**Update: I originally DNF'd this, but a combination of guilt and absence of other reading materials drove me to finish.
Dear Station Eleven, I’m sure **Update: I originally DNF'd this, but a combination of guilt and absence of other reading materials drove me to finish.
Dear Station Eleven, I’m sure you’re a fine book, an uplifting book, an enjoyable book, a cozy book.
But see, here’s the thing.
I don’t believe a postapocalyptic post-superflu post-civilization dystopia should be cozy.
It's me. I know it's me. This book has received universal acclaim. But even though it should have been a pleasant, comforting read, it just didn't work for me. Part of the problem is that I've read several post-apocalyptic novels recently, and it's a genre I find draining. Part of the problem, I suspect, was that I was rather bored, and when I'm not absolutely captivated, the sceptic that lives in the back of my head starts making comments about the worldbuilding and before I know it, I'm in a lather about magically ubiquitous hipster horses.
My tolerance for cozy postapocalypses was not improved by the story’s similarity to Stephen King’s The Stand. How similar, you ask? Well, the plots aren’t identical, precisely, but the setup pretty much is.
Station Eleven is yet another book in which the 99.9% of the world’s population is destroyed by a superflu, in which the survivors try to rebuild cities, and in which a nasty religious Prophet gets in the way of sanity. Add in a series of flashbacks telling the life story of a long-dead actor from the people around him and references to a scifi comic book of a distant future and you've got all the metaphorical fodder for a literary masterpiece. That's as it may be, and even though I certainly caught some of the aforesaid metaphors--they're a bit hard to miss-- literary symbolism doesn't do much for my personal reading enjoyment. The story is certainly very readable, with a gentle third-person narration that lends a distant, abstracted feeling to it all. But the sceptic in the back of my head just couldn't reconcile the tone with the contents.
I think my core problem with Station Eleven is that the story is stripped of all the gritty realism that made The Stand so vivid. I discovered that I have a visceral reaction against the idea of a cozy pandemic tale. Uplifting? Sure, if you can manage it. But the situation must be acknowledged. Millions upon millions of people are dead: strangers, friends, family. This isn't a genre that should be allowed to be cozy.
In Mandel’s version of the post-superflu world, within 20 years, all technology is gone and they’re back to a horse-and-wagon, candle-lit society. Right. So, 99.9% of the world is gone, only 20 years have gone by, and...they’ve used up all the batteries? All the gasoline? All the canned food? All of the antibiotics? Really? If that large of a population is gone, there’s suddenly a serious supply of battery-driven technology with very little demand. And it’s not like all the solar panels or the how-to books on building your own personal hydroelectric plants have disappeared from the libraries. And where did all those horses come from? I suppose it gains in picturesqueness what it loses in rationality, but in my opinion, that’s not a fair trade.
Mandel is a talented writer, and her pre-apocalyptic scenes do come to life. But during and afterwards? It all feels removed, distanced, abstract. Sure, the characters talk about loss and hunger and struggle, but they don't seem to feel them. Even though the lifestyles are all back to rural country simplicity, there’s no real discussion about the struggle of adjusting, the desperation or uncertainty. The survivors just seem generally stable and happy, chugging along on their horse-drawn wagons, listening to Shakespeare plays.
The flashbacks portray a world of stalled cars and dead bodies, but even then, it feels distant. In one segment, people trapped inside an airport hear about the events outside only through the sterilized portraits of the news. The reality of the horror all around them is confined to a tiny screen, snapshots of a world they never directly interact with. In some ways, I think this is an analogue for the rest of the book. If 99.9% of the population died, then the world must be filled with stinking, decaying bodies, the roads clogged by cars and the cars themselves simply portraits of death and decay. I believe that the death, the decay, the loss of life...they would all be utterly inescapable. Yet in the 20-years-later version, all the chaos seems to have vanished. Mandel's postapocalyptic world just seems empty, as if the 99.9% simply evaporated, Rapture style.
And then there’s the antagonist. Oh, those religious types. How our media loves to go after them. How easy, how convenient, how comforting to demonize.
Basically, Mandel’s version of a postapocalyptic world is cozy. It’s a comforting idea, that so much of the population could die and yet leave behind a neat, clean world and a throwback society that could adopt all the quaint customs we’re still rather nostalgic about. Horse-drawn carriages, outdoor stagings of Shakespeare, a night of candlelight, a mother cooking dinner while her husband is out in the fields… how very nice.
I really regret my inability to enjoy this book. There shouldn't be anything wrong with Nice. Sometimes I wish I could strangle the sceptic in the back of my head, but like the book's characters, it's just too resilient. If the world falls, then at least for a few generations, I think it should be nightmare. I find it troubling to imagine that so many lives could be so quickly forgotten, and that the survivors grieve for civilization instead of civilians.
In the end, I guess I believe that apocalypses have no business being cozy....more
To me, the most important aspect of nonfiction is that it be nonfiction. Unfortunately, writers of pop nonfiDNF.
I made it over halfway, but I give up.
To me, the most important aspect of nonfiction is that it be nonfiction. Unfortunately, writers of pop nonfiction usually go for the most sensational versions of the truth that they can find.
To my mind, this book falls into that trap. Abbott's book is clearly well-researched, but she tends to present as fact information from such dubious sources as the women's own memoirs or stories from Harper's Weekly. Since many of the women parleyed their life stories into various careers, it was in their own interests to make them as sensational as possible.
I also felt that Abbott doesn't carefully delineate from her own embroidering and her sources. She doesn't tend to attribute her "facts" to any particular source, even when they come from such dubious places as Belle Boyd's romanticized versions of events. She also repeats stories from Sarah Emma Edmonds' memoir, though even Abbott can't quite swallow some of the ones that are provably false. Like Boyd, Edmonds sold her memoir and thus had reason to make it as sensational as possible. I don't really believe, for example, that she visited home in her male disguise and that her mother broke down in tears because "Frank" reminded her of her lost daughter and that she dramatically uncovered her true identity to the rejoicing of her mother and sister. Abbott swallows it hook, line, and sinker.
I dispute many of Abbott's facts, such as her inclusion of such tall tales as the soldier at Bull Run who was saved by a Bible in his pocket (his name was William Preston Magnum, and while there's no real evidence that the bullet was deflected by his Bible, it is an indisputable fact that he died from his wounds a week later and was buried at Manassas.)
The overwritten, purple-prosy style didn't do much for me either. If I wanted to read Victorian over-sensationalism, I'd go pick up the ladies' memoirs. To be clear, I do think that Abbott has sources for all of the stories she tells. I just don't believe the veracity of her sources.
I think these women were incredible and fascinating. I believe they deserve to have their true stories told, not the hyperbolic and romanticized versions that their lives inspired.
If it were not against my personal policy to rate books I didn't finish, I'd give this a 1. Just in the first four chapters, which as far as I got, thIf it were not against my personal policy to rate books I didn't finish, I'd give this a 1. Just in the first four chapters, which as far as I got, the damsel in distress is raped, humiliated, and defiled in every conceivable, graphically- described manner possible, in a style that I believe is intended to be titillating. (view spoiler)[I quit when the villain forced her to have a humiliatingly uncontrolled orgasm at a restaurant in front of her boss. (hide spoiler)] Maybe I'm just a prude; certainly I didn't give this book a "fair chance." But honestly? I'm just rather horrified that someone is able to think like this. Please, pass the brain bleach....more
Love the title, hated the content. I didn't make it more than 30% in due to my absolute loathing for the narrator.
Loathing, unadulter**edited 12/30/13
Love the title, hated the content. I didn't make it more than 30% in due to my absolute loathing for the narrator.
Loathing, unadulterated loathing For your tone, your voice, your posing Let's just say I loathe it all! How you describe women--it's your male gaze It sends my anger right into a blaze With simple utter loathing...
Technomancer is you might get if you combined Jason Bourne and the TV show X-Files. The start of the plot is very Bourne Identity-ish: the main characTechnomancer is you might get if you combined Jason Bourne and the TV show X-Files. The start of the plot is very Bourne Identity-ish: the main character, who goes by the rather romantic name of Quentin Draith, wakes up in a hospital with amnesia and a rather disturbing familiarity with the mechanics of violence. As he wanders around and irritates people, he discovers that something's going wrong in his hometown of Las Vegas: mysterious objects, each of which has a specific power, are appearing all over the place and creating chaos. They appear to be controlled by a powerful set of people known only as the Community. Bizarre deaths--disappearances, spontaneous combustions, choking on sand, and more--are becoming common. Draith discovers that he has one of these mysterious objects himself and sets out to unravel the mystery.
I didn't finish this, but not because I particularly disliked it--simply because it was due at the library and I didn't care enough about it to renew it. (My library charges $$ for renews/holds/requests.) Someday I'll see it again at the library and finish it...until then, here's my reaction to the portion I read (about the first two-thirds).
Draith reminds me a lot of Sandman Slim (Richard Kadrey)--his attitude feels too violent, heartless, and nihilistic to me. I also don't find his humour remotely entertaining, but people in his world definitely do and laugh sycophantically at his "jokes"--always a bad combination for me. I also found him one of the most arrogant, sexist jerks I've come across in a while--to the point that he actually hits on a recently bereaved bride and comments that he might have rescued her even if she were not attractive, etc. What ticked me off even more is that, when speaking with said bride who watched her husband disappear in something like an antimatter tornado, his main preoccupation is trying to determine whether the husband was able to consummate the wedding before he died because apparently if the groom had "tapped that ass" (gah I hate that expression) Quentin can feel a little better about his death. First, the groom is dead, so if it were me I'd be putting my empathy with the bride--the inability of the protagonist to even empathize with females is like male gaze to the max. Second, for me at least, that is one hell of a repulsive train of thought given the circumstances. Anyway, I can't find a character to attach my emotional interest in, and the death count, especially given its graphic nature, is already much higher than I usually take. And I know, I know, I'm judging prematurely...but the world just doesn't feel very real or well-thought out to me. All in all, it's not a bad book...just not a great fit for me. Definitely recommended for fans of Sandman Slim, though....more
As soon as I saw the ridiculously attractive cover-art and intruiging title, I couldn't wait to tear into the story. To my disappoint**edited 12/30/13
As soon as I saw the ridiculously attractive cover-art and intruiging title, I couldn't wait to tear into the story. To my disappointment, I found I really shouldn't have judged this one by its cover.
The story takes place in England in the late Georgian period--about twenty or thirty years before Jane Austen's time. The main character, a surgeon from Philadelphia, is brought into the case of a suspicious death by the beautiful Lady Lydia. Graphic death scenes, a shallow and improbable InstaLove romance, and generalized "historical atmosphere" follow.
Call me crazy, but one thing I tend to expect of historical novels is some level of historical accuracy. Harris clearly did some amount of research for this book, but in my opinion, she just didn't do enough.
OK, so I'm rating this after making it through about 5-10%, which is totally unfair, but I'm stopping before it completely saps my will to live. This OK, so I'm rating this after making it through about 5-10%, which is totally unfair, but I'm stopping before it completely saps my will to live. This is not my genre. It is, indisputably, a paranormal romance, not an urban fantasy. I do not do paranormal romance.
I nearly sicked up when I reached the line "his tongue circling my thundering pulse..." and after that point, it moved into an ick-factor BDSM thing. I find all "sexy" scenes gag-inducing and this is of a particularly glutinous variety, but in this case, it doesn't even make sense. Who the hell is listening to her freaking sexual urges when she's a few heartbeats from death?
The final straw? The author apparently thought a "generic" British accent was sexy, but didn't bother to even do the tiniest amount of research into, yaknow, how any particular real British accent goes. Her (mysterious, brooding, smouldering...gack) hero uses every "chirpy Cockney phrase" that Americans think Brits still use, and his phrasing is an insane mixture of Mancunian, Cockney, and RE. (Blimey, guv'nor, you mean the chaps don't talk like that? Sod off!) I was listening to it on audio, and the narrator is even worse.
This book has sapped my will to live, so I'll stop while I can....more
Can't finish. Gahhhhh. It seems like a very cool concept--a noir police procedural set in a near future where actual and virtual realities have been mCan't finish. Gahhhhh. It seems like a very cool concept--a noir police procedural set in a near future where actual and virtual realities have been melded. But the writing. It is multi-narrator, present-tense, second-person narrative. Whyyy! I mean, I know I'm rigid about narrative styles; I tend to dislike present tense, but I'll tolerate it for a good story. But second person? I mean, how many people do you know who refer to themselves as "you", e.g.
I must have zoned out, you realize nervously.
I tend to adore unreliable first-person narrators, and I even think I could have coped with a Gollumesque/royal "we". But a story changes narrators every chapter, and all the narrators speak in present tense and refer to themselves as "you?" I just can't deal. It's like a choose-your-own adventure story where you have Multiple Personality Disorder and don't actually have any choices.
The concept is very cool, and I think it could be a fun story. If you can deal with the narrative style, I'm sure it's a fantastic read. It was gripping enough that I hung in there for a while, but ended up deciding I just couldn't cope. And now I have a headache....more
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