My life in books

"A Trump Christmas Carol," by Roz Kaveney, Laurie Penny, John Scalzi and Jo Walton; Uncanny, December 25, 2016
http://uncannymagazine.com/article/trump-christmas-carol/

A brilliant piece of political fiction, a solid reworking of the ideas of Dickens' classic as the ghosts of 2016 teach the President-elect the true meaning and proper use of political power.



"The Orangery," Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam; Beneath Ceasless Skies, Issue #214, December 8, 2016
http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-orangery/

Using the myths of Apollo and Daphne and Apollo and Dryope as central images, Stufflebeam gives us a powerful look at the responses evoked in women when confronted with men's desire and sense of entitlement to women's labour, bodies and love. When confronted with all the women, including Daphne and Dryope, who have chosen transformation into trees, Apollo asks “Why do you women fear men so much that you would rather be tree than give a kiss?” It's a question answered by this novelette, though perhaps not in any way that one who must ask can understand.



"The Evaluators: To Trade with Aliens, You Must Adapt," N. K. Jemisin; Wired, December 13, 2016
https://www.wired.com/2016/12/nk-jemisin-the-evaluators/

A brilliant and truly terrifying cautionary tale told in modern epistolary style (excerpts from emails, reports and other documents) about the dangers of making assumptions and rushing first contact.



"Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0," Caroline M. Yoachim; Lightspeed, March 2016
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/welcome-to-the-medical-clinic-at-the-interplanetary-relay-station/

Having spent way too much time dealing with medical personnel and institutions lately, this grim little story about the futility of getting any real healthcare from a bureaucratic and underfunded system hit close to home.



"My Grandmother's Bones," S. L. Huang; Daily Science Fiction, August 22, 2016
http://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/religious/s-l-huang/my-grandmothers-bones

A short and moving story about generational relationships and cultural changes, seen through a series of funerary behaviours.


"17 Amazing Plot Elements... When You See #11, You'll Be Astounded!," James Beamon; Daily Science Fiction, May 3, 2016
http://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/religious/james-beamon/17-amazing-plot-elements-when-you-see-11-youll-be-astounded

An interesting approach to the retelling of a very old tale. Short, but worth reading for the way it's told.



"The Right Sort of Monsters," Kelly Sandoval; Strange Horizons, April 4, 2016
http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-right-sort-of-monsters/
Powerful story about need, sacrifice and how humans deal with difference. A strange and alien grove - the Godswalk - appears mysteriously beside a village, leaving most of the inhabitants unable to have children of their own. In the forest are the blood trees, whose flowers produce children in return for human blood, children that are not quite human, but human enough. But when Viette enters the forest to seek a child to fill the void left by a series of miscarriages, she learns that the Godswalk hides deeper secrets than she realised.

The second book in Jo Walton's Thessaly trilogy, The Philosopher Kings, is in many ways an inversion of The Just City. Instead of asking questions, it proposes answers. Instead of trying to build the just society of Plato's Republic, it details the shattering of that singleminded goal into a multitude of separate factions, each imagining itself to be the proper way to bring about justice and excellence. Instead of hope and progress, it deals with loss and discord.

Apollo and Maia continue to be key narrative voices, but the death of Simmea brings to the forefront a new character, Arete, the semi-divine daughter of Apollo and Simmea.

The core questions are still the same - what is just, what is the good life, what is excellence, what is personal responsibility, and what is purpose of life. But where in the previous novel, the characters sought their answers to these questions within the framework of Plato's ideal, here they find personal answers in their interrogation, re-examination and alteration of the ideal. The Just City was idealistic theory, The Philosopher Kings is personal praxis.

And just as The Just City ended in a debate that prompted the action of a god and the changing of everything that had gone before, The Philosopher Kings ends much the same way, promising a conclusion as different and original as the two volumes that preceded it.

Sometimes I find myself wondering what my life would have been like had I made different choices at one point or another. Of course, I'll never know. This one life is all I have, and all my choices represent roads not simply not taken, but never to be known.

But In My Real Children, Jo Walton tells the story of a woman who does know, who stands, in her final years, on the cusp of two worlds, knowing exactly what will come from a crucial decision, and armed with that knowledge, prepares to chose which life she has lived - who are her real children (literal and metaphorical) and who are the phantoms drifting along the road not taken.

Patricia Cowan is, at the beginning of the novel, a woman of nearly 80, with advanced dementia, living in a senior's facility. Her medical chart notes that she is frequently "very confused" - which is to be expected from her diagnosis. But as we listen in on her interior monologue, we realise that not all of her confusion is due to her mental state. Patricia is remembering two lives, and living in two slightly different worlds. As she begins to understand this herself, the novel flashes back to when she was a child, and moves forward to the moment her life split in two - the day when, as a young schoolteacher with a degree in literature from Oxford, the somewhat odd yet insistent young man with whom she has carried on a romance via letter for two years gives her an ultimatum, to marry him now, or never.

From that point on, we see in alternating chapters her two lives unfolding. In one, where she is called Trish, she is unhappily married and personally frustrated for many years, but slowly finds ways to put her talents to use in a variety of causes from peace work to local politics to teaching adult education classes.

In the other, where she is called Pat, she finds a career and a passion in writing guidebooks to the great cities of the Italian renaissance, meets and forms a long lasting and loving relationship with another woman, living a life that holds greater personal and professional satisfaction and fulfillment, but is less oriented to public service.

The larger world also splits on that day, and both Trish's and Pat's worlds vary from our own. In Trish's world, the great powers move further back from the brink than in our own, and humanity reaches the moon, civil liberties are acquired sooner, the world seems more likely to find peace. In Pat's, human beings still reach the moon, but there are limited nuclear wars and a heightened response to terrorism that seems to go beyond what has happened in our world.

By the time the doubled lives of Pat and Trish have been told and we are again in the facility with Patricia, we understand that this twinned existence cannot continue, that Patricia must make a choice between her pasts - and decide which world her real children will live in.

Walton leaves us to decide for ourselves what Patricia's choice is, and invites us to consider what choice we might make.

It's a book that made me cry, and made me think. Walton does that a lot.

Karin Lowachee, The Gaslight Dogs

This is a powerful story about a young woman, Sjenn, who bears a gift that is intended to be used for the protection of her people. She is stolen away from her own culture and forced to make her gift serve the ends of her people's enemies. Her confusion, alienation, and struggle to survive, maintain her identity and return to her people are all part of an engrossing personal story.

This is also a brilliant examination of colonialism and forced assimilation. Heavily influenced by Lowachee's experiences living in the Canadian North, and clearly based in part on the history of Canada's indigenous northern peoples with white imperialist nations, it shows hard truths about the processes and impacts of the colonial project.

As in her earlier works, which exposed the horrifying effects of war on children, including those forced to become child soldiers, without being in any way didactic or sacrificing the art of storytelling, Lowachee has given us a reading experience par excellence - fully realised and compelling characters, a well-developed and intriguing secondary world, and a riveting story. At the same time she makes us think about the questions of power inequities between peoples, and about what history looks like from the perspective of those who have been deprived of their voice by a dominant culture.

One warning - this is the first volume of an intended trilogy, and so Sjenn's story is incomplete and many questions about the workings of the worlds she lives in remain to be answered. I am hoping that Sjenn's people will escape the fate so many indigenous peoples have faced.

for those interested, there is a good review by Jaymee Goh on tor.com.


Jo Walton, Among Others

I suspect that anyone who reads heavily in the science fiction and fantasy genres who has not heard of this amazing book has been living under a rock at the bottom of the sea on Europa for the past year.

Among Others is told in the format of a personal narrative, the diary of a young girl who has survived traumatic events and has now been taken away from the places and people she knows among her mother's relatives, and placed in the custody of her long-absent father, who promptly sends her to boarding school. The personal, cultural and social gaps between a working class Welsh girl and her mostly upper class English schoolmates, between a withdrawn and bookish girl in love with science fiction and fantasy and the "mundanes" around her, are part of why Mori is constantly "among others." But Mori is also the daughter of a power-mad witch, and she and her twin sister have the power to see the magic and the otherworldly beings that are invisible to most humans - here again Mori is and has long been living among others. (Even further, because the world of humans and the old dwelling places of the fairies are intertwined, it can also be said that human society itself is unknowing conducted among others.)

This book is so rich on so many levels - it's the story of a young girl growing up, dealing with disability and grief and the consequences of a dysfunctional family. It's about the battle between light and dark, the drive for power-over vs the nurturing of power-together. It's about the nature of perception and the power of belief. About finding one's identity and one's own inner power. About the loss of connection and intention in modern society, about the hollowness of work done without emotional investment. About the callous destruction of nature in the service of yet more sterile progress. About the necessity of magic. It is also, in a marvelously self-referential way, about how alternative fiction feeds the minds and souls of people who want to think about and explore all these things, and more.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.


Kirill Yeskov, The Last Ringbearer (translated by Yisroel Markov)

And speaking of those who have been deprived of their voice by a dominant culture, this very interesting work turns The Lord of the Rings on its head and tells the story of how a society seeking to move toward scientific enlightenment and democratic rule is almost destroyed by a hidebound culture in which power is limited to the few and progress has been stifled, keeping the people in ignorance and thralldom. Following the maxim that history is told - and usually distorted greatly - by the victors, Yeskov takes as his fulcrum the themes of nature vs, industry and magic vs, science that are woven through The Lord of the Rings and valorises the side that Tolkien demonised. A fascinating look at how changing perspective changes everything.

Ha’Penny, Jo Walton

This, the second volume in Walton’s Small Change trilogy – an alternate history of a fascist post-WWII Britain – continues its brilliant and merciless examination of a society that has come to accept the unacceptable, tolerate the intolerable, and keep on smiling as if nothing could ever be wrong.

The first novel in the series, Farthing, made use of the literary conventions of the English country house murder mystery to show the cumulative effect of every individual decision, every petty threat, ever minor compromise, every small change that results in the creation of a fascist regime in which people voluntarily accept the curtailment of freedom and condone murder and state terrorism to gain an illusory security.

Ha’penny takes the form of yet another well-established genre, the suspense thriller, to explore the moral issues at the core of life under an unjust and illegitimate government. Walton uses the same structure she adopted in the first novel, alternating the narrative point of view between two characters. The first, Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard would seem, by his centrality to the action of both volumes to day, to be the central figure of the trilogy. The second viewpoint character in the novel is new to us, although she has some connection to some of the events of the first novel - actress Viola Lark, estranged daughter of a well-placed and wealthy family (based, it would seem, on the Mitfords), and about to begin rehearsals for the leading role in a gender-reversed Hamlet.

Carmichael, blackmailed into silence about his knowledge of the crimes at the heart of the new regime by his superiors, who are aware of his relationship with another man, finds himself in the position of acting against his own deepest beliefs to preserve the government that he, more than most, knows to be the result of a murderous coup. His only hope is that he can at least, by serving honestly in an unjust world, save some of the innocent who might otherwise be caught up in the wheels of an increasingly uncaring machine.

As Carmichael threads his way through the complexities of investigating a terrorist conspiracy, Viola’s narrative traces the path of seduction and compromise that leads an unconcerned and apolitical innocent into the heart of violent resistance. Through both narrative threads, the ethics and motivations of those who condone state terrorism and those who would commit terrorist acts in the name of freedom are explored with equal honesty, showing the effects of compromised ethical positions on all sides.

It’s an uncomfortable portrait of human nature, and poses a number of questions about the methods and ethics of resistance to an unjust government – leaving the answers up to the reader.

Farthing, Jo Walton

One of the most brilliant books I’ve read this year is Jo Walton’s Farthing.

I’m not ordinarily an enthusiast of historical or alternate history novels set in or folllowing World War II, but I’d heard so much about this book, and enjoyed Walton’s other works so much, that I set aside my silly prejudices and read it. And I am very glad that I did, because despite being very fully situated in time, place and culture, this isn’t really about post WWII England at all. It’s about everywhere and every time.

You might not notice this at first, however. It begins with the murder of Lord Thirkie, part of Britain’s social and political elite, at the Farthing country estate during that most classic of muder mystery settings, the English society house party. The London police are called in, the family and house guests are interviewed, various theories of the murder are examined – on the surface, this could be an Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers novel. But right from the beginning there are some things that don’t read as a traditional country house murder mystery. First, the daughter of the house is married, considerably beneath her social status, to a war hero who is also a Jew. Second, this is an alternate history, where Britain negotiated a “peace with honour” with Nazi Germany, thus ending the war on the Western Front and forestalling the entry of the US into the war – and it’s the so-called “Farthing set” who were the driving force behind this capitulation, with Lord Thirkie the chief negotiator. Third, the London inspector has a secret to hide - he is a closeted gay man, in a culture where being gay is illegal. As the investigation proceeds, the truths about who committed the murder and why unfold, but the conclusion is far from what one expects from a country house mystery.

This is a book that shows us, with remorseless honesty, how a society takes the first steps toward 1984. It shows us why it is so true that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

It is also an unflinching picture of how the prejudices of a society – in this case, against Jews and homosexuals – can influence perceptions and can be used both to manipulate the truth and enforce compliance. Fear and distrust of the outsider, fear of exposure and reprisal, fear of speaking truth to power, fear of risking comfort in order to champion what is right, fear of upsetting the status quo and social norms – it’s all here, and as the people who know or guess the unspeakable are, one by one, driven out or silenced, the freedoms of individuals and the obligations of a just and democratic society to its citizens are undermined.

It’s also a beautiful love story, which is part of what gives the outcome its extraordinary impact. How can such a loving and devoted couple not win out over the forces threatening them. How can such sympathetic characters not find a way to foil the plot? How can everything go so very wrong?

The answers to these questions are things that we all need to keep in mind, today more than ever.

Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton

Tooth and Claw is a Victorian-style family drama, complete with dark secrets, stolen inheritances, and impoverished young members of the gentry struggling to regain – or improve on – their social standing in a world where even the most skillful veneer of manners can’t conceal the vicious competition for place and status, and where even the slightest misstep can mean catastrophe for one’s self and one’s family.

The plot is quite traditional for such novels. To quote my partner glaurung_quena (from an email discussion list):

… two brothers and three sisters gather for the premature death of their father. The elder brother has become a parson, and the elder sister is married with a generous dowry, but the younger brother is trying to build up his wealth in the civil service, and there isn't enough wealth left to properly dower the two younger sisters. There's a dispute over an ambiguity in the will, with the selfish brother-in-law bullying a full share for himself and his wife, leaving the younger siblings even more impoverished than they had thought they would be. One unmarried sister goes to live with the her brother the parson, and the other is forced to live with her overbearing brother-in-law and her sister, whose character has sadly changed since marriage to resemble her husband's. Against all the odds, all three younger siblings find someone who wishes to marry them, who is of a higher station than their own, and who, coincidentally, they happen to love as well.

And it’s all about dragons.

As Walton says in her prefatory notes to the novel:

It has to be admitted that a number of the core axioms of the Victorian novel are just wrong. People aren't like that. Women, especially, aren't like that. This novel is the result of wondering what a world would be like if they were, if the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology.

As it was for humans in the Victorian novel which Walton takes as her starting point, social status is everything for the propertied class. The gentry live off the peasant class, while those who make their fortunes through trade life off the working class. Males achieve their ambitions through careful management of their estates and businesses, through political and social alliances, through schemes and deals and application of power and status. Females take their social place from their fathers, then their husbands; making a good marriage is the only respectable way to gain status, and only a respectable – that is to say chaste and uncompromised – female can rise in society.

Walton’s dragons literally improve their social standing by consuming the flesh of other dragons – the only way they can grow larger and become stronger. A dragon’s greatest inheritance is the flesh of his or her parents. A dragon of property grows powerful off the flesh of his tenants’ and workers’ offspring. A dragon who wins in a battle of law, business or honour may advance to greater heights by consuming the flesh of his opponent. Female dragons must follow the rules of respectability without exception, because a female dragon, once made aware of passion, changes colour – appropriate, even required, in a bride or matron, but forever damaging to an unmarried female of whom unsullied maidenhood is demanded. All the “axioms of the Victorian novel” regarding human behaviour are literalised in the bodies of Walton’s dragons.

The title of Walton’s novel is from Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H., with the crucial lines quoted at the beginning of the novel itself: “Nature, red in tooth and claw/ With ravine.” Appropriately enough, not two stanzas further on, one finds the lines “Dragons of the prime,/ That tare each other in their slime.” These dragons, red in tooth and claw, make for excellent reading.

Each book of Walton’s that I read, impresses me more and more, with her originality, her versatility, her wealth of literary and historical knowledge that serves to deepen and enrich everything she writes, and her stunning talent in creating characters that live in one’s mind for a very long time after one turns the last page.

And now for Part 2 of the omnibus thumbnail reviews of recently-read sff.


The Temple and the Crown - Katherine Kurtz & Deborah Turner Harris

Kurtz and Harris write wonderful alternate history occult fantasies, drawing to some degree on Templar mythology with (in the Adept series) a large splash of Blavatsky et al. The is actually the second of two alternate history books they’ve written in which survivors of the discredited Templar Order place their abilities in battle, both mundane and arcane, at the service of Robert the Bruce in his struggle to free Scotland. I’ve not read the first book, but this one was lots of good fun, assuming you enjoy reading about Templar occultists fighting for the Scottish throne against the villainous Sassenach.


Swordspoint - Ellen Kushner

I am kicking myself for only now having read my first book by Ellen Kushner. Swordfights, politics, intrigues, long-lost heirs to ancient noble houses, and wonderfully gay heroes – good reading and wildly entertaining.


Crossroads - Mercedes Lackey
The Valdemar Companion
Sanctuary

I have discussed my weakness for Mercedes Lackey’s books in other entries. Crossroads is another Valdemar anthology, and includes stories written by a number of authors including Judith Tarr, Tanya Huff and Lackey herself. Much fun. The Valdemar Companion is of course a reference work for those whose memories can’t keep track of all of the characters of all of the Velgarth stories, but it also has some fun articles and new material written by Lackey herself. Definitely for fen.

Sanctuary is the third book in Lackey’s new series about dragon-riding pseudo-Egyptians, and it continues the series well. The evil magicians are now in control of both Upper and Lower Egypt, er, the lands of Tia and Alta, and the remaining dragon riders, er, Jousters, of both countries are hiding out in the desert protected by Bedouins, er, whatever she’s calling them instead. We’re all set up for the fourth and final book of the series, in which young Kiron, the dragon-boy with a Great Destiny, leads his valiant army of free dragon-riders to the rescue and restores truth, justice and goodness to the Two Lands. And I’ll just lap it up once it’s out in paperback. ;-)


A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L’Engle
A Wind in the Door
A Swiftly Tilting Planet

I confess, I had never read Madeleine L’Engle’s oft-recommended Time quartet until this year. Now I’ve read the first three books and have been properly charmed by her writing, which, while somewhat quaint and perhaps just a shade too overtly religious at times (much like C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, which one loves, if one does, perhaps as much because of as in spite of these things), are indeed delightful. I fully intend to read at least the rest of the Murray-O’Keefe (Kairos) books, which continue the adventures of the family from Wrinkle in Time and I may try the Austin (Chronos) books as well, although since they are generally described as being more realistic than the Kairos books, I may not enjoy them as much.


The Dragon Prince Trilogy - Melanie Rawn
Dragon Prince
The Star Scroll

I read Rawn’s two interlocking trilogies, The Dragon Prince and Dragon Star, when they were first written back in the late 80s and early 90s, so these two books go in the list of re-reads. I deeply enjoyed both trilogies, at least in part because of the complicated and interwoven political manoeuvrings of both secular and esoteric power bases. Like many others, I regret that real-life difficulties have so far prevented her from completing her Exiles trilogy, and continue to hope that someday The Captal’s Tower will appear. In the meantime, I can always re-read the Dragon trilogies again.


Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J K Rowling

Well, I’m ready for the final book now. I surely hope that Rowling has a finale that’s big enough and strong enough to carry the weight of all these years of building expectations. But whatever happens to Harry, Snape has to be one of the great literary love to hate, hate to love characters.


The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart
The Wicked Day

More re-reads! I was going to wait until I had the full set in hand again, but there I was one afternoon, really craving some good old Arthurian historical fantasy, and there the two books were, and I said to myself, “I know what’s in The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills, I can re-read them separately once I pick them up.” So I read what I had to hand, and it was indeed fun to relive some of the earlier books of the popular Arthurian lit explosion of the 20th century.


The King’s Peace - Jo Walton

This is the first volume of Walton’s alternate history based on the Arthurian legend, and it looks to be the beginning of a worthy addition to the genre. I am, of course, delighted with the fact that the tale is set in a world where there is a good deal of gender equity and that the POV character (who appears to be fulfilling the Lancelot/Bedwyr function, at least so far) is a woman. A good historical fantasy read in general, and a treat for fans of the Arthurian material.


Empire of Bones - Liz Williams

Another new author (to me, anyway) and another novel I enjoyed very much. An original take on the classic star-seeding idea, with a well-realised alien culture, a non-Anglo protagonist and earth-based setting, and (minor but enjoyable to me) an honest look at issues of teleporter technology. I also liked the fact that the story line dealt with issues of disability and medical care. Worth reading.


Consider Her Ways and Others - John Wyndham

Another of my classic re-reads. Some thought-provoking stories, including the dystopic title story. I’ve always had problems with “Consider her Ways,” and the years haven’t changed that. The analysis of the role of romantic love in the social control of women remains solid after all these years, but Wyndham’s insectoid vision of sexless worker drones and brainless mothers in an all-female future makes for a terrifying alternative. I don’t believe that Wyndham lacked the ability to imagine a third alternative, so I must assume that this is some kind of cautionary tale to feminists, to be careful not to (in a deliberately maternalist image) throw out the baby with the bathwater.