Review: Too Like the Lightning

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received a free e-galley of this book via NetGalley.

How many books do you get in your life that make you sit in a stunned daze then cry softly because they are such a beautiful, moving piece of art that's now over, and to which you will constantly compare every book you read until you come across another book that moves you so strongly?

Well, add one more to my pile.

This is a book I've been waiting for since the cover reveal months ago. I put its release date in my calendar, I was so intrigued by the gorgeous cover art and the wonderfully strange synopsis. I was lucky enough to get an ARC from NetGalley but I'm probably going to go out and buy it anyway, because this is something I want to own and lend and proselytize, I need to spread the word of this Good Book.

So what makes this so good? So many things. The worldbuilding is phenomenal. This is Earth 400 years from now, recognizable but foreign in the same way that Earth 400 years ago is to us. Our history - both the history we are familiar with now and the history we're writing for people 400 years from now - is woven into the fabric of the world. Some threads are predictable, and some aren't. We finally get flying cars and it changes the world in a surprising, sensible, fundamental way: no two locations on Earth are more than a few hours from each other. It's a change that seems obvious - yes, that's exactly how that would happen! - now that it's pointed out (a feeling I got about so many things in this story). The effects of these changes are much more subtle, and it was a joy discovering the fascinating ripple effects that turn up in unexpected places (the flying cars change the shape of the family unit and government) and interact so cleverly with each other.

The voice of the story, Mycroft Canner, is like a song stuck in my head. He is a criminal, but also a genius and a charmer, and his frequent eloquent, rambling asides are as confusing as they are illuminating. He is the culmination of the unreliable narrator. He is writing or maybe telling this story for posterity and he tries to explain to the reader the way things are in his time, but he is a poor example of a creature of his time. He introduces us to a fantastically large, diverse cast of power players in the economic, political, and artistic spheres.

The plot. Oh man, the plot. I don't want to get into what happens (I know I'll regret this in December when I'm prepping to read book two) because, well, a lot happens. Let me just say that every action of this story has impact, every moment has meaning, and while it starts out fairly slow (thank god, because the layers of culture and character and world needed to understand the plot can nearly drown you), it picks up quickly. It's as if I was in a giant house and just when I had explored the main building, new doors opened up. But not even like that - more like new rooms slammed from the sky, fully formed and fully compatible with what I knew but completely new and different.

Even with all of those great elements, I think what made me love this book was that it wasn't perfect. About a third of the way through I almost gave up. The world is chaotic - just familiar enough to lure you into assumptions but different enough to overturn them all, leaving you knowing less than you knew before. The international power dynamics of the world didn't add up. Gender was supposed to be fairly unmarked but so many characters supposedly luxuriated in extravagant gender performance. Many small things (for example, a tree that grows dozens of kinds of fruit in a home kitchen) feel too wonderful to ever exist, and I felt somehow wronged by their inclusion, even though I loved them. But this is an optimistic world, so those marvels can be marvelous. I pushed through, and I'm glad I did. I underestimated how deep the planning of the story runs, and everything paid off in the end.

This is magical, powerful, strange, and smart. Read it if you like well-written, well-plotted, engrossing SF.

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Reviewing for "Bounding Into Comics"

This week, I started reviewing comics for Bounding Into Comics. Check out my review of Descender, Vol. 2, and keep an eye on my page for more reviews!

Review: Lagoon

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I listened to "Lagoon" in audiobook format and not only was it a greatly entertaining experience, I suspect it might also be the best way for Western, white audiences to experience this book. Because, and this shouldn't have been a surprise to me since the book is set in Nigeria, all of the actors are either Nigerian or are very comfortable using Nigerian accents. It's something I wouldn't have thought much about if I were reading it visually, but fundamentally shaped the story for me when listening.

Adaora, Anthony, and Agu all happen to be on a beach in Lagos, Nigeria when a massive sonic boom occurs, followed by a wave that pulls them all into the ocean. Aliens have landed in the water, and they are particularly interested in these three. Adoara is worried that it may be because she is what her husband accuses her of being: a marine witch. She got into a fight with her husband and accidentally held him to the floor, seemingly by magic. Similarly, Agu almost killed a man with one punch. And Anthony knows that his songs draw on the power of the Earth.

The aliens can take on whatever form they like. They're mostly impervious to harm. And they come in peace, but Nigeria doesn't quite believe that. And this story is as much about Nigeria as it is about the aliens; Okorafor shows us Nigeria are by showing us their varied reactions to First Contact. A Christian priest decries Adaora and the alien she shelters; an LGBT group parades in the street next to the priest's followers; a group of young men scheme to kidnap the alien; a prostitute desperately resents the aliens and violently acts out. Even the city (and its gods) gets in on the action. The main highway is the home of the Bone Eater and feeds off the accidents and chaos caused by the aliens. Under Nigeria, the spider sits and spins the story of her people. Okorafor's incorporation of mythology, of every class from prostitutes to President, of native-born Nigerians to Black Americans, is chaotic, yes, but exciting and surprising in its activity.

Parts of the story didn't click for me, at the time, because the sheer number of voices was chaotic and I wasn't sure which characters I should invest in, which people I could expect to be important. But in retrospect I consider that a strength, because every voice is important, and that chaos is the human response to change. I do think it weakened the sense of plot, and it didn't give the story the opportunity to explore the aliens as a species, or the transforming things they said to Anthony, or the long-term impact on the lives of Adaora, Agu, and Anthony. I know that none of those things are the point, but they're still questions I wanted to see addressed (or would like to read about in the future!).

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Review: Super Extra Grande

Super Extra Grande by Yoss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I received an e-galley copy of this book from Edelweiss and Restless Books.

I was super extra excited to read this because Restless Books' last Yoss translation, "A Planet for Rent," was one of the best books I read last year. "Super Extra Grande" isn't quite up there, but it has different strengths. It doesn't have the emotional teeth as "Planet," instead showing off Yoss's comedy chops by dialing up the absurdity and dispensing with the colonialism allegory. Yoss knows how to build a functional, coherent SF world without going on at length. His universes are brightly colored with unusual (but logically consistent) working parts - think a world of Lego or K'nex.

Dr. Jan Amos Sangan Dongo (whose last name is a play on words that essentially means 'big') is a veterinarian - in space! He specializes in "super extra grande" creatures, giants from all planets. When we meet him, he's literally wading through shit as he walks through the bowels of a giant space whale. He's huge himself, for a human, and his previous two assistants (both beautiful women, for their species, who he had to fire because they were in love with him) were also incredibly tall. Sangan Dongo can't do anything small.

The book gets off to a slow start. Sangan Dongo wades through shit for a good third of the book, with many asides and reveries that give the reader background on this world. We learn that Spanglish is the universal human language. We learn that there are seven spacefaring species who all happened to discover interstellar travel at the same time. We learn that Sangan Dongo has always had an affinity for larger creatures - because in veterinary school, his size was a hindrance when working with the smaller animals - and the only giant species he has never worked with are laketons (so named because the single-celled organisms look like large lakes, and weigh tons). Once he gets out of the belly of the beast, he's sent into the belly of the beast again - to rescue his assistants, who have crash-landed (together!) on the home planet of the laketons. The plot wraps up as quickly as the beginning was slow, but altogether, it's a good ride. As I said before, the book is a riot, and it's a quick read, so if you have the chance to pick it up, do!

Personally, as a linguist who's currently in a lab focusing on bilingualism and code-switching, I'm fascinated by Yoss's (and the translator's) idea of what Spanglish will be in the future. I'd be really interested in seeing the changes Frye made in translation - what words did he switch from Spanish to English, and vice versa? Did he change the syntax? Because honestly, I don't know if I would've understood huge patches of the story if I didn't know Spanish, but it's also not in line with general patterns of Spanish-English codeswitching. One easy example: If you switch from Spanish to English in the middle of a determiner-noun pair, the determiner will almost always be masculine - you'll say "el fork" or "el spoon," never "la fork" or "la spoon," even though fork is masculine and spoon is feminine in Spanish. But "la (English noun)" occurs a lot here. So what does this sound like in the original Spanish to native Spanish speakers - like a natural extension of Spanish/English contact, or like some strange futuristic evolution of the two languages?

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Review: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My boyfriend has been trying to get me to read Erdrich for a year now. I don't know why I didn't listen to him earlier, because Erdrich has everything I could possibly want on my author wishlist: she's a woman writing magical realism from the perspective of a minority who often incorporates gender issues into her stories and comes highly regarded as a master of prose. And is she ever! This is easily the best book I've read so far this year in terms of beauty of prose and emotional power of the story.

"The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse" is a strange place to start with Erdrich, though. From what I understand, many of Erdrich's novels take place in an Ojibwe (Native American) community in North Dakota, so characters appear and re-appear in different novels. And this novel revolves around a huge spoiler for the rest of those novels, and you can't talk about the book without talking about this reveal, so here goes: the white priest for the community is a woman, and has been masquerading as a man (by the end of her/his life) for about 70 years.

Father Damien Modeste, also known as Agnes, has been writing to the Pope since he became a priest, and finally, it seems, the Pope has answered as Modeste nears the end of his life. A young priest has come to investigate the miracles of Sister Leopolda, an Ojibwe woman who became a Catholic nun (and often the subject of Modeste's letters), and consider her for canonization.

Modeste is old, long-winded, and absent-minded, so the young priest finds his job surprisingly difficult. Modeste alternately rambles about moments in his life and becomes lost in nostalgic reminiscence, and the reader is privy to it all. He remembers the love he has always had for both God and music, looks fondly on his life prior to the priesthood, considers his changing relationship to religion as he becomes integrated in the Ojibwe community.

I say "he" because Erdrich has cast Modeste as a character who is comfortable with ambiguity. He is perfectly at home entertaining two conflicting ideas and making a whole from those disparate parts without destroying or betraying either. This is true for his gender and his religion. There are moments where Modeste is a man, and he is a he; there are moments when Agnes is a woman, and she is a she. Both exist within the character, and each comes through in varying degrees at varying moments, and Agnes/Modeste is not bothered by it at all. Agnes grew up Catholic and maintains that love for God throughout her life, and as she becomes Modeste, she incorporates Ojibwe beliefs into her Catholicism (and converts Ojibwe by incorporating Catholicism into their existing beliefs).

Erdrich has mastered elegant nuance of character, of ideology. Her imagery is enchanting; the story is full of descriptions of nature and characters that are beautifully striking. Novels are often described as tapestries and I think that description is nowhere more fitting than with Erdrich - this book is a warmly hand-woven tapestry carefully made and illustrated with an expert's detailing, but still full of charm and heart. It evokes a natural garden, lovingly planted but allowed to grow almost wild with only a touch of carefully-placed cultivation and love. Read this, or some other Erdrich book, if you want to be woven into that tapestry and grow in that garden and in the end be wrenched out of it and it hurts to leave but you can see the beautiful whole.

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Review: On a Red Station, Drifting

On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novella pairs well with two books I've read and reviewed recently - "The Traitor Baru Cormorant" and "The Winged Histories." All are focused on women (and generally women of color) in a setting with colonial or imperialist elements, and are concerned with navigating power in both interpersonal/familial and political contexts. "On a Red Station, Drifting" is more about family than diplomacy, but both threads are still there. This is one of my favorite kinds of stories to read and I'm lucky to have read three that are so delightful and so different in such a short period of time.

My only qualm with "On a Red Station, Drifting" is that it isn't longer. I've read many interviews with Aliette de Bodard, I've read some of her short stories before in various anthologies, and I've certainly heard this story in particular praised many times. But somehow I didn't retain that it's a novella, not a novel. It didn't occur to me until I was about halfway through and thought, "Hm, things are coming to a head way sooner than expected..." at which point I checked my progress on my ereader. Anyway, the story is set in what she calls her Xuya universe, and while there's no longer work set in that continuity there are a host of short stories (one of which ended "The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women," which I read last year). I'm sure I'll be reviewing one of those shortly.

De Bodard's stories focus on family, especially in the Xuya universe where many people live with neural implants containing the consciousnesses of their ancestors. In Red Station, Quyen flees her Imperial post when rebels attack and travels to Prosper Station, where she has distant relatives. She does not hit it off with Linh, the woman who runs the station. Quyen is an academic (and recently wrote a treatise denouncing the Emperor who would let her planet fall to rebels) and a privileged success story of the meritocratic system of the Empire; Linh is a home-making wife who has nothing but her family, and many of the more prestigious family members have left for war and have yet to return.

The conflict between these two women, the conflict between family and duty, the conflict between duty to family and personal dislike, are the heart of the story. Linh is alone, and while she proudly asserts herself as the one keeping the station together, we know she doubts she can keep the station going much longer by herself. She tells the sentient AI-cyborg creature that has run the station for hundreds of years that she can't do it alone; she mourns her family's absence; she resents Quyen because she assumes Quyen thinks of her as a lesser spouse. Quyen is resentful, too; she resents that Linh won't give her a position that will use her skills, that she won't accept Quyen's help with family or station matters.

It's a beautiful, elegantly written story. The characters are compelling, and the story builds to such a satisfyingly character-driven conclusion. I'm sorry it's not longer, and I'd love to read more in this universe.

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Review: Sex Criminals, Vol. 1: One Weird Trick

Sex Criminals, Vol. 1: One Weird Trick by Matt Fraction
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Sex Criminals" was a disappointment from beginning to end. Matt Fraction and Christian Ward created ODY-C, which I enjoyed quite a bit, and they've received rave reviews for Sex Criminals, so I'll admit my expectations were high, but the bar would've had to be pretty low for me to love this. On the upside, it was pretty funny, and I like its frankness and its attempt to speak to the awkwardness and shame attached to sex (especially for adolescents).

Right away I could tell the art wasn't for me. The character designs are boring and lack style, and it was hard for me to tell characters apart. The effects they use for "The Quiet" or "Cumworld," as they call it, are tacky and superficial. In general, the art is meh at best and feels cheap at worst.

Also confusing is the general story format and layout. There are at least three, maybe four storylines spread throughout time, and it's hard to tell which one is happening at any given time. When the main female character described her late teen years, it took me a while to understand it wasn't happening in the present, because she looked the same and there was no difference in the artwork to indicate it. This happens repeatedly throughout the novel, and didn't ever really get better.

Another device that didn't work for me, related to the above, is the breaking-the-fourth-wall element. The main character speaks to the reader directly. She narrates her life, with several panels devoted to her speaking 'face-to-face' with the reader (and shows up, as an adult, in scenes from her childhood). But this only happens occasionally, and wanes as the story continues, until I'm not sure why they included it at all because it only made the beginning more confusing. And again, if they had clearly demarcated with the art what was happening and when, this wouldn't have been an obstacle. I wish they had done something with the art to separate either the narrative voice from the story or the different eras from each other. Even using a larger panel at each transition to clearly establish setting. Or anything to give the reader a sense of time, location, and weight.

The story premise is ridiculous, and I wish they had taken that absurdity and run with it, because there are hints of the silly hilarity that could have ensued. The real Cumworld (a sex shop they frequent) always has laugh-out-loud worthy videos and products. (My favorite porn section: "Obamacore - socialist/medical themed.") There are innumerable puns. Some of the characters are off-the-wall, but in the fairly grounded and serious setting, all these wild elements feel tonally out of place. I get that the story is, at its core, about the relationship between these two people, but it's also a story about people who can stop time when they have sex! And there's a sex-world police force! You can keep the serious, grounded characters and still have a zany, strange world, but I think the overall effect here is that there are some really weird, strange things that are played down or played straight when they should've been played up. It's a crazy world, but no one in the story treats it that way.

As I mentioned earlier, I like the cheeky humor throughout, and I do appreciate the attempt at an allegory for teenage sexual awakening. But the latter feels pretty obvious and unsubtle, so while I like the idea behind it, it didn't stick the landing with me.

Either way, it's not that bad. I was entertained. I just don't think it was very good, and I certainly don't have any desire to read any further.

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