Sep 16 2021

Rooms Of The Mind by Makenzie Campbell

There’s a huge caveat to my review of this book today: I got an e-galley for Kindle, which was so strangely formatted as to make me constantly second guess whether I was reading a new poem or a continuation of the last one every few stanzas. This pervading doubt is not terribly conducive to enjoyment of a poem’s flow, much less its message, so my apologies for any obtuseness on my end caused by this.

That said, I did find my brain mulling over the writing more than once, as Makenzie Campbell describes several different compartments in her mind. Mulling is a good thing, to be clear. She writes about very universal, relatable feelings, whether they be love or hope or fear or nostalgia, in ways that reminded me of chapters of my own life. The emotions felt very raw and true — even if I did sigh a little at the portentous declarations of turning a heartbroken 21, like, chiiiiild, just you wait! — and more than once, I felt snagged on a particular snapshot of feeling, and had to sit with it to ponder for a while before I could move on. Once I finished the book, I also went back and started to read again from the beginning, to see if things looked differently the second go-round. I was rewarded with greater insight on the second pass-through, as matters that had seemed opaque as I was reading the first time slid into greater clarity: this speaks to the richness of the collection.

For all that the book hangs together seamlessly enough to warrant circling back round to an immediate re-read, however, I don’t necessarily think that the thematic divisions worked as well as intended. There was a lot of overlap, particularly in the last half, and just a wee bit too much repetition. Overall, it’s a laudable attempt at structure that I think could have used greater stringency in (self-)editing.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/16/rooms-of-the-mind-by-makenzie-campbell/

Sep 15 2021

Poe For Your Problems: Uncommon Advice From History’s Least Likely Self-Help Guru by Catherine Baab-Muguira

I honestly wasn’t sure when I started reading this book where Catherine Baab-Muguira was going with it, and to be completely honest, I’m still not sure how to categorize this work now that I’m done reading it either. I do know that I finished reading this with stars in my eyes and hope in my heart, and if that isn’t the point of any good self-help manual then I don’t know what is.

Here’s the thing: while the book allegedly seeks to have readers learn from the absolute dumpster fire that was Edgar Allan Poe’s life, his life serves as about 50% model and 50% cautionary tale, as wittily depicted in this volume. Poe For Your Problems doesn’t claim to be a biography of the famed author and poet but frankly is one of the best popular biographies I’ve ever read, humorous and honest and not above leaning in to 21st century mores and manners in examining the good, bad and absolutely cringe aspects of Poe’s life. Ms Baab-Muguira shows how weirdly relatable his life is to the modern American reader’s, whether it be in matters of education, career or romance. There are plenty of flaws and transgressions that she’s quick to admonish — like Poe marrying his 13 year-old cousin, ewwwwww — but even more that she highlights as being full of lessons for today’s reader. For a far more relatable anecdote in the field of romance, for example, Poe may not have been the first celebrity to do the equivalent of sliding into his fans’ DMs to disastrous effect, but he certainly was not the last. So if you’re gonna be messy on social media about your love life, don’t feel too bad about it: people who should probably know better have been doing it since time immemorial, and everything still worked out okay eventually!

The thing is, PFYP feels a lot like a humorous biography with plenty of (gosh, it feels weird to say but here goes) morals for readers to learn from. The cautionary tales are easiest to nod along to, ofc: don’t marry a thirteen year-old, don’t drink to excess, don’t gleefully burn every professional bridge while struggling to live off of bread and molasses. But it’s the sideways lessons that are the most poignant, and which provide the chewiest food for thought. We don’t need necessarily to be less neurotic, more together people in order to find happiness and success, Ms Baab-Muguira tells us. Sometimes, it’s okay to lean into our less sociable, less decorous, less polite instincts in order to remain true to ourselves and leave behind something worthwhile.

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Sep 14 2021

Beautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang

For the first three-quarters or so of this book, I was absolutely enthralled. Qian Julie Wang tells the story of her relatively prosperous, if politically oppressed life in Northern China before her Ba Ba emigrates to America, followed by herself and her Ma Ma five years later. They overstay their visas, becoming undocumented while Ba Ba and Ma Ma work a series of awful jobs to scrape together a life in Brooklyn, constantly dodging anyone who might seem to want to deport them. Qian struggles in school even after teaching herself how to read English, less due to her innate abilities than to the less than nurturing attitudes of certain teachers.

As the years pass, the corrosive effect of living in the shadows takes its toll on the small family, coming to a head when Ma Ma is hospitalized. Even after her recovery, Ma Ma is further disillusioned by her inability to become documented and thus get a job worthy of the qualifications she’s worked so hard to achieve both pre- and post-immigration. So Ma Ma takes a drastic step, and Qian is finally set on a certain path to freedom from the fear of losing everything she loves because of arbitrary employment and status regulations.

So, as an open borders absolutist, books that expose the completely ridiculous ways in which people contort themselves to justify denying human rights to migrants are totally my jam. Towards this end, Beautiful Country knocks it out of the park. It’s a stain on the moral character of any peoples who allow migrants to work for pennies under inhumane conditions, as the entire Wang family is forced to do. Some of our citizens even have the nerve to decry a shortage of skilled labor while refusing to extend protections to the qualified, further making up arbitrary reasons to harm the vulnerable while still profiting from their exploitation. Jackasses like these don’t see immigrants as people, only tools.

Fortunately, we have books like Ms Wang’s that highlight the humanity of the undocumented by depicting with complete frankness all the trauma that a life of poverty, enforced only by a lack of documentation (which, let’s be honest, is fundamentally due to racism,) inflicts upon her and her parents. She has the self-awareness to show how kindness and understanding require effort that the impoverished and hungry often simply can’t afford, freely admitting to having been kind of a shit herself, while still calling out the people who don’t have this excuse, whose experiences are so limited to their lives of relative privilege that they don’t even ask why a child would behave in seemingly self-sabotaging ways, instead assuming it’s because she’s lazy or indifferent. She catalogs both the people who were kind to her as well as all the ways people were gratuitously unkind, including in this last list her parents and the bizarre pronouncements they would lay on her. It’s fascinating and heartbreaking to follow along with a maturing Qian as she sees her father become exactly the opposite of who he’d wanted to be, why he’d left China in the first place.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/14/beautiful-country-a-memoir-by-qian-julie-wang/

Sep 13 2021

Among Thieves by M.J. Kuhn

This debut fantasy novel has all the things that pique my interest, starting with a motley team of rogues coming together for a daunting heist, each with their own ulterior motives and back stories that unfold as the novel progresses. There’s adventure, romance, multiracial representation and plot twists galore! So I should totally love this book, right?

Alas, reading Among Thieves felt like a chore for me for one reason alone: the pacing was godawful. All the information came in a fevered rush, there was no suspense, no build up, and all the plot twists were dropped in like anvils from heaven. When something genuinely surprised me (which it only did at the end,) I was moved so far as to raise an eyebrow and murmur, “Clever.” And that’s it! The entire reading experience was like lying down in rapidly rushing water, with a big wave at the end: pleasant but rather mindless, and extremely one note.

But, you know, some readers will dig that, and if that’s you then I’m happy for you, because here’s a book you’ll love! The premise, briefly: the port city of Carrowwick is run by its street gangs in the same way that the five kingdoms of Thamorr are run by their monarchies. The Saints, led by the ruthless and potentially mad Callum Clem, have just suffered a rather large reversal, but Callum has a plan for getting his gang back on top of the power structure. This will involve bringing together Ryia (and I really want somebody to tell me how that’s pronounced,) the assassin known as the Butcher of Carrowwick; Tristan, a light-fingered street urchin indebted to Callum; Ivan, the foreign master of disguise; Nash, the smuggler captain who styles herself the Empress of the Three Seas, and Evelyn, the disgraced former captain of the Needle Guard, the security force that patrols Carrowwick for its ruler.

And as the ruler guides the country, so does the Guildmaster rule Thamorr, due to his being the only source for the gifted warriors known as Adepts. Ofc, our team is sent on a heist to steal something extremely valuable from said Guildmaster. But since each of our rogues has their own interests at play here, will they be able to score their prize without betraying and possibly dooming each other to death or worse?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/13/among-thieves-by-m-j-kuhn/

Sep 12 2021

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

“As a heartless killing machine, I was a total failure.” That’s Murderbot to a T. All Systems Red introduces Murderbot, a part-mechanical part-organic construct more formally known as a Security Unit, one of many produced to keep humans safe in an interstellar civilization. Before the story began, this Security Unit had hacked its governor module — an element that enforced a sort of corporate version of Asimov’s Laws — and become fully independent. Unfortunately for it, if the corporations that run the parts of space shown in this novella discover what it has done, they will have it rendered back to spare parts. So it has to keep pretending that it is a normal Security Unit while it looks for a way to make a break for freedom.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

All Systems Red begins with Murderbot having considered one of the natural reactions a former slave has toward its enslavers: “I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites.” Distracted, maybe redeemed, by the power of stories. “It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a total failure.” (p. 6)

It’s out on a new contract, looking after a scientific team that’s exploring a planet newly opened for possible human exploitation. It’s also half-assing the job, looking forward to getting back to base and episode 397 of the serial it’s currently watching, considering tuning out the humans’ status feeds and tuning in to the music feed without the base computer knowing.

I was looking at the sky and mentally poking at the feed when the bottom of the crater exploded. … [Cross-talk from humans and bots]
In the middle of all that, I hit the bottom of the crater. I have small energy weapons built into both arms, but the one I went for was the big projectile weapon clamped to my back. The hostile that had just exploded up out of the ground had a really big mouth, so I felt I needed a really big gun.
I dragged [Dr.] Bharadwaj out of its mouth and shoved myself in there instead, and discharged my weapon down its throat and then up toward where I hoped the brain would be. I’m not sure if that all happened in that order; I’d have to replay my own field camera feed. All I knew was that I had Bharadwaj, and it didn’t, and it had disappeared back down the tunnel. (pp. 10–11)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/12/all-systems-red-by-martha-wells/

Sep 11 2021

Twenty Years On

This is not real. We’ve seen it all before.
Slow down, you’re screaming. What exploded? When?
I guess this means we’ve got ourselves a war.
And look at — Lord have mercy, not again.
I heard that they went after Air Force One.
Call FAA at once if you can’t land.
They say the bastards got the Pentagon.
The Capitol. The White House. Disneyland.
I was across the river, saw it all.
Down Fifth, the buildings put it in a frame.
Aboard the ferry — we felt awful small.
I didn’t look until I felt the flame. …

That’s the beginning of “110 Stories,” by John M. Ford, the best piece of writing about September 11, 2001 that I know of. He had finished it by that autumn. Read it on something bigger than a phone’s screen; the layout matters.

Introducing the poem when she published it in August 2002, Teresa Nielsen Hayden wrote, “Someday I’ll be able to read it without crying.” Today is not that day for me.

Ford passed away in September 2006, much, much too soon. Here is an initial collection of tributes.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/11/twenty-years-on/

Sep 10 2021

Never Saw You Coming by Erin Hahn

I admit that I flinched a little when I read the blurb for this on receiving the Wednesday Books circular. How much would I, a progressive Muslim, find in common with a bunch of evangelical Christian church kids? Apparently, quite a lot! I’m glad I put my trust in Wednesday Books on this: when they do “controversial” they do it right.

Meg Hennessey is 18 years-old when she discovers that her entire life has been a lie. Raised and home-schooled by devoutly Christian parents (the kind who would characterize themselves brightly as “Christian!” when asked which denomination, probably without even realizing the cynical marketing behind the turn away from their Pentecostal roots — yes, I have THOUGHTS,) Meg is informed by her mom that the man who raised her isn’t actually her biological father but the best friend Mom married when she found out that she was pregnant and that the guy who’d knocked her up was dead. After this confession, Dad takes off altogether, leaving Meg feeling betrayed, rudderless and alone. When she discovers that her paternal great-grandmother lives ten hours upstate and desperately wants to meet her, she decides to take her gap year up in Marquette, Michigan in order to try to get to know that side of her family better.

Micah Allen used to be the quintessential pastor’s kid until his dad was imprisoned for embezzlement from the church. Between that and the sexual relationships, occasionally coercive, between Micah’s dad and certain church staff, Micah’s completely blind-sided family was shunned and worse. Micah’s mom eventually remarried and had several more kids, but Micah never really recovered. Though his faith in God is still strong, he no longer goes to or believes in the church.

When Meg and Micah meet, they first think the other is an extreme weirdo, but as circumstances keep throwing them together, they find themselves falling in love. But are they each too much of a mess to be able to really connect? Can they come to terms with the past in order to build a better future together? And while they share a deep love of God, will the teachings of the evangelical church tear them apart?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/10/never-saw-you-coming-by-erin-hahn/

Sep 09 2021

Malika: Warrior Queen Volume 1 by Roye Okupe, Chima Kalu & Raphael Kazeem

What a fantastic way to kick off the YouNeek YouNiverse, an interrelated set of fantasy, sci-fi and superhero comics and properties from an African perspective! The first volume of Malika: Warrior Queen tells the story of a 15th century ruler, who she was and how she was shaped by the battles that rent and threatened to ultimately destroy her kingdom of Azzaz.

Malika grew up the younger daughter of the royal family, in the shadow of her beloved older sister Nadia. Tho a prodigy, she only became heir the same day that Nadia took a terrible fall and disappeared. With the death of her mother several years later, Malika ascended to the throne, ruling over a scant few years of peace and prosperity before dissension reared its ugly head once more. Now Malika has to preserve the kingdom she fought so hard to unite, not only from internal strife but from the looming threat of General Cheng and his mighty Ming army.

The plot twists nicely (if not necessarily surprisingly to this jaded thriller reader) as Malika has to navigate both military action and political intrigue in her quest to restore peace and affirm a united Azzaz. The rousing speeches are a highlight of the dialog, as Malika must contend with what makes for a fit ruler; kudos to Roye Okupe for some really thoughtful, evocative writing. The supernatural element is also very cool, leaning heavily on a mash-up of African and Chinese mythology. I really enjoyed the ending as well, and how it sets up for the rest of the extended universe. Bonus: this book definitely passes the Bechdel test!

But my favorite part of the book was likely the art, which was pretty darn terrific. Raphael Kazeen’s colors do a wonderful job of breathing life into Chima Kalu’s evocative, expressive illustrations. It’s rare to find someone as good at depicting facial expressions as they are at close combat, mass military maneuvers and supernatural effects, but Mr Kalu fully delivers on everything the script calls for.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/09/malika-warrior-queen-volume-1-by-roye-okupe-chima-kalu-raphael-kazeem/

Sep 08 2021

An Interview with Fran Dorricott, author of The Final Child

Q. First off, congratulations on your second book! How was the experience of writing The Final Child different from writing your debut, After The Eclipse?

A. Thank you! Honestly, writing The Final Child was a lot of fun. To me it feels a little grittier, a little slower in terms of tempo, and I liked being able to explore the characters at a difference pace. Writing under a deadline for my second novel was an interesting experience, but I tend to draft fairly quickly so it wasn’t as hard as I thought – but revising a novel under a time pressure is always tricky so there were some elements with this second novel that I found harder. I like to think the work paid off, though!

Q. I love that The Final Child continues to explore several of the themes from After The Eclipse, including a focus on survivors and how people cope with tragedies for which they blame themselves. How do you feel that your themes evolved from one book to the next?

A. I love to think of After the Eclipse and The Final Child as two kind of companion novels. They’re not connected but they are sort of spiritual sisters, and I think this stems from the evolution of ideas from one novel to the next. While I was writing After the Eclipse I found myself thinking a lot about what it means to be a survivor, and how really there is no one way to process that extreme kind of trauma, so I started to think it would be worth exploring that in more detail in my next book. And as for the sibling theme, guilt and anger and loss in sibling relationships is something I often come back to because I have such a strong bond with my own sister.

Q. What motivated you to add a concrete link from The Final Child to its predecessor in the form of the (awesome) aspiring writer Harriet Murphy?

A. I think it’s just a character idea I really love! Writing is such an intrinsic part of my life that I love to include it in my work where I can, and I thought this novel would also benefit from the kind of insight that writers tend to experience. A lot of writers I know seem to have the ability to read people, to feel a strong empathy for them, but that doesn’t make us street smart and that can lead to some interesting problems for characters to unpick. It’s one of my favourite tropes in books I read too.

Q. I really enjoyed the representation in The Final Child. I know you made conscious choices regarding that in After The Eclipse, as well. With different characters at its heart, however, what were you particular about wanting to showcase in this novel?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/08/an-interview-with-fran-dorricott-author-of-the-final-child/

Sep 07 2021

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

It’s weird how Silvia Moreno-Garcia is so hit or miss for me. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t start with the books which made her famous, and which I still really want to read. Instead, I’ve hopped around her timeline somewhat, based on what was available to me, and can safely say that her newer works kick ass but her older ones kick only rocks.

Alas, Certain Dark Things falls firmly into that latter category despite being reissued with some extra stuff at the end, including a book club guide and a fun section of drink recipes inspired by the novel. CDT is set in a parallel future, in a world where vampires have been out since the 1960s, to varying but mostly negative receptions. There are at least ten distinct bloodlines, and as restrictions have clamped down in Europe, the native vampires there have spread out to other parts of the world, including Mexico. Now the Necros, who are very much like the traditional Dracula-types common in Western pop culture, are making big plays against the local Tlahuelpuchi. Atl, the last daughter of one of the latter clans, is on the run and hiding in the allegedly vampire-free zone of Mexico City.

Domingo is a young trash picker who lives in the sewers. When he catches the eye of beautiful, mysterious Atl on the subway one night, he thinks his life is about to change. And change it does, but not for the better, as he finds himself caught in the middle of a war between vampire clans, drug dealers and corrupt cops in this bloody, savage neon-noir.

First, I love that name “neon-noir”, which strikes me as a pretty awesome subgenre description, even if there isn’t a whole lot of mystery going on in this novel, just a bunch of brooding criminals circling each other till the final confrontation. But plot is not, seemingly, the point of this book. The greatest strength of CDT lies in the entirely fresh world-building, which reconsiders and reworks your typical urban fantasy scenarios into something vividly new. The different species of vampire are intriguing, and the depiction of an alternate universe Mexico City compelling.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/09/07/certain-dark-things-by-silvia-moreno-garcia/