Ohhh, I hate giving a low rating to a sapphic book but this just... was not... good. Two stars because I didn't hate it and it was quite readab[image]
Ohhh, I hate giving a low rating to a sapphic book but this just... was not... good. Two stars because I didn't hate it and it was quite readable, but that's about all I have to say.
I spent the entire book asking 'why' and I got no answers. Why did Kahina save Atalanta? (A question characters ask, repeatedly, with the same lack of resolution.) Why did she then decide to hate Atalanta? Why would gods like Artemis and Apollo be both so present and so passive? For that matter, why were the twins at odds with each other?
And why are there forks in this story set in ancient Greece?
The characters, relationships, and settings are all so... flat. Other reviewers have commented on the lack of sense of place (which is a shame, as Tammi mentions in her afterword that the story was inspired by time spent studying in Greece) so I'm not going to go into depth about that, but it did really bother me that the setting felt completely generic.
Characters, especially the two leads, are the story's biggest weakness. They feel like cardboard cutouts being moved around for the plot - Kahina saves Atalanta because the story needs her to, hates her because the story needs her to, kisses her because the story needs her to. There's very little sense of what she wants outside of 'not going back to Delphi' - and even there, the descriptions of her time in Apollo's temple are so vague that her motivations feel weak. Yes, being kidnapped by her cousin is awful, but there's no heart, no emotion behind it. Atalanta has a bit more depth, as her desires for freedom and family are in direct contention, but she is still rarely an active character.
In a fundamental way, both Kahina and Atalanta do very little to move the plot forward, or to resolve it (with the exception of (view spoiler)[Atalanta killing Zoisimos (hide spoiler)]). Their romance - I almost hesitate to call it that, because there's so little spark, and little sense of them knowing each other as people - also has no sense of momentum, just moving through the steps. The final conflict is a power play between Artemis and Apollo, with both girls pretty much sidelined to bit parts, and there's no sense of resolution to personal arcs.
(This book also made me think of this video essay about retellings of Greek myth, and the ultimate question of who has a 'right' to these stories, but that's not something I'm qualified to speak more about.)
Listen, I want more sapphic books, and I want more approachable sapphic YA, but... seriously, can they please be good books first?...more
Reading this book when it was first published, in 1992, must have been a different experience from reading it now - in a post-Blackfish, post-Tilikum Reading this book when it was first published, in 1992, must have been a different experience from reading it now - in a post-Blackfish, post-Tilikum and Dawn Blanchard context. Post-Free Willy, even, which came out in '93 and was an early part of changing the cultural conversation about orcas in captivity.
Now, it feels... prescient. In particular, the descriptions of S'gana displaying 'threatening' behavior towards her trainer, including holding her underwater briefly - those are things that have actually happened, in both fatal and nonfatal incidents publicized since this book came out. The author bio mentions that Stauffacher worked at a marine park seasonally for three years, and I wonder if this aspect of whale behavior was based on stories she heard from trainers, or on direct observation.
I was also particularly struck by this line:
For years, Katy had made Theresa feel special.
Because... as someone who did, briefly, entertain the fantasy of working at Sea World, isn't that the root of it? These creatures are magical, and there's a natural desire to be close to them to catch a little bit of that magic, to have a special relationship with them which, in turn, makes you special and magical, yourself. To be fair, the book still sort of plays on that - Derek has a literally magical connection to S'gana, which is what makes him the protagonist - but for Derek, being 'special' means sacrifice, trying to take action on behalf of another.
It speaks to me both about humans' relationship to whales in captivity, and more broadly about the nature of love - that love is service, striving to make another's existence as joyous and rich as possible. Love isn't about having, it's about giving, and that's true whether we're talking about relationships between people or between a species.
...That got away from me a bit there. Anyhow. The book - it's a solid middle grade novel, with a surprisingly emotionally nuanced ending, and also highlights a Native American/First Nations people who haven't always been well-known outside of the Northwest. Judging by the fact that this is the second review ever for the book, I'm guessing not many people will get the chance to read it these days, but I do think it's worth the time....more
This is such a potentially interesting topic, and I kept trying to read this book because I wanted to learn, but eventually I haveDNF at page 146/240.
This is such a potentially interesting topic, and I kept trying to read this book because I wanted to learn, but eventually I have had to admit that I simply... was not learning much of anything. There are two factors:
1. I have no idea who the target audience is meant to be. At some points the writing feels like it might be aimed at younger readers (by which I mean middle school), but it's not consistently either advanced or simplified. Instead, there's a weird mixture of the two, with simple topics overexplained and more complex ones introduced with little explanation. There are also... the inserted graphics. Sometimes it's a line graph which doesn't actually include actual data, sometimes an illustration which adds nothing at all to the text, and sometimes it's something like this: [image] This was the image which made me decided to give up on the book, by the by.
2. It's abysmally edited. The peak example is this... sentence:
There were not any humans on the moon at this time, so that this solar flare were exposed.
But this also came across in the extreme repetitiveness; after 2-3 pages explaining something, a section would conclude with a paragraph which just reiterated everything that had just been said. It felt like I was back in third grade learning how to write an essay - the old "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell them; tell them; tell 'em what you told 'em". I don't know how many times it's necessary to say that countermeasures cannot reverse the effects of low gravity on the body because you can't exercise 24/7, but certainly not as many times as it's repeated in this book.
I'd still love to learn more about the biological and physiological challenges of space but... this ain't it....more
The genderless aromantic robots love each other in a way which is simultaneously platonic and hella gay and beyond human comprehension. Good for them.The genderless aromantic robots love each other in a way which is simultaneously platonic and hella gay and beyond human comprehension. Good for them.
Also thanks Martha Wells, now I have feelings about ANOTHER fictional computer!
Finally, spoilers but not spoilers: TWO OF THEM?...more
This is a story told with a lot of heart, and while the parallels to Israel and Palestine are front and center, the message it offers about thinking cThis is a story told with a lot of heart, and while the parallels to Israel and Palestine are front and center, the message it offers about thinking critically and understanding the humanity of others is certainly applicable on a larger scale. As other reviewers have said, the ending felt a little rushed, and I particularly struggled with the idea that a happy ending is achieved by toppling one corrupt person in power - in a story about systemic injustice and prejudice, that felt too pat. It felt like set-up for a sequel, and perhaps one will come eventually and round out the narrative a little more....more
(Initially, I received this book from NetGalley for review purposes; however, the DRM-protected files expired before I got around to reading it, and I(Initially, I received this book from NetGalley for review purposes; however, the DRM-protected files expired before I got around to reading it, and I later tracked down a copy from my local library. Either way: no external considerations went into this review.)
Monstress is… opulent. The worldbuilding is rich and complex; the art is stunningly beautiful and yet easy to follow; the characters are diverse, fascinating, and clearly with a lot left to reveal. It reminded me of some of Hayao Miyazaki’s work - specifically, Princess Mononoke and the manga version of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. As do Miyazaki’s stories, Monstress presents conflicts between humans and nature on a massive scale, where the question of who is righteous and who is monstrous has no easy answer.
If there’s one thing that I felt was lacking from this first volume, it’s an appendix with worldbuilding information. This is something that, as a habitual high fantasy reader, I often struggle with in second-world-fantasy comics; I’m used to getting more detail than any comic can actually provide, simply for reasons of space. Still, Monstress is so complicated that I did struggle to keep track of everything going on for about the first third of the volume. Interludes with brief infodumps helped, but I hope that future volumes will include a brief glossary, map, and cast of characters at the beginning.
The plot and characters definitely have me hooked. Maika Halfwolf makes for an intriguing protagonist - she seems to have little objection to violence, but also deeply wants to see herself as a good person. The volume ends with a suggestion that there’s more to her situation - and the larger conflicts between humans and non-humans - than it initially seemed, and that what is strange and hard to understand is not necessarily evil.
While I’m not a dedicated comics reader who picks up each issue as it comes out, I’ll definitely keep an eye out for future collected volumes of Monstress.
Merged review:
(Initially, I received this book from NetGalley for review purposes; however, the DRM-protected files expired before I got around to reading it, and I later tracked down a copy from my local library. Either way: no external considerations went into this review.)
Monstress is… opulent. The worldbuilding is rich and complex; the art is stunningly beautiful and yet easy to follow; the characters are diverse, fascinating, and clearly with a lot left to reveal. It reminded me of some of Hayao Miyazaki’s work - specifically, Princess Mononoke and the manga version of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. As do Miyazaki’s stories, Monstress presents conflicts between humans and nature on a massive scale, where the question of who is righteous and who is monstrous has no easy answer.
If there’s one thing that I felt was lacking from this first volume, it’s an appendix with worldbuilding information. This is something that, as a habitual high fantasy reader, I often struggle with in second-world-fantasy comics; I’m used to getting more detail than any comic can actually provide, simply for reasons of space. Still, Monstress is so complicated that I did struggle to keep track of everything going on for about the first third of the volume. Interludes with brief infodumps helped, but I hope that future volumes will include a brief glossary, map, and cast of characters at the beginning.
The plot and characters definitely have me hooked. Maika Halfwolf makes for an intriguing protagonist - she seems to have little objection to violence, but also deeply wants to see herself as a good person. The volume ends with a suggestion that there’s more to her situation - and the larger conflicts between humans and non-humans - than it initially seemed, and that what is strange and hard to understand is not necessarily evil.
While I’m not a dedicated comics reader who picks up each issue as it comes out, I’ll definitely keep an eye out for future collected volumes of Monstress....more
This is a relatively short book, and it is available for free in its entirety here, and I think if I had read it as a teenager in my early angry feminThis is a relatively short book, and it is available for free in its entirety here, and I think if I had read it as a teenager in my early angry feminist phase it would have, as the kids say, rewired my brain.
It is, essentially, a seminal text on the concept of intersectionality - that multiple oppressions (racism, sexism, classism) overlap and interact and, critically, impact different groups of people in different ways. Davis takes the reader through U.S. history with a focus on the experience of black women, from slavery through Jim Crow and the civil rights movement and through several waves of feminist organizing, among other political movements. She discusses the alliances and distances which variously existed between anti-racism activism and other movements, the ways in which white women (especially middle class white women) at first agitated against slavery and then abandoned the cause to appeal to racists when it suited their own needs. In this, as in other examples (especially issues of sexual autonomy), it's easy to understand why there is still a mistrust of white feminism!
A lot of these ideas weren't new to me, but I do think that the way that Davis expresses them and lays them out is by far the most efficient and thorough explanation I've encountered. This book should be required reading for most colleges at the very least, and for anyone outside of academia who wants to be a better activist and/or ally to any number of causes....more
Vacation read 5/5! Except whoops, I lied, I forgot about the 6th book I finished on the plane ride home.
Like a lot of short story collections, this waVacation read 5/5! Except whoops, I lied, I forgot about the 6th book I finished on the plane ride home.
Like a lot of short story collections, this was uneven - some standouts, but overall a mixed bag. I will also note that there were a lot of reflections on deity and the meaning of belief which I didn't really resonate with, as I'm an atheist, and quite a few places where I felt I was missing context which perhaps an Israeli and/or Jewish reader, or someone with more background in certain eras of SF would have.
My personal highlights: - "The End of the Story" had an interesting concept and would have been among my favorites, except that I felt it was hampered by its self-referentiality. If the referenced stories hadn't been in the same book, it would have interested me more. - "My Uncle Gave Me A Time Machine" was my favorite overall, as it seemed to be deliberately riffing on "All You Zombies", which is a SF story that will live in my memory forever. - "VegeScan" had a delightful little twist of irony, and some very clever use of language. - "Aquarius Falls" felt prescient and chilling, if a little bit nauseating. - "Truth in Advertising" hit VERY close to home in the modern internet landscape.
Definitely an interesting collection, and one I'm glad was included in this year's World SF/F Storybundle!...more
Vacation read 4/5! I'm gonna get caught up, I swear.
Anyhow, I've had this book on my Kindle for WAY too long to only be getting around to it now, and Vacation read 4/5! I'm gonna get caught up, I swear.
Anyhow, I've had this book on my Kindle for WAY too long to only be getting around to it now, and I couldn't tell you what took me this long - though honestly, ask the physical books I own about that; it's not like this is a new or unique phenomenon.
But really, this should have been something I read immediately; I've collected variations on Cinderella stories for most of my life, and this is an excellent one. Swift hits the traditional Cinderella structures very well, but also embroiders and expands on them, creating a new, fresh story with more narrative and character depth. The writing is beautiful - I knew that would be the case going in - and the queer representation is, of course, also wonderful. (It took me way too long to realize that Char's name could also be read as short for 'charming' as well as 'charred'.)
I had one or two outstanding questions at the end, but overall I found it more thoroughly satisfying than other fairytale retellings. It both upheld the spirit of the original story and told a new one, and that's a lovely and delicate balance to strike....more
Vacation read 3/5! Only jotting down this review a month+ late... it's fine.
I enjoyed this, but I think not as much as I would have if I was actually Vacation read 3/5! Only jotting down this review a month+ late... it's fine.
I enjoyed this, but I think not as much as I would have if I was actually familiar with the characters and their relationship. I felt like I was missing a lot of context and backstory there. As always, though, Aliette de Bodard knocks it out of the park with worldbuilding, and I particularly enjoy the adamant way she centers Vietnam as a global power in... all of her work that I've read so far. It really casts a light on the sheer lack of imagination of other SF/F writers who replicate existing power structures in futuristic or fantastical worlds.
This was a cute little novella with a straightforward plot and a sweet resolution. There were a few grammatical errors, and I'm not personally a fan oThis was a cute little novella with a straightforward plot and a sweet resolution. There were a few grammatical errors, and I'm not personally a fan of adult female characters being continuously referred to as girls, but I also recognize that everyone has their own relationship to gendered terms and that says more about me than the book.
Overall, a nice narrative snack, but ultimately simple which keeps it at a three for me, as there wasn't much to pique my interest.
Edit: I keep forgetting to add this, but I felt Bedeck did a fantastic job drawing parallels between our protagonist's experience as a half-elf in Elven society and her experience as a trans woman who hasn't quite figured that out yet. That was very thematically satisfying and well-handled....more
I mean... Saga continues to be fabulous, as always. I appreciated the fact that this volume was a bit slower-paced, because since I only pick them up I mean... Saga continues to be fabulous, as always. I appreciated the fact that this volume was a bit slower-paced, because since I only pick them up when the collections come out, I tend to forget the more complicated, action-heavy plots in between. Vol. 8 felt like it wrapped up some plot threads, set up for others, and spent a little extra time establishing characters and their relationships - both a welcome breather, and a good launch point for whatever madcap adventures will come next.
Merged review:
I mean... Saga continues to be fabulous, as always. I appreciated the fact that this volume was a bit slower-paced, because since I only pick them up when the collections come out, I tend to forget the more complicated, action-heavy plots in between. Vol. 8 felt like it wrapped up some plot threads, set up for others, and spent a little extra time establishing characters and their relationships - both a welcome breather, and a good launch point for whatever madcap adventures will come next....more
At this point - jotting down thoughts several months after I read the actual book, because I do need to return it to the library eventually - I think At this point - jotting down thoughts several months after I read the actual book, because I do need to return it to the library eventually - I think it's time to admit I'm probably not going to finish this quartet. On a writing level it's fine; I'm just not invested in the story or the characters the way I was in the Weather Warden series, and by now I've forgotten enough of what was going on that picking up the last volume would be mostly confusing.
I'm glad I've assuaged my curiosity thus far, but if I decide to revisit this universe I'll just go back to Ill Wind instead....more
1.5/5. Read as part of my ongoing shelf audit and yeah... I see why this was a library discard. Also, my copy had the bad kind of old book smell, on t1.5/5. Read as part of my ongoing shelf audit and yeah... I see why this was a library discard. Also, my copy had the bad kind of old book smell, on top of everything else.
I have hazy childhood memories of listening to Tales from Lake Wobegon on NPR on the weekends, but recall very few specifics at this point - I remember finding things funny, and enjoying Garrison Keillor's voice, but that's about it. Perhaps naively, I thought reading this book would bring back memories, that I might find familiar characters and settings here which triggered my recollection, but... no. Maybe this was just too early in the development of Wobegon as a setting to have much overlap with the radio show I knew, or maybe nothing was all that memorable (aside from the phrase 'Norwegian bachelor farmer', which I can absolutely still hear in Keillor's voice).
On the whole, I found this book to be surprisingly dry. The characters were not really clearly rendered, and the way the narrator meandered from thought to thought, scene to scene, and even time period to time period within a single chapter didn't help. Very few ideas were followed to completion, and on top of that came the footnotes, some of which ran over multiple pages and almost all of which were too lengthy to be smoothly integrated into the reading experience.
The first two chapters can be skipped entirely, I think. I nearly DNF'd the book at that point, but decided to give it another chapter's grace for old time's sake, and it recovered a little bit to become at least not painful to read once it approached the 'modern' (at time of publishing) era. That said, there's not really anything about this book that sticks in my memory, and certainly nothing that connects to other memories of weekend mornings with the radio on in the kitchen.
All in all, not intolerable, but mostly left me wishing I was reading Tom Bodett instead....more
Read as part of my ongoing shelf audit... sorta... because I also just bought this book over the summer when I found it for $1 at a used bookstore. ReRead as part of my ongoing shelf audit... sorta... because I also just bought this book over the summer when I found it for $1 at a used bookstore. Regardless - I've got the third and fourth books on library hold, but I'll be taking the first two back to said used bookstore anyway.
I still just don't quite click with this series the way I do with the original Weather Warden books, which I think may be a lot to do with the fact that Cassiel doesn't have the same compelling sense of self as Joanne Baldwin. Her process of self-discovery could be interesting on its own, except that it kind of takes a back seat to all the action sequences.
As with Undone, I remain intrigued by the series plot more than I'm engaged with the events of a particular installment. This is partly because, as of this book, the protagonists are forced into being reactive - they don't actually have enough information to be proactive, and so they get bounced around, beaten up, and led by the antagonist. That's great to raise the overall stakes, but not a very compelling story in and of itself.
Also, I'm starting to feel like Earth Wardens are a little overpowered. They can wipe memories, precision-vibrate someone's eardrum to 'talk' to them, and now make local changes to gravity? It's getting to be a bit much. Kind of wild when the people who can manipulate fire are starting to look like the least dangerous members of the group....more
I am fully aware of my sacred duty to not spoil anything, so this review is going to be short and vague. I'm thinking of doing a reread of all three bI am fully aware of my sacred duty to not spoil anything, so this review is going to be short and vague. I'm thinking of doing a reread of all three books once Nona is actually out (and not just an ARC being passed between my GF's bookstore coworkers like it's a water bottle in the desert) and may circle back and write proper reviews at that time. I think a looooot of stuff will make more sense on reread.
For now, what I'll say is that Muir is an absolute master at piecing out information just so. For around 90% of the book I had the incredibly frustrating feeling that I was learning SO MUCH and yet knew NOTHING, and then right at the end she dropped the last element into place and things made sense. Clues were practically handed to me and yet the final reveal was unguessable until it became obvious. I'm still realizing things which, in hindsight, make perfect sense based on what I now know.
I am incredibly glad that Muir decided to make this its own book, instead of the first part of Alecto, because I can't imagine how this story could be squashed down. On the other hand, I will be slowly dying with every day that passes that I can't read Alecto, because I have a near-physical need to know how this story ends....more
Read as part of my ongoing shelf audit. Verdict: From library book sale we come, and to library book sale we return.
The more I talked about this book Read as part of my ongoing shelf audit. Verdict: From library book sale we come, and to library book sale we return.
The more I talked about this book to my girlfriend after finishing it, the more I realized that it had swindled me into assuming that, because it was 'old', it had inherent value. Which is weird because this is something I find perennially frustrating in the way people treat the mainstream literary canon, but when I get into my personal hobby horse of SFF genre history, I apparently have some blinders on.
Here is the crux of my problem with this book: it is a post-apocalyptic narrative which doesn't actually care about the apocalypse. The characters aren't particularly interested, which to a certain extent makes sense since this is 1000 years post-event, but also, are there no legends and no archaeologists? There are ruins, but these seem to be far fewer than they should be, and characters either avoid them or only interact with them by accident, and then for a very short period of time. There's no knowledge about the ancient world but also no curiosity, other than Jestak's insistence that everyone must have been part of one shared culture before the apocalypse. The narrative, too, doesn't really engage with this unique setting; post-apocalyptic fiction can invoke emotions by showing a place or thing that the reader recognizes but the characters don't, but that hardly ever comes up, and indeed the author treats much of the Great Plains as if they are completely empty, without mentioning even subtle ruins or landmarks.
There is no sense of place in general (I genuinely can't tell you if Northwall is all tunnels like an anthive or if parts are open to the sky), but I was especially struck by this in the portion of the book which takes place in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains because... I grew up hiking there, and yet there was absolutely nothing which was evocative or familiar in the way the landscape was depicted/described. What's the point of setting a story in a place your readers may have been, if you're not going to bother to invoke that place? Like man, throw me a bone here. I'll take, I don't know, a reference to diagonal uplift layers or something. You don't have to mention Long's Peak but aspen trees wouldn't have been a stretch.
Moreover, the more I think about it this apocalypse doesn't make sense. Per cover copy, it was an 'atomic holocaust', but there are still cities on the Eastern Seaboard. Somehow horses are limited to the Rockies and the parts of the plains closest to them - what the hell happened to Kentucky? There's an archipelago in the Atlantic which at first I thought might be the Bahamas, but it's volcanic and yet doesn't match any of the extant volcanic archipelagoes, which is a timeline problem.
This book would have been better off as second-world fantasy, because it's not really connected to the real world in any way that matters. Maybe that gets fixed later in the series, but this is not an intriguing enough start for me to make an effort to track down the rest. Two stars because the prose was readable enough to propel me through it quickly, once I sat down to focus on it.
(And all that doesn't even MENTION the fact that a good 30% of this book is different people fawning over how great Jestak is. That part is just obnoxious.)...more
Yeah, three stars but it's on my 2022 faves shelf. Go figure.
The thing about this book is that the concept absolutely seized my attention. It's a crosYeah, three stars but it's on my 2022 faves shelf. Go figure.
The thing about this book is that the concept absolutely seized my attention. It's a cross between Cinderella and Faust - what if the fairy godmother was actually the Devil? - which specifically asks, what if Cinderella weren't defined by being good and kind?
Eleanor tried to be good, she tried to be kind, but she wanted so many things that she could feel them gnawing at her from the inside.
This is an absolutely blockbuster idea. There are so many interesting directions to go from a start this promising, and by and large I felt the book made good on this early promise, right up to the very end, and then didn't quite meet expectations.
Part of the problem is that its two source components, Cinderella and Faust, have opposite inevitable endings. Both are endings driven by key qualities of their protagonists, but Cinderella's goodness leads her to a happy finale, whereas Faust's fallibility leads him to tragedy. Readers know how each of these parts is supposed to go, but combining them makes competing promises. Ultimately, two stock narratives enter but only one leaves, and that was probably doomed from the start to disappoint many readers.
(There's also an element of an unreliable narrator here which, I fully admit, I didn't pick up on until I read some other reviews of this book who laid the evidence out. That's a whole OTHER thing.)
The strongest element of this story is Eleanor herself, who is from the start a dubious protagonist. She's got a lot of anger, a lot of wanting, and much of it is sympathetic. She has been unjustly treated, and no small part of her anger is on behalf of friends who have been exploited, abused, and raped. And yet, Eleanor's wanting is focused on the life she feels she deserves: that of a noblewoman, elevated above all the grime of below-stairs life, and there is no sympathy or solidarity for servants in her imaginings of what she deserves. She is convinced that she doesn't belong in poverty, but doesn't really extend that empathy to others. Even as, through the course of the story, she seems poised to get what she wants, the most she is willing to extend to her 'friends' is a better variety of servitude.
This selfishness is the first indication that the story is going to be more Faust than Cinderella. Still, I admit I held out hope that she would, in fact, somehow get out of her bargain. (view spoiler)[Partly this is because I was, I think, misreading a lot of the hints that the entire 'devil' element of things might be a hallucination on her part. Mentions that Eleanor was a violent terror as a child may have been meant to clue me in, but I concluded instead that her benefactress, Mrs. Pembroke, might have also made a bargain and Eleanor's healing was one of her wishes. (hide spoiler)] I'm a sucker for a Cinderella/underdog narrative, and for a little over half the book I was really rooting for her relationship with Charles.
I'm not dissatisfied with the path the story took, except in that I think the ending was a little simpler than I was hoping for. For a concept which is rooted in two competing narratives, I wish the scales had been a little more evenly weighted, and that the conflict between these archetypal stories had been drawn out more. (view spoiler)[IE, that the Cinderella story was more than aesthetic at the finale, that Eleanor did have a little of that goodness in her at the end. I'm not sure how it would have worked, to be fair, but nonetheless. (hide spoiler)] Still, I found the ideas that went into this book fascinating, and - as someone who loves and collects Cinderella retellings - this was an angle that caught my attention and got me thinking. As such, despite not being the most satisfying read, I think it's earned a spot on my favorites shelf for 2022....more
Read as part of my ongoing shelf audit. Verdict: Not a keeper.
This book is... fine. If I'd read it back in 2009 when I originally got an ARC at a confRead as part of my ongoing shelf audit. Verdict: Not a keeper.
This book is... fine. If I'd read it back in 2009 when I originally got an ARC at a conference, I probably would have enjoyed it; but since I didn't get around to it until now, I'm no longer really in the target audience. It's a pretty simple, undemanding story, without much to make it stand out. Paradoxically, I think its greatest strength is also its fundamental flaw - Selfors does a great job portraying the perspective of a high school student who is struggling with the question of what comes next, and feels like she has no idea what she wants to do after graduation; but the flipside of that is that Katrina is a very passive character, pushed one way and another by the plot, but rarely doing anything. When she finally does make a decision and take action, it feels forced and unearned.
The romance isn't really present, or particularly romantic. There's nothing wrong with Malcom, but he's just not actually very important to the plot, and there's no substantive chemistry between them.
Overall, I think 'it was ok' is honestly a pretty good summary of this book. Not good, not bad, just... there....more
Obviously, the definition of what constitutes a 'dangerous vision' changes with the times, and with a few exceptions I didn't find any of these storieObviously, the definition of what constitutes a 'dangerous vision' changes with the times, and with a few exceptions I didn't find any of these stories particularly revolutionary or boundary-pushing from a modern perspective. It sort of functions as a time capsule, both in that regard and in others - it was kind of wild to read an introduction to Roger Zelazny which predates his Amber books, or one to Larry Niven calling him a promising young writer. But mostly, other than as an historical curiosity, I don't think this book is very worth reading nowadays. Frankly, a lot of the 'dangerous visions' seemed to mostly be 'dangerous' by dint of their preoccupation with sex (and a very male-focused POV on it which I started to think of as "penis-gazing" about halfway through, in which sex exists as a thing that men desire and women, conveniently and without any diversity in perspective, give them).
A few standouts:
The good: - "Evensong" by Lester Del Rey, which opened the collection with a short, pointed allegory. I caught on to the twist early, but still find it satisfying and well-rendered. - "The Day After The Day The Martians Came" by Frederick Pohl, which pits earthly prejudice against alien threat; it took me a bit to figure out what Pohl was getting at, but I think he makes his point well. - "Faith of our Fathers" by Philip K. Dick, which got weird, but ultimately had a very interesting root concept and speaks to the easily corruptible power of fanatical belief.
The bad: - "Riders of the Purple Wage" by Philip Jose Farmer neatly cured me of any desire to read any of Farmer's other work. It was pretentious, nearly incomprehensible, and had no payoff. By the end of what seemed an interminable slog I no longer cared now notable Farmer was in the genre. - "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" by Theodore Sturgeon, which is actually one of the only stories that I think would still qualify as a 'dangerous vision' these days, because its postulate is that incest is so natural that, in fact, resisting the impulse leads to cancer. This story made me uncomfortable, which it was clearly supposed to do, but my discomfort was a bit more... specific, as the description of this utopian-but-for-incest society sounded a little too much like what Moira Greyland, Marion Zimmer Bradley's daughter, described when she spoke up about her abusive childhood. (Warning, her full blog post has a lot of homophobic rhetoric and, obviously, a lot of upsetting content. She's clearly gone through a LOT of trauma.) Sturgeon's afterword in this book was not exactly comforting vis-a-vis whether this story was just a thought experiment or... not.
And I have mixed feelings about "Eutopia" by Poul Anderson, because the multiverse and alternate histories of the Americas it postulated were neat, but the twist was 'hah! this enlightened man is actually GAY!' was... weird and I still can't parse how it was intended.
There's a lot of casual homophobia and transphobia throughout the book, as well as a very flat view of women (obliging Providers Of Sex, always willing when the protagonist wants, very little character beyond that), which is something I'm accustomed to in reading old SFF but still gets exhausting when, over thirty-two stories claiming to offer original perspectives, it's ALL like that. By the way, a whopping three women in that cohort - I suppose I should be glad there were any, but oof.
Also, Ellison's introductions were annoying as hell. Self-referential in the extreme, more about how he's buddy-buddy with all these cool folks than anything about their stories, and made the whole book feel like a self-aggrandizing project....more
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