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Tag: Books I Liked

Review: Wardenclyffe by Lloyd Hall (Out 10/1/21)

Published by J. Z. Kelley on September 25, 2021
Cover of Wardenclyffe by Lloyd Hall

Genre: Science fiction
Audience: MG/YA
Series?: Wardenclyffe series

Rating: Liked it

For fans of: Star Trek’s Data, adventure games, the “It was earth the whole time!” trope

Achievement unlocked: I received my very first physical review copy of a book earlier this summer.

eARCs (eBooks for review) seem to be the standard for blogs like mine, and I get why. They’re much cheaper for publishers to manufacture and distribute, and reviewers can’t resell them (a controversial practice I’m not going to weigh in on right now). People with larger platforms get to require physical books for review. For the most part, I’m just happy to be invited to the party, but I was very excited to get this offer.

I was even more excited to receive the book! I can’t say for certain, but I’m guessing most physical review copies don’t come packaged so beautifully, with coordinated tissue paper and thank-you notes:

How I received Wardenclyffe: Wrapped in purple tissue paper with a gold sticker and a hand-written thank you note.

The author and publisher of Wardenclyffe, Lloyd Hall, has a fashion and costume design background, and it shows. Even discounting the gorgeous packaging, which I assume retailers like Target won’t include, the book itself is a work of art. The satiny, dark purple hardback and matching dust cover were illustrated by Abigail Spence. You can’t tell from the little digital image, but when you hold it in your hand, the drawing almost looks like a linocut. It’s stunning.

Additional illustrations throughout the book by Minna Ollikainen help bring the world of Wardenclyffe to life.

An early illustration from Wardenclyffe shows carnival booths, trees, and banners at the Illumination Festival in the town of Valentine. The image is in black and white, with geometric shapes and patterns reminiscent of mandala designs.
Featuring my latest nail polish love, Femme Fatale’s “You’re Not Even Alive!”

Despite its beauty, I had a tough time getting into this book at first.

We got off to a bad start. Though it remains popular, I’m always put off by the sci-fi trope where characters in futuristic settings talk about weird old artifacts they found that we, the readers, recognize as commonplace in our time:

Mary is behind the counter distributing large containers to the crowd. I look inside the container and see it filled with hundreds of tiny pieces of white material. I approach Mary …

“What is the material you are distributing?” I ask her.

Mary laughs. “It’s food, Bit!”

ANALYSIS — UNKNOWN

“I am unfamiliar with this food,” I tell her.

“Well you’re not completely unfamiliar. You know the corn we grow up in the fields behind the cafe?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Well that’s what this is!”

DATABASE SEARCH — MATCH INCOMPATIBLE

“It does not appear to be the same,” I say. She laughs again.

“No it is, I promise! We just found a new way to cook it,” she explains.

“What method of preparation causes the physical appearance to change?” I ask.

“Well, Bruce found us this old book of recipes. If you take the corn kernels and heat them they do this.”

This happens several times in the first few chapters, and I seriously considered DNF’ing the book because of it.

Another problem I had is the book is written in a style that feels overly simplistic for the intended audience (thirteen- to eighteen-year-olds).

This could be a deliberate stylistic choice. The narrator, Bit, is an android. Though she’s physically stronger than ordinary humans, doesn’t age, and has perfect recall, Bit lacks several basic human traits, including emotions and the capacity to recognize beauty. She’s overly literal and lacks a sense of humor.

It makes sense that her sentences would be short and direct with limited sensory details, but I still struggled with them at first. I barely made it through the disaster that cuts off all power to Valentine and the surrounding towns and Bit’s decision to journey north (for years, if she has to) in search of a scientist she believes may have a solution.

Things changed for me almost as soon as she got out of town. While I struggled to invest in any of Wardenclyffe’s characters, I found the world fascinating and mysterious.

Bit travels through a town called Paradise, where most people spend their days turning power switches on and off to make sure they use the exact same amount of power in the exact same way as they have for generations, and an island called St. Helens, where technology is reviled and melted down for scrap. The people of Paradise believe disasters are the result of breaking tradition. The people of St. Helens believe they’re caused by technology.

I started to think of Wardenclyffe less as a novella and more as an adaptation of an adventure game or a Twilight Zone episode. It gave me serious Myst vibes. That way, the odd, clunky dialogue seems less like a flaw and more like an essential element of the genre.

As Bit travels, we learn more about the history of her world. A catastrophic event referred to as “the flooding” resulted in the loss of most of the human population as well as most human knowledge, so that surviving people can use old technology but they cannot repair it or create new technology. I like that the book doesn’t try to explain what caused the flood or fill in every detail of the world before and after. That kind of granular worldbuilding has to be immaculate, and leaving it vague makes it easier to suspend disbelief.

It wasn’t until Bit reached St. Helens that I realized her world is actually our world. St. Helens is an island in a thermal lake either near or in the crater of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. June, the location of the titular Wardenclyffe lighthouse, is Juneau, Alaska. Paradise is a town in California, and I think Valentine might refer to Valentine Camp, also in California. This is maybe hypocritical, given what I said earlier, but I was delighted by these breadcrumbs and felt very smart for getting them.

Wardenclyffe, if you’re wondering, is not actually a lighthouse in Alaska. It was an “early experimental wireless transmission station” built by in New York Nikola Tesla, later torn down to settle some of his debts. I didn’t know that part in advance. Google told me.

The mysteries of the scientist and what happened to Valentine’s power are tied to the mystery of Bit’s creation and why she has outlasted all the other androids. She finds all the answers she’s looking for near Wardenclyffe, which should make for a satisfying ending. I’m still torn on whether or not it does, though. I think it’s thematically appropriate, but perhaps because I never connected with the characters, I didn’t find it particularly emotionally resonant.

Still, I really enjoyed exploring the world of Wardenclyffe, and I’m intrigued by the possibility of future books. I’d definitely pick up book two if it had a different narrator with a more descriptive voice.

Can you do me a favor?

If you like this review, please like it on Goodreads and maybe follow me there.

More Info

Publisher: Self published
Hardback Page Count: 238

Lloyd Hall is on Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.

You can preorder the book (out October 1) directly from the author’s website.

Review: Plague Birds by Jason Sanford (Out 9/21/21)

Published by J. Z. Kelley on September 11, 2021

Genre: Science fiction
Audience: Adult
Series?: Standalone?

Rating: Liked it

For fans of: Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy and Dreamblood duology, Meyer’s The Host*, Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, weird and unsettling AI stories, creepy children with godlike powers, cross-species friendships, furries

Don’t worry! This isn’t a story about a pandemic. It’s about bloodborne AIs.

It is not possible to write a better introduction this novel than Jason Sanford himself did on his blog:

Plague Birds is set in the far future and is the epic tale of a young woman betrayed into becoming one of her world’s hated judges and executioners, with a killer AI bonded to her very blood. While the novel is science fiction, it reads much like fantasy and is weird and dark.

The far future is a post-apocalyptic blend of low-tech agrarian societies and advanced AI. The young woman is Cristina de Ane, a human-wolf hybrid who lives with her father and their stubborn donkey in Day’s End, a small village of gene-spliced humans. (Yes, I’m reviewing two furry sci-fi books today.)

When she was alive, Crista’s mother told her stories of massive cities and the high-tech moon colony where her ancestors once lived. The other people in Crista’s village consider these stories essentially fairytales. Long before any of them were born, “excessive genetic manipulation” caused a species-wide series of conflicts and disasters collectively known as the collapse, after which:

… a horrible war was fought. Eventually, the three-fold armies won and laid down new rules for our world. The hunters [human-animal hybrids who give into their animal sides and form packs] could live their lives within certain constraints while AIs … would work with isolated villages to return [the rest of] humanity to your original state.

Plague birds are essentially wandering human-AI pairs that maintain the “three-fold balance” by ensuring no crimes go unpunished. By death.

When a plague bird confronts a suspect, they review the suspect’s memories to determine their guilt. The human host then draws their own blood in order to release the AI that lives within them. As a cloud of blood, the AI rains down upon the guilty, sometimes entire villages, killing them with agonizing slowness and creativity.

(This is why the human host is necessary: to temper the AI’s bloodlust as well as its black-and-white approach to justice.)

Obviously, plague birds aren’t exactly popular dinner guests, even though most people agree they’re necessary. Human hosts give up their village, everyone they know, and even their very connection to other humans in order to carry out their plague bird responsibilities. In exchange, their AIs enhance their senses, sustain them without the need for food or (much) sleep, heal even wounds that should be fatal, and greatly extend their lifetimes. Usually.

In the opening chapter of Plague Birds, a plague bird named Derena is attacked, incapacitated, and fatally injured in a way that shouldn’t be possible. She manages to drag herself to Day’s End, where she asks Crista to become her successor.

Crista denies Derena’s request at first because, you know, hero’s journey. However, when Crista realizes it’s the only way to save herself and her village, Crista Accepts The Call, becomes a plague bird, and sets out to find Derena’s attackers. The journey is filled with mysteries, from the plague bird Crista believes killed her mother to a sentient monastery that stores all of humanity’s accumulated knowledge to the powers fighting to maintain or disrupt the three-fold balance.

This is Sanford’s third published entry in the Plague Birds universe, following two acclaimed short stories (which don’t appear to be freely accessible online at this point). His announcement (linked above) includes a few pieces of fan art for the previous works, as well as his sheepish notes that the artists have taken some liberties in their portrayals: His protagonist doesn’t wear “red leather skin-tight suits” or “let her shirt fly up like that.”

I bring up those notes because while he’s right that this is a weird and dark book, his approach is careful and considered. This is a dark, post-apocalyptic book with no slurs. This is a dark, post-apocalyptic book in which children only die offscreen. This is a dark, post-apocalyptic book with no! sexual! violence! (There is intimate partner violence that might resonate painfully with people who have experienced sexual violence, so be aware of that, but I thought it was handled well.)

The other thing I love about this book is the characters. Crista is a brave, nuanced, conflicted character with a strong moral compass that grounds the story. On her travels, she collects a diverse group of friends and allies that slowly coalesce into a strange sort of found family. It’s always satisfying to watch battered, distrustful people grow together.

Also, Plague Birds fits into a trend I’m noticing where writers are allowing themselves to include scenes that resonate thematically but aren’t strictly necessary to advance the plot. It’s hard to be specific without spoilers, so instead I’ll spoil “Mist Songs of Delhi” (Podcastle 640), which is one of my favorite recent short stories.

The story follows Rajaji, a man with the power to decide which dying people’s lives get preserved as divine song as he copes with his mother’s approaching death and her reluctance to have her life “enspooled.” Early in the story, Rajaji meets with a merchant who has complaints about his wife’s enspoolment. This scene could have simply served to explain the enspoolment process and progress the main plot, but after Rajaji’s mother dies and the plot is resolved, we get one more scene, a happy ending for the merchant and his family.

That last scene feels generous, because we live in a world where aspirations of page-to-screen adaptation and advice from Save the Cat have made it almost taboo to include even a single sentence that doesn’t catapult the protagonist toward the next big set piece.

Plague Birds is full of interludes and quiet moments that feel equally generous.

The only thing that doesn’t work about this book for me is how much the final acts depend upon a series of nesting reveals that I completely saw coming. I don’t think endings need to be a total surprise. In fact, I think a twist ending that isn’t telegraphed at all is worse than a predictable ending. However, in this instance, I found the tension really went out of the story when I wasn’t struggling to figure out which characters to believe and which were lying.

Other reviewers felt differently, so take that with a grain of salt. You may be surprised on your first reading, or you may enjoy the ride regardless.

The ending of Plague Birds is satisfying, but not entirely resolved, so I have hope there will be a book two. If there is, I’ll definitely pick it up.

*Hot take but I stand by it.

Can you do me a favor?

If you like this review, please like it on Goodreads and maybe follow me there.

Disclosure

I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

More Info

Publisher: Apex
Paperback Page Count: 274

Jason Sanford is on Twitter. More importantly, he runs the Genre Grapevine Patreon, which is like a whisper network for people in the SFF community without whisper networks. Absolutely check it out and support him there, if you’re able.

You can preorder the book from Apex’s website, where they also have links to (most of) your favorite retailers.

Spoiler-Free Review: And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed (Out 7/20/21)

Published by J. Z. Kelley on July 10, 2021
Cover of And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed

Genre: Science fiction
Audience: Adult
Series?: Standalone

Rating: Liked it

For fans of: The Handmaid’s Tale, Maria Haskins’ “Six Dreams About the Train,” Sarah Pinsker’s “The Court Magician,” Alyssa Wong’s “A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers,” eco sci-fi, poetic literary speculative fiction

In a science-fiction world where only the very wealthy have funerals and everyone else is dumped into the ubiquitous filthy canals when they die, a high end courtesan comes back to life to take vengeance on her wealthy client/murderer. Jewel, the protagonist of And What Can We Offer You Tonight, is the dead girl’s friend. Having not been reanimated with a terrible purpose, Jewel’s concerns are more quotidian: meeting clients, looking after her fellow courtesans, and trying to keep from losing her job as a known associate of the vigilante dead girl haunting the city’s rich.

This is a tough novella to summarize and an even tougher one to review. It’s beautifully written. Despite being 75% run-on sentences, it never feels dense, just poetic. Jewel’s helpless, often directionless ruminating turns her world into an anxious kaleidoscope. The imagery of the courtesans’ elegant House contrasts with the crumbling city outside in a way that makes both of them seem equally alien and lovely, and Mohamed has a way of describing familiar objects like perfume that seems stranger than her futuristic technology. I wanted to highlight entire chapters.

It’s also, objectively, something that should really connect with me. I love class conflict stories and I love female characters that other reviewers call too passive or too violent or too morally impure and I love a run-on sentence. But it didn’t hook me behind the belly button the way I wanted it to, and I can’t really say why.

If I had to guess, I’d say it was probably that Jewel is very Hamlet. She wants everything and nothing. She can’t make up her mind. She acts only when her hand is forced by other, stronger willed characters. Her definite trait is her compulsion to smother her unpretty emotions in order to keep her job and her life (which is saying the same thing twice).

I don’t think this is a flaw in the writing. I mean, Hamlet. If anything, Jewel is too relatable. Her dystopian future world is too real. Like, I am living through real climate disasters and class warfare, I do not have any spare energy for lightly fictionalized versions of them.

On the other hand, reading lightly fictionalized versions of the traumas you’re surviving can be healing. I think that will be the case for a lot of people who read And What Can We Offer You Tonight. After the murders in Atlanta and this summer’s heat wave, a lot of readers are going to find catharsis in the story of a murdered sex worker who traverses a flooded city to kill her killer.

I think this novella will also appeal to a lot of readers who don’t typically like SFF. If Margaret Atwood can say The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t science fiction, then I think I’m justified in saying neither is And What Can We Offer You Tonight. Buy this book for your snobby aunt and tell her it’s Literature that happens to have some lightly futuristic technology and exactly one un-dead girl. 

Disclosure

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

More Info

Publisher: Neon Hemlock Press
Hardback Page Count: 80

Premee Mohamed is delightful on Twitter and on her blog, so check those out.

Preorder the book on Amazon (out July 20).

Review: Queerleaders by M. B. Guel

Published by J. Z. Kelley on June 12, 2021

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Audience: YA
Series?: Standalone

Rating: Liked it

For fans of: But I’m a Cheerleader, Mean Girls, Glee, high school AU fanfiction, Dr. Pepper lip balm

This post contains minor spoilers for Queerleaders.

One quick aside before I never read another negative Goodreads review for a book I like ever again (ha): I wish readers showed as much grace to #OwnVoices writers as we do to (presumed) more privileged writers of similar stories.

Or maybe I just wish the readers with seemingly inexhaustible patience for privileged writers would pick up little indie queer books more often.

The Road To El Dorado gif where the characters say, "Both?" "Both?" "Both." "Both is good." (I don't know who these characters are, sorry!)

The only way I can describe this delightfully campy little novella is But I’m a Cheerleader meets Mean Girls meets Glee. If you like all of those properties, you will like this book. If the satirical homophobia of But I’m a Cheerleader and Mean Girls is too much for you, you will not like this book.

If you’re like, “That sounds great, but I’d literally rather die than listen to another Lea Michele cover,” good news! There is no audio component to this book. I don’t think any of the characters even mention a song in passing, though I could be mistaken about that.

The protagonist of Queerleaders, Mack, is a closeted lesbian in her senior year at a Catholic high school. She has a best friend who goes everywhere with her, the kind of supportive parents you really only see in teen comedies, and a crush on the head cheerleader, Veronica, who she believes is secretly much smarter and kinder than everyone gives her credit for. To prove to her friend that Veronica is a worthy love interest, Mack makes a list of Ronnie’s admirable traits.

Naturally, Veronica’s football player boyfriend finds the list and uses it to out Mack in front of everyone. Mack, who has never been kissed, vows to get revenge by stealing all of the football players’ cheerleader girlfriends.

Clea Duvall as Graham in But I'm a Cheerleader smokes a cigarette in an obnoxiously pink bed.

This is the most fanficy premise I’ve encountered in a professionally published book since Fifty Shades of Grey. I messaged it to my friends. Then I sent them a copy. Then I, in the depths of my Asian Readathon selections and desperate for something simple and sweet, checked it out of the library and stared at it every day until June 1.

Keeping in mind Corey Alexander’s very good essay on what we call fluff, I need to clarify that this book was simple and sweet for me because I have been out of high school for almost 12 years. Some of the bullying Mack experiences—particularly a scene in which someone sets her up for public humiliation, and the fallout from that—comes close enough to what I went through that I might have found it difficult if it were fresher. Then again, these scenes are brief, and Mack gets a satisfying teen romantic comedy ending shortly thereafter. Maybe I would have found it cathartic.

Aside from the premise and the sweet ending, my favorite part of Queerleaders was the romance. So many sapphic romances in YA feel like friendships with extra tragedy. Where’s the tension? Where’s the yearning? Queerleaders delivers on both passion and desire, along with a love interest unlike any I’ve seen in sapphic or straight romance before.

More Info

Publisher: Bella Books
Paperback Page Count: 148

M. B. Guel posts pictures of their adorable pets on Instagram.

You can support your local independent bookstore by buying Queerleaders on Bookshop.org, or grab it on Amazon. Also make sure to preorder their forthcoming novel Internet Famous (December 2021).

Spoiler-Free Review: The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K. S. Villoso

Published by J. Z. Kelley on June 5, 2021
Cover of The Wolf of Oren-Yaro

Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Adult
Series?: Chronicles of the Bitch Queen

Rating: Liked it

For fans of: The Farseer Trilogy, The Unbroken, Ursula Le Guin, family dramas, political fantasy, strong female characters, slow burn romance, Suffering

Asian Readathon is over, and I am only reading cute, fluffy books with lots of kissing and minimal dead cats from now on. I deserve it after The Wolf of Oren-Yaro.

K. S. Villoso’s Filipino-inspired family drama-cum-epic fantasy is narrated by Queen Talyien, possibly the only Strong Female Character to say, “I can take care of myself, thanks,” and then do so. Talyien is the first female ruler of Oren-yaro. She was betrothed at first to the last end of a rival faction in order to end her country’s brutal civil war. Then her worthless garbage truck of a husband fled on their coronation day, abandoning her with their two-year-old son to rule alone.

Talyien believes (and Goodreads reviewers seem to agree) that her primary flaw is continuing to love her husband through the five years of his absence. There’s some textual evidence for this: When her husband asks Talyien to meet him in a hostile and much more powerful neighboring country, she does, and almost everyone she trusts either dies or betrays her as a result.

I disagree. I think Talyien is so strong people fail to notice what’s actually going on with her: She’s traumatized. She’s trying to live up to not only the expectations of an entire fractious nation but also the idealized image of her dead father. Yes, it would be better for her to put her hope and faith in someone (anyone) who deserves it more than her absent husband, but this is what traumatized people often do. We love people who don’t deserve it.

This isn’t a story about a dysfunctional marriage so much as it is about a dysfunctional family, all three generations of it.

It’s also a character study. Yes, there’s (so much) violence and politics and forbidden magic, but all of those things serve to propel Talyien’s journey from queen who’s always been surrounded by servants to beggar wandering the slums in a hostile country to the person she becomes at the end of the series.

I say “series” rather than book because The Wolf of Oren-Yaro feels very much like the beginning of a trilogy rather than a standalone novel. Which makes sense: It was originally self published. K. S. Villoso knew she didn’t need a publisher’s permission to continue.

However, it makes this a difficult book to review. The character arcs are incomplete. The good guys are still in danger, and even the bad guys who have died feel like they might make a comeback. Talyien has seen some of the world outside her (comparatively) sheltered life as a queen and gained some surprising insights about the people she thought she knew best, but it remains to be seen what she’ll do with those insights. There’s no resolution, merely a pause.

I wanted to hold off on writing this review at all until I finished the series, but I decided to push ahead for two reasons. One: It’s hard to post a full-series review on Goodreads and Amazon, where authors need reviews the most. Two: I don’t know when I’ll feel up to returning to Talyien’s world.

The Wolf of Oren-Yaro is beautifully written, but it isn’t a pretty book. There’s very little hope or light. Even the settings are ugly: dank prison cells, barred windows, and slums filled with starving children and dead cats. Talyien is rarely free from threats of rape and murder. Even in her dreams, she’s reliving childhood traumas. She does get to spend a few sweet pages with a normal, loving family, but then she’s immediately back to fighting for her life.

Here’s what I can say at this point: K. S. Villoso is a strong, genre-savvy writer. Despite the sprawling world and the shifting politics, I never felt lost. There is no glossary or cast list at the end of the book because it’s unnecessary. I never needed to flip back to remind myself who a character was or what they wanted.

And they felt real. One of the reasons I’m so reluctant to read The Issekar Falcon right now is how much I cared for Talyien. She’s a flawed, fully developed, and deeply wounded character. I want someone to come along, prove they’re worthy of her trust, and give her a hot meal and a nice long bath. I want her to learn to set boundaries and get comfortable with disappointing her father’s memory. I want her to be okay–and because she’s a flawed, fully developed, and deeply wounded character, I know that won’t happen for at least another book and three quarters.

Asian Readathon

This is my final book for the 2021 Asian Readathon. I’m counting it for challenge 3 (favorite genre)

K. S. Villoso is Filipino Canadian.

Content Warnings

This book is heavy. I never want to try to provide a complete list of all triggers, for fear of missing one, but I didn’t see anyone else talking about the extent of sexual violence in this book. It’s a lot.

The Wolf of Oren-Yaro contains frequent and often detailed threats of rape, human trafficking, verbal descriptions of past rape, and rape on the page.

More Info

Publisher: Orbit
Paperback Page Count: 496

K. S. Villoso is on Twitter and Instagram.

You can support your local independent bookstore by buying The Wolf of Oren-Yaro on Bookshop.org, or grab it on Amazon.

Spoiler-Free Book Review: Thorn by Intisar Khanani

Published by J. Z. Kelley on May 22, 2021

Early in Thorn, Intisar Khanani’s YA fantasy retelling of “Goose Girl,” the protagonist’s talking Horse advises her with the book’s central theme and conflict:

It is rare for someone who wants power to truly deserve it.

Princess Alyrra is patient, gentle, generous, curious, and honest to a fault. After years of abuse at the hands of her mother and brother, she’s almost relieved to have her identity stolen on the road to the neighboring kingdom, where she is to wed the prince. Alyrra has no desire to rule. If only she could be sure the imposter would not harm the prince, Alyrra would be content as a goose girl, trading hard physical labor for freedom from court politics.

Thorn is a deceptively heavy novel. Despite its colorful cover and accessible writing, themes of abuse, injustice, and revenge permeate almost every scene. Intisar Khanani handles these themes with consideration and respect not only for their weight but also for the reader. I particularly appreciated the nuanced discussion of defensive versus offensive violence. And amid the darkness, there are much-needed moments of humor and beauty, including stubborn horses, a sweet found family that loves Alyrra the way her family of origin couldn’t.

Of the retellings I’ve read, Thorn is among the most faithful to its original fairytale. The cast is broader and more developed, and there is a side plot about human trafficking and thieves guilds. However, the primary plot points largely mirror those of “Goose Girl.”

That isn’t necessarily a problem. Based on a quick skim of Goodreads, I’m one of many readers for whom this was our first exposure to “Goose Girl.” Khanani also worked in a few twists that would have surprised me even if I had been familiar with the inspiration. However, there is one event in the original fairytale that doesn’t make much sense to me in that context, and it made even less sense to me in Thorn. To avoid spoilers, I’ll just say I kept waiting for something important to happen as Alyrra passed through the gates, and it never did.

I also wish Khanani had done more to develop Alyrra’s world and to push back against the fairytale trope of characters that are either all good or all evil. The primary villain, who orchestrates the theft of Alyrra’s identity, is complicated and sympathetic, but no other antagonist gets the same treatment. However, I enjoyed the quieter, more contemplative scenes immensely, and I’m eager to see what Khanani writes next.

Thorn is most likely to appeal to fans of trauma narratives that are light on romance, like Raybearer and Deerskin. However, it’s also a beautiful found family story, and I think people who prefer the parts of Disney movies where princesses cheerfully clean the house with the help of their animal sidekicks would enjoy it immensely.

Asian Readathon

This is the first book I finished for the 2021 Asian Readathon. I’m counting it for challenge 1, though it could also fulfill challenge 2 or 3, or all 3 if I only wanted to read 3 books.

Intisar Khanani’s family is Pakistani.

Content Warnings

I’m still conflicted about listing these, but apparently it’s a thing I’m doing now.

Thorn by Intisar Khanani contains physical, verbal, and emotional abuse; violence against animals; torture; human trafficking of children; onscreen threats of sexual violence; offscreen sexual violence; and torture.

More Info

Publisher: Orbit
Paperback Page Count: 528

Intisar Khanani is on Twitter and Instagram.

You can support your local independent bookstore by buying Thorn on Bookshop.org, or grab it on Amazon.

Book Review: Passing Strange by Ellen Klages

Published by J. Z. Kelley on April 25, 2021

Content Notes: This review contains significant spoilers for the entirety of Passing Strange, including the ending. I don’t think knowing what happens ruins the book, but more importantly, I don’t think it’s possible to discuss my messy, complicated feelings about it without these spoilers.

Speaking of messy and complicated, I’m going to discuss Klages’s depictions of homophobia, anti-Asian racism, sexism, domestic violence, sexual violence, police brutality, and suicide. If you’d rather not read about these subjects, I’d recommend skipping both the review and the book.

The cover of Passing Strange depicts two women (one in a tuxedo, one in a backless jumpsuit that looks like a dress) in front of a large, moonlit window. The night skyline of San Francisco is sketchily visible in the background.

Passing Strange is a difficult-to-categorize novella . Google calls it an LGBT fantasy about five women’s interconnected lives in historical San Francisco, which I think is wrong on all counts except the setting, but definitely more marketably pithy than my description. I’m going to call it a lesbian time traveler’s guide to San Francisco in 1940. You, lesbian time traveler, will learn all the best places to eat, drink, and sightsee, along with some helpful tips for dealing with law enforcement.

You’ll also get a cute love story and some lengthy explanations of why two separate magic systems cannot be explained. Which won’t matter to you, as you presumably have your own magic system, unless you’re a science fiction sort of time traveler. If you’re a science fiction sort of time traveler, perhaps you’ll enjoy the late-nineteenth-century-sci-fi-story-style dinner parties in which scientists describe their research at unnecessary length.

I enjoyed the dinner parties, the cute love story, the sightseeing, and many other elements I’ll touch on later. That’s part of what made Passing Strange such a frustrating read.

The frame narrative takes place in 2014. In the beginning, the elderly Japanese-American lawyer Helen Young has just received confirmation that her unspecified illness is terminal, and we follow as she finalizes her estate, revisits her favorite places in the city, and takes her own life at home. Her primary errand is to retrieve a pastel painting from an underground Chinatown labyrinth and sell it to a rare bookstore owner for everything he has.

Strangely, this section of the book is the most fun. Helen clearly has a plan for her last days. She carries it out with self-satisfied precision and without explanation, similar to a criminal mastermind pulling off a heist. It’s not clear how the smug bookstore owner is going to regret his purchase, but it’s clear that Helen’s come out ahead in this transaction.

After Helen’s death, the book jumps back to 1940. Helen attends one of the aforementioned dinner parties with the artist of the pastel painting, a white woman named Haskel who primarily paints pulp magazine covers. Helen sometimes poses as an “inscrutable Asian villain” for Haskel’s covers. Neither woman seems particularly uncomfortable with this arrangement:

Helen let her arm drop to her side, the prop knife dangling. “I like playing dress-up, but Dr. Wu Yang needs some summer-weight clothes.”

[…]

“Next time you can be the terrified victim.” Haskel lit a cigarette and leaned against a worktable covered with pastel chalks, jars of paintbrushes and pencils. “But Oriental fiends are harder to find.”

“That’s a relief.”

Also at the dinner party is Emily, a young white woman who makes eyes at Haskel. Haskel brushes her off, but later they run into each other at Mona’s Club 440, where Emily sings in drag. They fall in love almost instantly and spend the rest of the book making love and exploring the city. Helen more-or-less ceases to exist until Haskel and Emily need her help after the climax.

Castiel from Supernatural says, “I’ll just … wait here then.”

This is my primary problem with Passing Strange: Klages clearly wants to tie the 1940s queer experience to the 1940s Asian-American experience, which makes sense both historically and thematically, but her only Asian-American character exists to facilitate the romance between the white leads.

Frieda Kahlo appears briefly to fulfill a role that is similar to Helen’s, but worse. Worse both because she was an actual, real person, and because at least Helen gets to win sometimes. Frieda just gets to be crazy and tragic and sexy in an exotic, crazy, tragic way. (Haskel slept with her, but only once. Her mustache tickled.)

Like Helen, Emily and Haskel both have to flatten and commodify their identities as marginalized people in order to survive. Emily has a beautiful voice, but as a lesbian, she can’t perform in any respectable club. Instead, she sings in a tux and a mustache as Mona’s, where:

Visitors who’d come to San Francisco for the world’s fair ventured nervously […] to gape at curiosities that would astound the guys at the office, the ladies in the bridge club back in Dubque or Chattanooga.

Haskel, a domestic violence survivor, fills her covers with scantily-clad women in terror, about to be devoured by monsters.

Unlike Helen, however Emily and Haskel actually get the room to have complicated emotions about their experiences. Emily bemoans the pressure to define herself as either and only a butch or a femme. After a confrontation with her husband, who’s been out of the country for “three or four years,” Haskel decides to stop painting images of violence. And in the end, Emily and Haskel get to opt out, escaping to a fantasy world of their own making.

Helen–who is, again, a Japanese-American woman living in San Francisco in 1940–has to stay behind and see to their affairs.

That makes it hard to recommend this book, even though there are parts I love. Klages’s prose is beautiful, detailed, and precise in a way that reminds me of DMing tabletop games. You could draw a map from her descriptions.

Haskel and Emily’s love story is genuinely sweet and swoony. Like, look at this:

“Not quite. A little more–” Haskel set the sketch pad down and knelt by the bed. “–like this.” With one hand, she turned Emily’s head slightly to the side, her fingers entwined, for a moment, in auburn curls. Emily felt her arms go all goosebumps. Their faces were inches apart. She could feel the warmth of Haskel’s breath on her cheek, smell coffee and a drift of smoke.

A moment passed. Neither of them moved. Then she heard Haskel sigh and felt a tickle of hair against her neck, lips brushing her own, lightly at first, and then, when she offered no resistance–none at all–with unmistakable desire.

“Golly,” Emily said, when there was air again.

I died. I died when I read it, and I died again when I sent it to all my friends, and I died a third time typing that up for you. In lieu of flowers, please send nail polish. I need a good green, but I’m not picky.

When Haskel and Emily get into trouble and it seems like there’s no escape, their found family of other lesbians step in to care for them in a way that feels both heartwarming and familiar. “People like us, we help each other,” Helen says. (This theme is part of why I find it so frustrating that they left Helen behind! In 1940!)

Jack from Titanic, handcuffed to the sinking ship, says, “I’ll just wait here.”

There’s so much sweetness and light, it’s not hard to see why people frequently recommend it as a cute, fluffy sapphic romance. Kind of like Passing Strange itself, I see where they’re coming from, and I’m also really frustrated by it.

Corey Alexander wrote a blog post back in 2018 called “On being careful what we call fluff,” which sums up my feelings about these recommendations well.

This is not a fluffy book. I’ve already touched on the racism, homophobia, sexism, and domestic violence, but I want to be clear that these are not just incidental as a result of the setting. They are pervasive and they hit hard. There’s a scene of homophobic violence and sexual assault against a side character that makes me so sick to remember that I can’t honestly say whether or not it furthered the plot or themes or whatever.

This is a heavy book with a cute romance and a more-or-less happy ending, closer to Keeping You a Secret than The Princess Affair.*

I think that if you’re the kind of person who generally enjoys 1990s lesbian fiction, or if you have an interest in queer history and a high tolerance for suffering, you’ll enjoy this book. If you’re more than a year into a global pandemic and feeling helpless about police brutality and anti-Asian racism, maybe check out The Princess Affair instead.

More Info

Publisher: Tor.com
Paperback Page Count: 215

Ellen Klages is an American science, science fiction and historical fiction writer who lives in San Francisco. Her novelette “Basement Magic” won the 2005 Nebula Award for Best Novelette. You can follow her on Twitter and buy the book on Bookshop or Amazon.

Resources

If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to one of these organizations:

*I haven’t actually read The Princess Affair, but my friend assures me it’s for-real fluffy.

Ranking Stephenie Meyer’s Edward Apologetics: Tier List, Part I

Published by J. Z. Kelley on April 20, 2021

Content note: This blog post discusses domestic violence and abuse, child abuse, grooming, the sexualization of minors, and hetero-allonormativity in the context of the Twilight series.

I finished the Midnight Sun audiobook a little after midnight last Saturday, and a little after midnight-thirty wrote a quickie Goodreads review that was basically:

Liked the narrator, hated the second half. Meyer’s defenses of Edward have gotten more sophisticated since Life and Death. Mostly.

But I’ve slept since then, and I’m not so sure anymore.

About the defenses, I mean. The narrator really committed to growling Edward’s lines. 10/10, I want him to star in the remake.

So I’m doing the YouTuber thing and making a tier list for the ways in which Stephenie Meyer has attempted to justify, excuse, and minimize Edward’s–well, really just his entire character. I’ll be ranking defenses from 3 different sources:

  • Life and Death
  • Midnight Sun (specifically the published version, not the leaked version)
  • Q&As on Meyer’s website and the Twilight Lexicon

I won’t be considering fanworks, film adaptations, or interviews. There’s too much Twilight content to examine it all.

In evaluating the defenses, I’ll only be considering 2 factors: Does it actually justify, excuse, or mitigate Edward’s actions? And if so, how well does it align with book canon?

I’ll describe the different tiers (S through F) in more detail in a second. First …

A gif of Edward carrying Bella on his back captioned, “You better hold on tight, spider monkey.”

Why does Edward need defending?

I could touch on the fraught issues of fandom and author-reader relationships here, but this isn’t a three-hour long YouTube video and I don’t enjoy suffering.

Let’s just agree to accept that Stephenie Meyer is really attached to one particular interpretation of her characters. She wants the Twilight series to be read as an epic, overcoming-all-odds, star-crossed love story, and she’s been fighting (on and off, with varying degrees of intensity) against alternate interpretations for the past ten years.

Or, really just one alternate interpretation: that the Twilight series is about a young girl (Bella) with low self esteem and the old man (Edward) who gaslights and abuses her into believing they’re in love.

Some evidence in favor of this second interpretation:

  • Edward is 104 when he begins a romantic relationship with Bella, who is seventeen.
  • He stalks her, before and during their relationship, using his ability to mind read in order to observe her when he is not physically able to see her and sneaking into her bedroom to watch her sleep.
  • He warns her that he (at least partially) wants to kill her, and he regularly reminds her how easy that would be for him, as a vampire.
  • He consistently demeans her and insists she doesn’t know what she truly wants or what’s best for her.
  • Edward threatens to leave Bella at regular intervals, keeping her on edge.
  • He is terrifying and unpredictable.
  • When Edward does lose control, he blames Bella: for making him want her, for being so fragile, for not following his orders.
  • He isolates Bella from her human friends. She stops sitting with them at lunch and hanging out with them outside of school in order to spend all of her time with Edward.
  • He attempts to isolate Bella from her werewolf friend, Jacob, going so far as to disable her truck so that she cannot visit Jacob without Edward’s permission.
  • Edward uses information and affection as “rewards” for Bella’s “good” behavior.
  • At other times, he withholds information in order to control Bella’s behavior.
  • In addition to the above, Edward attempts to control every aspect of Bella’s existence, from the vehicle she drives to her short- and long-term plans for the future.
  • He even attempts to force Bella to have an abortion against her will.

Interestingly, that last item on the list is the only one Meyer never attempts to defend. (She’s Mormon, and pro-life rhetoric permeates the books.)

A horrible Blingee disaster. The background is trees. In the middle left, there’s a gif of Edward and Bella climbing a tree. In the bottom right, there’s a still image of Edward and Bella kissing. There are hearts and roses and glitter. It’s captioned, “and so the lion fell in love with the lamb. what a stupid lamb/ what a sick masochistic lion / I <3 YOU.”

The Tiers

S Tier: “Do I dazzle you?”

I don't think I'm going to find anything in this tier, but if we come across any defenses that fully line up with the text and make me think Edward's actions were actually justified, they'll go here.

A Tier: “Without the dark, we’d never see the stars.”

For defenses that are textually supported and make me think yeah, what Edward did wasn't great, but it was necessary.

B Tier: “I am not really breaking any rules.”

You know how sometimes people say things that are technically true but not at all true in spirit? Those kinds of defenses.

C Tier: “… love gave someone the power to break you.”

For defenses that only sort of do what they're supposed to. I'd guess 90% of these will not really match up with what's on the page.

D Tier: “What if I’m not a superhero. What if I’m the bad guy?”

Bad job, insufficient effort, are you referring to a different book?

F Tier: “… as long as I’m going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.”

If any of Meyer's defenses actually make me think less of Edward, I'll put them here.
2 panel cartoon. In the first panel, a man in a tie crosses his arm, frowning. In the second panel, he throws up his arms and says, “I GUESS.”

Defense 1: Edward is actually 17.

Source: Midnight Sun, Twilight Lexicon. It’s actually in Twilight as well, which should tell you something about its effectiveness.

Effective?: Sure. If Edward had been cryo-frozen for 87 years, learning and experiencing nothing, his actual date of birth wouldn’t matter. But …

Canon?: This is super weird, because even though Edward claims to be seventeen “in every way that matters,” Meyer says herself:

 Edward is emotionally and intellectually more adult than a modern seventeen-year-old, due to the times in which he lived. In his world, he was old enough to be considered a man. People his age were getting married and beginning their lives. He was about to join the military and go fight in the Great War. Developmentally, he was an adult. So he is able to understand and absorb this century he’s lived through, to gain perspective from it.

This perspective is what makes him think of his classmates as children, coupled with the fact that they are so helpless in comparison with himself.

Personal Correspondence 9, Twilight Lexicon

Edward:

✔ Thinks of his classmates as children.
✔ Remembers at least 87 years of un-life, with some hazy memories of his life before he became a vampire.
✔ Has 2 medical degrees.
✔ Can read the minds of everyone around him, witnessing and learning from their thoughts and experiences.
✔ Has outlived all his human family and friends.
✔ Has a completely different physiology than when he was a human seventeen-year-old.
✔ Is generally very emotionally even keeled (except when it comes to Bella).

In what way, aside from his appearance, is he “really” seventeen, Stephenie?

However, Edward still is a teenage boy in many ways. This is his first experience with romantic love, his first kiss, just as it is for Bella.

Personal Correspondence 9, Twilight Lexicon

Cool, cool, cool. That’s not a fucked up or harmful thing to say at all.

I’m not going to dig into the implications of that statement because this was supposed to be a fun project, and I’m worried that explicitly saying that your maturity is commiserate with your sexual and romantic experience is both -phobic in like 87 ways and also exactly the kind of thing someone grooming a child would say will ruin it for everyone.

Verdict: Tier C

Gif of Rosalie (Edward’s vampire “sister”) shattering a glass salad bowl.

Defense 2: Bella’s really mature for her age.

Source: Twilight Lexicon. It’s part of the answer quoted above, and oh boy, you are not ready for it:

[Edward] thinks of Bella as just one of the “children” until he becomes interested in her. Then he begins to learn how mature she is for her age, just like him …

Personal Correspondence 9, Twilight Lexicon

Effective?: NOPE. This is what literally every predator tells the child he’s grooming.

Canon?: I mean, I don’t want to call a teenager immature for meeting a cute boy and instantly deciding she wants to literally give up her life to be with him forever, but I wouldn’t call that the height of emotional maturity either.

Bella does take on an unusual amount of responsibility at home – cooking, cleaning, protecting, and otherwise caring for her parents – but that isn’t maturity either. It’s parentification.

Verdict: Tier F

Gif of Robert Pattinson in a Breaking Dawn interview saying, “I would like to break the hands and mouth of the person who came up with it.”

Defense 3: Bella’s human friends suck (figuratively).

Source: Midnight Sun, Twilight Lexicon. It’s the part of the answer quoted above, and oh boy, you are not ready for it:

The other girls at school are fairly immature and petty. Their minds are a turn off … 🙂

Personal Correspondence 9, Twilight Lexicon

Effective?: I guess!

Canon?: Technically, almost. Edward can hear the thoughts of all his classmates, and the only person in the entire school who’s ever had a single kind, unselfish thought about Bella is Angela. Which is gross, Meyer’s misogyny is definitely showing, but I’m not ranking these based on if they’re effective and canon but I hate them.

Verdict: Tier B

Gif of Regina George Gretchen Wieners from Mean Girls saying, “We want to invite you to have lunch with us.”

It’s once again midnight thirty, and this post is getting long, so in the tradition of Breaking Dawn, check back for an unnecessary but commercially lucrative part two.

I’ll go over the five blanket excuses Meyer tries to toss over all of Edward’s garbage fire decisions. If you’re good and don’t go anywhere or do anything without me, maybe I’ll also share my absolute favorite apologetic, for which Twilight fans had to wait fifteen years.