ergative's reviews
925 reviews

NB: More coherent, edited review to come in Nerds of a Feather mid-March.

 This was really cute: a 1930s body-swap book in which the two swappers differ wildly in class, each finding in the other something she'd been yearning for. Polly Wilkinson, a middle-class housewife, is dazzled by the glamour and luxury of the life Elizabeth Forrester, a wealthy aristocrat, lives, but what I found most striking was the brief commentary on the freedom that Elizabeth enjoys. Polly does not even have time to write letters to her own college friends, and can't find time to nip downtown and have a private meeting with a Elizabeth. And she hasn't even realized the constraints on her freedoms until she experiences the life without it. (Although I felt this particular point in her character arc was very underdeveloped).

Elizabeth has a strained marriage, and finds herself loving Polly's cosy domesticity and easy affection with her husband, and adores Polly's children, playing with them and telling them stories (which they then demand Polly continue, which Polly finds rather trying, since she doesn't know how the stories began).

Throughout their repeated unintentional swaps, they find themselves in a position to either cause trouble for the other, or perhaps smooth over difficulties that the other doesn't have the ability to handle. Polly finds herself determined to figure out what's wrong with Elizabeth's marriage and fix it, while Elizabeth helps Polly organize some visits and dinner events with Polly's husband's boss, since her superior social status insulates her from being overawed by them, as Polly had been hitherto.

Everything resolves itself in this book exactly as you might expect from a respectable novel of this era. A modern book would definitely dive deeper into a lot of things that are skipped over more delicately in the book. The tensions between Polly and Elizabeth, as each thinks the other is responsible for the swaps, and gets quite idignant and starts trying to make a bit of trouble, is very funny, but it could be taken much further, with corresponding consequences for when they finally meet each other in person. And the core of unhappiness in each that motivates the swap could be given a great deal more thoughtfulness. Elizabeth's unhappiness springs from exactly the tedious source you might expect in a book of this era, and is resolved just as tediously. Polly's is barely mentioned.

And then there are the ethics of sex in other people's bodies, when you yourself are married to someone else when you're in your own body. Elizabeth is careful never to sleep with Polly's husband; and despite Polly's efforts to reconcile Elizabeth's body with Elizabeth's husband Gerald, she nev never actually sleeps with him or even kisses him. She just evokes the potential without letting it go too far (which leaves some extremely mixed signals to poor Gerald). Suppose she did take it further. Would it be it cheating? More concerningly, would it be rape? If so, of whom? Of Gerald, who most certainly did not consent to sleep with Polly, whatever she looks like, or perhaps of Elizabeth, who is not on terms of sexual intimacy with Gerald and would not consent for her body to be used in this way? I'm not sure Maude Cairns ever got beyond the 'is it cheating' question in her head, but I'm pretty sure a modern book woud have at least one husband-wife pair sleep together, and use that to motivate the tension between the women when they meet later.

I'm reminded a bit of some discussions of Star Trek episodes involving the mirror universe, in which prime universe characters are put in positions of sleeping with mirror universe characters under the guise of being their own mirror universe selves. This is pretty unambiguously accepted as rape on the podcasts I listen to, since the prime characters are pretending to be someone they're not, so the mirror characters are not actually consenting to sleep with them. Body swapping feels like a similar situation in some respects (certainly with respect to the rights of the sexual partner), but differs in that the actual body performing the action is the 'correct' body, but the mind inside it is not. 

Nevertheless, despite the missed opportunities for deeper consideration, this book is light and fun, and I had a great time reading it. The class-based mistakes are very funny, and it's quite striking how Polly's errors of class (e.g., calling Elizabeth's father 'Dad' instead of . . . Papa? Father?; brutally snubbing a concert pianist by criticizing his music, which has no good tunes in it) are taken as a joke, until they start causing offense; whereas Elizabeth's errors of class (being haughty and high-handed with tiresome relatives) make Polly's life easier. It's as if incorrectly importing aristocratic manners into middle-class life solve problems; while importing middle-class manners into aristocratic life creates them. Perhaps that asymmetry simply reflects the asymmetries inherent in a class-based society; or perhaps it springs from an inherent bias in the writer, who herself was a titled aristocrat.  (Again, I'm reminded of Star Trek and the mirror universe--this time the TOS episode, in which Spock immediately detects the mirror universe imposters in the prime universe, because, he says, it is easier for a civilized man to pretend to be a barbarian than vice versa.) 

Anyway: good book. Very fun. I'd love to see it redone for a modern audience. And it would make a terrific movie, with wonderful range for the actors who must play Elizabeth and Polly, with two distinct personalities in each body, that must nevertheless match across the actors' performances. Hollywood, take note!
 

This was fun but a little bit underdeveloped. I loved the world-building, with the monstrous sea-beasts, the everpresent threat of contagion, the magical adjustments that people make to enhance their various powers, and so on. But the ideas felt a little too telly and not enough showy. People's enhanced powers always felt directly relevant to the plot, rather than simply existing as part of the world; and the fears of contagion were expositioned at us, and realized when it was plot relevant, rather than shaping how people lived their lives and built their society in a more fundamental way. I was a little reminded of Kameron Hurley's bug-based science fantasy in her God's War trilogy, but where she deeply evoked her world in a very visceral way, this story felt too surfacy. It was fun. It was inventive. But I don't see myself eagerly waiting for the next installment in the series.

 Superb, as all of Yong's writing is. There are some wonderful turns of phrase in here, showing a linguistic playfulness, which makes the fascinating science writing all the more effective.

 Gosh, I liked this quite a bit! Very fun 1920s vibe, with extremely fun slang, and I think the book did a really good job setting the scene for larger story in the series through Memphis and Theta's bits, which highlight the larger context of the phenomenon of the Diviners, without letting it feel like too much of a distraction or sidetrack from the primary mystery occupying Evie and crew. Evie's impetuous, selfish, good-hearted personality was really effective, and she worked well as a proactive character who forces plot to happen. You can tell it's a YA book, with the de rigeur adolescent fretting against adult strictures on behaviour, but in her case she doesn't fret impotently. She secretly makes deals with reporters, sneaks out of her room to go dancing at speakeasies; she makes the book interesting because she's young and reckless.

I think this might be what makes me so typically hesitant with YA books. Often the young, dumb, reckless decisions of the protagonists have bad consequences, getting them into trouble. It makes plot happen, yes, but in a way that smells a little like those old morality tales, in which misbehaving children are naughty and must suffer as a result. But Evie's misbehaviour sometimes causes difficulties, but other times yields genuine insights and moves the plot forward productively, rather than destructively. And even when things go wrong, her endless youthful energy means she doesn't waste time brooding about it all, but picking herself up, going out to a dance, a party, to buy a new hat, and move on to the next thing. It makes for great pacing, great fun.

I don't particularly care for her interest in Jericho, though, however temporary it might be; I don't believe it. Tall, strong, handsome, brooding young men with secrets and trauma in their past are really, really boring. And it wasn't particularly helpful that he does nothing during the final confrontation to help Evie out. Like, he gets drugged and falls in a hole and then she's entirely on her own. And she does a great job on her own--of course she does; she has to wrap up the plot!--but I can't help feeling like someone (Jericho?) should have remarked on how useless Jericho was during it all. Sam Lloyd is much more fun. He's also proactive and makes plot happen. If he'd been there he may still have gotten drugged and fallen in a hole, but I suspect he would also have snuck something useful in his pockets on the way out of the house for important moments in later books. 

I also think the little interludes of people dying horribly to the villain were a bit dull. I don't particularly care for horror, so I didn't appreciate any added vibe. And since we knew exactly what was going to happen (horrible death awaits) it wasn't as if the interludes allowed us any further insight into the plot. Indeed, one such interlude was recapitulated later on in a found diary, so it was entirely superfluous. But then, these interludes were pretty short, and I guess they served to add more setting colour to the book---the all-night dance contests, the ambitions of children of immigrant families, the kid gangs, the Freemason temples, and so on. Maybe I'm just grumpy because I don't like being invited inside a character's head only to have them die horribly. 

I've also got to put in a note for the narrator here. I listened to the audiobook, and January LaVoy did a GREAT job with all the different characters! I genuinely believed the goofy 1920s slang coming out of Evie's mouth; and my little man Isaiah sounded just like a 7-year-old (or however old) kid from Harlem. 
 

 This was a bit more surfacey than I wanted, but I enjoyed the details about the actual procedures on site, which is what I really wanted to know about. I might look into his bigger book, 'Three Stones Make a Wall', but given that the intro here says that this pretty scanty book is providing the deeper details that his big book doesn't contain, I doubt I'm going to get more of what I want. 

 I was so impressed by this! On just about every level it showed a sophistication and thoughtfulness and skill of writing that kept me utterly engrossed. The exploration of multiple timelines, in particular, did very interesting things with characters. Kyr's kneejerk adherence to authority shows up in different ways, depending on how authority is manifested, but it's still a core part of her character--and yet the way her different selves react after they're united once again shows how profound a difference her different upbringings make in the person she becomes. I loved how Avi is such a wildcard in all timeliens. I loved the consideration of sociopolitical life on Gaea station. The macguffin of the Wisdom/agoge technomagic was really well incorporated with the structure of the plot. 

And I gotta say, I rather appreciated how Kyr realy had no time or patience for Mags's coming out touchy-feelies. 'Yes, ok, fine, whatever--can we please focus on SAVING HUMANITY?' Like, on an character level I understand how this is being portrayed as an example of her insensitivity and poor people skills, but on a narrative level I kind of agreed with her priorities. 
 

 This was fun. Very engaging.

I kind of figured out most of the twists pretty far before they were revealed: Kidnapping attempts being faked, Esther's status as a scribe, Cecily's silence spell, Maram being Esther's mother

--but I still enjoyed the story. There were some nice touches: Joanna's experience at Catholic Mass triggering her sexual awakening by provoking some h/c fanfiction with Jesus was very funny; and I rather liked the conversation early on about how it's wrong to attribute anti-witch sentiments of the past to book-hunters, because that buys into the whole story that the people being hunted did have some occult significance, rather than being senseless victims of humans' propensity to dickishness. I had a good time reading the book, and it left me feeling reasonably contented. But I felt as if some of the hype I'd read about it was a bit overblown. It was fine. It was fun. But it wasn't really special.

 This was fine. A bit sprawling. I found myself getting restless towards the end. I also struggled a bit with the characters. Evar and Livira's relationship wasn't really interesting enough for the eventual revelation about the Assistant to really hit home (although it was quite a well-constructed reveal). Oddly, I think that the biggest weakness of this book could actually have been addressed by writing more rather than taming the sprawl. Specifically, this book depends on an effective interplay between a vast, mysterious universe-spanning library, and the way the outside world interacts with it across time. The former was done really well. I've seen this kind of thing done before and felt that it was hokey and underdeveloped, because it's hard to make such a mystical library type of institution effective without addressing why/how such an institution could have been built. But this book grapples with it explicitly, acknowledges that it's a mystery, and shares with us the mythology and origin stories that have been passed down about the library, while acknowledging that they are imperfect and probably inaccurate.

No, where it falls down is the outside world. There are hints of politics, social structure, public discourse, and so on, but it's all filtered through the perspectives of the library crew who only leave the confines of the library complex rarely. But in order for the influence of the library on the outside world to land, we have to see the outside world, become invested in it, care about its fate. The fact that there is a world beyond the library's home city is mentioned but never made real. Even Livira's settlement in the Dust at the very beginning was more real in its chapter or two than the 400 pages of city that followed. I think I could have become incredibly invested in this book if it had sprawled more, given me more city and politics and external world building. As it was I found it hard to care whether the sabbers destroyed the city or not.

I have mixed feelings about the chapter-beginning epigraphs. They're all references to some real book, but refracted and distorted--the implication being that all books exist in one form or another across the universes, so the version whose extract we see will be a version of a book we know from our world. So we can recognize references to Narnia, A Tale of Two Cities, and so on, but the authors' names are scrambled. This was fine. However, there was one epigraph that was purported to be about the history of the city, and it refers to King Dubya, the grandfather of King Oanald, whose rule is governed by a desire to misuse the library in order to find justification for the policies he wants to make people accept as true, and it's just an unnecessary importation of American politics into a world that jarred and displeased.
 

 A solid, entertaining story, with a twist that I guessed maybe 50 pages before it was revealed, and a satisfyingly ambiguous ending. I see from Goodreads that a sequel is planned. Not sure I'll bother to read it, but I had a good time with this one. 

Like Witness for the Dead, this had a sort of unfocused plot structure, lots of individual events winding around each other, anchored by Celehar's internal landscape which--despite being so central to so many events--doesn't really change much over the course of the book. A very slow, gentle opening up of a mostly closed-off but gentle person. 

Unlike previous books, the use of pronouns for conveying intimacy felt much less consistent. People regularly blend informal 'I' and formal 'you' in the same conversation in a way I don't recall from previuos books (but possibly a reasonable middle ground between extreme formality and extreme intimacy); and there are cases where the same people in the same conversation use 'thou' in one sentence and 'you' in the next. This is a pity; I really liked this approach to linguistic worldbuilding in these books, and I would like to see it maintained more consistently.