The story seemed to me to be primarily a vehicle for the ideas, and perhaps because of this, plot and characters are left undeveloped. Instead of driving narrative, the ensemble of characters and their "I-loop" narratives, riddled with unanswered questions, slowly reveal the world. The story is told with a dreamlike detachment that for me precluded engagement with the characters. In some ways, the book felt like a series of short stories set in the same world: the threads of the characters' narratives are often left unbound, and the people themselves are little changed by events. (view spoiler)[My biggest irritation with this aspect was Carmen and Vlad. We have one person stifling under the weight of memories and the other dying to consume them… how did nobody put that together? I get that they're foils, but how did not a single person make an allusion to the possibility in the story. (hide spoiler)] As one of the many themes of the story is the power of narrative, I think this was entirely intentional:
"Life was half-completed plots abandoned, heroes dying halfway along their quests, loves requited and un-, some fading inexplicably, some burning short and bright."
"There comes a time in a man’s life when he realises stories are lies. Things do not end neatly. The enforced narratives a human impinges on the chaotic mess that is life become empty labels, like the dried husks of corn such as are thrown down in the summer months from the adaptoplant dwellings, to litter the streets below."
The story is thematically rich, exploring the meaning of stories, of self, of consciousness, of reality:
“Consensus reality is like a cloth... It is made of many individual strands, each of which is a reality upon itself, a self-encoded world. We each have our own reality, a world made by our senses and our minds. The tapestry of consensus reality is therefore a group effort. It requires enough of us to agree on what reality is. To determine the shape of the tapestry, if you will.”
If you're looking for a unique speculative fiction story that rejects straightforward character-driven narrative, Central Station is definitely worth a look. It's almost hallucinogenic, a lyrical poem to a far future, with substance hidden in the shadows.
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Tachyon Publications, in exchange for my honest review. Quotes were taken from an advanced reader copy and while they may not reflect the final phrasing, I believe that they capture the spirit of the narrative as a whole.~~
I admit it: I routinely judge books' potential by their covers. I have a tendency towards impulse selections, both on Netgalley and from my library's I admit it: I routinely judge books' potential by their covers. I have a tendency towards impulse selections, both on Netgalley and from my library's ebook collection. Both websites start me out in a gallery of thumbnails. Covers are crucial: they determine whether I'll check out the blurb. So when I saw a book cover on Netgalley that displayed a bunch of book covers I'd previously seen on Netgalley, I knew I had to read it.
Book Cover Design is organized by designer: for each one, there is a short biography, a paragraph describing "The Designer's Approach," and several full pages of the designer's work. The book gave me a new appreciation for the breadth of some of the artists' design styles. My absolute favourite aspect, however, wasn't the covers themselves but the short paragraph in which the artist describes, in their own words, their methodology. While most of the designers assert that reading the book is necessary for cover design, there are several who admit that they don't have the time and don't see the need. I confess I prefer the covers that speak to the soul of the book, the type of cover you look at again after reading the story and you realize what scene they're portraying, and see all the little details from all the minor moments in the story. Covers like these, in fact:
[image]
[image]
[image]
[image]
[image]
[image]
[image]
While I had seen quite a few of the covers in Netgalley and my library's ebook site, I admit I hadn't read a lot of them. The covers displayed in the book tended to be nonfiction, classics, and literary novels, and I'm pretty much a genre reader through and through. Even so, I loved seeing the sheer variety of covers displayed in the book. Some of my favourites:
[image]
[image]
[image]
[image]
[image]
[image]
[image]
[image]
I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about the inspirations and approaches that go into creating the covers that lure me into requesting more books than I can possibly handle. If you're also susceptible to cover-love, this may be the book for you.
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Schiffer Publishing Ltd, in exchange for my honest review.~~...more
There's something really badly wrong with me. An example: I'm at the climax of a horrifically graphic battle scene where Jim Schweitzer, ex-SEAL and cThere's something really badly wrong with me. An example: I'm at the climax of a horrifically graphic battle scene where Jim Schweitzer, ex-SEAL and current super-zombie on the run from a secret government cell, is desperately trying to protect his wife and child from magic-wielding mercenaries who have come to take him back or take him down. Schweitzer's wife is fighting for her life, but another mercenary has her in his sights. Schweitzer acts. In the sudden silence, he gazes at the body of the man who tried to rip lightning out of the sky and use it to fry Sarah. And my brain immediately goes: He's dead, Jim. But here's the truly amazing thing about Javelin Rain: even with my brain inserting lyrics from "Star Trekkin" at inopportune moments, the book still managed to be nail-bitingly suspenseful, gut-wrenching, horrific, sad, and bittersweet in turn.
One of the things I love about Myke Cole is that when it comes to magic, he doesn't do pretty and he doesn't do nice. His zombies are no exception. Unlike the rest of the Operators in Gemini Cell, Schweitzer may still have his mind, but his face is sheet metal stretched over skull, his eyes are glowing silver orbs shining out from empty sockets. His body shows marks from all previous battles, carelessly stitched and duct-taped to hold it all together. Death has irrevocably changed him. (It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.) Throughout the story, Schweitzer struggles to come to terms with the fact that while consciousness remains, his life is over. He can never be a father to his son, never take him to soccer practice, never take his wife out to dinner. Even as he risks all to protect them, there are heartbreaking moments where even his loved ones treat him as the monster he is in so many ways.
Javelin Rain is a little bit hard to characterize in terms of plot. It's a second book, a "things fall apart" book, in which Schweitzer sets himself in direct opposition to Gemini Cell. It's a fugitive's story, a chase, a series of desperate last stands. But it's also a love story. An increasingly creepy, violent love story, because the longer Schweitzer stays dead, the more of his humanity he loses. If you read my reviews, you probably know by now that I don't do romance, but love stories aren't necessarily romances. They're not about passion; they're about commitment, about compromises, about trust, about two alien people trying to create something together. Throw in the fact that one member of the couple has veins of glycerol and is steadily losing his last vestiges of humanity, the other has a small child with a bad case of poison ivy, and they're both on the run from a relentless military black ops military organization, and the love story really takes on a unique flavor. As one character puts it,
"Magic is like cancer. You don't ask for it, and it changes everything."
Schweitzer and Sarah's story is not the only plot running through the book, but it was definitely my favourite. Perhaps half the pagetime is from the perspective of other members of Gemini Cell, including Eldredge, the chief scientist of the cell, and Jawid and Dadou, the sorcerers responsible for creating zombie beings like Schweitzer. I found the Jawid/Dadou subplot deeply and troublingly problematic. Jawid, the only Muslim character in the book, is a naive simpleton who parrots repressive religious dogma and wants nothing more than to own a wife and family. Religious simpleton characters irritate me in general, and to have Jawid the only Muslim character in the story left a bad taste in my mouth. Dadou, who has a history of abuse and sexual assault, uses her own sexuality to cynically dominate those around her, mostly because her higher command orders her to do so, something that isn't really dealt with in the story. I wanted to empathize with her, and certainly her story is tragic, but she makes it awfully difficult. My other major complaint with the story is that a bunch of major plot elements didn't make sense. (view spoiler)[Let's see: (1) Why on earth would binding zombies into living beings make them more obedient? As far as I can tell, the Obedient Zombie Track Record is nil: one of them is running operations, one of them ran away, and the rest run wild. Why would an intelligent zombie be biddable? Wouldn't it have everything it wanted already? Equally, why would such a living zombie be "reliable, a known quantity", a "puppet"? (2) On the same note, if Dadou really had the power to grab Sarah out of the soul-cyclone, then she already had complete power to make Silvers and to make living zombies. From the first book and from this one, we know the major problem is that the souls that come out of the vortex are just too strong. Yet if she really has the power to pick and choose, she could choose a weak soul, weak enough to be defeated by the Silver. (3) On that note, the Soul Vortex. When I read it, I couldn't accept the vortex as the only end in the narrative because it's so damned depressing. Plus, harking back to Dadou's ability to yank anyone and everyone out of the whirlpool, it would mean that literally anyone could be used after death. Including Dadou. Do I smell a sequel? Personally, I'd rather the vortex be a single stop on the way to eternity, or eternal nothingness. (4) Why on earth would Eldredge give up the knife? Surely it would be better spent protecting Patrick, because: (5) If Sarah really wanted release, why couldn't she just go? Wasn't staying the hard part? It's not like the merc wanted her there. From what we know of the whole shared soul bit, leaving is easy. It's staying that's hard. So why didn't Sarah leave rather than be bait? (hide spoiler)]
Schweitzer lived his life around the SEAL motto, "So others might live." But in this book, all of that starts to fall apart: we find out more about the Gemini Cell, their leadership, and their belief that they don't "have the luxury of ethical struggles."Gemini Cell suffers a bit from Second Book Syndrome. For one thing, I really don't think it can be read without the first book. For another, I can actually summarize the entire book, which demonstrates its simplicity. At the same time, it's an interesting step in the Gemini Cell saga, and there were plenty of shocking twists. Sarah underwent significant character development, and I find her one of the more interesting members of the cast. Javelin Rain also satisfied one of my biggest concerns with Gemini Cell. Schweitzer no longer sees himself as a sanctified paladin. He seeks to protect only his family by any means necessary. As he puts it:
"He didn't want to hurt anyone, but if he was going to be a monster, then he may as well be one to protect his own."
As always, the sequel is automatically on my to-read list. I'm dying to find out how Schweitzer's saga ends, not in least because hyperintelligent zombies don't make an appearance in the later Shadow Ops books, and I'm awfully curious about why. If you have any interest in creative, gritty, and graphic military urban fantasy, you definitely need to check out Cole's Shadow Ops.
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Berkley Publishing Group, in exchange for my honest review. Quotes are taken from an advanced reader copy and while they may not reflect the final phrasing, I believe they speak to the spirit of the book as a whole.~~
Superficially, it's just another pat nineteenth-century abolitionist polemic: a heartwarming--if patronising-- story of wrongs committed by slave-owniSuperficially, it's just another pat nineteenth-century abolitionist polemic: a heartwarming--if patronising-- story of wrongs committed by slave-owning Southerners and brave (white) Northerners fighting for the justice and freedom of their black neighbors. However, the realities that underlie the Parker sisters' kidnapping are far murkier: not only did its notoriety stem almost solely from the death of a white man rather than the kidnappings themselves, but one of the kidnapped girls didn't want to return; she preferred slavery to "freedom" in the North. It's an unsettling story. Maybe that's why it's been so comprehensively forgotten.
The kidnapping and its aftermath are both a product and a perfect exemplar of its time. By 1851, tensions between North and South, and between Pennsylvania and Maryland in particular, were reaching flashpoint. While most Pennsylvanians rejected the term "abolitionist"-- it seems to have picked up the same negative extremist connotations that "feminist" has today-- they also wanted no part in the slavecatching business and enacted laws to keep them out of it as much as possible. And then the new Fugitive Slave Act stripped the state of even this power: under the act, new commissioners decided cases without giving the accused an opportunity to speak on their own behalf. Given that they were paid twice as much to find in favour of the slavecatchers, it's unsurprising that only about 6% of the cases found in favor of the defense. Marylanders celebrated while Pennsylvanians fumed.
Slavecatchers doubled their efforts, abducting fugitive slaves and free blacks with equal ruthlessness. These aggressions brought out the militant side of both free Pennsylvanians and escaped slaves. As Maddox puts it,
"Racial equality had no place in their world, but neither did the kidnapping of "their" black people."
Some, like William Parker, set up vigilante groups that used the "Lynch Code" to combat kidnappers. In 1851, Parker's group fought back against a Maryland slavecatching party, leading to the so-called "Christiana Riot" in which the slaveholder was killed. The slaveholder quickly became a Maryland martyr, while Pennsylvania courts swiftly acquitted most of the "rioters." In Maryland, acquittals in a case where "A white slaveholder had died at the hands of a crowd of black men" was an outrage and a travesty of justice. Into this powder keg stumbled Rachel and Elizabeth Parker, their kidnappers, and Joseph Miller, white "benefactor" of Rachel and the only fatality in the case. Yet again, tensions between Pennsylvania and Maryland exploded:
"Black people had been hustled out of the county by slave catchers and kidnappers for years, and white people had been chasing after them to bring them back, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. But for one of those white people to die--in the process of doing what most in the county considered the right thing--was another matter altogether."
No matter which side of the Mason-Dixon line you were on, it wasn't black lives that mattered.
Not only did the book give me a clearer sense of the seething tensions of the 1850s; it is also dramatic in its own right. Quite a bit of the story is spent on Joseph Miller's mysterious death. With all the twists and startling revelations in court, it felt very much like an episode of Law and Order. However, my major discontent is that it is primarily a story of white Pennsylvanians versus white Marylanders. For most of the story, the Parker sisters are trapped in prison, yet very little pagetime is spent on their experiences or their family's. Although the story's catalyst centers two African-American sisters, they and the other black citizens are stripped of agency and silenced by those around them.
Yet even so, Elizabeth Parker defies our expectations. Reporters of the time
"Tried to create a story which 'confirms a simplified, safe, and reductive version of the antislavery message: liberty is always sweet, even to those who are low, poor, and black.'"
Rachel's story is in some ways the story the North very much wants to promulgate: the kindly white citizens banded together, putting fortunes and life in jeopardy, to protect their African-American neighbors. Rachel, who was later eulogized as (gag) a "trusted, faithful servant, after the manner of the colored Mammy of the South", is given basically no voice in the story but seems to have been acquiescent throughout. However, Elizabeth so preferred her life as a slave in New Orleans that she didn't want to come home to "freedom." Admittedly, her experience was unusual: rather than suffering the terrible exertions and vicious punishments of plantation life, she was purchased by a shopkeeper to sell flowers, milk, and candy. She had a soft bed, good food, the companionship of girls her own age. She was praised for her abilities and enjoyed the novel experiences of dances and the theatre. Was it really a surprise that she hesitated to return to an unloving mother, cold neighbors, and uncertain and onerous employment? Given how little control Elizabeth had over her life in Pennsylvania, her story begs the question of how free the free blacks in the North actually were. In the mid-nineteenth century, not even fiercely abolitionist Quakers believed in real equality. Black families in Pennsylvania tended to be ripped apart, with young children acting as live-in servants in widely-dispersed white homes. As Maddox says, it was a
"Twilight zone between slavery and freedom."
Perhaps Elizabeth's free life was especially bad and her life as a slave especially good, but her story certainly provides a startling contrast with stories such as Solomon Northup's. The story was both educational and entertaining, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in this period or the deep tensions running between North and South. Yet I couldn't help but find it both depressing and ironic that Maddox's narrative sheds so little illumination on the personalities of Rachel and Elizabeth. Even in their own story, their voices are lost in the telling of the tale.
~~I received a copy of this book through Netgalley from the publisher, Temple University Press, in exchange for my honest review. Quotes are taken from an advanced reader copy and while they may not reflect the final phrasing, I believe they speak to the spirit of the narrative as a whole.~~
Figure studies are one of my favourite forms of art. There is such endless variance in humanity, in expressions, in forms, in postures, that for me, fFigure studies are one of my favourite forms of art. There is such endless variance in humanity, in expressions, in forms, in postures, that for me, figure studies never get old. I will admit that my own tastes aren't particularly sophisticated. I strongly prefer the realists such as Edward Hopper, and tend to be thoroughly bemused by more abstract or avant-garde schools. So when I had the opportunity to read Bodies of Work, I jumped at the chance. The book not only introduced me to new and more challenging styles; more importantly for readers like me, it also discusses and explains the motifs and meanings of the art itself.
I found more classical styles, like that of Michael Borremans, Peri Schwartz, and Jacob Collins, to be easy to appreciate and enjoy. However, a majority of artists in the book utilize styles I found more challenging and opaque. For these artists, the pages introducing the artists and their styles were critical for me. Some of the art, particularly that with more childish, whimsical styles, never really grew on me, even though the book gave me a better understanding of the emotive underpinnings. One of the most difficult sections of the book for me was that of "body as form," where the human figure was construed in terms of line and colour, and often distorted in ways I found difficult to enjoy. The chapter on narrative painting was more interesting, demonstrating, to my mind, how art intended to tell a story puts significantly more emphasis and complexity into the background and surroundings of the figures.
Many of the artists whose work is presented in Bodies of Work, such as Ahmed Alsoudani, Whitefield Lovell, Kerry James Marshall, and Hayv Kahraman, use figurative art as a means of social commentary. An entire chapter of the book is set aside to figurative paintings used as social statement. I was particularly intrigued by Kehinde Wiley, who reimagines classical works with contemporary African-American figures set against clashing, complex, vibrant tangles of plants and flowers, and Titus Kaphar, who creates revisionist history paintings that give expression to the mute voices of history. Liu Xiadong's beautiful, expressive paintings of contemporary life in China were easy for me to appreciate, both in terms of artistic beauty and social content.
If you're interested in figurative art, particularly in a wide array of styles and emphasises, and you're looking for something to help guide your interpretation and sharpen your vision, I heartily recommend Bodies of Work.
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Schiffer Publishing Ltd, in exchange for my honest review.~~
"When you face prejudice, fight it and fight it hard."
I have to admit that before reading this book, I don't remember ever really hearing about the Ch
"When you face prejudice, fight it and fight it hard."
I have to admit that before reading this book, I don't remember ever really hearing about the Chicago Defender, and yet throughout the last century, The Defender has acted as more than simply a voice for a marginalized group. Robert Abbott created the newspaper with a mission in mind: particularly after the Atlanta riots of 1906, he saw that a new voice was needed to act as "Defender of his race,". For over a century, The Defender has been a staunch combatant against racism and promoter of integration. [image]
The book opens with Frederick Douglass's visit to the World Fair in 1893. Although the Civil War was over, prejudice, racism, and inequality was just moving into high gear. As he put it:
"There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own constitution."
Inspired by Douglass, Abbott set out to create a newspaper that could continue to advocate such honesty. It was a rocky beginning: Abbott started by running the newspaper out of his boardinghouse, subsisting off limited community support rather than advertising, and even being forced to rely on money from Teenan Jones, an infamous gangster. Despite its message of racial pride, it routinely carried advertising for skin lighteners and hair straighteners. Without full-time journalists on the payroll, Abbott and his crew started by pulling stories out of other papers and rewriting them for their audience. The Defender also faced an impressive level of hostility: Southern "gentry" and law enforcement ridiculed the paper and sent taunting telegrams suggesting Defenders come and report on lynchings that had yet to happen. Abbott was repeatedly investigated by the FBI and related organizations, and various Southern states even made attempts to extradite him for libel charges. [image]
In the early twentieth century, Chicago was a comparative bastion of liberty and freedom: while lynchings and attacks certainly happened, police usually attempted to stop them instead of joining in, and although Chicago's race riot of 1919 was one of the bloodiest seen, it still indicated that Blacks in Chicago could fight back. The Defender sought keep a spotlight on racist violence, reporting continuously and vividly on lynchings and other atrocities of Jim Crow. Although a firm supporter of integration, the Defender wasn't always conciliatory. Often fiercely emotional and moralistic, it occasionally stooped to publishing clearly apocryphal stories or using aggressive rhetoric, such as the time it insisted that anyone who failed to vote against Hanrahan was "a traitor to the black cause". But perhaps a strident voice is necessary to actuate social change. As a Defender editorial put it:
"We are a watchdog and to many bigots in Chicago, an irritation, a Socratic gadfly, a pain in the neck or even a 'black hysterical voice,' but we proudly accept this role at this critical juncture in American history and will jealously cling to it until we can become 'just another daily newspaper.'"
[image]
The Defender and its editors played significant roles in actually influencing and guiding public policy. The newspaper was a critical catalyst for the Great Migration. It lobbied tirelessly--and eventually successfully--for an integrated military. It was a Defender reporter who was beaten during the Little Rock Nine's entrance into the school. As the paper gained greater influence, Abbott and Sengstacke directly interacted with more and more powerful political figures, including many presidents-- even if most refused to be photographed with a black man. A true believer in unity, the Defender was internally integrated, hiring white reporters throughout its history. [image]
The story of the Defender is fascinating, and Michaeli's writing style is vivid and moving. My biggest complaint is a certain lack of scholarly disinterest, which makes sense, given that Michaeli worked at the Defender and met many of the people whose lives he documents. Throughout, Michaeli's protagonists are described ias "brilliant,""charismatic," etc, often without supporting evidence, and he tends to ignore flaws intrinsic to rounded portraits. For example, he simplifies the complex relationship between King and Jesse Jackson, lauding Jackson as King's successor and later portraying him as an august "elder statesman".He is also uniformly negative towards enemies of the Defender such as Marcus Garvey. Throughout, figures such as Abbott and Sengstacke are treated almost hagiographically. For example, when Sengestacke fires every reporter on the paper who won't tow his pro-Truman line, Michaeli phrases it as a dismissal of those who crossed "Sengstacke's red line of explicit political work." I found it an amusing description, given that under Sengstacke's direction, the Defender vigorously endorsed Truman, spearheaded a huge fundraising effort for him, and actually characterized the election as "A crusade, not a political campaign." Michaeli is also clearly a fan of Obama and describes even his questionable actions in glowing terms. For example, when describing how Obama snakes the nomination out from under Palmer by challenging Palmer's petition to get proof that each signer had the right to vote, Michaeli characterizes him--unironically-- as being "gracious in victory." [image]
There is so much to this book that I can't even begin to describe it all. The book provides a vivid, visceral history of the last century, It's the minutiae that highlights the insidiousness of racism and the courage of those who fought it; Jack Johnson's world championship, the century-old conflict over segregated real estate, Brown versus the Board of Education, the Freedom Riders, King's efforts in Chicago and his slow fade during the rise of Black Power, Clinton's reaction to Dantrell Davis... the Defender reported it all. More than that: it was instrumental in all of it. As one reporter said of Robert Abbott:
"When he sought to raise the black man to the level of the white man, he was branded a radical. The radical of today is the conservative of tomorrow and other martyrs take up the work through other nights."
And there is plenty of work left to be done. If you're interested in learning more about Chicago, or reading twentieth century history through a distinctive lens, The Defender is absolutely worth a read. [image]
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this book through Netgalley from the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in exchange for my honest review. Quotes are taken from an advanced reader copy; typos are all mine.~~...more
To say I enjoyed the first book in this series, A Murder of Mages, is an almost criminal understatement. As soon as I finished the book, I (a) went ouTo say I enjoyed the first book in this series, A Murder of Mages, is an almost criminal understatement. As soon as I finished the book, I (a) went out and purchased the only other novel by Maresca I could get my hands on, and (b) reread the book. Given this highly atypical behavior on my part--I almost never buy books-- you can imagine my excitement when I received an arc of the sequel, An Import of Intrigue.
It's a bit hard to explain why these books work so well for me. Part of it is the genre: I absolutely adore detective novels crossed with speculative fiction, and police procedurals in this vein are particularly fun. I also have a deep fondness for urban-fantasy themes in high-fantasy worlds, and I thoroughly enjoyed Maresca's blend of clockpunk and steampunk. Last but not least, there were the characters: Satrine, the wife of an injured cop and a mother of two, with a history in spycraft and a goal of tricking her way into a decent-paying job, made for a highly sympathetic female protagonist. And then there is Minox, a member of a multigenerational clan of coppers with the not-so-secret disability of uncontrolled magic. I particularly liked Minox, who came across to me as fitting somewhere on the spectrum. In Import, we get to see a new side of the city: its foreign quarter. A mysterious murder has taken place that seems to involve every major foreign group in the city, and Satrine and Minox are taxed with finding the guilty party, hopefully without starting too many riots.
Given my feelings about the first book, you can imagine how much it breaks my heart to say it, but An Import of Intrigue really didn't work for me. I've always had some issues with the way that Maresca approaches race in his book, and this story merely exacerbates my issues. The Druth, who seem to me to be a vaguely British/European-based culture, create a white default, and all of the "exotic" foreign cultures the book deal with are varying shades of brown (and, in one case, grey). By the time we're in a fantasy world, why do authors insist upon basing so much upon skincolor? Why do they not understand the massive cultural baggage involved in having a character, say, go in blackface? Worse still, the imaginary cultures are clearly stereotyped shills for real-life cultures. The Kierans, for example, with their obsessions with bathing and art and trade and their general decadence, are based on the Romans.
The Lyranans are more problematic. Here is the opening description of them:
"They spoke in similar ways, with that tonal quality, and their faces had nearly no expression, at least none that Minox could properly understand. The only thing he could get out of it was haughtiness, but that might just be his own biases. Even the graceful, fluid way they moved their hands was odd, almost inhuman. More disturbing was the difficulty he had in identifying their differences. There was no sense of age he could place on any of them."
The Lyranans have names like "Fao Nengtaj" and "Pra Yikenj" and their language includes words like "teungzhai". Characterized as being extremely formal and with an obsession with titles and propriety, they eat glass noodles with "strange utensils" and have one agent skilled in an exotic martial art. They speak with a "strange tonal quality", their writing is made up of complex symbols, and they value poetry, particularly in a specific complex form. Given all this, is it any wonder that the Lyranans came across as a shallow and ill-informed stereotype of generic Asian culture?
The Imachan culture was even more offensive. How sure am I that the Imach culture is ripped off of some of the worst stereotypes of Muslims? Well, they have names like "Nalassein Hajan," "Ghalad", "Kadabali," and "Assan Jabiudal". The men wear "thick beards" and women are forced to wear heavy fully-covering clothing and are generally considered "unclean." And their "Eht'shahala"-- way too close to "inshallah," isn't it? Oh, and they are religious zealots, run by "his High Holiness the Cehlat of Imachan", and the story involves two different sects who bitterly hate each other. How over-the-top offensive was the characterization? Well, here's an example quote:
"The presumption--an accepted convention--is that Imach men are enflamed by fair-haired Druth women, and even more so by my coloring." "Surely they wouldn't attack you." "Probably not."
Look, I get it. Maresca is trying to write a book about racism, tolerance, and clash of cultures. There are quite a few gratifying moments when Minox is called out for his thoughtless assumptions and biases. But here's my problem: if you're trying to write a book about racism, you better be really, really sure that you aren't thoughtlessly invoking biased stereotypes. And in my opinion, Maresca lost that one and lost it hard. If you want to write about foreign cultures, even in fantasy, then I believe that you have to do it right and do the research. It can be done; The Golem and the Jinni is a beautiful example of respectful multicultural fantasy. If other authors are daunted by the seven years of research that Wexler put in, then why not use their imaginations and create their own cultures? This is supposed to be fantasy. Why attempt to superficially mimic real cultures rather than create your own? I just don't get it.
Maybe it was because I was already in a bad mood, but this book also injured my view of the protagonists. In this book, we learned that Satrine didn't actually earn her skills in the spy trade; he got them via magic which required no effort on her part. Worse still, Maresca finally applied to what started out as an important main character some of the most standard objectifications against women: (view spoiler)[he has reduced her to a walking womb. She has gone from a strong women with an ill husband to a girl shoved into a situation her smarts had nothing to do with, got pregnant, participated in a shotgun wedding, and hid away her kid. She's no longer a cop; she's a womb, the progenitor of a royal heir. (hide spoiler)] And to top it all, the mystery was, sad to say, pretty lame, although at least the characters thought so as well. (view spoiler)[As Satrine puts it, "a confession drops into our lap." If Rup-Sed wanted to bring attention to what was going on, why didn't he try to tell the investigators what was going on? (hide spoiler)] Whenever I could rip my thoughts away from fuming about the Imach and Lyranan cultures, I tried to enjoy the book. We get to see all of the fun characters of A Murder of Mages as well as some sly mentions of the other story arc taking place in the world.
Is this book worth a read? Well, it's definitely worth checking out A Murder of Mages first. If you've fallen in love with the world, and your rage triggers aren't the same as mine, then maybe this book could be a lot of fun. The book also puts a larger story arc into position that I'm interested to explore further. Even though I'm mourning the missed opportunities of this book, you can definitely count me in for the next.
~~I received an advanced reader copy from the publisher, Berkley Publishing Group, in exchange for my (depressingly) honest review.~~
If you've interacted with me much, you'll know by now that I absolutely love heists. So how could I resist a book called "Heist"?
The opening is promisIf you've interacted with me much, you'll know by now that I absolutely love heists. So how could I resist a book called "Heist"?
The opening is promising enough. We are introduced to the aforementioned "oddball crew," which consists of a thief, a grifter, a hitter, a brain, and... Oh, wait. That's Leverage. [image] As it turns out, Heist isn't so much about the heist as it is about the aftermath. The heist itself is dirt simple: an employee goes in at night, pulls out the money, hands it off to his conspirators, and heads off to Mexico. What happens next involves a hitman, a cigar store Indian, a lot of M&Ms, and a Velvet Elvis. The book is not so much about the heist as it is about the insane and idiotic things the conspirators tried to do with the money. To take only one example, one of the women goes to a bank, asks about the max she can deposit without having it reported to the federal government, and then adds cheerfully to the teller, "Don't worry, it's not drug money."
While it is funny, I also found it distasteful, and it took me a while to pin down why. For one thing, I don't generally like reading recent histories; I like my nonfiction to involve people who are not only dead but whose bones are basically dust at this point. Second, this story and the way it is presented is simply a reinforcement of all the negative stereotypes people have of "hillbillies." The theft itself appears to have had devastating effects on the community, and not only because of the families with members in prison. Because of the theft and its aftermath, the whole area became a laughingstock for the rest of the US. It bothers me that the story extracted from the theft is one of hollow mockery.
Alright, all that over, I'm going back to watching Leverage, where the heists are clever, the humour is more upbeat, and the endings are happy....more
"Why have I always got to be up to something?" "Good question."
Tom Holt/KJ Parker reminds me quite a lot of early Terry Pratchett: an amusing setup, to
"Why have I always got to be up to something?" "Good question."
Tom Holt/KJ Parker reminds me quite a lot of early Terry Pratchett: an amusing setup, tons of hilarious scenes, and with funny, acute, and thoroughly quotable reflections on the human condition scattered throughout. In general, I absolutely adore his short stories and have mixed feelings about his novels, so it's fitting that my feelings about this novella fall somewhere in between the two. Downfall of the Gods tackles--you guessed it-- religion.
The story takes place in a world where the gods--who are suspiciously similar to the Greek/Roman pantheon-- routinely walk the earth, mostly to stir up trouble. Our narrating goddess is the goddess of many different qualities, including the moon, mirth, and music, but her primary role seems to be as goddess of mischief. When a murderer asks for her forgiveness, she refuses; the dead man was one of her favourite musicians. But after some prodding from her father and brother, she decides to set him a task reminiscent of Orpheus's: if he retrieves the musician from the land of the dead, he'll be rewarded with her forgiveness, and, hopefully, her inattention. As he puts it:
"Play your games if you want to. It's all right. I know you'll save me. I have faith." "Do you now." He nodded. "I know you want something from me. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, if you want something from me, I know I'll be just fine."
As Parker clearly intended, the smug, egocentric Goddess annoyed the hell out of me, but even so, she was a vastly entertaining narrator. She has an amusing tendency of breaking the fourth wall:
"A mortal stands on the same hilltop every night and looks at the sky. To him, it appears that the stars are moving. All wrong, of course. The stars don't move; it's the earth. (Sorry, didn't you know that? Oops. Forget I spoke.)"
as well as a breezy tendency to paraphrase the villains of literature:
"All gods are infinitely strong, but some gods are infinitely stronger than others."
I may not have actually really empathized with either the Goddess or her victim, but I did enjoy their interactions:
"To the gods all things are possible," I said, "but there's stuff we can do that we don't because it would make things worse, not better. Counterproductive, I think is the word I'm groping for." "I see," he said. "In other words, you're very powerful but hopelessly badly organized."
At the same time, Parker's characters are almost universally united by a single failing: they are uniformly, tragically static. Even the rare characters that manage a little self-reflection rarely apply it to their actions. I want characters to grow and change throughout the story, which may be why I prefer Parker's shorter works. The Goddess is understandably static; after all, one doesn't expect much change from immortal deities. In her case, the most memorable insights come from the conversations, from the parables Archias tries to tell, and from the Goddess's bald description of practical realities:
"Is what the strongest wants necessarily Right? Well, of course it is. To understand that, consider the meaning of the word Right. Doesn't take long to figure out that it doesn't actually mean anything. It's not like black or serrated or strawberry-flavoured; it has no objective meaning. 'Right' is just a shorthand way of saying 'what we think is right.'"
Because in the end, what purpose to the gods serve other than a well-defined moral code? As the Goddess puts it,
Without us, all they'll have is Right and Wrong. They'll get themselves in the most awful tangle.
If you're looking for a short, lighthearted religious satire, Downfall of the Gods is definitely worth a look.
~~I received a copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Subterranean Press, in exchange for my honest review. Quotes are taken from an advanced reader copy and while they may not reflect the final phrasing, I believe they capture the spirit of the book as a whole.~~
Full disclosure: I volunteer on weekends as a dog socializer at my local animal shelter, and on weekdays, I routinely stalk the dogs I worked with on Full disclosure: I volunteer on weekends as a dog socializer at my local animal shelter, and on weekdays, I routinely stalk the dogs I worked with on our website, checking daily to see who got adopted and who has new pictures or videos. When I saw a book promising cute photographs of shelter dogs, I couldn't resist. [image]
Shelter Dogs in a Photo Booth is indeed chock-full of adorable doggy pictures and stories. I really hope it has positive impact and raises awareness about shelters. There are a few dogs in the book who are listed as "still waiting" for a forever home, but I'm sure the book itself will guarantee their adoptions. I firmly believe that shelters are the best place to get a pet: you're not only saving a dog from potential euthanasia (and about 50% of shelter dogs in the US are euthanized, by the way); you're also getting a companion who has seen the worst of humanity and still will give you unconditional love. [image] In terms of the book, I thoroughly enjoyed each of the dog's stories and images, but I think it suffers somewhat from the format. Each dog has exactly four photographs laid out in precisely the same way with a short blurb underneath. More problematically, it quickly becomes clear that all of the interactions being photographed are treat throws. (They look like Beggin' Strips to me.) Occasionally I could even see some whale eyes and flattened ears in non-treat photographs, which are standard signs of stress, fear, and anxiety. I spend a lot of time with dogs, and their expressions when they're actually interacting with humans are very different from their food-focused faces, so I felt like the pictures, while cute, didn't really capture their true personalities. My favourite section was easily right at the end, where the book gives us some "happy ending" shots of the dogs with their new families. Here, finally, we get to see some of the dogs' real personalities. Speaking of which, if you do adopt a dog, please please please send the shelter some "happily ever after" pictures and stories--you will make the volunteers' day.
Shelter Dogs in a Photo Booth is an adorable idea and I hope it gives animal shelters some much-needed publicity. If you're looking for some cute puppy faces, it may be worth a look. Even better, head down to your local shelter and pick up a photo booth puppy of your very own.
~~I received this review through Netgalley from the publisher, Andrews McMeel Publishing, in exchange for my honest review.~~
Loading...
