ergative's reviews
925 reviews

 SO GOOD. Andy Weir really does the one-guy-solving-problems + huge-world-effort-to-solve-problem quite well. I also think the decision for the ending worked very effectively to sidestep the much more complex social-political ramifications of his set-up that he was perhaps not capable of or interested in exploring in all their nuance and complexity. Even the bitts with Strat wielding all her power strained credulity just a bit, although I was happy to swallow that porcupine because the rest of it was so good. And, anyway, I didn't really want to read about that story. Society-falling-apart-when-confronted-with-catastrophe is a grim tale. A bright guy solving problems with an alien buddy is so much more fun. 

 I'm BEREFT! I have finished the last of the Cabals, and I now have no more Cabal remaining. How will I cope? 

 I liked this a lot more than I would expect to like a book whose basic plot arc derives its tension from an unexpected pregnancy, and whose message seems to be 'babies fix all things because family'. It was funny and good-hearted, with lots of lovely bits of wit. The nutty unofficial handbook about life on Mars, with the tiny throwaway comment about manuals that reveals that no one takes it seriously; the snippets of detail about how the reality show viewers are reacting to the various events on Mars; the rather chilling commentary of the watching aliens--there were a lot of moving parts to this book, and they all worked very well.

-.5 for one utterly bizarre comment about how carrying a pregnancy to term on Mars, where no one knows how the radiation and gravity will affect fetal development or maternal health, and pregnancy is utterly banned (to the extent that SEX is 'banned' (hah) but the med stock includes plenty of pregnancy tests), is still  'it's safer than the alternative'. WTF kind of doctor thinks a high risk pregnancy caught early is safer than any termination? That kind of bullshit is what contributed to the loss of Roe. But I think it's a writing-related lapse, not any kind of anti-choice sentiment. At least, I hope it isn't. Pro-choice includes choice to continue a pregnancy, after all. (Jeez, now I'm second-guessing my evaluation of the author's politics. Don't go down this rabbit hole. The book was very good. I liked it a lot.) 

 This book was trying to have a conversation about colonization and research ethics that the writer didn't have the skill to pull off. The discussions about cultural history and the odd little antagonisms from the governer that didn't go anywhere felt forced against the backdrop of the medical mystery and the family drama--which, oddly, worked quite well. The way Firuz's preoccupation with the various public health issues prevented them from helping their brother's gender alignment transition, which led the foster sister with her much more powerful magic to get involved, which tied back in with her training and the use of blood magic that was at the heart of the public health issues in the first place, was all quite well constructed. But the discussion about colonization and history sat oddly on top of that, which is a pity, because in the author's afterword Jamnia makes it clear that this was her real interest in telling this story.

Also, I never fully understood how the blood bruising worked, or how the magical solution (blood serum transfusion + sympathetic magic?) was supposed to work. It was clear from the various details that Jamnia has some kind of medical training (also confirmed in the afterword), but it wasn't translated clearly enough into the story, so I got left kind of confused.

A better writer could have made a very fine story out of these component parts. It is too bad that Naseem Jamnia is not that writer. 

 This was such a rich, thoughtful, deep meditation on travel and cultural exchange. I found the writerly prose a bit much to take (especially because the narrator struggled with it a bit), but I can see what Samatar is doing, and she does it very well. 

Some of the details were exquisite: the way Lunre's teaching was not a foundation in Olondrian literature, but a foundation in Lunre's own taste and enchantments; the delicate connection between Jissavet's vallan and other islanders' jute (sp? I listened to the audio book--the physical external soul doll), which Jissavet, being a Hotun girl, lacks. The way Jevik starts describing her as a ghost--the islander word--but quickly switches to referring to her as an angel, the Olondrian word. 

Some of the details didn't quite work. The careful poetic language, for example, got a smidge purply, and I was never fully clear on why Jissavet's ghostly visitations were so agonizing to Jevik.

But what most struck me was the intricate connection that Samatar weaves between literacy and culture and cultural clash. The Tinimavet islanders are entirely illiterate, while the Olondrians have a vast literary culture, which captivates Jevik through Lunre's teaching. Indeed, it captivates Jissavet too, who comes back from beyond the grave to demand that it make room for her. Within Olondria, the coming clash between the religious groups also revolves in part around literacy. The Cult of Avalei represents those illiterate Olondrians who have been oppressed for so long that their own culture is at risk of disappearing entirely, but as they fight back, they fight back by destroying libraries, thus preserving themselves at the price of the past. But then, it's not their past, so what matter? And yet we see all of this through Jevik's eyes, and Jevik has very little stake in the fight, except inasmuch as he loves Olondrian books and writing, and indeed brings the tradition to Tinimavet at the end. When the dust settles in Olondria, it may well be that the islands are the remaining home to literacy in that part of the world. The glorious cultural heritage of Bain, which so captured Jevik's imagination and desire as a boy, will be preserved only as a memory, an outsider's contribution to islander culture, imported and filtered through Jevik's eyes. A stranger in Tinimavet, if you will. And, indeed, this recalls exactly what Lunre is, in the end. He carries the memories and writings of Olondria with him, but he in the end adapts himself entirely to the islands. He will never look like an islander, but he lives and loves as one of them. Lunre is the personification of literacy, and his story is the precurser to the arrival of literacy in the islands. It's all beautifully done. 

I picked this up after watching the first few episodes of the Netflix series, but it was very disappointing. I understand that, from the perspective of the late 80s, a comic book that was not a superhero story was something new and imaginative, but yikes. Some installments worked well--especially the last one, where we meet Death--but some were just plain weird. I'm not sure how much of this is my not knowing how to really read comic books, and how much of it is 'this is volume 1 and Gaiman was still finding his feet'. Gaiman's own afterword suggests that there is a lot of the latter, and my sister, who is much better at graphic novel reading than I am, says the same. So I'll continue reading it--it's not like it's a huge time commitment after all--but hmmph. 

I think, oddly, that what I find most disappointing is the artwork. A lot of it seems quite rough and sketchy, and many of the panels are cramped. I was so struck by the beautiful cinematography of the Netflix series, and repeatedly thought to myself 'Oh, this visual, this shot, must absolutely be making reference to iconic panels from the source text'. But, um, no. So, good job visual artists at Netflix, well done! But I did want better art in the comic book. What's the point of a comic book if you don't like the art? Might as well just have a regular novel and benefit from the improved flexibility of plot and narrative and dialogue and length and complexity of story. Cheaper to print, too.

 Mph. It followed a pretty standard heist format--which is perfectly fine! I like a good heist!--but I had difficulty keeping track of the moving parts of the heist as planned, so when the underheist was revealed, it was not satisfying and clever, but instead mostly confusing. I think this book might benefit from re-reading, but I'm not sure I want to reread it. The characters felt a little bit stale and remote--which, again, is fine if the focus is on something like clever heist mechanics, but since we've already established that the mechanics fell a bit flat for me, the book suffered from the weak characters.

What was brilliant, however, was the deeply fucked-up Puppet society. Puppets are a population of humans who were genetically engineered to feel religious awe for their historic ruling class, the Numens. However, for various reasons involving genetic drift and unforeseen consequences and the Numens basically being really, really dumb in building themselves a society of slaves who worship them as gods, the Puppet society has evolved into something utterly bizarre. The way the book plumbs the depth of that creepiness as events unfold was really, really great. So, in the end, I'd recommend this book on the basis of that component of the plot. Cripes, what a creepy bunch of weirdos those Puppets are. 

 Gauld's humor really is perfectly aligned with my interests. 

 A beautiful melding of regency romance, women's rights, and magical bargains with fairies. A+++ costumes, too. 

I bought this largely because of the brilliant praise from a variety of authors I know and respect--Tamsyn Muir, Alix E Harrow, Arkady Martine, S. A. Chakraborty--and that serves in an object lesson of the value of blurbs by big names. Unfortunately, it did not live up to the promise of something 'wild and new' (Alix E Harrow) or strike me as 'stylish, classy, and timeless' (Tamsyn Muir). It was fine. It was perfectly fine. There was a great antagonism between two youngsters, Csorwe and Tal, who fall under the mentorship of the Sethennai, but it never developed into anything more than sibling bickering. They didn't grow past their differences into some sort of mature partnership, and they didn't fester into a bitter feud. They just kind of always got in each other's way as they stumbled after the same goals. Some of those events were quite cleverly choreographed, actually, but they never quite built to something bigger than clever choreography.

The plot, too, is oddly paced. There's the quest strand, and then a side-plot that develops out of it, and lingers on well after the quest itself is finished, except there's a revelation about the object of the quest that pops up later--which is good, I guess, because the details of the quest seemed awfully vague throughout much of the book, so it was nice to have that last piece of information provided. The problem, though, is that I never actually had any confidence that there was any last piece of information to be provided, because I couldn't be sure that the vagueness wasn't just vagueness. The whole character Sethennai felt incomplete throughout the book. It was never clear what he wanted, how he felt, what his deal was. Csorwe was fine; Tal was actually very compelling. Oranna and Shuthmili were a bit one-dimensional, but their personalities and motivations were comprehensible. But when everyone's tying themselves in knots to do what Sethennai wants, and I don't really have any sense of why Sethennai does anything that he does, it makes the whole book feel unmoored.

Although, speaking of moorings, I did enjoy the worldbuilding. I quite like this patchwork of worlds, connected by an interstitial maze system, rather like C. S. Lewis's Wood Between the Worlds. The connections of how the interstitial maze can be seen in the skies of worlds that were dying was quite effective. Maybe that was the wild and new bit of the traditional quest tale that Harrow liked so much. Not quite sure where Muir's stylish and classy bits came from, though.