The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (Tor Books, 2018)
★★★★★
Warning: half review, half tinfoil. (spoilers ahead, including for The Traitor Baru Cormorant)
Monster feels much rougher than Traitor, and uneven between chapters. Baru in the first few pages goes from putting-on-my-ruthless-face to childish squeaking. She spends much of the rest of the book drinking and flaunting her sexuality, and though I understand she's setting out beyond reach of Falcrest, as well as headed toward her own dark night of the soul, it feels out of character for how buttoned-up and disciplined she was in Traitor. (But maybe such is the nature of her injury? Driving her to be more like—or to grapple with an incarnation of—the late Tain Hu?)
The other characters all feel like they could've used more flesh on the bones; with so many people moving on and off the page, and minus a single focal point like Hu, it's hard to fully believe Baru (mis)trusting others or others (mis)trusting her. We simply don't get enough time with them. Most egregiously: Baru, Iraji, and Tau manage to reveal a bunch of shared connections before Cheetah sinks with all of them inside. What a convenient timing puzzle—better than LinkedIn!
Dickinson continues to be at his best when injecting biological and sociological phenomena that have real-world precedent. Race and gender/sexuality dynamics obviously drove the first book and are embiggened herein. But even throwaway flavor like the mother-of-worms parasite colony (~Guinea worms), Baru's detection of the forged accounts (~Benford's Law): while they sometimes feel shoehorned-in, by and large the frequent smatterings of truth mean I can't always pick out where the fantasy begins. That scaffolding grants the world texture, patina; and grit when you bite in.
God, I LOVED the world! I loved that zooming out revealed new known quantities but also several what-the-fuck mysteries (and so much in between). Will we get to see Zawam Asu, the southernmost outpost of the world, where Tau's father disappeared and whales gather for their quorums? Will we see the mountain on the eastern supercontinent where the lightning never stops, and where the Storm Corps were attacked by... something? Will we see the ruined and plague-blasted Camou Interval? Will Baru circumnavigate the world?! I'm holding out hope.
In the end, Baru's journey isn't so much a quest as a protracted escape, and the string of clues she follows is tenuous at best. But it simply doesn't matter: every plot zag is compelling, whether for tension or intrigue or horror. And so I'll gladly follow Baru wherever she goes. I mean, fucking uranium cancer sorcerers, amirite?
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Some still outstanding questions/thoughts/theories:
- The man with the iron circlet: in Traitor, Baru asks Tain Hu where she learned to fight. Hu replies in the forest. Baru says: "You've killed?" Hu says "the man in the iron circlet." Baru brushes it off as some kind of lingo. In Monster, Yawa notes Hu fought and killed the Pretender-King Kubarycz—so I'm assuming the man in the iron circlet refers to him, a Stakhi—but one not previously discussed that I remember. What was his significance to Hu and Baru's collaboration?
- If Aminata's letter from Hu was legitimate, then Hu did not have a will, so what was in the "will" Apparitor had and who wrote it?
- Tain Shir's "I get to keep Tain Hu" seems to reinforce the idea there's something physical of Hu embedded in Baru (or perhaps elsewhere).
- Farrier has been to Zawam Asu (not to mention the whole whale thing), so my money's on at least seeing that place, and definitely the jungle on the way.
- What is that man's terrible secret? If it has to do with his supposed taste in Oriati women, I'll be disappointed.
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Gnomon by Nick Harkaway (William Heinemann, 2017)
★★★★☆
The first half of this book was stunning. I felt like it was written just for me. It combined the intertwingled folios of Cloud Atlas, the ludic spelunking and indeed Ludovician of The Raw Shark Texts (though let's give credit to Calvino, and Barthes whom Harkaway would call Calvino's imitator), and the speculative architectural zags of BLDGBLOG or Ballard. It evolved the noosphere/reification premise that so tickled me in Harkaway's earlier The Gone-Away World. It sets all this in an ostensibly incorruptible surveillance state that harbors all manner of too-timely dystopia: systemic injustice, what-if-phones-but-too-much, and at least one (thankfully unsympathetic) fascist antagonist.
I really hoped it wouldn't disappoint. But somewhere around the 2/3 mark, it falls down into pretty bizarre territory, and I'm not sure it recovers. Stepping back, the conclusions the protagonist draws throughout the book feel mostly unearned (intentionally?), and the dreamlike nature of it all means everything is permissible / none of the stakes are meaningful. Given the Kyriakos/Stella relationship, the comparison to The Raw Shark Texts is perhaps too close for comfort (also intentionally?)—though in any case I feel the former made the same point about ~literature as author's mind connecting to reader's mind~ more elegantly. My final peeve bears mentioning: unlike, say, in Kushiel's Dart, here the sex is prurient, or at the very least gratuitous. I got tired of it early on, and it doesn't let up.
Up and down on this one, but 4 stars for the tremendous positives.
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Circe by Madeline Miller (Little, Brown and Company, 2018)
★★★★★
I savored every sparse, gorgeous sentence of this story about a woman coming into herself. Miller weaves several classics into a tapestry I found compelling and ultimately even transformative.
“Where are the rest of your fellows?” I said to her. “I would have them here too.”
She looked at me with pale eyes. I am enough.
I highlighted many passages in this book, but this line from the wolf Arcturos brought me to tears. The what and when of it, the bare simplicity, the three words I can so rarely speak for myself.
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Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss (HarperBusiness, 2016)
★★★★★
Advanced empathy judo on steroids.
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Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong (Copper Canyon Press, 2016)
★★★☆☆
Raw. Sometimes fierce, sometimes immature. Sometimes beautiful for it. Like an as-yet-unaged Li-Young Lee. I appreciate it exists and hope the people who need to read it, do.
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Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey (Tor Fantasy, 2003)
★★★★★
I unexpectedly, unabashedly loved this. Phèdre's voice was compelling to read: she's a clever and skillful courtesan-spy, and when she accurately names the emotions that flicker over others' faces, it's oh-so-satisfying to see her proven right. But she's also willful, impudent, and prideful—and you just can't wait to see how the other shoe is going to drop. Since the story is told in retrospect, there's lots of "if I had known then...", but there are also moments where her canny observations are sharpened, made more biting, for her knowledge of future events. I enjoyed that sex was used not in a prurient way, but to further the plot and to demonstrate many possible flavors of deep emotional connection. I found the results often beautiful, and occasionally heartwrenching.
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The Power by Naomi Alderman (Little, Brown and Company, 2017)
★★★★★
Bombed through this book in one day. Tightly plotted and paced.
I was engaged by all the characters' storylines, but especially Tunde's. When his POV was turned on moments of joy and freedom in the post-power world, I felt deeply touched, and seeing places where sex and the power entangled was arousing (and later conflicting). Alderman quickly establishes him as a bright, sympathetic character who loves and stands with women. However, the sometimes cruel ways she tests his capacities feel unworthy of him: his arc fits-and-starts, and eventually falls flat.
On the other hand, I can see how those same tests serve her larger points—about how "smashed" structures creep back in, and what people will do simply because they can. Those larger points, especially as presented in the framework of the faux-historical novel, felt very like A Canticle for Leibowitz. But where the former hits only a single tone with its wrapping message, Alderman zags into satire, and delivers perfectly. I have to admit that
Well played, Naomi Alderman. Well played.
A few more parting thoughts: I loved that Eve and Roxy could've just been "brains and brawn," but were each so much more. I loved seeing all the variations on how women used the power—playful, restrained, erratic, brutal—and the descriptions of their physiologies (as observed by themselves [e.g., Margot] or by others). I loved the insecurity and self-discovery from "abnormal" women and men, though I think Jos gets appallingly short shrift. I loved all the instances of women, alone or together, choosing a different way.
FIVE FUCKING STARS.
P.S. It was pretty cool to find out that Naomi Alderman was the lead writer for Perplex City, since I was legit obsessed with it back in 2006. Whatup leitmarks.
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Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf Press, 2017)
★★☆☆☆
Was jazzed for this collection after reading "The Husband Stitch," but the abrupt, unworked-feeling end that characterizes that story is symptomatic in her others. Not everything needs to end with a bang; still, despite the keen subject matter, these stories seemed to fall short of realizing their potential. As a result, the whole collection felt very "debut."
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Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books, 2017)
★★★☆☆
About 1000 pages of poorly-written drudgery for 200 pages of payoff. In the beginning I couldn't remember anything from Words of Radiance, so it was tough to care about characters' plights. Toward the end I felt invested again (measuring by how much time I spent on Coppermind). But all throughout the book I'd been complaining about (and counting) the "literally"s, and after the barn-burning final battle he just had to drop one last L-bomb. So, on balance? Giving up on this series out of spite. Probably.
Positives:
Dalinar's flashbacks range from mediocre to enjoyable, but I was blown away by his ending. Mild spoiler:
Sanderson is a great painter of cultures. The international tensions here finally begin to manifest the scope of the (unequivocally epic) world.
Taravangian continues to terrify/draw pathos. Possibly my favorite character.
The idea that we're only seeing part of any given spren is neat (and spooky as all hell).
Negatives:
The dialogue sucks. His women are especially poor.
Kaladin's initial scouting mission was the most interesting part of his story.
I can't decide if Shadesmar just isn't that interesting (the land is water, folks, and our shadows point the wrong way), or if it's the shallowness of the encounter that sells it short. Either way, the longest camping trip is now the Longest Camping Trip (see below).
Three begrudging stars.
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La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017)
★★☆☆☆
Listened to this on audiobook over the course of several long drives/bus rides. It was slow going to start and, sadly, lacked much of the magic of the His Dark Materials series.
The second half, during which the main characters were harried by a not especially compelling (and mostly just gross) villain, felt a lot like Life of Pi or The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: moving from island to disjointed island, albeit sometimes dreamily. There were powerful moments, but it otherwise seemed like filler; I was unfavorably reminded of the "longest camping trip" from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I liked the Noah's Ark conceit, but it didn't redeem the book.
Alice is reasonably developed, but has so little agency compared to Malcolm. And it's frustrating that
And finally, I get what Philip Pullman is trying to say about original sin and the joys of adolescent love, but it's uncomfortable to read about 11-year-old Malcolm's burgeoning feelings for her. I never liked, nor believed, the Lyra/Will romance in His Dark Materials, either.
Two stars for briefly inhabiting a world of dæmons, anbaric light, and chocolatl again.
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The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit, 2017)
★★★☆☆
I'm in the minority here, but I found this book pretty disappointing. I enjoyed Hoa's backstory and the way the characters wrestled with whether or how to perpetuate injustices, and I thought the character arcs resolved nicely. But overall, I was much more enamored with the world-building of the first and second books (the Fulcrum, orogeny) and the mysteries of who and how than the actual answers to those questions, the handwavey life-magic, or the grander Earth/humanity conflict and Moon...quest.
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The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi (Tor Books, 2014)
★★☆☆☆
I was almost completely unengaged while reading this (not helped by the intervening time since I read The Fractal Prince). Jean is boring. Mieli is boring. The zoku are boring. The All-D (terrible name) is boring. (I have never been a fan of Mieli's character, but she really gets short shrift this book with a totally nonsensical romance.)
Choice quotes from other reviews:
"His universe is so mind-bending that things wind up being a bit impressionistic -- you can recall who's an antagonist, but how are you supposed to remember a narrative when you're rarely even sure if an event is happening in physical space or one of several types of simulations? Or if the people it's happening to are people or fragments of them? ... The All-Defector, in particular--the book's chief villain--completely failed to convey menace."
"I'll never know what happened to that lovable rogue Jean, and I don't care because by now he is not lovable, not a rogue, not charismatic, not even interesting. I even know that he's going to steal one of Saturn's rings later in the book and I Still Don't Care."
"The idea of a society in this timeframe having its roots so firmly entrenched in gaming culture circa 2006 stretches suspension of disbelief way past breaking point. Just a decade later, that culture has contracted into a much smaller niche."
This needed developmental editing and copyediting. Barely avoids 1 star due to a couple instances of emotional poignance and a cool branching simulation scene near the end.
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More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert (Thorntree Press, 2014)
★★★★★
Edit 9/8/2019: I've become aware that Franklin Veaux’s ex-partners (including his co-author Eve Rickerts) have spoken out against him for the harm he’s caused. See https://polyamory-metoo.com/ and https://medium.com/@fv.survivor.pod/on-light-and-shadow-polyamorys-metoo-411e0275c2fe for more information.
A great read. Contains guidelines on how to conduct open and honest communication, set boundaries and negotiate agreements, and generally steer towards courage and vulnerability—guidelines that I imagine would be helpful for anyone (poly or otherwise) seeking to improve the way they approach intimacy and relationships. I enjoyed the authors' continual focus on trust, compassion, and gratitude as competencies to prioritize and practice. Verbose, sometimes to the point of redundancy, but written in an accessible way and peppered with anecdotes, so the pages went by quickly.