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The Sins on Their Bones by Laura R. Samotin
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Sometimes love is not forever. Sometimes relationships end. Sometimes you transform your lover into an unholy monster bent on world domination. That’s the gist of The Sins on Their Bones, by Laura R. Samotin. Heavy on tragedy and pathos, this is a book steeped in magic and mysticism yet not always satisfying in terms of pacing or plot. I received a copy in exchange for a review.
Dimitri Alexeyev used to be the Tzar until his magically reanimated husband overthrew him for being a softie. Now in exile from Novo-Svitsevo, he and his court come to the unenviable conclusion that the only way for Dimitri to retake his throne and save his people from Alexey’s depredations is to kill the unkillable thing that Alexey has become. Easier said than done, of course. Meanwhile, hopped up on dark power, Alexey is determined to harness as much of that power as possible to create an army of demons that he can use to take over the entire world.
Do … do we call this a love story? The love between Dimitri and Alexey is central to the plot of this book, yet they are definitely on the enemies side of the lovers-to-enemies equation even at the start. I would have to describe the principal feeling that suffuses this book as ache. Not only does Dimitri ache for Alexey (and, though Alexey would not always admit it, vice versa), but all the supporting characters seem to ache as well. Whether it’s for someone or for something, each character has an ache, a want, a desire unfulfilled. This is a story about the depths of loss.
To that end, I really liked how languid this book is at times. The pacing is really slow (and I do have some criticisms of that to come). Dimitri is so, so broken throughout this book, from start to finish, because of what has become of his husband. This is not a story of heroism, patriotism, or fighting the good fight. It’s a story about the uncomfortable fact that if a loss doesn’t kill you, life goes on. Dimitri didn’t die. (Alexey did, but look what that did for him!) Dimitri has survived to watch the monster he created overrun his country and potentially the world. That must be a kind of living hell, and Samotin does an excellent job exploring what that would be like for someone.
The people who surround Dimitri do their best to bolster him, though they can only do so much. I enjoyed meeting these supporting characters and learning what we do about them. I wish we had learned more. The book focuses extremely tightly on three characters. Samotin sketches out, more or less successfully, distinct personalities for the rest. Nevertheless, the result is that this book feels far more intimate than your standard epic fantasy, much more like a stage play.
My biggest issue with this book, however, is how Samotin eschews showing flashbacks in favour of telling us about what happened in the past. I’m not a show-versus-tell purist. But I can only read so many scenes of characters sitting around telling us about how bad the war was, about how awful Alexey’s heel turn was, etc., when it is entirely possible to simply show us those moments. I understand Samotin starts this story very deliberately from a certain place, basically Dimitri at his nadir. Alas, the constant looking back and wallowing in the past made me wonder at times while I was reading whether the story should have started earlier.
Regardless, I can’t fault Samotin for the premise, for Alexey’s transformation and subsequent machinations. The tragedy that underpins this story is simple: Dimitri feels guilty for being the cause of Alexey’s transformation, yet Alexey left him little choice. Both men are responsible for what happens. I really liked how the story draws out and sustains a kind of narrative revulsion for Alexey’s character: his coldness, his cruelty, his dominating streak. He is a study in inhumanity as much as Vasily is a study in humanity, each man orbiting Dimitri, a study in misery and regret. These apposite characterizations are extremely satisfying.
The Sins on Their Bones is a clever, character-driven novel. I like that Samotin draws upon eastern European and Jewish folklore and history, which are all underrepresented in fantasy. I like the overall setup, the way that Dimitri and Alexey are at odds, and how Samotin unspools each man’s thoughts and feelings. I like the queernorm society. Overall, this is a rich, sympathetic, resonant novel—one that I wish I had connected with more.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Dimitri Alexeyev used to be the Tzar until his magically reanimated husband overthrew him for being a softie. Now in exile from Novo-Svitsevo, he and his court come to the unenviable conclusion that the only way for Dimitri to retake his throne and save his people from Alexey’s depredations is to kill the unkillable thing that Alexey has become. Easier said than done, of course. Meanwhile, hopped up on dark power, Alexey is determined to harness as much of that power as possible to create an army of demons that he can use to take over the entire world.
Do … do we call this a love story? The love between Dimitri and Alexey is central to the plot of this book, yet they are definitely on the enemies side of the lovers-to-enemies equation even at the start. I would have to describe the principal feeling that suffuses this book as ache. Not only does Dimitri ache for Alexey (and, though Alexey would not always admit it, vice versa), but all the supporting characters seem to ache as well. Whether it’s for someone or for something, each character has an ache, a want, a desire unfulfilled. This is a story about the depths of loss.
To that end, I really liked how languid this book is at times. The pacing is really slow (and I do have some criticisms of that to come). Dimitri is so, so broken throughout this book, from start to finish, because of what has become of his husband. This is not a story of heroism, patriotism, or fighting the good fight. It’s a story about the uncomfortable fact that if a loss doesn’t kill you, life goes on. Dimitri didn’t die. (Alexey did, but look what that did for him!) Dimitri has survived to watch the monster he created overrun his country and potentially the world. That must be a kind of living hell, and Samotin does an excellent job exploring what that would be like for someone.
The people who surround Dimitri do their best to bolster him, though they can only do so much. I enjoyed meeting these supporting characters and learning what we do about them. I wish we had learned more. The book focuses extremely tightly on three characters. Samotin sketches out, more or less successfully, distinct personalities for the rest. Nevertheless, the result is that this book feels far more intimate than your standard epic fantasy, much more like a stage play.
My biggest issue with this book, however, is how Samotin eschews showing flashbacks in favour of telling us about what happened in the past. I’m not a show-versus-tell purist. But I can only read so many scenes of characters sitting around telling us about how bad the war was, about how awful Alexey’s heel turn was, etc., when it is entirely possible to simply show us those moments. I understand Samotin starts this story very deliberately from a certain place, basically Dimitri at his nadir. Alas, the constant looking back and wallowing in the past made me wonder at times while I was reading whether the story should have started earlier.
Regardless, I can’t fault Samotin for the premise, for Alexey’s transformation and subsequent machinations. The tragedy that underpins this story is simple: Dimitri feels guilty for being the cause of Alexey’s transformation, yet Alexey left him little choice. Both men are responsible for what happens. I really liked how the story draws out and sustains a kind of narrative revulsion for Alexey’s character: his coldness, his cruelty, his dominating streak. He is a study in inhumanity as much as Vasily is a study in humanity, each man orbiting Dimitri, a study in misery and regret. These apposite characterizations are extremely satisfying.
The Sins on Their Bones is a clever, character-driven novel. I like that Samotin draws upon eastern European and Jewish folklore and history, which are all underrepresented in fantasy. I like the overall setup, the way that Dimitri and Alexey are at odds, and how Samotin unspools each man’s thoughts and feelings. I like the queernorm society. Overall, this is a rich, sympathetic, resonant novel—one that I wish I had connected with more.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Web of Angels by John M. Ford
challenging
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Not bad, John M. Ford. Not bad. That’s about all I’ve got for opening thoughts. I received an eARC of this reprint edition of classic Web of Angels from Tor and NetGalley in exchange for a review.
This edition has a foreword from Cory Doctorow, who delivers an encomium of Ford while waxing poetically about Web of Angels as a kind of evolutionary cousin of what became cyberpunk. It makes a lot of sense. As Doctorow says, a lot in this book is familiar, right down to the naming of Ford’s cyberspace as the Web—however, a lot of it also feels dated, a result of Ford writing just prior to the PC and internet displacing the phone as the primary mode of telecommunication.
Grailer Diomede is nine years old when the book opens, a precocious boy singled out by a fascist interstellar law enforcement agency for death. Rescued in the nick of time, Grailer is raised to embrace his abilities as someone with “Fourth Literacy,” which means he can not only operate and program for the vast, interstellar Web, but he actually has the ability to conceive of it and its myriad connections in an intuitive way.
He’s a l33t hax0rz, as I might have put it back when I started my journey on the web in 2004.
This book is a bildungsroman that follows Grailer as he quickly grows up, falls in love, and starts sticking it to the man. Ford takes us to various exotic locations, and we meet a small but plucky cast of characters who alternately aid or antagonize Grailer while he is posing in one of his many Web-forged identities. The vignettes within this story overlap and spiral towards an inevitable conclusion, echoes of which reside in later science fiction, like The Matrix.
Doctorow mentions that this is one of Ford’s less accessible works, and I believe it. Time slips, unmarked flashbacks, and precious little exposition—especially for a reader unfamiliar with what operating a computer terminal felt like in the seventies. I won’t lie to you: I was really confused about what was going on for a great deal of this book. I still am, kind of, but rather than worry too much about it, I’m going to roll with it.
Here’s what I liked about this book: even without reading that foreword, I would have been able to see the connections between Ford’s writing and the authors who have come since. In this way, Web of Angels is clearly a classic worthy of this reissue, belonging up there among the other greats like Butler, Le Guin, Asimov.
Ford’s prose has a fairytale-like quality that reminds me of Neil Gaiman. He can quickly set a scene even when descriptive language is at a premium. The future of humanity that Ford sketches here is a lush one but also full of people, places, and things that aren’t entirely what they seem.
Ford and his contemporary cyberpunk founder, William Gibson, share in common a view of cyberspace as something that exists independently of the humans who use it. Grailer ponders whether the Web can be intelligent, as in self-aware, for it spans the entirety of human existence. Ideas like the Singularity lurk in the background of this novel, occasionally mentioned or hinted at in that way that happens when we haven’t quite coined all the terms that are now familiar to us.
But actually, the author whose writing this most reminds me of is Dan Simmons. His Hyperion novels feel ripped out of the pages of Web of Angels in the sense that both books posit a future of humanity steeped in literary trappings of our past. A lot of science fiction imagines that our culture will trend further towards secularism, towards a cold, minimalist aesthetic of starship hull blues and greys (or it goes solarpunk and imagines us all in the greens and browns of cholorphyll bioships, lol). Ford and Simmons draw their inspiration from humanity’s literary past in telling of our literary future: from subcultures whose every movements are part of an intricate Dance to doctors who wear capes and receive the title of Lord, these anachronisms, more even than the faster-than-light drives and lifespan-enhancing treatments, mark this society as futuristic and alien.
Web of Angels is not a novel that “holds up” in a modern sense of what most readers want from their novels. The story is not straightforward. The characters are not particularly deep. In many ways, this reads like a novella stretched thinly over the frame of a novel—and I mean that as a compliment. This is a book for the anthropologist of science fiction, for the fan digging into the archives to glimpse their favourite authors’ inspiration. I stipulate to Ford’s brilliance while also admitting that this book, on its own, didn’t do a lot for me. I won’t rush out to read more by Ford, but I am pleased to have read something by him, and perhaps I will explore his oeuvre further now that Tor has rights to republish!
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
This edition has a foreword from Cory Doctorow, who delivers an encomium of Ford while waxing poetically about Web of Angels as a kind of evolutionary cousin of what became cyberpunk. It makes a lot of sense. As Doctorow says, a lot in this book is familiar, right down to the naming of Ford’s cyberspace as the Web—however, a lot of it also feels dated, a result of Ford writing just prior to the PC and internet displacing the phone as the primary mode of telecommunication.
Grailer Diomede is nine years old when the book opens, a precocious boy singled out by a fascist interstellar law enforcement agency for death. Rescued in the nick of time, Grailer is raised to embrace his abilities as someone with “Fourth Literacy,” which means he can not only operate and program for the vast, interstellar Web, but he actually has the ability to conceive of it and its myriad connections in an intuitive way.
He’s a l33t hax0rz, as I might have put it back when I started my journey on the web in 2004.
This book is a bildungsroman that follows Grailer as he quickly grows up, falls in love, and starts sticking it to the man. Ford takes us to various exotic locations, and we meet a small but plucky cast of characters who alternately aid or antagonize Grailer while he is posing in one of his many Web-forged identities. The vignettes within this story overlap and spiral towards an inevitable conclusion, echoes of which reside in later science fiction, like The Matrix.
Doctorow mentions that this is one of Ford’s less accessible works, and I believe it. Time slips, unmarked flashbacks, and precious little exposition—especially for a reader unfamiliar with what operating a computer terminal felt like in the seventies. I won’t lie to you: I was really confused about what was going on for a great deal of this book. I still am, kind of, but rather than worry too much about it, I’m going to roll with it.
Here’s what I liked about this book: even without reading that foreword, I would have been able to see the connections between Ford’s writing and the authors who have come since. In this way, Web of Angels is clearly a classic worthy of this reissue, belonging up there among the other greats like Butler, Le Guin, Asimov.
Ford’s prose has a fairytale-like quality that reminds me of Neil Gaiman. He can quickly set a scene even when descriptive language is at a premium. The future of humanity that Ford sketches here is a lush one but also full of people, places, and things that aren’t entirely what they seem.
Ford and his contemporary cyberpunk founder, William Gibson, share in common a view of cyberspace as something that exists independently of the humans who use it. Grailer ponders whether the Web can be intelligent, as in self-aware, for it spans the entirety of human existence. Ideas like the Singularity lurk in the background of this novel, occasionally mentioned or hinted at in that way that happens when we haven’t quite coined all the terms that are now familiar to us.
But actually, the author whose writing this most reminds me of is Dan Simmons. His Hyperion novels feel ripped out of the pages of Web of Angels in the sense that both books posit a future of humanity steeped in literary trappings of our past. A lot of science fiction imagines that our culture will trend further towards secularism, towards a cold, minimalist aesthetic of starship hull blues and greys (or it goes solarpunk and imagines us all in the greens and browns of cholorphyll bioships, lol). Ford and Simmons draw their inspiration from humanity’s literary past in telling of our literary future: from subcultures whose every movements are part of an intricate Dance to doctors who wear capes and receive the title of Lord, these anachronisms, more even than the faster-than-light drives and lifespan-enhancing treatments, mark this society as futuristic and alien.
Web of Angels is not a novel that “holds up” in a modern sense of what most readers want from their novels. The story is not straightforward. The characters are not particularly deep. In many ways, this reads like a novella stretched thinly over the frame of a novel—and I mean that as a compliment. This is a book for the anthropologist of science fiction, for the fan digging into the archives to glimpse their favourite authors’ inspiration. I stipulate to Ford’s brilliance while also admitting that this book, on its own, didn’t do a lot for me. I won’t rush out to read more by Ford, but I am pleased to have read something by him, and perhaps I will explore his oeuvre further now that Tor has rights to republish!
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
There’s a now-classic sketch from comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb called “Are We the Baddies?”. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, but to spoil the bit, it’s about two SS officers having a conversation on the front line in which it gradually dawns on them that they might be the bad guys in this war. Involving Nazis in your comedy is always a dicey proposition, but Mitchell and Webb pull it off: the sketch illustrates how challenging it can be to break the cognitive dissonance required to rationalize one’s place in human suffering on a mass scale. The Wings Upon Her Back does the same thing. Through an intimate story told across two times, Samantha Mills illustrates how it’s harder to stand up to fascism when every step towards that fascism felt logical and just at the time. I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for my review.
Zemolai has spent the past decades of her life as a Winged. She flies through the air on mechanical wings attached to her body via implants. This technology is a gift from the gods, specifically the Mecha god, one of the five who sleep watchfully over Zemolai’s city. At the start of the novel, Zemolai makes a tragic mistake that leads to her downfall. Cast out of her paradise, she finds herself the unwilling companion of the rebels she has spent so long despising. Mills intersperses these chapters with a look back at who Zemolai was before she was Winged: Zenya, a descendant of scholars who dreamed of flying and set her sights on being a warrior who could protect her city.
Mills doesn’t pull punches here. This book is laser-focused, restricting its perspective almost entirely to Zemolai or her younger self, Zenya. The parallel storytelling drives home the central theme with startling clarity: Zenya is idealistic and optimistic, driven to impress Vodaya at all costs, devoted to the mission; Zemolai is bitter, tired, divided, and eventually resentful of Vodaya’s deceit. Like two ships passing in the night, Zenya’s radicalization proceeds apace with Zemolai’s deprogramming. The result is a kind of synergy foreshadowed by one of the city’s scholars: we are who we always were, all our selves across all points of our existence. She is Zemolai and Zenya, even if it takes her a while to recognize this.
You’ve seen elements of Zemolai’s story in plenty of media before. The prisoner who eventually comes around to the side of good, the face turn, is a common enough trope, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. So Zemolai’s gruff, half-hearted cooperation with Galiana and the others feels familiar. However, it has been a while (if ever) that I’ve read this story from the prisoner’s point of view. To have such a direct and personal audience to someone slowly being deradicalized is a fascinating experience. As the cracks appear in Zemolai’s faith in the mission, her desperation becomes palpable. It’s hard to come to terms with one’s complicity in causing suffering.
It’s also hard to write such a flawed protagonist. It’s easy to write a shining hero, someone who’s always trying to do the right thing (even if they misstep occasionally). That’s not Zemolai. She believes that what she is doing is for the greater good, of course. But each chapter, each decision, compromises Zenya’s connection to her past and her community a little more. She is such a sympathetic figure, but it’s hard to call her a good person, and that’s the point.
Few people set out to be the baddie. Zemolai certainly didn’t. Mills expertly depicts how Zenya endures the perfect storm: Vodaya’s manipulations, Zenya’s idealism, the secretive politics of the city’s most powerful, etc. (The nature of the gods lurks in the backdrop, a tantalizing mystery but not one that ultimately matters all that much to the overall plot.) All of Zemolai’s pain, particularly the deterioration of her relationship with Vodaya, is so bold on the page. I was really invested in seeing this story through to the end, and I really like where Mills chooses to end it.
This is a tight, contained novel with an excellent setting and a strong protagonist who can carry this story on her shoulders, much like she carried her wings for twenty years. In a time where we need to reflect more on our own complicity (those of us who live in countries that benefit from companies exploiting child labour in Congo, or countries that fund genocide), The Wings Upon Her Back offers a potent combination of admonishment and hope. You can’t wipe your sins away simply by announcing you’ve had a change of heart. You can’t excuse away your actions by pointing to the influences that shaped you into that person. But it is never too late to make a choice, to turn around, to embrace that past self that has been inside you all along.
I picked up The Wings Upon Her Back because I was intrigued by the idea of mechanical angels protecting a city. I got so much more than I bargained for: a story of fascism and abuse, of resilience and rebuilding, of loss and pain and sorrow. This is a poignant but worthwhile read, one I highly recommend when you are ready for it.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Zemolai has spent the past decades of her life as a Winged. She flies through the air on mechanical wings attached to her body via implants. This technology is a gift from the gods, specifically the Mecha god, one of the five who sleep watchfully over Zemolai’s city. At the start of the novel, Zemolai makes a tragic mistake that leads to her downfall. Cast out of her paradise, she finds herself the unwilling companion of the rebels she has spent so long despising. Mills intersperses these chapters with a look back at who Zemolai was before she was Winged: Zenya, a descendant of scholars who dreamed of flying and set her sights on being a warrior who could protect her city.
Mills doesn’t pull punches here. This book is laser-focused, restricting its perspective almost entirely to Zemolai or her younger self, Zenya. The parallel storytelling drives home the central theme with startling clarity: Zenya is idealistic and optimistic, driven to impress Vodaya at all costs, devoted to the mission; Zemolai is bitter, tired, divided, and eventually resentful of Vodaya’s deceit. Like two ships passing in the night, Zenya’s radicalization proceeds apace with Zemolai’s deprogramming. The result is a kind of synergy foreshadowed by one of the city’s scholars: we are who we always were, all our selves across all points of our existence. She is Zemolai and Zenya, even if it takes her a while to recognize this.
You’ve seen elements of Zemolai’s story in plenty of media before. The prisoner who eventually comes around to the side of good, the face turn, is a common enough trope, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. So Zemolai’s gruff, half-hearted cooperation with Galiana and the others feels familiar. However, it has been a while (if ever) that I’ve read this story from the prisoner’s point of view. To have such a direct and personal audience to someone slowly being deradicalized is a fascinating experience. As the cracks appear in Zemolai’s faith in the mission, her desperation becomes palpable. It’s hard to come to terms with one’s complicity in causing suffering.
It’s also hard to write such a flawed protagonist. It’s easy to write a shining hero, someone who’s always trying to do the right thing (even if they misstep occasionally). That’s not Zemolai. She believes that what she is doing is for the greater good, of course. But each chapter, each decision, compromises Zenya’s connection to her past and her community a little more. She is such a sympathetic figure, but it’s hard to call her a good person, and that’s the point.
Few people set out to be the baddie. Zemolai certainly didn’t. Mills expertly depicts how Zenya endures the perfect storm: Vodaya’s manipulations, Zenya’s idealism, the secretive politics of the city’s most powerful, etc. (The nature of the gods lurks in the backdrop, a tantalizing mystery but not one that ultimately matters all that much to the overall plot.) All of Zemolai’s pain, particularly the deterioration of her relationship with Vodaya, is so bold on the page. I was really invested in seeing this story through to the end, and I really like where Mills chooses to end it.
This is a tight, contained novel with an excellent setting and a strong protagonist who can carry this story on her shoulders, much like she carried her wings for twenty years. In a time where we need to reflect more on our own complicity (those of us who live in countries that benefit from companies exploiting child labour in Congo, or countries that fund genocide), The Wings Upon Her Back offers a potent combination of admonishment and hope. You can’t wipe your sins away simply by announcing you’ve had a change of heart. You can’t excuse away your actions by pointing to the influences that shaped you into that person. But it is never too late to make a choice, to turn around, to embrace that past self that has been inside you all along.
I picked up The Wings Upon Her Back because I was intrigued by the idea of mechanical angels protecting a city. I got so much more than I bargained for: a story of fascism and abuse, of resilience and rebuilding, of loss and pain and sorrow. This is a poignant but worthwhile read, one I highly recommend when you are ready for it.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Against the Darkness by Kendare Blake
adventurous
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Here we are! The story that began in In Every Generation and continued in One Girl in All the World concludes here with Against the Darkness. Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book from Kendare Blake, who will also return as a guest on my Buffy rewatch podcast, Prophecy Girls a couple of weeks after this review is published. I’d like to think I’m still providing a fair review of these books, however—and while Blake has perhaps tempered my general aversion towards media tie-in novels, I still remain skeptical on the whole.
As usual, spoilers for the first two books in the trilogy but not for this one.
Frankie Rosenberg is a slayer-witch living in New Sunnydale with her mom, Willow. Together with the next generation of Scoobies and her watcher, Spike, Frankie has uncovered the nefarious plan of this season’s—I mean trilogy’s—Big Bad, the Darkness. It’s connected to the disappearance of all the remaining slayers, including Frankie’s Aunt Buffy. Now, Frankie and the Scoobies need to find a way to defeat the Darkness and bring Buffy and the other slayers home, or else serious badness could descend upon Sunnydale. Again.
When I started the book, I had briefly forgotten how One Girl in All the World ended, as I am wont to do a year later. So I was a little confused by Frankie and Hailey being enemies and Hailey hanging out with Aspen. Thankfully, Blake catches the reader up pretty quick—that being said, I would have loved a little “previously…” synopsis at the start of the book. Those seem to be coming back into vogue. Are you listening, Disney?
In addition to the main conflict, Against the Darkness focuses on numerous conflicts and plots that have run through the series since book one: Frankie settling into her role as the slayer; Hailey grappling with her role as a non-superpowered Scooby; Jake learning to control his inner wolf, with Oz’s help; and Willow’s addiction to magic and power. Most of my criticisms of the first two books involved the details around characterization, especially of the legacy characters like Willow and Oz. Now that we are comfortably into book three, I’m admiring of how Blake has managed to make these characters her own (as much as one can make intellectual property owned by The Mouse one’s own).
Willow’s arc is probably the most salient and satisfying in this regard. Against the Darkness sees Willow embrace and work the “magicks with a K” (as we call them over on Prophecy Girls) in bigger ways than ever before, to her psychic detriment. She faces temptation and relapse, and the comparisons to other types of addiction are manifest. There’s a moment leading up to the climax where Willow hits a nadir, and for a moment I sat there and thought, “It has been sixteen years since she tried to destroy the world.” And then it hit me that this is must be what addicts experience. Sixteen years or sixteen hours—addiction is one day at a time, and relapse can happen after decades of sobriety. So my hats off to Blake for capturing the harsh truth of addiction.
Jake and Hailey’s arcs were less interesting to me. Jake’s swings towards morally dubious territory, something that Blake acknowledges but doesn’t fully unpack or appropriately address, in my opinion. (Without spoilers, Jake unwittingly causes a fair amount of harm to people he cares about, and the Scoobies basically shrug it off. Then again, that happened in the show on the regular, so who I am to judge?) Hailey’s story has a couple of layers: her romance with Sigmund and her evolution as a fighter. There’s also her relationship with Vi to consider, though that understandably receives less time in this book. All in all, I think Blake faced a challenge trying to squeeze in as much characterization as she could in the word count she had to work with: I get the impression that Hailey deserves, and would have received, more pages if possible.
Frankie and Grimloch’s hot-and-heavy romance, emphasis on the heavy rather than the hot (or is it on the hot rather than the heavy?—why would I expect myself to know this?), has its ups and downs here as well. I was really fascinated by the outcome to this one. Their initial attraction was always a nod towards Buffy/Angel, particularly the latter half of Buffy season 1. So I’m reading in the developments here a commentary, but I’m not sure if it’s a commentary on Buffy/Angel circa season 1 or just on how our society’s tolerance for age-gap relationships might have changed in a quarter century.
But Kara, you ask, what of the, you know, actual plot? What of the Big Bad, the missing slayers, the Darkness? (It’s still a silly name for an evil organization, but then again, Blake’s competition on that one was the Trio, so I guess she wins this round.)
Hailey’s credulity in the face of Aspen’s obvious iniquity annoyed me. That being said, I have the benefit of the limited third-person omniscient narrator backing me up. I wonder if I would be so critical had the book kept Aspen’s cards closer to its chest instead of letting the reader peek. As it is, I enjoyed Aspen as an antagonist, and her motivations make a lot of sense as a Buffy villain. If anything, as Frankie and the others observe, Aspen actually has a legitimate beef with Buffy and the slayers—her origin story has a kind of tragedy that echoes back to Adam, albeit with less gruesome … parts (pun intended). However, as Frankie and others observe, while this makes her sympathetic, it does not excuse her nefarious and violent actions.
Aspen’s true value, though, is only apparent towards the end of the book when Frankie ends up in direct conflict with her. In this respect she again echoes the Big Bads of the series, who were always ultimately reflections of Buffy’s own obstacles as she grew up. Aspen is a foil for Frankie, who probably has more power than a typical slayer (owing to her witchy ways) yet also harbours many more doubts. When Aspen and Frankie finally face off, it’s a worthy spectacle, one that Blake carefully sets up over several chapters before the final payoff.
Along the way, we receive the usual nods and allusions to the original series. Other fan-favourite characters (including a big one!) make an appearance or receive a mention. The ultimate fate of Miss Kitty Fantastico is revealed. Frankie borrows a lie from Dawn’s book of excuses for why Buffy was sick back in the day (though Dawn told it better). Spike and Buffy have a scene, and I won’t say more other than that I really liked how awkward it was and how carefully Blake walked that line.
Like any legacy media tie-in, this trilogy has a lot of heavy lifting to satisfy new and old fans at the same time. While I can only really speak for the latter group, I would hope that Blake’s style and voice appeals to the former as well. Against the Darkness, like the first two books, is a worthy homage and continuation to one of the most memorable television series ever made. At the same time, this series introduces a new generation of slayer, Scoobies, and story.
Each volume in this trilogy has been better than the last. I dearly hope Disney continues with this expansion of the Buffy universe, and I hope Kendare gets to write it. Frankie has more stories to tell, as do Hailey, Sigmund, Jake, and all the others I’ve come to adore.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
As usual, spoilers for the first two books in the trilogy but not for this one.
Frankie Rosenberg is a slayer-witch living in New Sunnydale with her mom, Willow. Together with the next generation of Scoobies and her watcher, Spike, Frankie has uncovered the nefarious plan of this season’s—I mean trilogy’s—Big Bad, the Darkness. It’s connected to the disappearance of all the remaining slayers, including Frankie’s Aunt Buffy. Now, Frankie and the Scoobies need to find a way to defeat the Darkness and bring Buffy and the other slayers home, or else serious badness could descend upon Sunnydale. Again.
When I started the book, I had briefly forgotten how One Girl in All the World ended, as I am wont to do a year later. So I was a little confused by Frankie and Hailey being enemies and Hailey hanging out with Aspen. Thankfully, Blake catches the reader up pretty quick—that being said, I would have loved a little “previously…” synopsis at the start of the book. Those seem to be coming back into vogue. Are you listening, Disney?
In addition to the main conflict, Against the Darkness focuses on numerous conflicts and plots that have run through the series since book one: Frankie settling into her role as the slayer; Hailey grappling with her role as a non-superpowered Scooby; Jake learning to control his inner wolf, with Oz’s help; and Willow’s addiction to magic and power. Most of my criticisms of the first two books involved the details around characterization, especially of the legacy characters like Willow and Oz. Now that we are comfortably into book three, I’m admiring of how Blake has managed to make these characters her own (as much as one can make intellectual property owned by The Mouse one’s own).
Willow’s arc is probably the most salient and satisfying in this regard. Against the Darkness sees Willow embrace and work the “magicks with a K” (as we call them over on Prophecy Girls) in bigger ways than ever before, to her psychic detriment. She faces temptation and relapse, and the comparisons to other types of addiction are manifest. There’s a moment leading up to the climax where Willow hits a nadir, and for a moment I sat there and thought, “It has been sixteen years since she tried to destroy the world.” And then it hit me that this is must be what addicts experience. Sixteen years or sixteen hours—addiction is one day at a time, and relapse can happen after decades of sobriety. So my hats off to Blake for capturing the harsh truth of addiction.
Jake and Hailey’s arcs were less interesting to me. Jake’s swings towards morally dubious territory, something that Blake acknowledges but doesn’t fully unpack or appropriately address, in my opinion. (Without spoilers, Jake unwittingly causes a fair amount of harm to people he cares about, and the Scoobies basically shrug it off. Then again, that happened in the show on the regular, so who I am to judge?) Hailey’s story has a couple of layers: her romance with Sigmund and her evolution as a fighter. There’s also her relationship with Vi to consider, though that understandably receives less time in this book. All in all, I think Blake faced a challenge trying to squeeze in as much characterization as she could in the word count she had to work with: I get the impression that Hailey deserves, and would have received, more pages if possible.
Frankie and Grimloch’s hot-and-heavy romance, emphasis on the heavy rather than the hot (or is it on the hot rather than the heavy?—why would I expect myself to know this?), has its ups and downs here as well. I was really fascinated by the outcome to this one. Their initial attraction was always a nod towards Buffy/Angel, particularly the latter half of Buffy season 1. So I’m reading in the developments here a commentary, but I’m not sure if it’s a commentary on Buffy/Angel circa season 1 or just on how our society’s tolerance for age-gap relationships might have changed in a quarter century.
But Kara, you ask, what of the, you know, actual plot? What of the Big Bad, the missing slayers, the Darkness? (It’s still a silly name for an evil organization, but then again, Blake’s competition on that one was the Trio, so I guess she wins this round.)
Hailey’s credulity in the face of Aspen’s obvious iniquity annoyed me. That being said, I have the benefit of the limited third-person omniscient narrator backing me up. I wonder if I would be so critical had the book kept Aspen’s cards closer to its chest instead of letting the reader peek. As it is, I enjoyed Aspen as an antagonist, and her motivations make a lot of sense as a Buffy villain. If anything, as Frankie and the others observe, Aspen actually has a legitimate beef with Buffy and the slayers—her origin story has a kind of tragedy that echoes back to Adam, albeit with less gruesome … parts (pun intended). However, as Frankie and others observe, while this makes her sympathetic, it does not excuse her nefarious and violent actions.
Aspen’s true value, though, is only apparent towards the end of the book when Frankie ends up in direct conflict with her. In this respect she again echoes the Big Bads of the series, who were always ultimately reflections of Buffy’s own obstacles as she grew up. Aspen is a foil for Frankie, who probably has more power than a typical slayer (owing to her witchy ways) yet also harbours many more doubts. When Aspen and Frankie finally face off, it’s a worthy spectacle, one that Blake carefully sets up over several chapters before the final payoff.
Along the way, we receive the usual nods and allusions to the original series. Other fan-favourite characters (including a big one!) make an appearance or receive a mention. The ultimate fate of Miss Kitty Fantastico is revealed. Frankie borrows a lie from Dawn’s book of excuses for why Buffy was sick back in the day (though Dawn told it better). Spike and Buffy have a scene, and I won’t say more other than that I really liked how awkward it was and how carefully Blake walked that line.
Like any legacy media tie-in, this trilogy has a lot of heavy lifting to satisfy new and old fans at the same time. While I can only really speak for the latter group, I would hope that Blake’s style and voice appeals to the former as well. Against the Darkness, like the first two books, is a worthy homage and continuation to one of the most memorable television series ever made. At the same time, this series introduces a new generation of slayer, Scoobies, and story.
Each volume in this trilogy has been better than the last. I dearly hope Disney continues with this expansion of the Buffy universe, and I hope Kendare gets to write it. Frankie has more stories to tell, as do Hailey, Sigmund, Jake, and all the others I’ve come to adore.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club by Eileen Pollack
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
2.0
In The Only Woman in the Room, Eileen Pollack shares her story of eagerly matriculating into physics at Yale, completing her degree, and then dropping out of science in favour of an eventual career as a writer and professor of English—ironically, what her parents initially advised her to do. Pollack connects challenges she faced, primarily during her time at Yale, to the larger systemic issue of the leaky pipeline in science and why more women don’t go on to get PhDs and remain in the field.
It took me a while to get into this book. Pollack’s writing style doesn’t work great for me. She kept mentioning incidents in an offhanded way when I was curious and wanted to know more about some of them. The overall chronological structure ends up monotonous as she relates one event after the next. There’s plenty of information, but it just wasn’t interesting to me.
Eventually, after Pollack starts her studies at Yale and then later when she is wrestling with her potential future as a physicist, the book is a little better. Still, the most interesting chapters are the ones at the end. Pollack revisits Yale and her hometown, interviewing new faculty and old teachers to get a better sense of how women and girls were and are treated in the study of science. These chapters shine. Maybe it’s because Pollack is recalling recent conversations using copious notes versus wracking her brain for recollections decades old. Whatever the case, Pollack connects with her subjects in this chapter in a way that her personal narrative doesn’t connect with me in the earlier chapters.
It’s a shame, for Pollack brings a unique and valuable perspective to this important issue. I can relate to her academic and career trajectory in the sense that I studied math in university, was very good at it, but ultimately decided not to pursue it professionally. Now, I had always started with the intention to be a teacher. And it’s important to note that I still thought I was a man back in university, so I received all the encouragement that Pollack notes most talented men receive and don’t even notice: I remember vividly a conversation I once had at a conference. I had been doing summer research, and my supervisor’s supervisor tried to talk me into going into grad school (and ultimately a PhD program) based on that little bit of work I had done. But I knew research wasn’t for me, and I am very happy with that decision, as Pollack seems with hers. Yet there is always a part of me that wonders….
So as Pollack discusses her reasons for leaving science, that hit me. I agree with a lot of what she says in this book about the need to give students (of any gender) opportunities to do research, the need to encourage female students more openly and explicitly to counter the anxieties they learn growing up, and the need to consider gender bias in the design of programs of study.
The Only Woman in the Room has a lot of promise, and there’s a great deal of good info here. Pollack brings an important perspective. However, I’m not sure how much of this book will stay with me as I get further from it.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
It took me a while to get into this book. Pollack’s writing style doesn’t work great for me. She kept mentioning incidents in an offhanded way when I was curious and wanted to know more about some of them. The overall chronological structure ends up monotonous as she relates one event after the next. There’s plenty of information, but it just wasn’t interesting to me.
Eventually, after Pollack starts her studies at Yale and then later when she is wrestling with her potential future as a physicist, the book is a little better. Still, the most interesting chapters are the ones at the end. Pollack revisits Yale and her hometown, interviewing new faculty and old teachers to get a better sense of how women and girls were and are treated in the study of science. These chapters shine. Maybe it’s because Pollack is recalling recent conversations using copious notes versus wracking her brain for recollections decades old. Whatever the case, Pollack connects with her subjects in this chapter in a way that her personal narrative doesn’t connect with me in the earlier chapters.
It’s a shame, for Pollack brings a unique and valuable perspective to this important issue. I can relate to her academic and career trajectory in the sense that I studied math in university, was very good at it, but ultimately decided not to pursue it professionally. Now, I had always started with the intention to be a teacher. And it’s important to note that I still thought I was a man back in university, so I received all the encouragement that Pollack notes most talented men receive and don’t even notice: I remember vividly a conversation I once had at a conference. I had been doing summer research, and my supervisor’s supervisor tried to talk me into going into grad school (and ultimately a PhD program) based on that little bit of work I had done. But I knew research wasn’t for me, and I am very happy with that decision, as Pollack seems with hers. Yet there is always a part of me that wonders….
So as Pollack discusses her reasons for leaving science, that hit me. I agree with a lot of what she says in this book about the need to give students (of any gender) opportunities to do research, the need to encourage female students more openly and explicitly to counter the anxieties they learn growing up, and the need to consider gender bias in the design of programs of study.
The Only Woman in the Room has a lot of promise, and there’s a great deal of good info here. Pollack brings an important perspective. However, I’m not sure how much of this book will stay with me as I get further from it.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
What’s better than a romcom? A story about friendship in the style of a romcom. Dear Wendy checks off so many boxes that it’s actually eerie: aro/ace protagonists, supportive secondary cast, plenty of humour, and a compassionate story to its core. This was one of my most-anticipated books of 2024, and that does not surprise me. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Feiwel & Friends in exchange for a review.
Sophie and Jo are both aromantic and asexual students at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. They meet and befriend one another in their introductory women’s studies course. However, they have something else in common in addition to sexual orientation: each is behind an anonymous Instagram account for relationship advice. Sophie has been running the “Dear Wendy” account for several months, and Jo recently started up “Sincerely, Wanda” as an acerbic Dear Wendy spoof that inadvertently gained its own following. As the two students navigate college life, friendship, and being young aro/ace people in a sea of horny roommates and peers, Sophie and Jo bond while their alter egos feud. What could possibly go wrong?
To say that I love this setup, with its implicit promise of romcom-level misunderstandings and hope for reconciliation, would be an understatement. Although romance isn’t my favourite genre, I have nothing against it, and I actually enjoy a good romcom. But comedies that privilege friendship tend to be quirky buddy comedies. Dear Wendy joins a handful of other stories I can recall that give us a romcom-like story arc to a platonic relationship (shout-out to the Canadian indie film Almost Adults as another example).
To say that I felt seen as an aroace woman with this book is also an understatement. I kept comparing myself to each of the two protagonists, alternatively at times identifying more with Sophie or Jo (but, if I am being honest with myself, I am a total Sophie!). While a lot about each character is different from my story (I’m not the child of immigrants; I don’t have two moms; I never went to an American college, let alone a historically “women’s” college like Wellesley), those details don’t matter as much as the vibes present here. Plus, like these two, I am that aroace always giving her friends relationship advice—seriously.
But most importantly, I know what it is like to watch my friends hook up, pair off, find a romantic soulmate, and wonder what’s out there for me. I know what it is like to question my gender. And I know what it’s like to be confident in my identity but have others (not my parents, thank goodness, but plenty of other people) tell me it’s just a phase or something I will get over once I find “the right person” (it’s not, and I won’t).
All of this is to say that many aro/ace readers are going to see parts of themselves in Sophie and Jo, and it’s lovely.
But I think I need to speak to allo readers (those of you who experience sexual or romantic attraction) for a moment. I don’t want to give the impression that this book is only for aro/ace readers. If anything, I think it is more important for allo readers to pick up Dear Wendy, and I think you will enjoy it too.
First, so many of the best parts of this book are only tangentially related to Sophie and Jo’s queer identities. Zhao suffuses this book with nonstop gags and powerful scenes of female friendship. Whether it’s Sophie bonding with her women’s studies prof, Jo spending time with their roommates, or the two of them hanging out and watching a movie (until Jo disturbs Sophie by breaking down and crying, lol), Dear Wendy is pitch-perfect new adult storytelling. It’s about two young people finding their independence in college, getting super excited about dumb shit and important stuff alike, making mistakes, and picking themselves back up after they fall down. It’s beautiful.
Second, I love how the conflict in this story is so mellow. Everyone around Sophie and Jo is just so damn supportive, and it is the kind of wholesome energy I need in April 2024. All of the conflict in this book comes from realistic misunderstandings and behaviour that makes sense for young college students. When everything inevitably blows up in Sophie and Jo’s friendship, it blows up in a sensible way, the drama far from melodramatic. There are no larger-than-life villains in this book. Even Sophie’s relationship with her aphobic mother is a nuanced one.
Zhao has somehow managed to capture what it’s like to live in an aphobic (and, more broadly, queerphobic) society without including overt instances of aphobia, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Maybe this is a consequence of the inclusive setting of Wellesley—which, as Sophie and Jo discover, is far from perfect but seems to be a refreshing bubble of acceptance. There are no moustache-twirling queerphobes here. (The dearth of cis straight male characters in the book might also have something to do with this, but I was even expecting one of the female characters to take off her mask and reveal she was secretly a TERF or aphobe or something, and it never happens.)
Which brings me to the final reason I need allo readers to devour Dear Wendy: I need you to see happy, well-adjusted aro/ace characters in fiction. Yeah, Sophie has some friction with her parents, and Jo has their moments of struggling with what their sexuality means for their future. At the end of the day, though, they are no more or less happy than their allo peers. (If anything, they both embody the sheer relief I often feel as my friends recount their relationship problems to me, and all I can think is, “That sounds exhausting. Couldn’t be me!”) Dear Wendy, with its subversion of romantic tropes to deliver us an HEA predicated upon platonic values, is a daring form of resistance to compulsory sexuality.
At this point you might be thinking, “Kara, of course you’re going to give this book five stars because you are incredibly biased.” And, reader, you might be right (but whomst among us is not?). Except that when I look back at my asexual-themed reads, I find that I actually tend to be quite critical. So instead of taking this rating and review with a grain of salt, view it as what it is: a full-throated and unabashed endorsement of an aro/ace-themed novel that gets it. And no, Dear Wendy cannot be everything to every aro/ace reader. Sophie and Jo are but two characters, of a particular age, following a particular plot. We continue to need a plethora of diverse aro/ace stories, and many of those won’t work for me.
But this one does. Oh, does it ever. If I could have a platonic life partnership with this book, I would.
I will never walk down an aisle towards the partner of my dreams. I will probably never live with anyone else. I am in my thirties, and my friends are pairing up and having children, and I feel like a movie character caught in a time-lapse effect where they stand still while the background extras turn into motion blurs around them. Being aro/ace can be incredibly lonely at times. But it can also feel incredibly freeing. Dear Wendy explores both of these truths, and it does so with incredible grace and no small amount of wisdom.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Sophie and Jo are both aromantic and asexual students at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. They meet and befriend one another in their introductory women’s studies course. However, they have something else in common in addition to sexual orientation: each is behind an anonymous Instagram account for relationship advice. Sophie has been running the “Dear Wendy” account for several months, and Jo recently started up “Sincerely, Wanda” as an acerbic Dear Wendy spoof that inadvertently gained its own following. As the two students navigate college life, friendship, and being young aro/ace people in a sea of horny roommates and peers, Sophie and Jo bond while their alter egos feud. What could possibly go wrong?
To say that I love this setup, with its implicit promise of romcom-level misunderstandings and hope for reconciliation, would be an understatement. Although romance isn’t my favourite genre, I have nothing against it, and I actually enjoy a good romcom. But comedies that privilege friendship tend to be quirky buddy comedies. Dear Wendy joins a handful of other stories I can recall that give us a romcom-like story arc to a platonic relationship (shout-out to the Canadian indie film Almost Adults as another example).
To say that I felt seen as an aroace woman with this book is also an understatement. I kept comparing myself to each of the two protagonists, alternatively at times identifying more with Sophie or Jo (but, if I am being honest with myself, I am a total Sophie!). While a lot about each character is different from my story (I’m not the child of immigrants; I don’t have two moms; I never went to an American college, let alone a historically “women’s” college like Wellesley), those details don’t matter as much as the vibes present here. Plus, like these two, I am that aroace always giving her friends relationship advice—seriously.
But most importantly, I know what it is like to watch my friends hook up, pair off, find a romantic soulmate, and wonder what’s out there for me. I know what it is like to question my gender. And I know what it’s like to be confident in my identity but have others (not my parents, thank goodness, but plenty of other people) tell me it’s just a phase or something I will get over once I find “the right person” (it’s not, and I won’t).
All of this is to say that many aro/ace readers are going to see parts of themselves in Sophie and Jo, and it’s lovely.
But I think I need to speak to allo readers (those of you who experience sexual or romantic attraction) for a moment. I don’t want to give the impression that this book is only for aro/ace readers. If anything, I think it is more important for allo readers to pick up Dear Wendy, and I think you will enjoy it too.
First, so many of the best parts of this book are only tangentially related to Sophie and Jo’s queer identities. Zhao suffuses this book with nonstop gags and powerful scenes of female friendship. Whether it’s Sophie bonding with her women’s studies prof, Jo spending time with their roommates, or the two of them hanging out and watching a movie (until Jo disturbs Sophie by breaking down and crying, lol), Dear Wendy is pitch-perfect new adult storytelling. It’s about two young people finding their independence in college, getting super excited about dumb shit and important stuff alike, making mistakes, and picking themselves back up after they fall down. It’s beautiful.
Second, I love how the conflict in this story is so mellow. Everyone around Sophie and Jo is just so damn supportive, and it is the kind of wholesome energy I need in April 2024. All of the conflict in this book comes from realistic misunderstandings and behaviour that makes sense for young college students. When everything inevitably blows up in Sophie and Jo’s friendship, it blows up in a sensible way, the drama far from melodramatic. There are no larger-than-life villains in this book. Even Sophie’s relationship with her aphobic mother is a nuanced one.
Zhao has somehow managed to capture what it’s like to live in an aphobic (and, more broadly, queerphobic) society without including overt instances of aphobia, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Maybe this is a consequence of the inclusive setting of Wellesley—which, as Sophie and Jo discover, is far from perfect but seems to be a refreshing bubble of acceptance. There are no moustache-twirling queerphobes here. (The dearth of cis straight male characters in the book might also have something to do with this, but I was even expecting one of the female characters to take off her mask and reveal she was secretly a TERF or aphobe or something, and it never happens.)
Which brings me to the final reason I need allo readers to devour Dear Wendy: I need you to see happy, well-adjusted aro/ace characters in fiction. Yeah, Sophie has some friction with her parents, and Jo has their moments of struggling with what their sexuality means for their future. At the end of the day, though, they are no more or less happy than their allo peers. (If anything, they both embody the sheer relief I often feel as my friends recount their relationship problems to me, and all I can think is, “That sounds exhausting. Couldn’t be me!”) Dear Wendy, with its subversion of romantic tropes to deliver us an HEA predicated upon platonic values, is a daring form of resistance to compulsory sexuality.
At this point you might be thinking, “Kara, of course you’re going to give this book five stars because you are incredibly biased.” And, reader, you might be right (but whomst among us is not?). Except that when I look back at my asexual-themed reads, I find that I actually tend to be quite critical. So instead of taking this rating and review with a grain of salt, view it as what it is: a full-throated and unabashed endorsement of an aro/ace-themed novel that gets it. And no, Dear Wendy cannot be everything to every aro/ace reader. Sophie and Jo are but two characters, of a particular age, following a particular plot. We continue to need a plethora of diverse aro/ace stories, and many of those won’t work for me.
But this one does. Oh, does it ever. If I could have a platonic life partnership with this book, I would.
I will never walk down an aisle towards the partner of my dreams. I will probably never live with anyone else. I am in my thirties, and my friends are pairing up and having children, and I feel like a movie character caught in a time-lapse effect where they stand still while the background extras turn into motion blurs around them. Being aro/ace can be incredibly lonely at times. But it can also feel incredibly freeing. Dear Wendy explores both of these truths, and it does so with incredible grace and no small amount of wisdom.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
The Dragonfly Gambit by A. D. Sui
dark
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
The phrase “burn it all down” is a popular one, but how many people really mean it? What would that look like? A.D. Sui explores this in <cite>The Dragonfly Gambit</cite>, a revenge novella featuring a former fighter pilot with nothing to lose, an empire staving off a rebellion, and a small cast of supporting characters caught in the middle. I received a review copy.
Inez Kato was a hot-shot pilot for the Rule—until an accident changed her life. Tossed aside, bitter, and on the wrong side of the Rule’s fascism, Inez hatches a plan to take down the empire from the inside. Bringing this plan to fruition will require her to work with her ex, as well as the Rule’s new hot-shot pilot, and the general who oversees it all. Inez has no one she can trust, no one to back her up, and as she wrestles with her attraction to the general, she realizes she is running out of time.
As it is, this book is about power. Who wields it. What they do with it. Inez is nominally powerless, a prisoner, conscripted to win a war she is opposed to. Yet she tells us she is the one with all the power, that she has a plan to win the war—for the other side—and destroy the Rule. Is she delusional? Will she be found out? Or will her plan succeed?
There are some good sapphic elements here—the sexytimes stuff doesn’t do that much for me, and I don’t entirely understand the appeal of “enemies to lovers,” but if that is your thing then Sui does it well. There’s a good kind of love (or at least attraction) triangle going on here, limited only in the sense that, as a novella, there isn’t much time to fully develop the relationships.
In the same way, I’d say that Sui makes good use of a lot of standard tropes in military science fiction: decrepit, fascist empire; a rebellion; war-weary soldiers. Yet I never really felt like the story was interested in saying anything about any of these things. This is very much a revenge plot through and through; if you are hoping for a deeper story about fascism, resistance, or war, then you won’t find that here.
That being said, while I won’t spoil it, I’ll say is that this is the most satisfying downer ending I have had in a while. The Dragonfly Gambit is a tragedy through and through, and I admire Sui’s commitment to the bit. I picked up heavy Battlestar Galactica vibes—maybe it was the discussion of fighter plots and hangar decks and the mention of how rundown the ship feels after Inez boards.
The Dragonfly Gambit is a pitch-perfect example of the pacing appropriate for a novella. Too long for a short story yet too short for a full novel, the plot here works perfectly for its length. I read the book in a single day, though not a single sitting, very much enjoying the steady elevation of tension as Inez worms her way deeper into the Rule’s hierarchy. Sui has a good grasp of when to sketch a character and when to fill them in, and it’s this careful awareness that makes this novella so tight and satisfying.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Inez Kato was a hot-shot pilot for the Rule—until an accident changed her life. Tossed aside, bitter, and on the wrong side of the Rule’s fascism, Inez hatches a plan to take down the empire from the inside. Bringing this plan to fruition will require her to work with her ex, as well as the Rule’s new hot-shot pilot, and the general who oversees it all. Inez has no one she can trust, no one to back her up, and as she wrestles with her attraction to the general, she realizes she is running out of time.
As it is, this book is about power. Who wields it. What they do with it. Inez is nominally powerless, a prisoner, conscripted to win a war she is opposed to. Yet she tells us she is the one with all the power, that she has a plan to win the war—for the other side—and destroy the Rule. Is she delusional? Will she be found out? Or will her plan succeed?
There are some good sapphic elements here—the sexytimes stuff doesn’t do that much for me, and I don’t entirely understand the appeal of “enemies to lovers,” but if that is your thing then Sui does it well. There’s a good kind of love (or at least attraction) triangle going on here, limited only in the sense that, as a novella, there isn’t much time to fully develop the relationships.
In the same way, I’d say that Sui makes good use of a lot of standard tropes in military science fiction: decrepit, fascist empire; a rebellion; war-weary soldiers. Yet I never really felt like the story was interested in saying anything about any of these things. This is very much a revenge plot through and through; if you are hoping for a deeper story about fascism, resistance, or war, then you won’t find that here.
That being said, while I won’t spoil it, I’ll say is that this is the most satisfying downer ending I have had in a while. The Dragonfly Gambit is a tragedy through and through, and I admire Sui’s commitment to the bit. I picked up heavy Battlestar Galactica vibes—maybe it was the discussion of fighter plots and hangar decks and the mention of how rundown the ship feels after Inez boards.
The Dragonfly Gambit is a pitch-perfect example of the pacing appropriate for a novella. Too long for a short story yet too short for a full novel, the plot here works perfectly for its length. I read the book in a single day, though not a single sitting, very much enjoying the steady elevation of tension as Inez worms her way deeper into the Rule’s hierarchy. Sui has a good grasp of when to sketch a character and when to fill them in, and it’s this careful awareness that makes this novella so tight and satisfying.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
The House of Saints by Derek Künsken
adventurous
challenging
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Nearly four years ago (wow), I gushed over The House of Styx, a Venusian planetary romance that swept me off my feet and into the clouds of Earth’s harsh neighbour. If you haven’t read my (spoiler-free) review of that book, go do it now so I don’t have to retread all the praise I gave it—all of which applies to The House of Saints, and then some. Derek Künsken brings this duology to a satisfying close
Spoilers for the first book but not for this one. (Also, shout-out to whoever thought to include a recap of the first book at the start of this book: more of this please, publishers!)
The D’Aquillons (those who survive, anyway) have aligned themselves with two other coureur families into a political unit called the House of Styx. Now they are in a race against time to secure and exploit the new resource they have discovered—a stable wormhole embedded into a cave on the Venusian surface, leading to another solar system rich in resources. Their behaviour attracts the attention—and animosity—of what passes for a government on Venus, not to mention the transnational bank to which the government is beholden. The politics are a powder keg, and one misstep could set everything alight—or, equally, plunge them into the depths with no hope of return.
I didn’t spend much time discussing the wormhole in my review of the first book (it is, after all, a spoiler), so let’s start there. This is such a cool novum. Like, I get that as a prequel series to Künsken’s Quantum Evolution novels, which established the primacy of wormhole technology. But it’s so unusual to see a story wherein one end of a wormhole is in space and the other end is on the surface of a planet, much less the planet Venus. It’s a perfect “what if” starting point from which Künsken extrapolates excellently. The challenges of working on the punishing surface of Venus create plenty of conflict even before we consider the politically charged situation in the upper atmosphere.
As I opined in my review of Flight From the Ages And Other Stories, Künsken’s creativity sets him apart in this generation of science-fiction authors. He has an incredible facility for harnessing dependable tropes of decades past while balancing them with fresh, wild, almost ludicrous ideas of his own imagining. The House of Saints is no exception. Do you want submarine warfare in the clouds of Venus? Do you want death-defying feats on the outer skin of a habitat? Do you want asteroid tethering, wormhole-mouth-moving, jaw-dropping feats of microgravity maneuvering? Yeah you do.
If that were all, that would be enough. I’d give this book three, maybe four stars, and move on to my next fix. But it’s not all. This book has heart. Künsken balances an action-packed plot with rich, meaty character development, and it takes my breath away.
No character embodies this ethos more than Émile. In The House of Styx, he was largely an irresponsible wastrel, written off by his father and largely unlikable. The House of Saints sees Émile evolve in such a satisfying way. He doesn’t suddenly turn into a hero; rather, he goes on a journey of redemption, an imperfect one that is far from simple or linear. It takes guts and gumption to write unlikable characters and to ask the reader to trust you enough to help them grow into rounder, more sympathetic protagonists—but the emotional payoff, in my opinion, is so worth it.
The same goes for Pascale’s story arc and her relationship with Gabriel-Antoine. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this was the part of the book I was most anticipating. Pascale in The House of Styx is an example of how a cis author with a good sensitivity reader and editor behind him can get it so, so right with a trans main character—and that continues to be the case here.
Honestly, some of Pascale’s scenes were difficult for me to read in ways I was not expecting. I was only seven months into my transition when I read The House of Styx—and this was during the height of the pandemic and lockdowns too, mind you. Everything about my transition was fresh, exciting, nerve-wracking. Just encountering such great trans rep made me feel so seen. Now I’m four years into my transition, whereas for Pascale only a few months have gone by. I was always more open and more certain than she was—at the start of The House of Saints she is only out to two people, and her coming out is a slow and somewhat painful experience, especially where Gabriel-Antoine is concerned. And it’s so fascinating to me, because as an aro/ace gal, I never had a lover whose reaction to my coming out was a concern of mine—yet so much of Pascale’s experience of coming out still feels relatable and painful to me. That fear of rejection, the impatience to see physical and emotional changes, the apprehension over how to ensure continual access to gender-affirming care, how to come out over and over to each person in your life … oof, yeah. It’s all here, my experience yet not my experience. And my feet were always firmly on solid ground in an atmosphere that wasn’t trying to eat me!
Above all, what stood out to me the most about Pascale’s journey in this book is how delicate it is. Künsken does not rush her coming out, does not rush to resolve the conflict this creates with Gabriel-Antoine or others in her life. I love the creative way he uses the limited third-person perspective to convey how she is in transition: even with the same conversation, the spelling of Pascale’s name shifts depending on whether the speaker knows she has come out. When they don’t, the book uses the male spelling, Pascal, which is pronounced the same. So we, the readers, hear the difference, but the characters who aren’t in the know don’t. With each new person who learns, each time Pascale asserts her identity, calls herself George-Étienne’s daughter, etc.—my heart swelled. There is such power in a beautiful depiction of the struggles and rewards of transition.
Beyond her transition, Pascale experiences remarkable growth as a protagonist and a heroine. She doesn’t set out to be in the spotlight, to be an agitator or an insurrectionist. Yet push does indeed come to shove, and she rises to the occasion—and then some, as the book’s epilogue indicates. We love to see it!
Honestly, if I have one criticism of The House of Saints, it’s simply that its climax comes a bit late and the denouement is a bit rushed as a result. I would have liked a bit more cooldown, a bit more time to see the fire subside into embers and then ash. The plot itself is nearly perfect, the resolution the right amount of messy and tenuous—I just wish there had been a longer, more sustained note of tension and mess and more wrapping up than we got. Still, I have to commend Künsken or his editor, whoever resolved on this being neither one book nor three but two. There is something very reassuring and satisfying about a proper duology.
Which brings me full circle: The House of Saints, like the first book in the Venus Ascendant duology, is satisfying. It’s much more than that, of course—but it is most definitely that. Unlike The House of Styx, this one didn’t surprise me as much, for I knew what to expect—and my expectations were high. So high, I was a bit worried this book couldn’t live up to them. It does. And then some. Of everyone currently writing science fiction out there, Derek Künsken is one to watch. Each of his books just seems to be better than the last.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Spoilers for the first book but not for this one. (Also, shout-out to whoever thought to include a recap of the first book at the start of this book: more of this please, publishers!)
The D’Aquillons (those who survive, anyway) have aligned themselves with two other coureur families into a political unit called the House of Styx. Now they are in a race against time to secure and exploit the new resource they have discovered—a stable wormhole embedded into a cave on the Venusian surface, leading to another solar system rich in resources. Their behaviour attracts the attention—and animosity—of what passes for a government on Venus, not to mention the transnational bank to which the government is beholden. The politics are a powder keg, and one misstep could set everything alight—or, equally, plunge them into the depths with no hope of return.
I didn’t spend much time discussing the wormhole in my review of the first book (it is, after all, a spoiler), so let’s start there. This is such a cool novum. Like, I get that as a prequel series to Künsken’s Quantum Evolution novels, which established the primacy of wormhole technology. But it’s so unusual to see a story wherein one end of a wormhole is in space and the other end is on the surface of a planet, much less the planet Venus. It’s a perfect “what if” starting point from which Künsken extrapolates excellently. The challenges of working on the punishing surface of Venus create plenty of conflict even before we consider the politically charged situation in the upper atmosphere.
As I opined in my review of Flight From the Ages And Other Stories, Künsken’s creativity sets him apart in this generation of science-fiction authors. He has an incredible facility for harnessing dependable tropes of decades past while balancing them with fresh, wild, almost ludicrous ideas of his own imagining. The House of Saints is no exception. Do you want submarine warfare in the clouds of Venus? Do you want death-defying feats on the outer skin of a habitat? Do you want asteroid tethering, wormhole-mouth-moving, jaw-dropping feats of microgravity maneuvering? Yeah you do.
If that were all, that would be enough. I’d give this book three, maybe four stars, and move on to my next fix. But it’s not all. This book has heart. Künsken balances an action-packed plot with rich, meaty character development, and it takes my breath away.
No character embodies this ethos more than Émile. In The House of Styx, he was largely an irresponsible wastrel, written off by his father and largely unlikable. The House of Saints sees Émile evolve in such a satisfying way. He doesn’t suddenly turn into a hero; rather, he goes on a journey of redemption, an imperfect one that is far from simple or linear. It takes guts and gumption to write unlikable characters and to ask the reader to trust you enough to help them grow into rounder, more sympathetic protagonists—but the emotional payoff, in my opinion, is so worth it.
The same goes for Pascale’s story arc and her relationship with Gabriel-Antoine. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this was the part of the book I was most anticipating. Pascale in The House of Styx is an example of how a cis author with a good sensitivity reader and editor behind him can get it so, so right with a trans main character—and that continues to be the case here.
Honestly, some of Pascale’s scenes were difficult for me to read in ways I was not expecting. I was only seven months into my transition when I read The House of Styx—and this was during the height of the pandemic and lockdowns too, mind you. Everything about my transition was fresh, exciting, nerve-wracking. Just encountering such great trans rep made me feel so seen. Now I’m four years into my transition, whereas for Pascale only a few months have gone by. I was always more open and more certain than she was—at the start of The House of Saints she is only out to two people, and her coming out is a slow and somewhat painful experience, especially where Gabriel-Antoine is concerned. And it’s so fascinating to me, because as an aro/ace gal, I never had a lover whose reaction to my coming out was a concern of mine—yet so much of Pascale’s experience of coming out still feels relatable and painful to me. That fear of rejection, the impatience to see physical and emotional changes, the apprehension over how to ensure continual access to gender-affirming care, how to come out over and over to each person in your life … oof, yeah. It’s all here, my experience yet not my experience. And my feet were always firmly on solid ground in an atmosphere that wasn’t trying to eat me!
Above all, what stood out to me the most about Pascale’s journey in this book is how delicate it is. Künsken does not rush her coming out, does not rush to resolve the conflict this creates with Gabriel-Antoine or others in her life. I love the creative way he uses the limited third-person perspective to convey how she is in transition: even with the same conversation, the spelling of Pascale’s name shifts depending on whether the speaker knows she has come out. When they don’t, the book uses the male spelling, Pascal, which is pronounced the same. So we, the readers, hear the difference, but the characters who aren’t in the know don’t. With each new person who learns, each time Pascale asserts her identity, calls herself George-Étienne’s daughter, etc.—my heart swelled. There is such power in a beautiful depiction of the struggles and rewards of transition.
Beyond her transition, Pascale experiences remarkable growth as a protagonist and a heroine. She doesn’t set out to be in the spotlight, to be an agitator or an insurrectionist. Yet push does indeed come to shove, and she rises to the occasion—and then some, as the book’s epilogue indicates. We love to see it!
Honestly, if I have one criticism of The House of Saints, it’s simply that its climax comes a bit late and the denouement is a bit rushed as a result. I would have liked a bit more cooldown, a bit more time to see the fire subside into embers and then ash. The plot itself is nearly perfect, the resolution the right amount of messy and tenuous—I just wish there had been a longer, more sustained note of tension and mess and more wrapping up than we got. Still, I have to commend Künsken or his editor, whoever resolved on this being neither one book nor three but two. There is something very reassuring and satisfying about a proper duology.
Which brings me full circle: The House of Saints, like the first book in the Venus Ascendant duology, is satisfying. It’s much more than that, of course—but it is most definitely that. Unlike The House of Styx, this one didn’t surprise me as much, for I knew what to expect—and my expectations were high. So high, I was a bit worried this book couldn’t live up to them. It does. And then some. Of everyone currently writing science fiction out there, Derek Künsken is one to watch. Each of his books just seems to be better than the last.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
You’re not paranoid, the saying goes, if they are actually out to get you. That’s what Scott Warms and his friend, narrator Marty Hench, learns in The Bezzle. Cory Doctorow tackles the unscrupulous American private prison system in this book, demonstrating how capitalism’s death grip on the carceral state has resulted in harm beyond the physical cruelty of solitary confinement or guards turning an eye to violence. Nowadays, it costs people money to be incarcerated—money most of them don’t have—and any pretense that the system is designed for rehabilitation has been dropped in favour of pure profit for private equity. The resulting book is, in my opinion, the typical mixed bag one gets in a Doctorow novel: terribly fascinating infodumps explaining systems most of us had no idea existed behind the scenes of our society mixed with unremarkable characters with about as much personality as one of those tiny bags with two biscuits you get as complimentary snacks on Porter flights. I received a copy in exchange for a review.
Marty Hench is a forensic accountant. He makes his living auditing companies suspected of wrongdoing, and he makes twenty-five percent of whatever such malfeasance he can uncover. Thus, his work is seasonal—after he finishes a job, he takes a few months off to relax and live off the proceeds. Sometimes he vacations on Catalina Island as a guest of his friend, Scott Warms, who made his millions selling his start-up to Yahoo! during the dot-com bubble and never looked back. However, when Marty interferes with a tycoon’s pyramid scheme on the island, Scott ends up with a target on his back that. From there, the story develops into an exploration of the injustice baked into the justice system, from traffic stops with corrupt cops to plea deals and private prisons. As Marty learns more about how unfair the system actually is, so too does the reader, in excruciating financial detail. Can Marty and Scott beat the house?
This is a loose sequel to Red Team Blues, the first book to feature Marty Hench. However, aside from some vague allusions, that’s about all the two books have in common: I haven’t read the first book, and I can say that The Bezzle stands alone.
Even within the book, there are distinct parts. The first third is the most dynamic in that it involves Marty’s interaction with the greatest number of people at once—paradoxically, it also might be the least interesting part? I kept waiting for the inciting event, and it eventually arrives, but it takes far longer than I expected for Doctorow to get us into the story. Once we’re in it, the novel becomes seventy-five percent Marty talking to the reader and twenty-five percent Marty talking to one other person, a series of two-hander vignettes that punctuate the equilibrium of exposition Marty supplies about how the prison system in California is nefarious and exploitive.
As far as what I learned from The Bezzle: I already knew the private prison system was bad, and I knew some of the details, but this book sketches an even bleaker picture. Y’all really let it get that bad, huh? (I am aware, as a Canadian, I should not throw stones given my country’s own awful track record when it comes to detention and detainment.) The way that Marty gradually uncovers just how bad it is works really well to help people who are less familiar with these systems get a glimpse into how they work (and they do work, as designed—it’s simply that they are designed to siphon money from the poor to make the rich richer, rather than rehabilitate).
As far as this being an entertaining novel goes … well. Marty and Scott are about as thin characters as you can get and still have them breathing on the page, so to speak. All I really know about Marty is that he is well-off, savvy with the numbers, loyal to his friends, but somewhat of a loner and single—but presumably into women given his occasional comments about how attractive they are. (Let’s not even get into how the only significant female character is a classy sex worker with a heart of gold. Oh, and there’s also a female prosecutor who shows up near the end for like two-point-five seconds.) Scott similarly gives me richie white playboy vibes.
Now, I want to give Doctorow some credit: he’s clearly designing these characters to be satirical exaggerations of the archetypes involved in Silicon Valley. The Bezzle is essentially a parable of the financial turpitude of the last quarter century, with Marty playing the role as a David mosquito taking a tiny yet juicy bite out of Goliath. So the fact that these characters are little more than sketches is almost certainly intentional. I’ve seen Doctorow have greater range than this before. On the other hand, I’ve not seen him have much greater range than this, and none of this changes the fact that, ultimately, this book has little in it that makes me connect with these characters.
Indeed, Cory Doctorow is a dichotomous author for me: I seem to enjoy his nonfiction but, at least as I have matured into adulthood, find his fiction lacking. In part, I suspect this is because both end up as vehicles for his polemics. My politics and Doctorow’s are often in alignment (and even if they weren’t, Heinlein would attest that I don’t mind myself a polemical work of science fiction—that’s kind of what the genre is for). No, it’s because his polemics are so thinly veiled, his characters so uninteresting beyond their service to the plot, that in some cases the books seem to turn into Socratic dialogues. I do love that he’s a firebrand of a nerd who hyperfixates on subtle slivers of injustice and then magnifies them into entire novels. The Bezzle is no exception here—but I still liked it, enough that I might go back and check out the first book in Marty’s series.
So if you want to hear more about how prisons (especially privately run prisons) suck, but you’d rather read a novel instead of a nonfiction exposé, The Bezzle is for you. It’s a burn-down-the-system, fight-the-power paint-by-numbers novel, which is not a bad thing—exactly what I have come to expect from Doctorow, yet comforting and satisfying in its own way.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Marty Hench is a forensic accountant. He makes his living auditing companies suspected of wrongdoing, and he makes twenty-five percent of whatever such malfeasance he can uncover. Thus, his work is seasonal—after he finishes a job, he takes a few months off to relax and live off the proceeds. Sometimes he vacations on Catalina Island as a guest of his friend, Scott Warms, who made his millions selling his start-up to Yahoo! during the dot-com bubble and never looked back. However, when Marty interferes with a tycoon’s pyramid scheme on the island, Scott ends up with a target on his back that. From there, the story develops into an exploration of the injustice baked into the justice system, from traffic stops with corrupt cops to plea deals and private prisons. As Marty learns more about how unfair the system actually is, so too does the reader, in excruciating financial detail. Can Marty and Scott beat the house?
This is a loose sequel to Red Team Blues, the first book to feature Marty Hench. However, aside from some vague allusions, that’s about all the two books have in common: I haven’t read the first book, and I can say that The Bezzle stands alone.
Even within the book, there are distinct parts. The first third is the most dynamic in that it involves Marty’s interaction with the greatest number of people at once—paradoxically, it also might be the least interesting part? I kept waiting for the inciting event, and it eventually arrives, but it takes far longer than I expected for Doctorow to get us into the story. Once we’re in it, the novel becomes seventy-five percent Marty talking to the reader and twenty-five percent Marty talking to one other person, a series of two-hander vignettes that punctuate the equilibrium of exposition Marty supplies about how the prison system in California is nefarious and exploitive.
As far as what I learned from The Bezzle: I already knew the private prison system was bad, and I knew some of the details, but this book sketches an even bleaker picture. Y’all really let it get that bad, huh? (I am aware, as a Canadian, I should not throw stones given my country’s own awful track record when it comes to detention and detainment.) The way that Marty gradually uncovers just how bad it is works really well to help people who are less familiar with these systems get a glimpse into how they work (and they do work, as designed—it’s simply that they are designed to siphon money from the poor to make the rich richer, rather than rehabilitate).
As far as this being an entertaining novel goes … well. Marty and Scott are about as thin characters as you can get and still have them breathing on the page, so to speak. All I really know about Marty is that he is well-off, savvy with the numbers, loyal to his friends, but somewhat of a loner and single—but presumably into women given his occasional comments about how attractive they are. (Let’s not even get into how the only significant female character is a classy sex worker with a heart of gold. Oh, and there’s also a female prosecutor who shows up near the end for like two-point-five seconds.) Scott similarly gives me richie white playboy vibes.
Now, I want to give Doctorow some credit: he’s clearly designing these characters to be satirical exaggerations of the archetypes involved in Silicon Valley. The Bezzle is essentially a parable of the financial turpitude of the last quarter century, with Marty playing the role as a David mosquito taking a tiny yet juicy bite out of Goliath. So the fact that these characters are little more than sketches is almost certainly intentional. I’ve seen Doctorow have greater range than this before. On the other hand, I’ve not seen him have much greater range than this, and none of this changes the fact that, ultimately, this book has little in it that makes me connect with these characters.
Indeed, Cory Doctorow is a dichotomous author for me: I seem to enjoy his nonfiction but, at least as I have matured into adulthood, find his fiction lacking. In part, I suspect this is because both end up as vehicles for his polemics. My politics and Doctorow’s are often in alignment (and even if they weren’t, Heinlein would attest that I don’t mind myself a polemical work of science fiction—that’s kind of what the genre is for). No, it’s because his polemics are so thinly veiled, his characters so uninteresting beyond their service to the plot, that in some cases the books seem to turn into Socratic dialogues. I do love that he’s a firebrand of a nerd who hyperfixates on subtle slivers of injustice and then magnifies them into entire novels. The Bezzle is no exception here—but I still liked it, enough that I might go back and check out the first book in Marty’s series.
So if you want to hear more about how prisons (especially privately run prisons) suck, but you’d rather read a novel instead of a nonfiction exposé, The Bezzle is for you. It’s a burn-down-the-system, fight-the-power paint-by-numbers novel, which is not a bad thing—exactly what I have come to expect from Doctorow, yet comforting and satisfying in its own way.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
But Everyone Feels This Way: How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life by Paige Layle
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
With most memoirs, I already have a good sense of who the author is, like in the case of Making It So, and I’ve picked up the memoir because I’m interested in hearing their story in their own words. In the case of But Everyone Feels This Way, I hadn’t heard of Paige Layle before. Instagram recommended a Reel by her. I don’t remember the Reel or what she said in it, but she mentioned her book coming out soon. I was intrigued, looked it up, and was able to get an eARC through NetGalley/Hachette.
Paige Layle is a twenty-three-year-old from Ontario, Canada—the same province as me, and a fact I only realized when I was well into the book and noticed she was using a lot of Canadian school terms, like saying “Grade 3” instead of “third grade,” and then she mentioned Toronto, and I was like, “CANADIAN. WE HAVE A CANADIAN HERE. FROM ONTARIO LIKE ME.” Sorry, I get unreasonably excited when unexpected Ontarians show up in my to-read list. Anyway, Layle is quite young to write a memoir, but they are passionate about being an autism communicator. Layle takes us chronologically through their life, sharing how they struggled through early childhood and adolescence. She expected her autism diagnosis, received at fifteen, to change everything and was surprised when it didn’t—but it allowed her to better express her needs, work on her relationship with her mom, and figure out what she wanted after high school.
Autism as a condition is drastically misunderstood. At its core, But Everyone Feels This Way is a first-person account of “discovering” autism. It has two major audiences: allistic people like myself who want to learn more about autistic people’s experiences, and young, neurodivergent people who might be autistic and not realize it. For that latter group, I hope some of them find this book illuminating.
Women in particular are underrepresented among autism diagnoses. This compounds misunderstandings about what it means to be autistic, what “#ActuallyAutistic” looks like, as the hashtag might say. I briefly perused Layle’s Instagram as I prepared to write this review, and I noticed a disturbing trend of comments like so: “You aren’t autistic, stop pretending. If you were autistic you wouldn’t be able to talk to us like this.” Now, it’s no surprise that the comments are a toxic trashfire. Still, I think these comments represent an unwillingness among the public to believe that autistic people can be verbal, can communicate with grace and elegance, can have complex and nuanced takes on things. This comes down to stereotypes—but I’d argue it’s also symptom of insecurity among neurotypical and allistic people who are invested in the idea that autism is something to be feared rather than embraced, at best tolerated as opposed to accepted and even celebrated. It’s these people whom Layle hopes to disarm, I think.
But Everyone Feels This Way is quite raw and pointed. While some will call Layle’s style simplistic, there is a difference between simplistic and simple, and Layle’s writing is the latter. It’s clear, and it’s honest—allistic readers are just used to people not saying exactly what they mean, engaging in ellipsis, etc. While I won’t litigate the legitimacy of Layle’s autism, let me say that Layle’s writing is, to me, one of the clearest indicators that they are autistic. It’s not bad writing; it’s just different from the range of styles that tend to be drummed into neurotypical writers—and if that isn’t your thing, cool, but I think you would be missing out.
What I found most compelling about this book is how Layle builds, layer by layer, our understanding of her experience of autism as she moves through the each year of her life. I like to think I had a good handle on general facts about autism, many of which Layle shares in various fact-box sidebars throughout the book. However, there is a difference between holding a mental list of autistic traits in my head and actually hearing an autistic person describe how she embodies and experiences those traits on a daily basis. In this way, this book serves its primary purpose as a memoir: to build a richer empathy for autistic life than a work of more general reference nonfiction could ever achieve.
As a teacher, I found the chapters in which Layle is in high school very helpful and challenging. She describes in detail the process of getting an IEP, an individual education plan (this is the point where I realized she’s in Ontario) and how some teachers would abide by this plan while others would … not. This doesn’t surprise met, but it does sadden me. I would like more Ontario high school teachers to read this book so they can hear directly from an autistic person why the accommodations in an IEP are not niceties, not wants, but needs.
The problem, Layle makes clear here, is not Layle themself. It’s that we built our society for neurotypical people, so neurodivergent people are often at a disadvantage in meeting expectations. School is difficult because you need to be quiet, sit still, not challenge your teacher’s authority or expertise even if you’re confused by how they are teaching you, etc. Neurotypical people, and most allistic, neurodivergent people like myself, learn how to play the game well enough to mostly fit in. (In my case, for example, I can relate to a lot of Layle’s experience in terms of being highly intelligent and academically motivated while not very socially involved. However, I didn’t experience her struggles to understand her teachers’ or peers’ emotions and motivations, so I had an easier time figuring out “how to behave” in high school. This is the privilege of an allistic brain.)
Ironically, for a book with a subtitle all about the diagnosis itself, this aspect of the book seems to be the least well-developed. I thought it was really interesting how Layle admits to disappointment that their diagnosis did not magically fix how people relate to them—there is a particular scene between Layle and their former best friend that highlights this keenly. I wish Layle had gone more into this side of things, but instead she focuses more on how the diagnosis changed her family dynamic.
This isn’t a perfect book, and of course it behoves me to observe that Layle in many ways fits the mould of influencer: young, white, woman. But Everyone Feels This Way runs the risk of being elevated into some universal tale of autistic experience because we would like it to be that simple. We like it when we can read one book about something and say we know about that identity. But it’s not that simple, of course. Layle can’t speak for all autistic people, doesn’t pretend to, and if you expect this to be a general crash course in autism, look elsewhere. Although there are some basic definitions and facts sprinkled throughout, this book is a memoir first—it just happens to be a memoir by an Actually Autistic person.
And that, in my opinion, is a good enough reason to pick it up. Layle’s unrelenting honesty, the way she matter-of-factly links her struggles to her suicide ideation and attempts, is a good enough reason to keep reading to the end. Because ultimately this is a book about someone trying to come to terms with the fact that the world was not built for them—and the people for whom it was built have no idea just how different things seem the people on the outside. Sometimes bemused, sometimes distraught, sometimes nonchalant, Layle’s memories reveal the kaleidoscope of rich, wonderful, uplifting, terrifying truths that accompany being a young autistic person coming of age in the 2010s and navigating adulthood in the 2020s.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.
Paige Layle is a twenty-three-year-old from Ontario, Canada—the same province as me, and a fact I only realized when I was well into the book and noticed she was using a lot of Canadian school terms, like saying “Grade 3” instead of “third grade,” and then she mentioned Toronto, and I was like, “CANADIAN. WE HAVE A CANADIAN HERE. FROM ONTARIO LIKE ME.” Sorry, I get unreasonably excited when unexpected Ontarians show up in my to-read list. Anyway, Layle is quite young to write a memoir, but they are passionate about being an autism communicator. Layle takes us chronologically through their life, sharing how they struggled through early childhood and adolescence. She expected her autism diagnosis, received at fifteen, to change everything and was surprised when it didn’t—but it allowed her to better express her needs, work on her relationship with her mom, and figure out what she wanted after high school.
Autism as a condition is drastically misunderstood. At its core, But Everyone Feels This Way is a first-person account of “discovering” autism. It has two major audiences: allistic people like myself who want to learn more about autistic people’s experiences, and young, neurodivergent people who might be autistic and not realize it. For that latter group, I hope some of them find this book illuminating.
Women in particular are underrepresented among autism diagnoses. This compounds misunderstandings about what it means to be autistic, what “#ActuallyAutistic” looks like, as the hashtag might say. I briefly perused Layle’s Instagram as I prepared to write this review, and I noticed a disturbing trend of comments like so: “You aren’t autistic, stop pretending. If you were autistic you wouldn’t be able to talk to us like this.” Now, it’s no surprise that the comments are a toxic trashfire. Still, I think these comments represent an unwillingness among the public to believe that autistic people can be verbal, can communicate with grace and elegance, can have complex and nuanced takes on things. This comes down to stereotypes—but I’d argue it’s also symptom of insecurity among neurotypical and allistic people who are invested in the idea that autism is something to be feared rather than embraced, at best tolerated as opposed to accepted and even celebrated. It’s these people whom Layle hopes to disarm, I think.
But Everyone Feels This Way is quite raw and pointed. While some will call Layle’s style simplistic, there is a difference between simplistic and simple, and Layle’s writing is the latter. It’s clear, and it’s honest—allistic readers are just used to people not saying exactly what they mean, engaging in ellipsis, etc. While I won’t litigate the legitimacy of Layle’s autism, let me say that Layle’s writing is, to me, one of the clearest indicators that they are autistic. It’s not bad writing; it’s just different from the range of styles that tend to be drummed into neurotypical writers—and if that isn’t your thing, cool, but I think you would be missing out.
What I found most compelling about this book is how Layle builds, layer by layer, our understanding of her experience of autism as she moves through the each year of her life. I like to think I had a good handle on general facts about autism, many of which Layle shares in various fact-box sidebars throughout the book. However, there is a difference between holding a mental list of autistic traits in my head and actually hearing an autistic person describe how she embodies and experiences those traits on a daily basis. In this way, this book serves its primary purpose as a memoir: to build a richer empathy for autistic life than a work of more general reference nonfiction could ever achieve.
As a teacher, I found the chapters in which Layle is in high school very helpful and challenging. She describes in detail the process of getting an IEP, an individual education plan (this is the point where I realized she’s in Ontario) and how some teachers would abide by this plan while others would … not. This doesn’t surprise met, but it does sadden me. I would like more Ontario high school teachers to read this book so they can hear directly from an autistic person why the accommodations in an IEP are not niceties, not wants, but needs.
The problem, Layle makes clear here, is not Layle themself. It’s that we built our society for neurotypical people, so neurodivergent people are often at a disadvantage in meeting expectations. School is difficult because you need to be quiet, sit still, not challenge your teacher’s authority or expertise even if you’re confused by how they are teaching you, etc. Neurotypical people, and most allistic, neurodivergent people like myself, learn how to play the game well enough to mostly fit in. (In my case, for example, I can relate to a lot of Layle’s experience in terms of being highly intelligent and academically motivated while not very socially involved. However, I didn’t experience her struggles to understand her teachers’ or peers’ emotions and motivations, so I had an easier time figuring out “how to behave” in high school. This is the privilege of an allistic brain.)
Ironically, for a book with a subtitle all about the diagnosis itself, this aspect of the book seems to be the least well-developed. I thought it was really interesting how Layle admits to disappointment that their diagnosis did not magically fix how people relate to them—there is a particular scene between Layle and their former best friend that highlights this keenly. I wish Layle had gone more into this side of things, but instead she focuses more on how the diagnosis changed her family dynamic.
This isn’t a perfect book, and of course it behoves me to observe that Layle in many ways fits the mould of influencer: young, white, woman. But Everyone Feels This Way runs the risk of being elevated into some universal tale of autistic experience because we would like it to be that simple. We like it when we can read one book about something and say we know about that identity. But it’s not that simple, of course. Layle can’t speak for all autistic people, doesn’t pretend to, and if you expect this to be a general crash course in autism, look elsewhere. Although there are some basic definitions and facts sprinkled throughout, this book is a memoir first—it just happens to be a memoir by an Actually Autistic person.
And that, in my opinion, is a good enough reason to pick it up. Layle’s unrelenting honesty, the way she matter-of-factly links her struggles to her suicide ideation and attempts, is a good enough reason to keep reading to the end. Because ultimately this is a book about someone trying to come to terms with the fact that the world was not built for them—and the people for whom it was built have no idea just how different things seem the people on the outside. Sometimes bemused, sometimes distraught, sometimes nonchalant, Layle’s memories reveal the kaleidoscope of rich, wonderful, uplifting, terrifying truths that accompany being a young autistic person coming of age in the 2010s and navigating adulthood in the 2020s.
Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.