Homebound by Portia Elan

I read Homebound by Portia Elan because a guest on Sarah's Bookshelves recommended it. I was swayed to her side when she discussed Yesteryear as a book she didn't love, so that earned her cred in my world. 

In Homebound, we follow multiple timelines: Becks in 1983 as she grapples with her uncle's death; Yesiko in 2586 as she tries to pay off the debt she owes while taking care of the crew of her ship; and Tamar Portman in the 2070s as she opens a lab researching cutting age technology. 

The first part of this novel was immersive and I was all in. Becks is a great character, dealing with her emerging sexuality and the loss of her uncle to AIDS (or GRID as it was known then). Yesiko's storyline was so interesting. She is desperate to get rid of her debt and care for her crew, but she's not sure how to do any of it. 

But then. Hm. There are ENDLESS passages about videogames and robotic technology. ENDLESS. I really really really don't like that.  I was invested in these two characters and suddenly we're taken away from them and thrown into nonsense. I also was not entirely convinced by how the storylines were all connected in the end. 

I have hopes for this author, though. The writing and the character development were strong. I'll go back for more, hopefully with less emphasis on text-based videogames. 3/5 stars 

Lines of note:

Generation on generation of skinny ship cats, but now only Panim, the opinionated tortie who slept curled against Yeshiko's chest, chirruping even in her dreams. (page 9)

I just love it when author's actually give pets personality. Panim is a lovely character. 

I understand that this is the natural order: our teachers, our mentors die, and we become the teachers, the mentors. The mantle passes. But what is "natural" is still painful and heavy, and I sometimes want to stomp my foot and tell time to just go back. (page 66)

I'm really struggling right now with some difficult, non-bloggable things, and this line really resonated. 

Things I looked up:

Pesach plate (page 9) - a special plate containing symbolic foods eaten or displayed at the Passover Seder (seriously, my ignorance of world religions is legion)

Eugene Cernan (page 167) - an American astronaut who traveled into space three times and to the Moon twice: as pilot of Gemini 9A in June 1966, as Lunar Module pilot of Apollo 10 in May 1969, and as commander of Apollo 17 in December 1972, the final Apollo lunar landing. During the Apollo 17 mission, he became the 11th person to walk on the Moon as well as the astronaut with the longest time spent walking on the Moon; he is also the last person to walk on the Moon as of 2026. (Doesn't it feel like I should know this person?)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

matching fur hats (page 114)

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Did you know who Gene Cernan was? Do you like books with multiple timelines told hundreds of years apart? 

Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Other books by Lily Brooks-Dalton
The Light Pirate
Goodnight, Midnight

I have completely enjoyed the two books I've read by Lily Brooks-Dalton before (see links above). She writes climate fiction, but in a way that comes off as almost hopeful. So when I heard Ruins was coming out, I was immediately onboard and ordered it from my library as soon as I could. 

Ember Agni is going nowhere in her job as a professor of archeology. Her students don't like her, she doesn't like them, and she refuses to make nice with administrators. Her marriage is failing, she doesn't have any friends, and she's still thinking about that expedition she didn't go on years earlier. It's 3000 years from now and most humans have been pushed north to avoid the deadly heat. When one of her former students sends her an artifact (a tablet with a piece of fruit on the back - what could it be?) from Pre-Crisis, Ember is determined to prove that Pre-Crisis humans did have technology and developed societies. 

Ember is terrible. Really, really terrible. 

...she was struck by a sudden, arresting sensation that she didn't belong here, in this chair or this job or even this city. How had all of it happened? How was any of it hers?

The most obvious answers did not seem to fit the questions - she had left the Summit dig willingly, applied for a job at the university of her own volition, said yes when marriage was proposed, and so on and so forth. She made these choices freely and with care, but without knowing that all of it would lead her here. She couldn't' tell whether that was naivety or just how life worked. Shouldn't she know the difference by now? (page 20)

This is actually sort of fine. I mean, we all sometimes look in the mirror and wonder at how Teenage Us became Grown Us and how disappointed Teenage Us would be, right? But then.

"I don't know what I want," she finally said. And this was, in some ways, true and in some ways not. She wanted to be cared for and to care for no one. She wanted to have everything she needed and not be responsible for reciprocating any of it. (page 101)

This is not how the world works. I don't think feelings have to reciprocated, but I do think that if you want people to care about you, you have to care about them. Right? 

Anyway, we spend SO LONG with Ember as her life falls into (ahem) ruins that it's anti-climactic by the time Ember leaves for a trip on page 219. TWO HUNDRED pages of her wallowing in her misery instead of just deciding to leave. 

So what I'm saying is that if I had written this book, I'd have started on page 219 and just done a few pages of flashbacks for us to see what Ember's life was like pre-trip. Then we could have spent more time doing archeological things. Alas, no one asked me about pacing. 

I'm really sad that this one didn't hit it out of the park for me. 2.5/5 stars

******************

Passage of note:

Across societies separated by geography, language, and technological means, a recurring phenomenon emerges: the segmentation of time. The division of days, months, and years is rooted in celestial rhythms: the sun's arc, the moon's phases, the drift of the constellations. Calendrical systems are instruments of coordination, yes, but also of ideology: they encode assumptions about recurrence, continuity, and control. To standardize time is to assert its knowability. 

Still, periods of disruption - be they environmental, political, or epistemic - produce anomalies: lost days, doubled years, durations reset or abandoned or revised. These aberrations in the record can be difficult to detect. The question, then, is not only how time has been measured, but why certain measurements persist while others vanish. What, or who, sustains a calendar? (page 289)

I have so many issues with calendars. SO MANY. I hate them. That is all. 

******************

Hat mentions (why hats?):

There in the foyer, crowded by a selection of coats and shoes and hats that belonged to one or both of them...(page 179)

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Do you like cli-fi? What's your favorite? 

Space Opera (Space Opera #1) by Catherynne M. Valente

Space Opera is the first in Catherynne Valente's Space Opera duology. 

In this book, humankind is introduced to other intelligent life in the universe! Yay! Except that it means humans have to go up against all the other intelligent life forms in a singing competition and the losing intelligent life gets nuked from existence. We follow Decibel Jones as he tries to write and perform the song that will save humanity.

What we have here is if Douglas Adams (he of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame), Eurovision, and very long sentences had a baby. I think this Goodreads review says it best:

The sentences in this book were EXHAUSTING. It did seem like Valente wanted to make me chuckle at every sentence, but I swear to you, I was so tired after reading every sentence and keeping track of clauses and tangents that all I wanted to do was close the book and go to bed. 

It has so much promise. Such an interesting world! Such a fun premise! Decibel is an interesting choice to save humanity! But the writing is just not my style. It felt like I was an acid trip that I didn't know I was going to go on. Maybe it's for you. Valente does have hardcore fans. But I have DNFed Valente before and I am pretty sure I'm not going to go back to the well.

Humorous books are not always perfect for every reader. There were some funny observations in this book and some pointed ones, but I felt a little bit like I was a stand-up show where the comedian was not reading the room. 

3/5 stars (the premise is good! the world-building is excellent! I like Decibel!)

Lines of note:

No matter how mad, bad, and dangerous to know a civilization gets, unto every generation are born the lonely and the uncool, destined to forever stare into the candy-store window of their culture, and loneliness is the mother of ascension. (page 112)

Ugh. Are we destined to always have lonely people? 

Because the opposite of fascism isn't anarchy, it's theater. When the world is fucked, you go to the theater, you go to the shine, and when the bad men come, all there is left to do is sing them down. You didn't get it, I didn't think you understood, you can't sing a dirge to the reaper, he's already hear them all. You gotta slaughter him with joy and a beat like the best of all possible shags, and because somehow, my nan's cartoons always had it right and the Care Bear Stare is the most powerful force in the world...(page 144)

I feel like this passage spoke to me in 2025...theater is what it is right now. 

But most people can only be so anxious and so terrified and so sleepless and so cowed and awed before the yawning abyss of the future for so long. Eventually, the body simply can't sustain it. Eventually, some work has to get done. Eventually, adrenal glands need a bit of a break. Even in the face of possible utter extinguishment of the human candle, one does, eventually, if it all goes on long enough and there is absolutely nothing one can do but sit there in one's own fear-stink, get a bit bored. (page 219)

Honestly, this made me feel better about how I just had to take a break from the news. I can't just live in fear. 

Things I looked up:

cavemen of Lascaux (page 25) - Lascaux is famous for its Palaeolithic cave paintings, found in a complex of caves in the Dordogne region of southwestern France.

chantry (page 34) - an ecclesiastical term that may have either of two related meanings:

a chantry service, a set of Christian liturgical celebrations for the dead (made up of the Requiem Mass and the Office of the Dead), or

a chantry chapel, a building on private land, or an area in a parish church or cathedral reserved for the performance of these celebrations.

neoteny (page 35) - also called juvenilization, is the delaying or slowing of the physiological, or somatic, development of an organism, typically an animal

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

hat rack of a head (page 24)

...something you wouldn't let into public school even with a hat on...(page 111)

They aren't picky, jumping from species to species with a vaudeville smile, a high kick, and a tip of the putrefying hat. (page 155)

"Please forgive the arrogance of a being who cannot even dream of becoming a hat rack for the use of those as exalted as yourselves..." (page 216)

"...we're in the interstellar equivalent of a bunch of adorable grandparents in clogs or lederhosen or boat hats, but I'm telling you we do it so damn sable, they don't want anyone else. Somebody's got to get up there in traditional costume and sing the songs of their people and remind these beat-junkies what's coal." 

Oort could feel the translator fungus on his throat steaming with the effort of interpreting whatever the Elakh had actually said that came out as "clogs," "lederhosen," and "boat hats." (page 236-237)

No matter how the tourists pulled at his hat, he did not move one solitary muscle. (page 241)

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall was a recommendation from Catherine on the podcast Sarah's Bookshelves Live. 

If you read this book, along with The Light Pirate, and Alas, Babylon, I think you'd be all set in the world of dystopian fiction. In this one, really strong hurricanes called hypercanes are common, the glaciers have melted, and a small group of human survivors have taken to living on the roof the American Natural History Museum in New York City, including Nonie and her family. But when a storm surge takes down the building, they must leave and survive without shelter. 

Cli-fi is so scary, right? Because this is not implausible. At some point, humans are going to have to figure out how to live when coastal cities are no longer viable. At some point, will the true danger be nature or other people? 

I found this book engrossing. The chapters are short - two to four pages each - so you always feel like you're making real progress. I found the writing hard to parse at first. Consider the following sentence. It came early on in the book and I'm still not sure what it's supposed to mean, to be honest. 

We were on the fourth floor, Astor Turret was, too, had a good view out the city, big windows. (page 21)

But then once I got into Nonie's voice and her tendency to let her mind wander to the past just as big events were happening, I liked the rhythms of this book. It is clear that Nonie is an expert at dissociation because she just cuts out when things get scary. I appreciated that it was a character trait that lasted throughout the entire book.

Anyway, I liked this. I read it on the drive to and from Iowa on Easter and it made the time go by quickly. 4/5 stars (there were some writing quirks I did not care for)

Lines of note:

"Sometimes you have to remember that The World As It Is changed things, but we can change them back." (page 166)

I think I needed this reminder in April 2025. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

"Nonie, can you see if my hat is in the pack?" (page 61)

Keller found his straw hat, veteran of rainforests. (page 62)

Keller's had matches, boxers, a roll of bandage, a tin cup, a baggie of seeds, the latest of his notebooks, a pen he took from the Amen gift show that wrote wet or upside down, second socks, a wool hat, a compass, a brass watch. (page 62)

He pulled his field hat lower and dug into his stroke. (page 140)

A sign said MASSPIKE, a black hat next to the worlds. (page 221)

If, like me, you had no idea what that line meant. 

Darling knocked softly on the door, then slid in, drenched, his wool hat back on, his cheeks still bright. (page 269)

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Death of the Author is the newest from Nnedi Okorafor, who wrote Binti, which has an absolutely amazing first novella.  

Zelu is a disabled Nigerian-American who has hit rock bottom. She lost her job, her book has been rejected for the tenth time, and her family includes a bunch of ableist jerks. Into this, she moves back to her parents' house and starts writing a book called Rusted Robots, a science fiction story about robots after the destruction of humanity, which become an immediate hit with a blockbuster movie made of it. 

The book alternates with chapters from Zelu's story and from chapters of Rusted Robots. I was invested in Zelu's story. She's sort of the unlikeable lady who I really like. She's had a hard time with her disability and her shitty family and she's struggling to find her place in the world, career-wise and in terms of her American and Nigerian backgrounds. She's got a chip on her shoulder, but who wouldn't in her shoes? But Rusted Robots? Ugh. I did not care.  

Here's the thing. I will read science fiction if it's about space aliens or humans in space because those are really just stories about humans. But science fiction about robots? Who cares? They're not people. Or dogs. Or cats. Or horses. Or really alive. 

And I don't want to spoil the ending, but I still have questions about the ending. It felt like a mean trick where we didn't get the answers I really wanted. If I have done the code correctly, I have put spoilers behind the following button. If I have not done the code correctly, oh, well. You shouldn't have the spoilers anyway! (Edited to add: It works! I'm a professional coder. /s)

Basically, was Ngozi really the last human on earth? Did Ankara really meet her? As in, was Zelu based on a true story in the robot lore? And the whole thing about how Rusted Robots was real, but not Zelu's story really felt like a cheap trick. That's all.

 

Read Binti instead of this one. 3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

It was mid-July, and it was ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit and what felt like 100 percent humidity. As uncomfortable as she was, Zelu was used to it. She was a Chicagoan, which meant she was used to every weather extreme except hurricanes. (page 54)

I feel this is my very soul after we had a day near 80 followed by a day with snow last week. 

They later had a lawyer write the prenup that would keep their assets forever separate, went to the courthouse, had it done legally, and that was it. They both vowed to never call each other "husband" or "wife." They were partners. It felt good. (page 357)

Big discussion with my husband about this. I think it's romantic when he calls me "his wife." I think partners makes it seem like a business deal. But I can also see how some people might think the stereotypical roles of husband and wife come with a lot of baggage. Interesting thing to think about. 

Things I looked up:

ikenga (page 40) - carved wooden figures that have a human face with animal attributes - of note, Nnedi Okorafor has a novel called Ikenga

agama lizard (page 90) - a genus of small-to-moderate-sized, long-tailed, insectivorous Old World lizards. The genus Agama includes at least 37 species in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, where most regions are home to at least one species.

iroke tree (page 90) - a large hardwood tree from the west coast of tropical Africa that can live up to 500 years

kabu kabu (page 178) - non-registered illegal cab that operates in some part of Nigeria - of note, Nnedia Okorafor has a short story collection called Kabu Kabu.

Hat mentions: 

None

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

I heard of Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino from Susie on Sarah's Bookshelves (the podcast).

The premise is that Adina is an alien and she sends and receives faxes from her home planet. But don't let the sci-fi element fool you. This is a book about coming of age, about struggling through, about grief, about life, about death. The alien slant is interesting in its own way, but if you're not into sci-fi books, this still might appeal to you because it's not the main theme. It was heartbreakingly sad and (spoiler here), the dog dies. I'm just warning you. 

I liked this a lot. I felt like it resonated with me and made me sad and hopeful all at the same time. 4/5 stars

Lines of note:

It is September 1979 and Americans are obsessed with Star Wars, a civil war movie set in space. Bounding to the stage after hearing her name, a Price is Right contestant loses her tube top and reveals herself to a shocked Burbank audience. (page 3)

A civil war movie set in space. Ha! Also, that poor lady on The Price is Right. It's immortalized on the internet to this very day. 

Their routine changes so frequently they don't need much language (page 19)

Sometimes my husband and I don't even talk. We just know what's going to happen. 

...being physically present in one place while your mind is in another is loneliness. Loneliness can make you hang with phonies to distract yourself. (page 82)

Interesting. I'm not sure that's how I define it, but to each their own, I guess. 

It must be the opposite of homesickness, to return home to find it more beautiful, to return and still feel distance. (page 83)

One of the hardest things is figuring out where home is (your childhood home? where you sleep now? your favorite aunt's house?) and figuring out how to react when it's not longer the place you're most comfortable. 

For the first time, Adina feels that no one on Earth or even beyond understands her. (page 113)

I have to admit that this line made me guffaw. Teenagers, you know?

She answers the phone, keeps the candy jar filled, and monitors the bathroom key. Ten minutes out of her twenty-minute training was candy-jar related. (page 177)

LOLOLOL. My boss keeps a candy-jar filled in our office and I swear to you that half her job is candy-jar related. When she goes on vacation for a week and it gets low, there are COMPLAINTS.

(page 180)

This passage about the geese made me laugh and think of Lisa and her boys, particularly the "It's big in the Midwest." 

Things I looked up: 

Pando (page 157) - the world's largest tree, a quaking Aspen, in Utah

parp (page 183) - to make a sound like that made by a car horn

double Cancer (page 194) - honestly, astrology posts make me cry - I have no idea what these means

Eames birds (page 222) - it's a carved bird; there's a history there, but it also made me want to cry with boredom

Hat mentions (why hats?):

The man chuckles at the women, bundled in hats and scarves. (page 99)

On the ride, Dominic pulls a bong, a toilet paper roll, and two tinfoil hats from his back seat..."And the hat protects you from mind control from other planets." (page 151)

Adina arranges the hat on her head. (page 151)

"You can keep the hat," Dominic says, and she says, "What hat?" (page 154)

"...I like your hat." (page 256)

The fancy-cheap brocade boxes, the caps like faux-gold hats. (page 279)

Cocktails on the lawn, groping hat-in-wind. (page 287)

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Are you a double Cancer? Do you even know what that means?

Calamity (Uncharted Hearts #1) by Constance Fay

I'm going to be honest with you here. I only read this book because I needed a book on my Kindle, all my Libby waits were MONTHS LONG, and this one was available for immediate download. I sort of cheated my way into Calamity by Constance Fay. Temperance Reed has been banished from her powerful family and now captains a ramshackle ship. She and her crew take on a mission for one of the Fifteen Families, but only under the condition that they include the second son of the family on the assignment. 

This is fun. It's an adventure book with a fun bit of worldbuilding. There's a romance (with some spicy sex scenes - beware if that's not your jam - I'm noticing a trend in fantasy that sometimes you'll be reading what you think is just a regular romance novel and then there are EXPLICIT sex scenes (yes, I might be scared from Fourth Wing) and I think it's attributable to BookTok's obsession with romantasy, but I'd rather read a romance OR a fantasy book and rarely do I think romantasy is done well, but I'm seriously digressing here). There's a ship! There's a fun crew! There's intergalactic politics. 

I think this book is what I'm looking for in science fiction. There's not too many technical details about what makes space travel possible, but just enough. There's enough about the Fifteen Families and power structures for you to understand what's going on, but there aren't huge lists of names or family trees. There's a love story and you really are rooting for them to get together, but they also don't completely ignore everything else in their lives because they're falling in love. Nicely done for a debut novel.

I'm docking it a point for two main reasons. One, the sex was absolutely unexpected (or maybe I'm a prude? - you decide). Two, the writing is incredibly basic. Look, I'm not casting stones here, but so many sentences are Subject - Verb - Object with little variation and if I'm noticing that, it can't be good. Just look at the lines of note if you want to know what I'm talking about. Still, I liked this and wouldn't mind reading more in the series. 

4/5 stars

Lines of note:

I make everyone’s problems my own anyway. It’s like a gift. (location 601)

I don't know why, but this made me laugh. I feel this way all the time. 

People are the worst. It’s always easier without people. (location 789)

I agree. It usually is easier without people, but what are we if not social beings. 

“We’re all going to die.” That helpful contribution comes from Pablo, who looks at his brother like a stranger. 
“We might not all die. I might live.” Micah’s really helping to raise the mood. (location 3846)

Lols. 

Thanks to my mother for suggesting that I should write some smut and my father for agreeing—and to both for being early readers. (location 4625)

I love reading about supportive parents. 

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

Micah is a man of many hats. (location 583)

The hat principle can apply to hair. (location 807)

Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Other books by Lily Brooks Dalton

The Light Pirate

I read Good Morning, Midnight because I enjoyed The Light Pirate so much and because it was recommended by someone on Sarah's Bookshelves (it was Susie in this episode!). 

Before we talk about the book, let's talk about the cover. I was convinced I had read this book before because the cover was so familiar, but I think it's because the cover reminded me of this:

Tent? Check. Starry sky? Check. White title? Check. A Novel? Check. The biggest difference is that it's snow on the cover of Good Morning, Midnight and grass on the cover of Station Eleven. Regardless, it's clear that this book is trying to mimic Station Eleven's art.

In Good Morning, Midnight we follow two parallel stories. Augie is a scientist at a research station in the Arctic. When the station is forced to evacuate, Augie stays behind and finds a child named Iris was also left behind. They cannot contact anyone on Earth and the radio stays eerily silent. Meanwhile, the spaceship Aether is going back to Earth after a trip to Jupiter. Mission Control falls silent about a year away from Earth and the astronauts on board the Aether have to figure out what to do. 

This was such a beautiful book. The characters. The characters. Man. So beautifully rendered. 

It's a scary thought. What if you were one of the last people alive? What would you do? How would you react? 

But somehow this book is hopeful and beautiful and sad and confusing and wonderful. 

4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

"I think he’s unkind because it’s easier to be angry than frightened,” Devi said. (page 95)

I wrote recently in the comments on Elisabeth's blog that I assume everyone is in Emergency Mode. We're all dealing with something, right? And I try to be give others grace when they are doing something unkind, rude, or disrespectful. I'm not always successful (WHY IS YOUR CART TAKING UP THE WHOLE GROCERY STORE AISLE?), but it helps me to remember that everyone is having difficulties. 

When he got to his feet, he shuddered to hear the cartilage in his joints cracking, his bones clicking against each other like dominoes falling down the length of his body. (page 158)

I didn't purposefully start reading books with protagonists who are older, but I am appreciating reading these descriptions about how our bodies break down. 

Hat mentions (why hats?): Eight hat mentions in the book. These are my favorites. 

As the days progressed Augustine began to walk farther, always keeping the emerald green of Iris’s pompom hat in his sights. (page 80)

A green hat! Are we sure it's not Katie Nolan?!

Her helmet was a few sizes too big and he had insisted that she wear three hats to pad it. (page 136)

Three hats! I frequently wear two, but three seems like a lot. 

Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon

I read Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon because it was highly recommended in an internet thread about a book with an older female character. It wasn't even a thread specifically about science fiction/fantasy, so when it filtered to the top, I knew I had to read it. 

Sims Bancorp Company has decided to disband Colony 3245.12, the place Ofelia has called home for over 40 years. So when the ship took off with her family in cryogenic storage, she hides in the woods and decides to spend out the rest of her years by herself on this planet by herself. She starts over, free from expectations and demands of others. But then a ship from the Company comes to her planet and suddenly Ofelia realizes she is not alone.

Yay! Ofelia is GREAT. The premise is great. The execution of the premise is great. The pace of the book never slowed down. Even when it was literally just an old lady fixing homes and cooking food, I was riveted (I suspect this is related to how so many of us bloggers find a day-in-the-life post so fascinating). I found the ethical conundrums to be just puzzling enough, the question of how this could  possibly end to be just right, and the slight hints of societal and capitalistic critique used perfectly. 

This is how you have a great, strong female lead in an interesting sci-fic world. Thumbs up from me. 

4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

She knew how to tell stories; she knew the shape such a story should have. But to put the words down with her hands, to see them come up on the screen, that was much harder. (page 48)
Do you think it's harder to write a story down or tell it orally?

Perhaps she had dreamed the whole thing. She had heard, in school, that no one could live long alone without going crazy, without thinking they heard and saw other people. She had never believed it, but she had been told. So if she had gone crazy, without noticing it, she could have imagined the whole thing. (page 70)

I think this is so scary. How will you know if you're going crazy?

The joy of creation, of play, had been the empty place unfilled by family and social duties. She would have loved her children better, she thought now, if she had realized how much she herself needed to play, to follow her own childish desire to handle beautiful things and make more beauty. (page 94)

Sometimes, when I'm playing with Hannah and she's yipping excitedly and I'm laughing hysterically, I realize how important it is to have someone in your life who you can be playful with. Go chase your dog or play soccer with your kids or push a baby on a swing. 

She was tired of difference, but the world had never yet shaped itself to her measure. (page 170)

AND

She had not wanted more responsibility. She had not wanted more tasks. But the world, her mother had often said, does not shape itself to your wish, any more than dough mixes itself when you’re hungry. (page 191)

I thought these two quotes were interesting because they were only about 20 pages apart. The world does not shape itself to our desires, that is true, but did it need to be mentioned twice?

She had done with these roles, with being a good child, a good wife, a good mother. She had put seventy-odd years into it; she had worked hard at it; now she wanted to be that Ofelia who painted and carved and sang in an old cracked voice with strange creatures and their stranger music. (page 274)

I love an older female protagonist who has opinions about how to spend her time. 

Men like this—she had known men like this all her life, even though these men would not have recognized the resemblance. “But thank you,” she said. One did not dare to act superior to men who dosed themselves with illegal substances. (page 295)

Ooof. Imagine being a septuagenarian and still being worried about violence against women. I guess women can never win. 

Hat mentions (why hats?): Seven hats in this book. Here are a couple of highlights.
The sun lay a warm hand on the back of her neck, and she realized she’d come out without her hat again. That would be one benefit of staying behind. No one would nag her to wear a hat. (page 11)

Hats are actually pretty symbolic in this book, representing a lack of freedom. In this situation, she hates wearing the hat, but her family makes her. As soon as they leave, she ditches it. 

The woman she had talked to before, now in cream-colored slacks and shirt, with a big hat on her head, accompanied by another woman and two men in variations of that outfit, and two obviously dangerous men in the dark protective suits, with weapons. (page 240)

Now a woman comes and she represents the Company and a loss of freedom. The hat tells us already that she's going to try and restrict Ophelia's freedome. 

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (Mossa & Pleiti #2) by Malka Older

Mossa & Pleiti
The Mimicking of Known Successes

Mossa and Pleiti are back! This time, a lot of people are missing from the university where Pleiti works and Mossa needs her help to figure out what's going on. A mystery ensues! Travel around Jupiter and to Io ensues! Woot woot!

Look, this is a lovely series so far. I am enjoying the developing relationship between these two. I feel like the mysteries strike the right balance of important, but not too outrageous. The setting is simply delightful. Who's not interested in what the academic factions will be once humans destroy the Earth and are forced on to other galactic objects?  

Thumbs up. 4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

It was the sort of lecture I liked: a topic that I knew enough about to follow easily, but little enough to feel like I was learning. (page 5) 

Yes!! It's not repeating something I already know, but not so far above my head that I don't understand what's going on. This is great observational writing.

I found myself humming under my breath - the second aria of Murderbot. (page 133)

Is this an homage to Martha Wells? It has to be, right? There's not a real opera about a Murderbot? I LOVE the cross-pollination of women in science fiction!!

It wasn't until the ceremony was well under way that I recognized that it was no kind of sacrifice to her: immune to the undercurrents of guilt, resentment, and injustice that so perturbed me, she was observing the social rite with a bass note of fascination. (page 144)

Ha ha. Anyone else go to church ceremonies with a bit of a feeling like you an anthropologist studying a foreign culture?

Things I had to look up:

mutatis mutandis (page 2-3) - (used when comparing two or more cases or situations) making necessary alterations while not affecting the main point at issue

herpentine (page 9) - I don't know, everyone. It keeps telling me to look up "serpentine," but I listen to Guns 'n' Roses and know that word. The context is: (describing a building) metal walls beaten into the textured, herpentine patterns popular during the era when much of the university's physical plant was built. 

fallecimiento (page 45) - death

copine (page 78) - girlfriend

bathetic (page 115) - producing an unintentional affect of anticlimax 

acurrucada (page 123) - curled up like a cat or dog

namkaraned (page 133) - to name (seriously, I couldn't figure this out?)

Hat mentions:

None. This is the second book with a hat on the cover and no mentions in the book. I am starting to feel like Older is trolling me.

*******************

What does herpentine mean? Do you think Older is referencing Martha Wells? What do you think a Murderbot aria would be like? Why is Older trolling me with the hats on the covers of this series?

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker is the coming of age story of a girl named Julia, who is living in a California suburb when the news comes that the rotation of the Earth is slowing. No one knows why, but the days and nights are getting longer very quickly. 

When I first heard the premise of this book, I thought this was going to be a Big Story, like The Martian, where there's a person who is the focus on the book, but we also see people at NASA and the UN working on a problem. That is NOT this book. This is a book about a girl growing up while the world is changing in crazy ways around her. We only hear from experts in occasional newspaper clippings and on television news. This is about a girl and her singular experience.

The earth's rotation is truly slowing by 47-thousandths seconds of a day, so scientists have been adding leap seconds here and there, so this isn't as silly a premise at it may seem, although the idea that the rotation would slow by hours in a single day is pretty farfetched. I think some of the science in this book is a bit precarious but to quote Glen Wheldon, I'm here for science fiction, not science fact. For instance, I think the electrical grid would fail long before it did in this book, but I didn't write the book, so who cares what I think?

Look, this book is pretty dire. If you're not in a place to read a dystopian sci-fi novel with focus on a decimated planet, don't read it. But I honestly thought it was a lovely bit of writing and the pages were easy to turn and it was exactly my kind of thing. 

4/5 stars

Lines of note:

But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown. (page 29)

I have found this to be absolutely true. I'm worrying about X, but Y is the thing that comes out of left field and becomes the focus. 

My grandfather was eighty-six years old. All his old friends were dead. His wife was dead. he had grown bitter about his own longevity. (page 60)

My maternal grandmother, who lived to be almost 100, once told me that there was nothing worth living for once she turned eighty. I mean, I felt a little hurt by this statement, but I also understood what she meant. 

Ours was a sudden bond, the kind possible only for the young or the imperiled. (page 223)

I know that some of you have developed wonderful friendships in adulthood, but I honestly believe that I'll never have a friendship as great and genuine as those that I developed when I was young and had all the time in the world to devote to building friendships. 

We were beach kids, sunshine kids. We did not know the properties of snow. I had never seen it fall, never knew how soft it felt at first, how easily it collapsed beneath feet, or the particular sound of that crunch. I never knew until then that snow made everything quiet, somehow silencing all the world's noise. (page 230)

Snow does make the world so muffled. I loved everything about this description. 

Hat mentions:

Sylvia would spend the next few afternoons pruning roses in a sun hat and casually pulling up weeds. (page 23, this same sun hat comes up on page 130 and 160)

She rested for a moment, hands on hips, looking around from beneath the wide brim of a straw hat... (page 115)

Inside were albums of black-and-white photographs of my grandparents in stylish hats and fur-lined coats...(page 141)

It was a man in a beach hat, an empty white bucket swinging from one hand. (page 194)

A man in a faded blue T-shirt and a wide-brimmed hat...(page 210, same hat referenced on 211)

The Mimicking of Known Successes (Mossa & Pleiti #1) by Malka Older

CCR sold me on The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older by describing it as a mash of genres: science fiction and mystery. There's also a touch of sapphic romance, if that's your jam, and let's be honest, it very much is my jam. All three of those things appeal, so I was down for this book.

Basically, people have screwed up Earth, so they live on Jupiter. That's the sci-fi part. A dude goes missing on a remote colony and Mossa, an Investigator, has to figure out what happened to him. That's the mystery. Mossa goes to Pleiti, a former flame, to help her out. That's the romance. 

It's good. It's short (less than 200 pages!). It's an interesting world and an interesting relationship. This is a completely satisfying standalone novel, although I heard there's a sequel that's pretty good. My library doesn't have the sequel, so I guess I'll have to remain in the dark on that one.  If this sounds like something you'd enjoy, you'll like this book. 4/5 stars

Lines of note:

...within the cluster dedicated to experimental agriculture and animal husbandry. (page 35)

Not a line of note to anyone else, but I refer to "animal husbandry" whenever we're doing something to the cat or dog that they don't want us to do (cut their nails, brush their teeth, etc.), but that must be done for health or safety reasons. Sometimes I also use it as an excuse to do something they don't want to do, but I do, even if it's just for my own personal pleasure, particularly picking the cat up. She doesn't LOVE to be picked up, but I'll say I'm doing it to train her to be used to me picking her up in case there's an emergency and I need to. This is partly true, but mostly I just want to cuddle with her.

...dressed in a fire-blue coat I instantly coveted. (page 36)

Haven't we all been there?

...being of utility was more than I had expected, and yet one still does not want to be used. Of use, but not used. (page 93)

Lovely distinction.

Minor mystery:

"Ah yes. I study the British Isles, in the mid-twentieth century. At the moment I'm working on a very useful book about rabbits and their adventures. There's a wealth of descriptions of the flora and fauna in a highly circumscribed, clearly identified area. Truly amazing stuff, most astoundingly useful for us. And most incredibly, this book - a storybook, note, perhaps even intended for children - has pages and pages of writing mentioning, oh, different flowers, and tiny beasts, and the author assumes that every organism he mentions is familiar to the readers. He barely describes any of it, because everyone he can imagine reading it already knows." (page 72-73)

I immediately thought of Watership Down. It was written by a man named Richard Adams, published in 1972 and it's set in Hampshire in southern England. My husband suggested The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but it was written by a woman (note the pronoun 'he' in the above passage) named Beatrix Potter and was first published in 1902, which is not mid-twentieth century at all. Any thoughts on this minor mystery?

Things I looked up:

"its details of salvage and bricolage" (page 12): (in art or literature) construction or creation from a diverse range of available things

"tiny cubical qibla astrolabe" (page 12): from Arabic 'qiblah,' the direction towards the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, which is used by Muslims in various religious contexts, particularly the direction of prayer

"I was only an unimportant myrmidon among thousands..." (page 153): a follower or subordinate of a powerful person, typically one who is unscrupulous or carries out orders unquestioningly

Hat mentions:

None, although one of the characters is wearing a hat on the cover. 

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk and Robot #2) by Becky Chambers

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is the follow-up to A Psalm for the Wild-Built. In the first book, Dex the tea monk and Mosscap the robot met each other in the wilderness after years of robots going no contact with humans. In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, we follow these two as Mosscap introduces themselves to humans, asking them what they really need.

I think I'm going to have reread all the books I've read in November. I seem to basically just dislike them all and I'm starting to wonder if my stress over two big things in my life, my job and recruiting board members for my volunteer gig, is just seeping into everything in my life, including my reading. 

I thought this book was boring. I'm not sure what message I'm supposed to get from it. 

It's typical Chambers, in that it's gentle and hopeful. I guess because I don't feel gentle and hopeful right now that it just didn't resonate with me. I just found myself glowering at my Kindle, knowing that this is NOT what would happen in "real life" and thinking that Chambers does not understand human behavior. Meanwhile, it has a 4.47/5 on Goodreads and people are writing things like it's "rewarding" or "a rich chocolaty cup of hugs." I am the problem, maybe?  

2.5/5 stars (which was me waffling between 2 and 2.5 and deciding to go for the higher number in an understanding that I'm a monster)

Line of note:

...unless you are a very particular, very rare sort of person, it does not take long to understand why people left said woods in the first place. Houses were invented for excellent reasons, as were shoes, plumbing, pillows, heaters, washing machines, paint, lamps, soap, refrigeration, and all the other countless trappings humans struggle to imagine life without. (location 46)

Right? Sometimes people go camping for fun and I'm absolutely clueless about why.

Things I looked up:

Propolis (location 805) - A natural resinous mixture produced by honey bees from substances collected from parts of plants, buds, and exudates (which is a substance secreted by a plant or insect - nothing like having to go look up a word to understand a word you're already looking up)

Littoral (location 1039) - relating to or situated on the shore of the sea or a lake

Adulthood Rites (Xenogenesis #2) by Octavia E. Butler

Dawn

Adulthood Rites is the second in the Xenogenesis trilogy.  When we last left this world, Lilith had to cooperate with her alien captors in a number of ways to be able to return to Earth, including mating with them for the purposes of procreation. She has had children on Earth, but these children are "constructs," in that they resemble humans as children, but grow into the alien-form, Oankali, after they metamorphize. One of her sons, Akin, is kidnapped by human resisters who shun contact with the Oankali. By the time Akin has been rescued, he has formed bonds with the resisters and decides that humans should have the chance to start again with their own society away from Oankali interference. This book is mostly told from Akin's point of view, a switch to someone who is part-human, part-Oankali, and is in that very challenging place of feeling as if his identity is unclear and that he belongs nowhere.

The questions this book raises are so big. Are humans destined to destroy the entire race, either through violence or genetic mutations?  What rights do we have to control our genetics and reproductive rights? What is the "correct" level of assimilation to a new idea, culture, or agent? I have so many thoughts whirling about in my head based on this book and I don't even know where to start. I'll do my best to do justice to this book.

The parallels to colonialization and assimilation are just spot on. Someone invades your homeland and you have the choice to either assimilate with all the losses of culture and freedoms that come with that or you reject the colonizers' rights to your body and your land and become "terrorists." The relationships between those who have assimilated and those who have not become tense. The colonizers do not understand why anyone is sad or upset about this change of status because what they bring to the table should make everyone safer and healthier and better. The best thing about this book is that all of this (and more) is in there, but Butler never just says the thing.  She shows it through interactions and thoughts and is simply brilliant. 

One of the things that the Oankali has done to humans is made them sterile unless they mate with Oankali themselves. In light of what's going on with access to abortion, birth control, and general women's health care right now, this particular storyline seems so prophetic. The Oankali have done this because they want to control the genetic traits that kill people (cancers, etc.), but in doing so, they've created a community of people, specifically the resisters, who don't have a hope for the future. They cannot have children and the feeling that the future is not worth living for creates an unsustainable living situation for them. 

The biggest theme that I see throughout this book is about whether or not human beings are irredeemable. Should humans be given another chance with another planet? To be trustees of a planet that they have not contaminated with pollution and material goods? Should they be given a chance to reproduce naturally, with all the dangers and mutations that come along with that? Should they be given a chance to work together and not kill one another over resources, disagreements, or religion? Or are humans bound to just kill themselves somehow no matter what?

If you can't tell, I think this is brilliant. Just brilliant. 5/5 very enthusiastic stars

Line of note:
"What lesson is condescension supposed to teach me about this group of my people?"

He would not have spoken so bluntly if Lilith had been with him. She insisted on respect for adults. Dichaan, though, simply answered his questions as he had expected. "Teach them who you are. Now they only know what you are..." (page 206)

Dawn (Xenogenesis #1) by Octavia E. Butler

Who here is up for a good old apocolyptic nightmare? Let me present to you Dawn, the first book in Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy.

Lilith wakes up, not knowing where she is, but knowing that humans have destroyed Earth in a nuclear war. She soon finds out that she's on a spaceship and the Oankali have been trying to save humans by keeping them in a deep sleep with the goal of returning humans to a healed Earth.  But the Oankali are not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts - they do want something in return. Lilith is tasked with assimilating with the Oankali and then Reawakening more humans and teaching them how to interact with alien species.

There is so much going on in this book that it's hard to know where to start. The book's big themes are big. Colonialization, gender roles, consent, imprisonment, assimilation, and bodily autonomy come up. But, and this is key, Butler isn't preaching about any of it. Lilith is angry with her captors, confused that they won't give her information about her own body and her own life, but she eventually realizes she needs to cooperate in order to get back to Earth. 

The book looks at shades of grey and doesn't give you an answer. Is it the right strategy for Lilith to collaborate with the Oankali? Are the Oankali's morally correct in taking from humans to be repaid for saving them? What does consent look like in a world in which you can't leave?  It's absolutely fascinating and brings up so many thorny ethical conundrums.  

It also ended on quite a cliffhanger and I'm excited to dive in to the rest of the trilogy.

5/5 stars

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

 

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North comes courtesy of the Top Books By Women Authors in r/fantasy, so all I knew is that it had some sort of sci-fi/fantasy tie-in when I started it.  

In this book, Harry August lives an undistinguished life as a British person and then he dies. But he is born again and soon realizes that he has all the memories of his previous life. He dies again and is reborn with all the memories of his previous two lives.  And so it goes. Harry is always born in a bathroom of a train station as his birth mother dies. He is adopted by a couple and he has to live his childhood and adolescence over and over again, despite having the knowledge of an adult. Eventually there are secret societies, espionage, and world-wide chaos.

The first third of this book is a bit slow-moving, at least it was for me. But then there came a turning point when I simply couldn't put the book down. I had to know if Harry was going to be okay and I had to know how Harry was going to make it out. Generally speaking, I do not like time travel books, but this is an interesting twist on time travel and I thought it took the Groundhog's Day plot and did something new with it.

3.5/5 stars

Notable lines:

"In thirty years it would be a parody accent, used by comics to expose the sad cliché of the lonely man who believed that Ascot was sacred and could never quite get a ticket." (page 128)

When we were shopping for my husband's wedding suit, we were at a fancy men's suiting store waiting for the tailor to do a fitting.  We were poking around, sort of looking at ties and another customer was turning around a giant lazy Susan and asked "is this your entire selection of ascots?" Dear Reader, I've never been ANYWHERE with a larger selection of ascots and sometimes when one of us is being picky about shopping for something, we will use the ascot line.  Now you know one of our inside jokes.

"It is perhaps the universal experience of travellers - I have only my own view to judge it by - but there is a moment, in the dead hours of the night, when a man may sit upon a platform in an empty station, waiting for the last train upon a long journey, and regardless of the personal experience of that individual, he ceases to be an "I" and becomes a "he."" (page 144)

I think we all have that out-of-body experience when on a trip somewhere. I was doing a training in Canada one January when weather happened (because Canada + January) and I found myself sleeping in the Winnipeg airport with my luggage.  I swear I thought the whole thing was happening to someone else. Also, there were A LOT of dogs in the Winnipeg airport - just LARGE dogs wandering around the baggage claim and it just seemed like a dream that was happening to someone else. The people were SO nice, the dogs were SO plentiful, and I just have fond memories of Winnipeg.

""We're just fucking soldiers. We kill some guys, they kill our guys, we kill their guys back - none of it fucking means anything, you know? Just numbers on a page, and only when the numbers get big enough do the fat cats who decide this shit sit down and go, 'Wow, let's make the decision we were always gonna have to make anyway.'...And you know the best bit?...None of it fucking matters. Not one bullet, not one drop of blood. None of it makes any fucking difference at all.":(page 217)

Bleak.

Things I Looked Up:

There was a plot point about China under Mao Zedong and I honestly just didn't know the timeline because my knowledge of history is shaky. (page 287)

Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956-1957) - Mao Zedong basically encouraged citizens to openly criticize the Community Party. This didn't go well for people who took him up on his offer.

Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) - This was Mao Zedong's plan to reorganize the farms of China into communes. It was a disaster for many reasons and estimates range from 15 - 55 million people died (55 MILLION!!).  

Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) - Attack on cultural and intellectual elites. Devastation to culture and tradition.  

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant (Beware Spoilers)

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant is yet another one of my finds from the r/fantasy list of Top Books by Women in science-fiction/fantasy. I had absolutely no idea what the book was about and, boy howdy, was I in for it. (Truthfully, I assumed it was a space book and the "drowning deep" was space. I realize, in retrospect, that this was foolish, but I am going to give myself some grace and not refer to myself as an "idiot" on my own personal web log.)

I hesitate to type this because I think it's best to go into this one with absolutely no background, but here it is. This book is about mermaids. 

It's about mermaids! 

It's set in a near-future (2022). Seven years ago, the ship Atargatis set sail to create a faux-documentary about mermaids. All hands were lost and the footage of the mockumentary showed mermaids.  Some people called it a hoax; others called it a tragedy.  Now, the ship Melusine has been decked out by the entertainment company behind the mockumentary to be an oasis for researchers to go find out the truth once and for all about what happened on the Atargatis. 

Mermaids!  (They're like the dragons of the sea, as far as I'm concerned.)

We soon learn that the Atargatis was not a hoax and the killer mermaids start picking off our characters one by one. Grant is an amazing writer and each character has a different expertise and a different personality and I was absolutely riveted by this book.  It's definitely a book about human hubris - the mermaids were living quite peaceably without us and now we're in their business and of course they're going to hunt us. It's a book about the environmental crisis - the usual mermaid food sources are no longer accessible to mermaids and that's because of human behavior, so if the mermaids come after humans, isn't that just the circle of life?*

Mermaids! (Creepy, killer mermaids!)

I honestly can't recommend this book enough. I was absolutely surprised by it and I was so eager to get back to my Kindle every night to read some. Every morning, I'd read it under my SAD lamp and I'd start each morning with a death report to my husband. It was an immersive experience and Mira Grant has just rocketed up my list of science-fiction writers to watch.  

*Cue Elton John. Also, isn't it crazy to think there are big animals just roaming around the planet, not behind bars in a zoo or sanctuary? Sometimes I can't sleep because I think about LIONS. I mean, lions don't naturally live in Wisconsin, but what if I stumbled across one on my walks with Hannah?  I mean, LIONS. This is my life.  

Things I Highlighted:

"Science was all about curiosity. It was a world where the kids who touched hot stoves and poked sticks down mysterious holes in their backyards could get better tools, protective gear, and bigger holes to poke at. Asking scientists not to look into an open box was like asking cats not to saunter through an open door. It simply wasn't practical." (page 173)

Grant's love for scientists shows in every word she wrote, even as she wonders about the ethics of what they do.

"It seemed almost hubristic now, when the mermaids were real and present and dangerous. The Atargatis hadn't found the mermaids through a free and open exchange of ideas. The Atargatis had found the mermaids because the people on the ship were made of meat, and the mermaids had empty stomachs that they wanted to fill. That was how you found things, in the sea.  Be delicious. That was all you ever had to do." (page 269)

It seems crazy that humans aren't always the apex predator, but the planet is mostly water, not land. Here there be dragons!

"Science is not a matter of belief. Science does not care whether you believe in it or not. Science will continue to do what science will do, free from morality, free from ethical concerns, and most of all, free from the petty worry that it will not be believed. Belief has shaped the history of human accomplishment - we believe we can, and so we do - but belief has never changed the natural world." (page 475)

This book was published in 2017 and when I think about the debates about science re: COVID, I can't help but think about how prophetic this paragraph is. 

Things I Looked Up:

Mariana Trench - In the Pacific Ocean, this is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth. 

Challenger Deep - This is a small valley in the Mariana Trench that is at least 10,000 meters deep.  

Goananas - This is another name for monitor lizards. 

Falling Free (Vorkosigan Saga #4) by Lois McMaster Bujold

 

Falling Free by Lois McMaster Buhold is the fourth book in the Vorkosigan Saga, but is the first full-length one if you read in internal chronological order, which is how Bujold herself recommends you read the series, so there you have it. It seems like I just jumped into the middle of things, but I didn't really.  I'm following instructions.

Once again, I am using r/fantasy's Top Books by Women 2021 and that is how I even stumbled on this series.  Bujold is royalty in science fiction, up there with Anne McCaffery, Ursula K LeGuin, and Octavia Butler, and it's a glaring missing entry in my reading history.  I've only read about a quarter of the books on the the above linked list, so I have a lot of reading to do.

This book introduces us to Leo Graf, an engineer mysteriously sent to join the Cay Project, but he wasn't given any other real information about it. When he arrives, he learns he's there because this jerk he once worked with requested him and he learns that there's been some biological engineering happening and he's introduced to quaddies. I'm not going to say more than that because I don't want to spoil things. 

Turns out that for boring reasons, his company, GalacTech,

(sidenote: I just love this name. It seems exactly what a giant inter-galaxy corporation run by ruthless capitalists would be called.)

wants to stop the project and destroy the quaddies. Leo does not want that to happen. Viva la Revolucion!  

I mean, I read this book in a few hours on a rainy Sunday, hunkered down on the couch with my cat.  It's readable and interesting and posits an absolutely fascinating world. I am, as you can imagine, eager to read more. These books get recommended all the time for a reason and I'm excited to get started since I imagine this will go into the pantheon of my much-beloved science fiction and fantasy loves with Realm of the Elderlings, Murderbot, Wayfarers, and Temeraire. Ordering the next book from the library right now!

The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin

The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin comes up a lot as sci-fi by a woman author that everyone who cares about that genre should read.  It was #2 in the subreddit /r/Fantasy's 2021 survey of top books by women (right between my beloved Realm of the Elderlings and Murderbot!). It seems like an insane sort of hole in my reading, so took it upon myself to make it my summer project when my husband mentioned that his book club was reading the first book and I knew I'd be able to talk with him about it if nothing else.

 The Fifth Season is just brilliant. Look, I wrote it and I meant it and I'm going to keep saying it. In Jemisin's world, there is an alternate (future? past?) Earth that is beset by seismic activity that leads to constant "Seasons" that repeatedly nearly wipe out humanity. You get an idea that our current world used to exist (parts of highways seem to be used) and there is occasional detritus of other worlds, including incomplete writings and these strange obelisks that float around in the sky.  But we are introduced to a world in which some lucky (?) few, orogene, who can control some aspects of the Earth's activity.

The book follows three plotlines, two of which happened in the past and one is happening right now in the immediate aftereffect of an event that is causing ash to fall continuously on the Earth.  We follow Damaya, a child who is discovered to be able to control geologic actions and, after her parents throw her out because of superstitious reasons, is placed under control of a Guardian named Schaffa.  We follow Syenite, a young mid-ranking oregene, as she is given an assignment to clear a harbor of coral while traveling with a very high-ranking oregene named Alabaster, but soon discovers she can no longer return to her training location. And, finally, we follow Essun, a woman who is looking for her daughter, but harbors secrets of her own, as she meets and begins traveling with a young boy named Hoa and a trans geomest (someone who studies Earth's seismic activity) who both appear to be hiding something. 

The world-building is subtle and wonderful. The characters are full of nuance and wonderful to spend time with.  I can hardly wait to get the next book in the series and see where we go from here. The moral quagmire of slavery and indentured servitude and the perpetual question of what it means to really be free are so integral to this book that it's hard to read it and not stop and wonder what exactly we're doing in this life, in this world.

Lines of Note:

"She looks from Alabaster to Syenite, but then her gaze swings back to him, which Syen completely understands. Nobody's more irritating than her mentor. She feels a sudden perverse pride." (page 128)

"'And since stonelore would be harder to remember if it was full of phrases like 'watch for the inverted fulcrum of a conical torus,' we get centers and circles. Accuracy is sacrificed in the name of better poetry.'" (page 157)

"There's a reason most comms pick a style and stick to it. Uniformity sends a visual message. It warns potential attackers that the comm's members are equally unified in purpose and the willingness to defend themselves." (page 213)

"But what is important is that you know it was not all terrible. There was peace in long stretches, between each crisis. A chance to cool and solidify before the grind resumed." (page 288)

Things I had to look up:

Chalcedony (page 18): This is a type of rock.

Spavined (page 91): Spavin is a disorder of a horse's hock and spavined can be used to describe something that is decrepit or in a broken-down condition.

Epeirogenic (page 219): Geologic term for an uplift or depression of the Earth's crust over a large are of land or ocean bottom.

Isotasy (page 219): Geologic term for the equilibrium that exists between the Earth's crust and the mantle so that the crust "floats" like a raft on the mantle.  

The Obelisk Gate is the second book in the trilogy.  It is very much a middle book in that nothing happens. Now that the plotlines have intersected, we just keep following them. Essun is stuck in one place doing nothing; Alabaster is enigmatic; Essun's daughter has a promising plotline begin, but then it fades into a quagmire of dullness; Schaffa returns, but is also sort of boring and lifeless.  I'm going to read the next book because I'm obviously a completist, but I'm not as invested in this world as I was after the first book.

The Stone Sky finishes the trilogy and it's more exciting than the second book, but isn't exactly the most riveting novel I've ever read.  We follow Essun as she uses her powers to help her comm and attempt to reunite with her daughter.  She's on a mission to return the Moon to Earth to help control the Seasons and save humanity.  Nessun, though, absolute brat, has decided to destroy humanity.  The book culminates in a showdown between mother and daughter.

Lines of note:

"But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors." (page 210)

"And as we so often do, she and he are having a conversation that has nothing to do with the words coming from their mouths." (page 251)

"The Earth sees no difference between any of...humanity is humanity...we were all guilty. All complicit in the crime of attempting to enslave the world itself." (page 355)

Final comments:

There are a lot of things I like about this series. The first book is amazing and spellbinding. I like the idea of Earth as a living entity - aware of humanity and pissed off at what we are doing. I like Jemisin's world building and development of castes built on survival. I like the idea of a world in which history is lost because of world-tearing events. But there are things I do not like about this series. The characters of Nessun and Essen are just...not great. I don't really feel anything in the final climactic scene because I don't care what happens to either of them.  Eh. If you're into lore and alternate worlds, you should definitely read it. 

This is a beloved series and I'm glad I read it, but I'm also not entirely sure I'll be recommending it to everyone I know.  Read at your own peril.