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
After Atlas proves that, yes indeed, Emma Newman can do cyberpunk.
Good news: although it takes place in the same world as Newman's earlier novel, AfteAfter Atlas proves that, yes indeed, Emma Newman can do cyberpunk.
Good news: although it takes place in the same world as Newman's earlier novel, After Atlas can be read without Planetfall, and if the idea of a discussion of agency wrapped around a police procedural taking place in a world remade by gov-corps sounds appealing while an exploration of OCD on an alien planet does not, then I'd definitely recommend jumping straight ahead to After Atlas. You'll miss a certain amount of dramatic irony, but the worldbuilding and plot points should be entirely intelligible.
The narrator of After Atlas is Carlos, a police inspector for the Noropean Ministry of Justice. Carlos is also an indentured slave with few rights and little hope of freedom. After "the transition from pseudo-democracy into neoliberty," the new gov-corps tried their hands at solving the issues of poverty and homelessness in the most economical way they could think of: "nonpersons" are scooped off the streets and locked into "hot-houses," where their brains are crammed with skills so they can be sold to the highest bidder. Carlos is luckier than most, for the MoJ is a comparatively kindly master. He may not have the right to own property or be in a relationship or "cohabitate" or even take his own life, but he has one of the most advanced artificial personal assistants on the market and he truly loves solving problems. His newest case, however, takes him to a place he has no desire to explore: his own past, including the technology-shunning cult he grew up in and fled from.
I thoroughly enjoyed the vivid, gritty cyberpunk world that Newman created. People wander the streets of London gesticulating to thin air as they engage in virtual conversations with friends hundreds of miles away; others use their APAs to play augmented reality games or watch an endless stream of advertisements. Except for the very wealthy, almost all food is made-to-order from food printers. Resources are scarce, attention even scarcer. In such a world, Carlos's questions about agency are all too apt. As he puts it,
"Everybody is on a leash. Some are more obvious than others."
Like its predecessor, After Atlas is a compelling story. Approached as a mystery, it is perhaps rather lacking, both in terms of twists and in an ultimately satisfactory explanation. (view spoiler)[As a reader, I thought it looked like suicide plus postmortem damage, but it was such an obvious solution that I assumed something far more intricate. Even the final reasons felt rather lacking. I never really felt I understood Alejandro, and many of the apparent clues remained odd and unresolved. Why did Alejandro embrace an extravagant lifestyle? Why did a man so vehemently against suicide end up killing himself? Why did he so badly want to be chipped, particularly since he planned to commit suicide? I know the mission of the cult changed, but even so, that seems like too radical and unexplained a shift in perspective. Where did Klein get the bruises? (hide spoiler)] The story shines most in its examination of agency and choice, particularly coming from the perspective of a character who has so little of either. As an elite inspector, Carlos is fully of the disparity between the privileged world he appears to be a part of and his actual state of disempowerment:
"It was the constant cognitive dissonance of being so desperate to get out yet too scared to leave. Of being so afraid to fail yet wishing I did so it would all stop. Of being told I was lucky when I was being abused. Of hearing I was a valuable asset when I was being treated like a fucking object."
I don't know what exactly Emma Newman does to make her books so addictive, but I do know that I'm thoroughly hooked. It's not just that I love the worldbuilding; there's something about her stories and her style that I find utterly beguiling. Whether the next book takes place on Earth or on the world of Planetfall, count me in.
~~I received this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Berkley Publishing Group, in exchange for my honest review. Quotes were taken from an advanced reader copy and while they may not reflect the final version, I believe they speak to the spirit of the novel as a whole.~~
For those of you who know me, the TL;DR version is this: I finished The Ghoul King in one sitting, and immediately turned around and purchased The EmpFor those of you who know me, the TL;DR version is this: I finished The Ghoul King in one sitting, and immediately turned around and purchased The Emperor's Railroad (I almost never buy books.) And now it's at the top of my to-read list.
The Ghoul King is short, but potent. Don't look for character development when reading this: it's pure nonstop action and captivating worldbuilding. The story takes place in a far-future America, after the collapse of society as we know it. The fallen world has become a theocracy, the rule of God pinned together by Dreaming Cities and ruled by the angels. Living dead and ghouls wander the earth, byproducts of a terrible plague that strikes at the whim of the angels. While the reader can recognize the power of the angels as some sort of advanced technology lingering in a fallen world, the characters themselves have no idea, and no way of distinguishing science from magic or from the power of God. As one character puts it:
"There is little in the world that is God's will, but a lot that is the angels'."
There is so much to love about the worldbuilding. While I have a suspicion the setup may be more familiar to gamers, I got a huge kick out of the cross between western and magical theocracy. I loved mentions of "The Monastery of Sainted Electrics" or "Angel Makers" or radiation counters carried as common course.
My biggest issue with the book comes from a few throwaway lines in the book:
"I've been told back in the Gone Before there were many colors of men in the world, and they all fought and warred and ruined everything, so after God's wrath cleansed the Earth he mixed up all those left so there's only a few shades of skin. I have never seen so pale a man, almost white as a fish's belly. I didn't know such men still existed."
So it turns out that our ubermensch protagonist is white, and the only white man the narrator has ever seen, come to save everyone with his incredible mind and talent. Sigh. Other than a few mentions of our white and blue-eyed protagonist that left a bad taste in my mouth, the rest of the book left racial issues alone, allowing me at least to pretend the whole "white saviour" thing wasn't happening. And as long as I could ignore that, I was utterly engrossed.
I love the idea of the Angels and the Dreaming Cities, and I can't wait to find out what makes them tick and what Quinn's actual mission is. In terms of series ordering, I read Ghoul King without The Emperor's Railroad and found it thoroughly comprehensible: Haley's style is to throw the reader directly into an initially bewildering world, slowly feeding them tiny pieces of backhistory and mechanics. I absolutely loved it. If you're looking for a short, wild ride with plenty of twists and captivating worldbuilding, The Ghoul King is definitely worth a look. Count me in for Knight Quinn's next adventure!
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, in exchange for my honest review.~~
In retrospect, I shouldn't have read this book. I don't typically like YA, I don't particularly enjoy fluff, I strongly dislike romance, and I'm impatIn retrospect, I shouldn't have read this book. I don't typically like YA, I don't particularly enjoy fluff, I strongly dislike romance, and I'm impatient with fluffy YA romances masquerading as gritty dystopians. It all started when I saw the second half of a "The 100" episode while at the gym, and there seemed to be all sorts of interesting plot lines that I utterly failed to grasp, not the least of which was what the 100 was actually a 100 of. While in retrospect, I realize I should have just looked it up on Wikipedia, I was momentarily out of books, The 100 was available in my library, and I was feeling curious. Plus, I assumed that a title as blatantly concrete as "The 100" must have a clever, punny, double-entendre-esque meaning. (It doesn't, by the way.) All of which forced me, inevitably, to a future in which I would waste an hour and a half of my life reading the book, and waste 15 minutes of my life writing a review to pan it.
So anyway, if you enjoyed this book, please ignore this review. If you plan to read this book, please ignore this review. If you're pretty sure you'll never read or enjoy this book, well, I read the book so you wouldn't have to. (You're welcome.) All of which is to say that this review is likely to contain spoilers, and since there isn't much plot in the book in the first place, I'm not entirely sure what consists of a spoiler and therefore cannot mark them appropriately.
The 100 is simply one of the hundreds of YA books out there that consist of highschool rebellion and romance superficially wrapped in a vaguely interesting but utterly ill-conceived dystopian backdrop. In this case, said dystopian backdrop is a world destroyed about three centuries before via some sort of nuclear apocalypse, with the only remnant of humanity hanging out on a space station revolving around the ruined earth. Said space station utilizes capital punishment as the penalty for all sorts of minor misdemeanors. Underage offenders are instead imprisoned until they turn eighteen, at which point they are retried and inevitably found guilty and penalized with capital punishment. As Morgan tells us, since the incident that destroyed the earth, the space station decided it must maintain a stable population, and thus reproduction is strictly policed and each couple is allowed at most one child. Clearly Morgan is unfamiliar with the elementary basics of mathematics, and perhaps since much of her plot revolves around the idea that siblings are an alien concept, none of her beta readers or editors were able to correct her misapprehension. To keep a stable population, you need each couple to have, on average, two children. (Actually, you need the average to be slightly more than two, due to non-child-bearing members of the population, accidents, child mortality, capital punishment for minor crimes, etc.)
With a population restriction of one child per couple, each generation's population will be decreased by 50%. The space station has been up for about 300 years, which corresponds to approximately 15 generations. If the generation gap is 20 years, P0 is the initial population, and P(t) is the number of people in the t-th generation, then we can estimate the generation size at time t as P(t) = P0*2^(-t/20). If you want a visual, the population per generation, starting with 10 million people in the first generation, would look like this:
[image]
This means that to even have 100 kids left in Clarke's generation to throw out of the ship--and this assumes 100% of the kids of her generation are delinquents-- they must have started with over 3 million people in the first generation.
Speaking of capital punishment, another aspect that struck me as impressively idiotic was the way the ship actually implemented its one-child policy. One would imagine that the station would have a forced birth control policy--or even sterilization for the post-one-kid folks. Nope. They apparently require abstinence, and even an unplanned pregnancy is punishable by death. We have one instance of teenage pregnancy--both father and mother are supposed to be killed because they were fooling around. Has anyone in this world heard of prevention, or is that expecting too much from a YA book?
Not that anything else about the worldbuilding or setup makes much more sense. It's never clear precisely how many people are onboard--I actually think Morgan carefully avoided defining this, as the impressions she gives vary wildly depending on the scene--but somehow it's enough to create several different communities with wildly different cultures that apparently don't intersect. One of them is the "wealthy" set; the others are the impoverished ones. While children of the "wealthy" community work and do whatever they want, the poor community kids do whatever their parents did. Because it definitely makes sense when your talent pool is that limited and you appear to have a semi-socialist setup to create huge social divisions and follow completely different career models in different areas.
The characters don't make much more sense either. My favourite case of complete idiot irrationality (view spoiler)[--well, possibly second favourite; the Darwin Award definitely goes to Wells for destroying the ship's airlock in the effort to get the girl he loves put without any support on a radioactive and possibly unsurvivable planet, although why no one in the last 300 years put any effort into either fixing the ship or developing gear to explore the planet utterly baffles me. Or Octavia, for stealing all the drugs, dooming everyone in the colony, and thinking she could get some sort of high off penicillin and the like, coz apparently all drugs are the same, amiright? Or Clarke, for silently accepting her parents' murder spree. Or Glass, for existing. Actually, choosing the dumbest, most illogical character in this book is really, really hard-- (hide spoiler)] comes from Bellamy, who holds the chancellor at gunpoint to get onboard so he can protect his sister. And what does protecting his sister entail? Well, since he committed a crime and is therefore a wanted man, "protecting" his sister means forcing her to leave the rest of the 100 with him and, presumably, live a life of danger, isolation, and loneliness, away from any assistance or community that the rest of the kids might have provided. And throughout the book, everyone keeps speaking of Bellamy's kindness and lack of selfishness without the requisite sarcasm.
Meh, I'm not going to waste any more time on this. Long story short, the book is a thinly-imagined dystopian wrapping over a lot of teen angst and romancing. The focus of the story itself is on the teens and their loves and their friendships rather than, I don't know, their struggles to survive on a now-alien world. The story switches perspectives often and utilizes flashbacks repeatedly and gracelessly. Every so often, I encounter a YA book that imbues me with a certain amount of enthusiasm for the genre. This is emphatically not one of those times....more
"Please allow me to introduce myself… No. Strike that. Period stop backspace backspace bloody computer no stop that stop listening stop dictating end e
"Please allow me to introduce myself… No. Strike that. Period stop backspace backspace bloody computer no stop that stop listening stop dictating end end oh I give up. Will you stop doing that?"
Meet Mo, a.k.a. Dominique, employee of the UK's super-secret black-ops magic organisation (they call it the Laundry), wife of Bob Howard (a.k.a. The Eater of Souls), bearer of a psychotically evil soul-sucking bone violin, and combat epistemologist. When Mo takes a trip to do a little glad-handing with the Deep Ones (aka BLUE HADES), she thinks she's finally going to get a bit of well-deserved R&R. But before she knows it, a tiny mistake has landed her neck-deep in trouble, and even worse, in bureaucratic paperwork. In Mo's world, the end is nigh, and all hell is beginning to break loose. As the barriers between our world and the Elder Ones of the Dungeon Dimensions break down, more and more people are gaining magical abilities. Magic is rationalized in the context of culture, and given the superhero craze, suddenly there are a disturbing number of people running (or flying) around in Lycra suits that may not precisely flatter them. And a series of mistakes leave Mo in charge of a brand-new superhero ops organization tasked with stopping the superhero singularity. To make things worse, there's a new supervillain Mad Scientist on the loose, and he he's leaving behind messages of the "Tremble, Fools, Before It is Too Late!" variety, and worst of all, the messages are printed in Comic Sans.
I suspect that the most divisive part of the book will be the change in narrators from Bob to Mo. Personally, I strongly preferred Mo to Bob. She's introduced to us in the midst of an unjustified attack of jealousy, but once she gets past that, I really warmed to her. I've grown a bit tired of Bob, and Mo's spiky, sarcastic, vibrant personality revived the series for me. I also wasn't too surprised by their marital issues; intentional or not on Stross's part, I've never sensed any chemistry between Bob and Mo. (Since much of the series is a Bond spoof, there are quite a few obligatory Bond girls, and Bob doesn't really think of Mo when she's not around.) While the previous books in the series don't really defy their Bond roots in the sexism department, I thought Stross did a pretty good job with his female characters here. He even has a wonderful riff on the Invisible Middle-Aged Woman syndrome. (Sure, there's the obsession on Bob's past partners, but Mo's Bechdel test failure moment is actually called out in-book.) The plot itself is rather measured, dealing mostly with Mo's struggles to get her fledgling superhero team going. I'm pretty sure anyone who has dealt with bureaucracy will find it amusing. For me, however, the ending was a bit of an off note. (view spoiler)[
If I understand matters correctly, the combined incompetence of Mo and the Laundry causes thousands of deaths. If the Laundry knew what was going on--and the conversations with the SA certainly suggests that--why not go after the organization? They're not all-powerful. They're not even magic. Surely a bit of explanation, shock and awe, or, in the worst case, deaths would have solved matters. Also, I know I'm a pedant, but I'm a bit weirded out by the oath bit. We (the barbarian Americans) also have the "lawful" bit, but for us at least, "lawful" means that it has to pass the legislature and be part of the law--just because an executive said so wouldn't make it right or true. Firing upon unarmed civilians without cause is kinda not cool with the UCMJ. So what about an immoral order by a superior officer makes it lawful? And how on earth was there not a witchhunt against Mo? She was shown on live TV to be killing a mass number of people with an enchanted weapon she was known to own, and, presumably, control. I pretty much do consider Mo and the Laundry culpable, and that assessment includes the mitigating factors.
And Mo made everything worse. She deduced nothing. She solved nothing. She acted as the puppet of everyone around her. She didn't even withstand Lecter and ends up requiring rescue. Again. Granted, that's what always seems to happen to Bob as well, but given the context, it was somehow worse here.
The other thing that really, really pissed me off was the ending, when Mo meets up with Mr Patronising Git, aka Dr Armstrong. In the last paragraph of the book, he responds to her valid concerns that (a) she did more harm than good, (b) she's worn out with it, and (c) the Laundry is an untrustworthy organization with a patronising speech in which he pretty much directly calls her hysterical. And she apparently takes it.
There are moments in the book when Stross's gender biases surface. Mo spends a lot of time jealously obsessing over Bob and the women who knew him, and there's quite a bit of the catfight vibe in the opening. I found it rather irritating, but sure, maybe some women are like that. But Stross's complete ignorance of a serious hotbutton is just a step too far. There's a proud and ongoing tradition of dismissing women as hysterical or overemotional. It's so common that these days, it's part of bias training. Yet the book ends with this arrogant git calling her overemotional and telling her she'll "calm down" and "regain her center" and think better of it all? Really? And you're going to end the book with that?
I would have loved to give this book five stars. Up until the ending, I really thought it would happen. But between the too-neat cop-out and the blind sexism of the last paragraph, the end left a bad taste in my mouth. (hide spoiler)]
As always, Stross is absolutely hilarious, and this time, you don't need a computer science degree to get in on the jokes. Some of my favourite quotes:
"Yes, she's a blood-sucking fiend. But she's also a superbly competent administrator and has an MBA which I think you'll agree makes up for a lot of sins."
"Scientific research is a bottomless money pit. You can approximate Doing Science to standing on the Crack of Doom throwing banknotes down it by the double-handful, in the hope that if you choke the volcano with enough paper it will cough up the One Ring."
"Despair, dismay, disorientation, and delusion: the four horsemen of the bureaucratic apocalypse."
Unfortunately, though, I don't really think it's possible to read this without the context of the previous books. I skipped only one (#5, The Rhesus Chart) and found myself quite bewildered by the references to recent events. I can't imagine how hard it would be to read this without some knowledge of the Laundry, the Eater of Souls, and CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. However, if you're looking to give the series a try, I think you can start with #2 (The Jennifer Morgue) or #3(The Fuller Memorandum)--I did.
**Note: quotes were taken from an uncorrected advanced reader copy of this ebook and may not reflect the final version. However, I believe they speak to the spirit of the book.
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Ace Books, a Penguin Random House imprint, in exchange for my honest review. Thank you!~~...more
~2.5 This is awkward to admit, but I'm not really sure what to make of this book.
The Heart Goes Last takes place in a near-future dystopia where the ec~2.5 This is awkward to admit, but I'm not really sure what to make of this book.
The Heart Goes Last takes place in a near-future dystopia where the economy has collapsed and with it has fallen all societal order. Stan and Charmaine are forced to live out of their car, subsisting off of Charmaine's meagre waitress salary, always moving to fend off thieves and gangsters and rapists that will attack any working vehicle. When Charmaine sees an advertisement for a new life in the symbiotic prison/town system of Positron and Consilience, she's desperate to take the plunge. And so Stan and Charmaine find themselves switching monthly between life behind bars in Positron and a soothing 1950s-style domestic life in Consilience. As the ads say,
"DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR OUR FUTURE. CONSILIENCE = CONS + RESILIENCE."
But Charmaine and Stan soon realize that, just like their fifties ideal, a facade of perfection isn't easy to maintain.
Given the amusingly bizarre premise and the absolute absurdity of later events, I'm pretty sure that the book was intended to be black comedy. Unfortunately, I didn't find it funny at all. Part of this had to do with the themes. As with all of Atwood's books, feminism--and more specifically, the victimization of women--plays a major role. It's an extreme thing to say, but this book gave me the sense that Atwood just despises men. Most of the book's plot rests upon the assumption that men are basically sexual predators. In the collapsed society, they rape all the women they come across. If they're denied female companionship, they rape chickens. If they're afraid of real women, they rape androids. And if they can manage it, they do whatever it takes to rape the women of their dreams. The entire book is about sex, and every single example involves something with the flavor of rape, from Charmaine unprotestingly and joylessly allowing Stan to do what he wants to the more extreme versions found later. The men of Atwood's world are all driven by sexual desire, and deep down, they all want their sexual encounters to involve force. To my mind, there are certain themes-- genocide, child abuse, etc-- that are simply too serious to be treated comically. Rape is one of those themes. (view spoiler)[With respect to the androids, I know there were the Elvis ones, but note that when they are introduced as "Possibilibots for everyone," it's in reference to gay men's desires, not women's. And I know Jocelyn is an abuser, but as the ball-buster woman, she's simply treating men the way the men treat women.
Stan, our supposed protagonist, is, of course, the worst example of all. His sex with Charmaine, with her docile but unwilling, sounds a lot like rape. From his first conversation with Jocelyn about "the thing with the chickens," it sounds like he spent his prison time raping them as well. If he's not an abuser already, he's on the first steps towards it; when he's angry, he smashes and breaks things, and he wants Charmaine to be abused:
"How long before Phil resorts to domestic violence, just for something to do? Not long, Stan hopes. He wouldn't mind knowing that Phil is smacking Charmaine around, and not just as a garnish to the sex, the way he does onscreen, but for real: somebody needs to."
His fantasies of Jasmine all involve overcoming her by force, only to have her melt into his arms. He stalks her. He wants to rescue Charmaine, not because she'll be turned into a sex slave, but because she'll be turned "into a sex slave for the wrong man." And in the end, as his reward for service, he wants Charmaine to be turned into a sex slave for the "right" man. I know it didn't really happen; that whole ending was telegraphed from the first moment the sex slave business got introduced. But that doesn't change the fact that Stan wanted to rip away Charmaine's agency and free will and turn her into his sex slave. Stan, our "every man" protagonist, is an awful, awful person. So what does that say about the book's portrayal of men in general? And what about the ending, where the various men have their wills taken away? I'm appalled that Atwood saw that as a "happy ending." (hide spoiler)] Atwood sees men as predators and women as (usually willing) victims. I get it. I've gotten it since Handmaid's Tale. But this isn't 1985 anymore--or 1950, for that matter. Women may not have gained equality, but surely we can tell stories with a more nuanced message.
Maybe I could have survived the book if I had been able to warm to a character, any character. But to my mind, all of the characters were simply awful--and more importantly, unsympathetic-- people. (view spoiler)[Both Charmaine's and Stan's first thoughts were about murdering each other, and both dismissed the fantasy only because of practical issues. Charmaine embraces her role as victim, actively seeking out a man who will degrade her. She submits just as willingly to her role of "Angel of Death." To my mind, the kiss on the head was the most grisly part of all. I wanted to like Jocelyn, but her role as the foil for all the abusive men made it awfully hard. It's as if the entire world is composed of sociopaths. (hide spoiler)] I actually started to wonder how Atwood could make the characters less sympathetic, but apart from wringing the necks of a few puppies, I'm stumped. The heart may go last, but honestly, I felt that these characters had no heart at all. It might just be part of the whole "black humour" thing, and maybe it's just not my genre, but at least for me, awful people doing awful things made for a grueling, distasteful read.
I started out by saying that I didn't know what to make of The Heart Goes Last, and that's mostly because I spent a good portion of the book trying to figure out if it was intended to be serious or black comedy. Some of the serious themes appealed to me; for example, the book heavily explores the distinction between being exploited and feeling exploited. Yet the plot certainly suggests comedy: every trope of B-movie scifi is mashed together, with additional absurdity thrown on top. Put it this way: Elvises (or is it Elvi?) get involved. Yet the themes and events, especially the ones that Atwood so thoughtfully explores, crossed the "not funny" line for me. There's a certain genre of black comedy involving despicable characters doing (and failing to do) despicable things, and this book fits neatly into that category. But it's not the genre for me.
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Doubleday Books, in exchange for my (depressingly) honest review.~~...more
**Note: if you're looking for a useful review that will provide cogent analysis of the book, please look elsewhere. This is my random, 10-minute, offh**Note: if you're looking for a useful review that will provide cogent analysis of the book, please look elsewhere. This is my random, 10-minute, offhand reaction. I'm going to talk about themes. Depending on your definition, you may consider it spoilery. You've been warned.**
~3.5
In some ways, speculative fiction often balances precariously on the boundary between detective fiction and horror. Some books--hard scifi is a prime example--seek to make a world that they can explain. No matter how bewildering everything seems to be, somewhere, somehow, you just know it all makes sense. And then there's the horror flavour. At its core, horror comes from the unknown. So horror must play upon the unguessable, the nonsensical, the inexplicable.
Area X falls firmly into the latter category. It's the purest novelistic form of the Weird scifi subgenre that I've ever encountered. And from the very beginning, it's clear that the story itself will be a quest--a failed quest--to make the world make sense. The titles reflect the nature of the story arc. In the first part, Annhilation, the protagonists discover the effects of Area X upon their once-stable, sensible world. In the second, Authority, they try to take control and, as can be predicted by the outset, utterly fail to do so. In the third, Acceptance, the protagonists finally come to terms with the fact that Area X simply cannot be understood.
I'm a reader of detective fiction. I like order. I don't need to hear the explanations, but I need to know that somewhere, they're out there. The whole point of Area X, as is clear from the very beginning, is that it cannot be explained, and it doesn't make sense. This book, therefore, was something of a mismatch for me.
Even so, Area X is a fascinating book. It's practically constructed whole-cloth from metaphor and allusion. All of the names are meaningful, from the identity-stripping designation of "Biologist" and "Psychologist" to the man who designates himself as "Control" at the times when he has absolutely none to Saul the lighthousekeeper who is blinded by light. It is a thoughtful, complex book, and it will leave you still wondering about it long after you've finished.
Granted, if you're a detective-type reader, your primary question will probably be "What the hell?", but the book is multilayered enough to leave questions for everyone....more
**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
I sat on this review for weeks, mostly because it isn’t easy for me to form, let alone articulate, a coherent opinion about Stony Mayhall, and it’s alI sat on this review for weeks, mostly because it isn’t easy for me to form, let alone articulate, a coherent opinion about Stony Mayhall, and it’s all the more difficult to do so without spoilers. So here’s my best shot, before the book becomes a dim memory.
The story starts with a portrait of “The Last Girl, the sole survivor, a young woman in a blood-spattered tank top.” The girl, whose name is Ruby, has made it through the zombie attack, to the temporary peace of the small town of Easterly, Iowa. And she’s searching for something. But then the story skips forty years backwards, to a time right after the first zombie attack. Wanda Mayhall is driving through the snowy countryside of Easthall when she stumbles upon a frozen body of a young woman clutching a baby. But despite the biting cold, despite the grey skin, despite the lack of heartbeat, the baby seems alive. Well, perhaps not alive. But not fully dead, either. And so John “Stony” Mayhall is brought into a family who must hide him from the rest of the world.
Daryl Gregory is a fantastic writer, and I’ll read anything he writes. I love his wry sense of humour and the way he injects it into the most serious of situations. Some of my favourites:
"As you might imagine, conspiracy theorists had a field day with this. And as usual, what began as a terrifying secret on the fringes of culture eventually found its way into the plot of a TV movie."
"Give a man a stick and he will beat you for a day. But give him a uniform, and he will beat you every day, then complain about how tough it is on his rotator cuff."
I also loved the detective series that Stony becomes addicted to--Jack Gore, ”A hard-bitten cop bitten hard.” I desperately want to read those books.
I think Stony Mayhall is easily Gregory’s most serious book, and his most direct exploration of social issues. It’s also the only book I’ve read that features a protagonist who suffers not from a psychiatric disorder but a physical one. In Stony’s world, an attack by the living dead has happened, but an apocalypse hasn’t. The threat has been successfully combatted, and the government relentlessly pursues any living dead that might have escaped their nets. But this doesn’t leave much room for someone like Stony. And so it’s a story about being ostracised for innate differences, being seen as subhuman, searching for a leader, a savior, an emblem of a cause, being dependent upon and resentful of the few sympathetic members of the oppressing group. It is about people who believe that separatism is the only way to bring peace, people who become so disillusioned by the world they live in that they seek to remake it, to reverse the inequality that stifles them. Comparisons to the history of racism and oppression in the US were unavoidable. The directness of the allusion simultaneously gave the book tremendous power, yet also seemed to detract from it as a novel. I know, weird. And I’m not sure I can explain. I think it’s because the book is so weighed down by the history it invokes that it can’t be experienced in isolation. The real history is so complicated, so emotional, so vivid, that the simplified version in the zombie world just feels lacking. Gregory isn’t very sympathetic to the ideas of separatism and supremacy, yet if we really look back at our own history, it becomes far easier to understand why these ideas gained traction. Gregory is thoughtful and careful, but the issue is so raw right now, so explosive, that it was difficult to read about in this simplified portrait.
I think my other major issue was my sense of distance from the story. Part of this was due to the structure. From the prologue, we know the world is going to fall apart; after that, I was holding my breath, waiting with a cold sense of inevitability for the first fracture in the facade of order. It was too easy to guess what would happen and where, and it was too hard to become attached to anyone when I knew the world was going to fall apart. And for me, Stony wasn’t easy to love in the first place. He is humble, forgiving, patient, cautious, careful, close-mouthed. And his emotions are so carefully held in check that I had difficulty empathising with him. Part of this was due to the ever-changing cast of characters. The book spans over forty years, and characters drift in and out, and their exits are often violent. The way they are forgotten soon after their loss contributed to my sense of distance from Stony. If I was still mourning a character, how could he have forgotten them? (view spoiler)[I’m not just talking about his sister. Consider his mother, who is trapped in prison. We don’t really hear about her after Stony gets out of prison.
But another huge problem for me was the lack of answers. What allowed the zombies to move? Was Stony somehow special? (hide spoiler)]
But despite all this, I loved the complexity of the themes of the story. It’s also about family, about faith, about leadership, about choice. What does it mean to make an informed choice if the full knowledge of the choice requires a change in self? When I was originally asked what I thought about Stony Mayhall, I couldn’t answer. I have so many conflicting emotions about the book that I can’t really simplify them into “it was good” or “I liked it.” And maybe, above all, that’s the reason why you should read it yourself....more
I picked this up because (a) it was on audio, and (b) I adore that cover. I wasn't sure what to expect; I think I predicted a retelling of Snow White iI picked this up because (a) it was on audio, and (b) I adore that cover. I wasn't sure what to expect; I think I predicted a retelling of Snow White in the vein of Cinder. Instead, Red Queen felt more like a combination of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Hunger Games, with extra infusions of Basic YA Princess Plot. Weirdly, I think it works.
I don't have a great track record with this genre, but while I found this book a bit hit and miss, I definitely enjoyed the ride.
The story is told in first person present (damn you, Hunger Games, for popularizing this utterly unnatural manner of storytelling) from the perspective of Mare, a Red who seeks to escape conscription and who loves the word "smirk" not wisely but too well. Due to a fortuitous meeting, she finds herself trying to navigate a "sea of Silvers," all while trying to determine her allegiance to a newly-formed group of Red freedom fighters.
As is standard in this genre, the romance is a major component of the plot. In this case, it's not just a love triangle, it's a love quadrilateral. And it shows every sign of mutating into a pentagon in the future. (Sidenote: I've never understood the whole shape thing, as the sides of the shape seem to imply rather more interesting plots.) (view spoiler)[New-pentagon-point, is, of course, Little Sis and her freedom-fighter crush. Remember her? Well, congrats if you do, because Mare certainly forgot her rather quickly. I don't remember Mare thinking about her even once after she goes Silver. (hide spoiler)] I find romance plots a drag, but one of the more interesting aspects here is that while there's an obvious final winner, the characters are all enjoyably imperfect and problematic.
My biggest complaint is, of course, the worldbuilding. I don't think Aveyard really thought things through. Mare's world is a dystopia that takes place far in the future after some sort of catastrophic meltdown that led to a lot of human mutations. "Silvers"--named for the color of their blood-- have magical abilities that give them control over the elements and the power to rule and control the un-mutated red-blooded "Reds."
Yet despite the far-future setting, Mare's comparisons usually reference our world and our constructs, including things (e.g. pageants) that she has no business being familiar with. But the anachronisms go deeper than that. We're told that the Silvers are evil slavemasters who live decadent lives and keep the Reds in a state of terrible oppression, poverty, and misery, but I don't think Aveyard's imagination really stretched far enough to shake off her own comparatively privileged life. (I'm betting it was privileged because of the book's unrealistic portrayal of the "downtrodden."). Red children can go to (free) school until the age of 18, at which point, if they haven't managed to find a job, they are conscripted into the army. To me, a society that provides free education and allows children freedom up to the age of 18 is pretty impressively un-oppressed.
The plot has just as many issues. (view spoiler)[The whole basis for the "queen" bit is absurd. If Mare conspicuously masquerades as a Silver, her presence risks embarrassment or worse for the royals at every moment. It's a terrible plan. And their cover story is even worse. How was Mare expected to have made it through childhood without ever shedding her (supposedly Silver) blood? It's ridiculous.
And then there's the freedom fighters. "Hi, guys, I know you're under observation from a woman who can read minds, so we've decided to take you on a tour of our top-secret hideout zone. What could possibly go wrong?" (hide spoiler)]
Despite the problematic plot and worldbuilding, I found the book quite fun. Aveyard is a skilled writer, and she has the rare talent of not telegraphing her twists. Even if you guess what's going to happen at some point, you may end up being pulled along by the story until the sudden twist comes as a shock. The narrator is fantastic, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book's ending. (view spoiler)[(barring the epilogue, which did a prepare-for-sequel-takeback on some of the previous events). (hide spoiler)]...more
It starts with a shot. As soon as the needle pricks her skin, Kendra’s bloodstream is flooded with corporate-sponsored nanobots that will invade her sIt starts with a shot. As soon as the needle pricks her skin, Kendra’s bloodstream is flooded with corporate-sponsored nanobots that will invade her system and harmonize with it, protecting her from disease, clarifying her skin, and even making her literally glow. They will also make her a part of a new viral ad campaign for the soft drink Ghost, give her an unquenchable craving for the product, and brand her with a ghost logo that glows beneath her skin. In Kendra’s world, selling one’s soul and identity to corporate industry is nothing new. Aidsbabies grow up in worker schools that are mined for talent by the corporations. Mobiles are tied to identities and equipped with “defusers” that can effectively taser the user at the behest of Corporate. The greatest punishment of all, however, is disconnection from the network. Losing your phone means losing your id chip, your ability to enter and exit doors, your ability to pay and purchase, your ability to receive or deliver news.
Unlike Kendra, Tendeka has no desire to bow down to corporate law. Inspired by a mysterious online contact, he decides to lead his own revolt against the corporate powers who have a stranglehold over the city. His actions will kick off a chain of events that will affect even the corporate-insulated Kendra.
The story is told from four apparently only tangentially-related perspectives, but as the story proceeds, the characters’ lives begin to intersect. Curiosity, boredom, and the promise of a good story lead Toby, an easy-going rich-boy podcaster, to provide Tendeka with rather half-hearted aid in his rebellion. When Tendeka’s project starts to require a bit of sophisticated hacking, Toby ropes in his old friend, Lerato, a programmer for a massive powerhouse corporation. Toby finally runs into Kendra, and again scenting a story, ends up dragging her into more trouble than she can possibly imagine.
Each of the characters provides a radically different set of motivations and perspectives. Kendra is the innocent, so “terrified of losing anything” that she spends her life trying to capture those fleeting moments on film. She is the only one of the four to follow the corporate edicts and literally swallow their dogma. Tendeka is initially unbending in his repudiation of the current system, considering it a “moral stand” worth the sacrifice of everything. Lerato grew up as an aidsbaby in a corporate working school and will do anything to get ahead and escape her past. She is willing to play the game but is always on the lookout for ways to cheat. Although his attitude is superficially similar to Lerato’s, Tendeka was born with a silver spoon and the assumption that the rules simply do not apply to him. While I found it rather difficult to fully sympathise with any of the characters, I do think they serve the narrative well. Moxyland is a story about perspectives, about media spin and the control of ideas and emotions, and these four disparate viewpoints add depth to the theme.
At the same time, I do think that Moxyland is a less mature effort than Zoo City, with a noticeably less well-developed world. Personally, I’m a bit sceptical that we’ll end up depending completely on phones; I’d predict bionics or at least computerized contact lenses would happen before all of the infrastructure is completely dependent upon mobile devices. The defusers, too, were a little problematic: why don’t people wrap their phones in insulation or at least drop them when they’re about to go off? It’s not like anything is physically attached. There were several other plot points and aspects of the worldbuilding that remained unexplained. As with Zoo City, I was also rather disconcerted to discover that, yet again, Beukes doesn’t really touch any of the racial issues that would seem to be inherent in a political and socioeconomic struggle in a near-future Cape Town.
Beukes’ style is apparently one that you’ll either love or hate, and I was fortunate enough to thoroughly enjoy it. As always, the book has a few quotable gems. One of my favourites:
“Humanity is innately damaged. It’s a flaw in the design code. We’re weak. We’re fallible. We need to be told what to do, to be kept in line.”
One of the best aspects of the book was also its heart: the exploration of the ways that truth can be intentionally reshaped by emotion and perspective. As one character notes,
“Fear has to be managed. Fear has to be controlled. Like people.”
And as for the title? One of the games that Toby plays is called Moxyland. It appears friendly and cute and fuzzy, and there are bright colours and kindly guides who spout rules and rhyming aphorisms. But the second you enter the game, gangs of older, more experienced players band together to take down the n00b:
“It's not about making friends with kids all over the world, it's about getting ahead, getting one over.”
No matter how well-laid your scheme and how advanced you think your play might be, you won't get past them. Welcome to Moxyland.
Excerpted from my review on BookLikes, which contains additional quotes and spoiler-tagged sections, mainly because I'm too lazy to copy them over....more
This is one of those books for which five stars simply isn't enough. Once upon a time, a girl with skin as white as snow and hair as fair as gold slepThis is one of those books for which five stars simply isn't enough. Once upon a time, a girl with skin as white as snow and hair as fair as gold slept in a stone room and dreamed of a world outside. Each day, Melanie wakes up in her cell and is strapped into a wheelchair and taken to class, where she learns kings and queens of England and the populations of cities and fairy tales and Greek myths. She knows that the Breakdown has altered the world; she knows that beyond the barricades, the cities have fallen and the hungries wait mindlessly for human prey, but she still imagines someday leaving the confines of her cell and her corridor, of, as she thinks,
“Like Pandora, opening the great big box of the world and not being afraid, not even caring whether what's inside is good or bad. Because it's both. Everything is always both. But you have to open it to find out."
The Girl with all the Gifts is a truly outstanding story, a captivating premise, an imaginative yet believable future, poignant, abruptly shifting from heartwarming to heartrending. The story is narrated in third person from several characters' points of view, and although it is told in third person, each voice is distinct, with its own cadence and viewpoint. Some have a charming, self-deprecating, darkly humorous edge; for example:
"This man came to Wainwright House with something trivial like bursitis and -- as many people do -- experienced complications while he was being treated. In this case, the complications were that the hungries feasted on his flesh and made him one of them."
The most glorious and gut-wrenching moments are from the perspective of Melanie. The writing style is in the present tense, simple but articulate, charged with all of the wonder and innocence and faith that only a child’s voice can contain. The contrast between the world that Melanie glories in and the dystopia that the reader absorbs through her eyes makes the story even more vivid and poignant and bittersweet. The reader sees a hopeless, post-apocalyptic world of zombies and blood and fear, of cruelty and slim hope for a future. Melanie knows about what the world was and what it is now, yet she still sees wonder and beauty and possibility everywhere; in a flower, in the sky, in the proof of infinite primes. The book is studded with lovely little moments of childish insight, articulated with an elegant simplicity:
"When your dreams come true, your true has moved. You've already stopped being the person who had the dreams, so it feels more like a weird echo of something that already happened to you a long time ago."
Melanie’s very innocence adds another layer of uncertainty; is she the frail hope to be rescued from the depths of the box of all evils, or a mixed blessing, holding in her hands both tremendous danger yet burgeoning hope for a darkening world? Or is she Pandora herself, destined to open the box and release humanity’s fate upon the world? There are so many complex underpinnings, so much symbolism, that the book is still haunting me.
The nature of the book makes it impossible to summarize without spoilers, so I’ll simply add that whatever you imagine the book to be, I think that it will defy and surpass your expectations.
**NOTE: Quotations are taken from an uncorrected digital galley and are therefore provisional. Quotes will be corrected when the book is released.**
~~I received this ebook through NetGalley from the publisher, Hachette Book Group (Orbit), in exchange for my honest review. Thank you! ~~
If you're interested but uncertain, there's an extended preview available on Amazon, Goodreads, Google Play, and elsewhere that will give you a great taste of the book....more
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