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Posted by: Fivetide at Mar 28th, 2021, 10:24 pm in

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Title: Seveneves
Author: Neal Stephenson
Published: 2015
Genre: Fiction > Science Fiction > Hard SF
Rating: ★★★½
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Posted by: WordDiva at Mar 27th, 2021, 1:16 pm in

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TITLE: Chetna's Healthy Indian Vegetarian
AUTHOR: Chetna Makan
GENRE: Non-Fiction, Cookbooks, Indian Vegetarian and Vegan
PUBLISHED: June 11, 2020
RATING: ★★★★☆
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Posted by: sleepwalkingdreamer at Mar 24th, 2021, 3:40 am in

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TITLE: Paladin's Grace (Saint of Steel #1)
AUTHOR: T. Kingfisher
GENRE: Fantasy, Romance
PUBLISHED: April 14, 2020
RATING: ★★★★★

PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism

Around this time in 2019, I got back into playing Dungeons and Dragons thanks to one of my close friends. I’d tried to play it before, but it was only this go-round that the bug really bit. Two years on and I've created a "Break in Case of Permadeath" collection: character sheets I've made up in my spare time, consisting of characters of various races and classes that can be rolled into a game on short notice in case the one I'm currently playing happens to die permanently.

Among the many, many potential classes a player can choose for their character is the Paladin. The term itself comes from the Matter of France, which is the most notable of the medieval chansons de geste, or heroic epic poetry. They are, in essence, the French equivalent of the Arthurian legends, with Charlemagne in the place of King Arthur, and in place of the Knights of the Round Table, there are the Twelve Peers, or the Twelve Paladins (from the Latin "palātīnus", a title used by the closest retainers of the Roman emperor). The legends told about these knights have overlapped and commingled with the tales told of the Arthurian knights, and down the line, those stories have inspired fantasy authors. Their stories have, in turn, inspired the D&D version of the Paladin: a warrior who can cast magic thanks to the incredible strength of their faith.

It is this latter version of the Paladin that features in Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher. The titular paladin, Stephen, is a shadow of who he once was after a disaster rips out the core of his identity as a paladin. He finds himself living from day to day, wanting only to continue the life of service he once had, in whatever form that might take now. One day, he runs into Grace, a perfumer with a dark past, and soon, the two of them find themselves entangled in a web of court intrigue that could get them both killed – if the serial killer stalking the city’s streets doesn’t get to them first.

Quite frankly, I’m glad that I chose to pick up Paladin’s Grace. The pandemic has made me weary, and anxious, and weary of being anxious, and I desperately needed something to take my mind off all the things about the world that are wearing me down. Paladin’s Grace did exactly that. It’s not a fluffy read – or at least, not in the sense that it’s all froth and no substance. This novel has a spine, to be sure; it deals with questions of purpose, and how to find it again when one thinks one has lost it. It also deals with questions of emotional abuse, and the process of recovery from it.

It’s the latter part that really hit me in the emotional solar plexus. For nearly two decades I was caught up in an emotionally-abusive friendship. I know that it’s romantic relationships that tend to get the most mileage in various media, but just because it was a friendship and not a romantic relationship doesn’t make my experience any less traumatising. It has taken me a while to admit that (not least because, again, it appears that the media largely validates emotionally abusive romantic relationships, but not necessarily platonic ones), but thanks to some of my close friends, I’ve gotten myself mostly disentangled from the abusive friendship – though recovery is another thing entirely.

Which is why reading about Grace’s situation hits me especially hard, since I recognise some of her thought patterns. Take the following excerpt:
“Were you unhappy?” asked Stephen.

Grace clearly had to think about it. “I suppose so. Yes, I must have been, but…it’s so hard to say. I was so relieved, you see.” She gnawed on her lower lip. “To be out of my apprenticeship and able to sell my own perfumes. I hadn’t known how I was going to do that. And relief felt like happiness, if you don’t know the difference. I don’t know that I’d have been able to tell you that, at the time. It took distance, and I was still so close to it then.”

“We’re all very close to our lives,” said Stephen. “Most of the time, anyway.”

“And then I wasn’t,” she admitted. “Relief wasn’t enough any more. But I’d been there so long, you know, that it took…well, a long time.”

“It’s all right,” he said, seeing her flush at a memory. … “There’s no shame in that.”

“Isn’t there?” asked Grace. “It seems like if I was wiser or cleverer or…or more experienced, or something…”

“No.” He was using the voice, he could hear himself doing it, but he believed it and he wanted her to believe it as well. “You can’t blame yourself for not knowing what you were never allowed to know.”

“I’m happy now, I think,” she said. … “…it startles me, because I don’t feel like I have a right to be happy…”

“You always have a right to be happy,” he said.

The above conversation is something I’ve had to deal with since getting out of the abusive friendship. The bit where Grace asks herself if she could have done better if she’d just been “wiser or cleverer or…or more experienced, or something…” hits especially hard, because I still ask myself that question. Could I have avoided all that heartache, if I’d just been smarter? Could I have gotten out sooner, if I’d just listened to what other people were saying? Could there have been a different outcome, if I’d just been more perceptive?

In the end, those are questions that are impossible to answer. Hindsight might have twenty-twenty vision, but it’s still hindsight. And as Stephen says: “You can’t blame yourself for not knowing what you were never allowed to know.” And in a way, I was never allowed to know what my ex-best friend was truly like. Abusers don’t tell their victims that they are abusing them, or I suppose my ex-best friend didn’t know she was being abusive in the first place. That’s a more complicated set of questions to answer, not least because I’ve avoided all contact with her as much as possible since the time our falling-out became absolutely final. Still, intentional or not, the damage remains, and it will take a long, long time for me to recover.

But that’s the thing: there is a chance at recovery. Grace is proof of that; it took her a while, but she managed to recover – and on her own terms. While this is a romance, and while Stephen does play a role in Grace’s recovery, that role is to help Grace on the path to recovery, not to save her. There is a scene in the novel that really shows this off to best effect, but again I won’t describe or quote it here to avoid spoilers. Suffice to say that, when Grace finally faces her demons head-on, she does so on her own strength, standing on her own two feet, with Stephen standing aside to let her do what she needs to do – because he knows she can take care of it just fine.

For some readers, I suppose that seeing this entire scenario with Grace play out in front of them via this novel might be too painful to bear; that's understandable. But in my case, and perhaps in the case of other readers, reading about Grace's situation and her eventual recovery is incredibly reassuring. It's a reminder that, yes, one day all this shall pass, and we are still worthy of love and care and understanding, no matter how damaged we are on the inside. It's a credit, too, to Kingfisher, that she writes of these things in a manner that might sting with familiar pain, but still contains a depth of tenderness and understanding for a situation that many people do not understand or dismiss out-of-hand.

While Grace’s story of abuse and her path to recovery is the narrative I can relate to the most, Stephen’s story is just as powerful. His narrative is about grief and mourning, and though the focus of that grief and loss is very much a fantasy thing, it does not lessen the impact of Stephen’s feelings and journey. Stephen’s road to acceptance is an intensely personal one – more so than Grace’s, actually – but it does show how purpose is something that one finds, instead of something that one is given. And that purpose need not be one that is grandiose. More often than not, it can be something quiet, and simple: as simple as caring for someone else.

Overall, Paladin’s Grace is a lighthearted, charming read, filled with wonderful characters and clever, gently humorous writing. But at the core of that charm and lightheartedness are themes of hopefulness in the face of great adversity; of finding strength in oneself after harrowing life events; and that love and happiness are not just for the undamaged, but for everyone.
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Posted by: sleepwalkingdreamer at Mar 10th, 2021, 3:35 am in

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TITLE: The Library of the Dead (Edinburgh Nights #1)
AUTHOR: T.L. Huchu
GENRE: Urban Fantasy, Young Adult
PUBLISHED: February 4, 2021 (UK); June 1, 2021 (US)
RATING: ★★★★

PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon UK
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism

Edinburgh is an old city, and its history runs deep. Long before there was a city bearing that name, humans were living in the area around 8500 BCE, and since that time it has only grown in size and prestige. In that time, the city’s history has been mottled in shades of light and shadow – and those shadows can be very dark, if the stories are to be believed. And there are plenty of stories: Condé Nast Traveller counted Edinburgh among the 10 Most Haunted Cities in the World in 2017, and many people are convinced there is truth to that.

And like many old (and sometimes not-so-old, in the case of many American cities) and storied cities, Edinburgh makes a fine setting for an urban fantasy novel. This is what T.L. Huchu has done in his novel The Library of the Dead, first in the Edinburgh Nights series.

The Library of the Dead follows a teenager named Ropa, who works as a ghostalker: someone who speaks to ghosts and delivers their messages to the living – for a fee, of course. A girl’s got to eat and pay rent, after all, and moreover, Ropa has a family to support: her Gran, and her little sister Izwi. Like any self-employed professional, Ropa has her own rules for how she conducts her business, and most of the time, she sticks to those rules.

Except one time, when the ghost of a woman approaches her, asking Ropa to look for her missing son. At first, Ropa refuses, but after some convincing she decides to investigate. And what she turns up leads her to some of the darkest – and most interesting – secrets of Edinburgh: secrets that can both empower her, and destroy her.

The first, most notable thing about this novel is Ropa herself. The novel is told in first-person point-of-view, so it’s her voice that narrates the story – and her narration says a lot about who she is as a character. Take the following excerpt, which comes from the first chapter:
I’m taking liberties ‘cause them two are so minted it’s enough to set off my allergies. Look at the size of this place. Even have to take off my coat, it’s sweltering inside. This is one of them nineteenth-century stone cottages, so sturdy it could last another three hundred years. Built when land was aplenty, everything’s on the same level, save for the loft conversion. The McGregors are really proud of this place; soon as I got here they were yakking on about it. ‘Did you know Thomas Carlyle and his young wife Jane Welsh stayed in this exact cottage after they got married?’ I shook my head even though I’d read the wee blue plaque on the front gate. Now, I’m not one to judge, but if I got married, I’d want to honeymoon somewhere exotic, like Ireland or some such place, not flipping Juniper Green. Each to their own and all that. ‘You do know who Thomas Carlyle is, right?’ they’d said in unison. I pretended not to know and let them yak on. Must be something they do to whoever winds up on their doorstep.

I’m no buff or nothing, but I like history as much as the next lass, and so I do know Carlyle was a historian who wrote this and that back in the day. He was into heroes and great men, had something to say about how they influenced the course of human history. Always just men, never boys and girls, and seldom women. I didn’t tell the McGregors that I found his wife Jane more interesting.

This excerpt serves a dual purpose. On one hand, it showcases Ropa’s cynicism and irreverence, while also hinting at her streetwise nature. On the other hand, though, it’s clear that Ropa is very booksmart as well. Her statement that she prefers Jane Welsh to her husband Thomas Carlyle is an interesting one, since it indicates a much deeper reading of history than one might expect from the average fourteen-year-old.

This combination of street-smarts and book-smarts makes Ropa an intriguing character to read about. It’s easy to forget that she’s only fourteen, since she sounds a lot older than she actually is. Given her life, though, I suppose it’s not too surprising that she sounds older than she does; she’s had to grow up fast and take on adult responsibilities sooner than many others her age. While I’ve been privileged enough not to be forced to grow up as quickly as Ropa, I do recognise the circumstances in which she’s found herself, as there are plenty of young people who, because of necessity, are forced to grow up very quickly in order to support their families.

(It may occur to some readers to compare Ropa to a certain famous boy-wizard, especially once they’ve reached a certain point in the novel when the titular library comes into play and certain aspects of Ropa’s history have been revealed. While the comparison is to be expected, I personally think that Ropa is a far more interesting character than the aforementioned boy-wizard.)

Unsurprisingly, this background informs a lot of Ropa’s characterisation. Early in the novel Ropa’s hard-edged practicality might come off as a bit cruel to the reader, especially when she’s dealing with ghosts, but it soon becomes clear why she draws her lines where she does. Quite literally, she can’t afford to be sentimental, because sentimentality doesn’t translate to cash, and she needs cash in order to keep her grandmother and little sister fed and warm – neither of which is easy, given that the Edinburgh in which Ropa lives isn’t quite the same Edinburgh the reader might be familiar with.

This is an aspect of the novel that took me a while to piece together: the Edinburgh of this novel is one that has suffered some kind of disaster. It’s not made clear just what kind of disaster that was, though there are hints scattered throughout suggesting that it was some kind of conflict with the rest of the United Kingdom. As a result, Ropa’s Edinburgh is darker and more dystopian than the real-world city. Some elements, such as smartphones and the Internet, are familiar and still exist, and for a moment the reader might forget, and think the city in the novel is no different from the city in the real world. But then, Ropa will mention a detail like Waverley Station being underwater, and the reader is reminded that this is not the same Edinburgh as the one they might know.

All of these details are interesting, of course, but what they do best is highlight the immense disparity between those who have wealth (and therefore more power), and those who don’t have wealth (and therefore very little power). Ropa constantly comments on this throughout the novel; even the earlier excerpt showcases this in how she talks about the couple and their cottage. This disparity between the rich and the poor, exacerbated by the effects of an unknown disaster of some kind, is the novel’s primary theme. It’s clear that money is important, and while one would think that having more of it would make one more inclined to be generous; in fact, the opposite is true. Those who have more tend to cling to it more tightly, whether that “more” is money, or land, or even something nonmaterial like youth or social status.

While all of this is potentially interesting and will likely keep the reader going to the very end, the truth is that this is all rather thin on the ground. Most of the novel is dedicated to world-building, and the mystery at the heart of the novel is rather thin, though there are some interesting (though perhaps somewhat predictable) twists and turns in it. The library mentioned in the title is not even the story’s central focus, since the mystery plot occurs primarily outside of it. The main thing holding this book together is Ropa, and it’s fortunate that she is interesting to read about.

Now, it must be said that none of the things I just mentioned make this a terrible book; simply that it might not be the kind of book most readers of urban fantasy might be expecting. If one is more familiar with the Harry Dresden books for instance, or the Rivers of London novels, one might be expecting something more action-packed and denser than what one gets in The Library of the Dead. But after a while, the reader becomes accustomed, and then intrigued, by the world the author is building as seen through Ropa’s eyes, and by the people – living and dead – that she encounters along the way.

Overall, The Library of the Dead might strike veteran readers of urban fantasy as a bit light on the plot side of things, but it’s rather easy to forget about that in the presence of Ropa, who is a charismatic and fascinating character, with a wonderful narrative voice that draws the reader in. There is also the intriguing world-building since it’s quite clear that the primary aim of this novel is to set the stage for something much bigger and more intricate further down the line. Given what happens in this novel, I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what other kinds of trouble Ropa gets herself into, and how she manages to get herself out of them.
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Posted by: sleepwalkingdreamer at Jan 21st, 2021, 2:23 pm in

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TITLE: A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1)
AUTHOR: Arkady Martine
GENRE: Science Fiction
PUBLISHED: March 26, 2019
RATING: ★★★★★

PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism

When I was sixteen, my parents asked me what I wanted for my eighteenth birthday. Tradition in my country dictates that my family throw me an elaborate debut, as one of my maternal aunts had done for her eldest and second eldest daughters. My parents were not so traditional as that, so decided to give me a choice. I could have the debut, if I chose, or they could get me a car.

I think it says a lot about how well my parents knew me, that they’d offered me this choice. I’d already been involved in the debuts of my two elder female cousins, so I was entirely aware of how hectic and draining such events could be, even if one was on the periphery. And since I wasn’t particularly interested in such large parties, and was an introvert, to boot, I think my parents knew I wouldn’t opt for the debut, hence the offer of a car. But I don’t think they were expecting me to suggest a third choice: a European tour, on my own, so I could “see the world.”

Now, in the wake of reading Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire, I’ve begun to ask myself a question: why was it that when I said I wanted to see “the world”, I had equated that phrase to Europe and the UK? The world, after all, is more than just Europe; I’ve traveled locally, and my country is part of the world. I’ve traveled internationally, and Hong Kong and the United States are both part of the world (though the latter does seem to exist in a world of its own, sometimes). But my eighteen-year-old self had said: “I want to see the world; let me go to Europe on my own.” So why the equivalency? Why did I think of the hub of Empire when I thought of “the world”?

The main character of A Memory Called Empire, Mahit Dzmare, thinks a similar thought as she arrives in the City, the heart of the Teixcalaan Empire. Mahit is an ambassador from Lsel Station, which is the hub of a collection of mining stations that has, so far, managed to remain independent from Teixcalaan - a trend they would definitely like to continue. Aside from continuing to ensure Lsel’s independence, Mahit must also find out what happened to her predecessor, Yskandr Agahvn. After all, it was Teixcalaan that asked for a new Lsel Ambassador, and the only reason they would do so was if they found the previous one unsatisfactory - or if something more unsavoury had happened to said ambassador. Assisted by her Imperial liaison, Three Seagrass, and Yskandr’s woefully out-of-date imago (a memory record contained in a machine implanted in another person’s head), Mahit sets herself to accomplishing those two aforementioned goals - and in doing so, stumbles into a conspiracy that leads to the very heart of the Empire itself, and to the secrets that Lsel has tried to keep out of Teixcalaan’s grasp.

Some readers who are accustomed to the action-heavy slant of the most popular science fiction movies might think that there really isn’t much happening in this novel, at least at first. There are no grand spaceship battles here, no laser-sword duels or phaser-fire exchanges. Instead, a large portion of the plot involves following Mahit around as she tries to figure out what, exactly, her predecessor managed to do before she arrived, and then later, figuring out the circumstances behind why she was sent to Teixcalaan at all. The focus is more on solving the mysteries that Mahit encounters, and how she adjusts to living in a place she has always longed to go, while trying to represent and protect the interests of where she has come from. All of this is filtered through Mahit’s mind, since she is the person narrating the story, and is peppered with her observations of and emotions about what is going on around her, and the people she’s associating with.

Despite lacking anything resembling typical sci-fi movie values of action for a significant portion of the story, the plot still moves along at an admirable pace. Tension is slowly built up over the course of the novel, with little hints scattered here and there for the reader to pick up and ponder, just as Mahit does. The author utilizes the limitations of Mahit’s point-of-view exceptionally well to build up the sense of mystery and ratchet up the tension as Mahit uncovers what is really going on, and begins to realize what is truly at stake and what she may need to do.

While all of the above makes this novel an excellent story of political intrigue, what I enjoyed most about it were Mahit’s thoughts about Teixcalaanli culture and language, and her place (or lack thereof) in it. Consider the following excerpt, which is from the beginning of the novel:
What’s down there, [Mahit] thought. For you.

<The world>, said her imago, who had been Ambassador from Lsel in the City when he was still a living person and not part of a long chain of live memory. He said it in the Teixcalaanli language, which made it a tautology: the world for “world” and “the word for “the City” were the same, as was the word for “empire”. It was impossible to specify, especially in the high imperial dialect. One had to note the context.

Mahit frequently thinks in these terms: of Teixcalaanli not as a casual spoken language, but as something more elevated, more literary. Throughout the novel it’s pointed out that to be a Teixcalaanli citizen is something to aspire to, something to want to be, and Mahit’s observations and thoughts on its language and the literature written in that language are along those same lines. To embrace a culture’s language and literature is to embody that culture’s ideals, to want to be a part of that culture.

But it soon becomes clear to Mahit that, no matter how much she loves Teixcalaanli culture, no matter how much she embraces it and immerses herself in it, she will never be Teixcalaanli. This is made clear in the following excerpt:
…Mahit knew two things: first, that if she wanted to take a turn at this game, all she needed to do was step forward into the circle, and someone would challenge her, same as any other Teixcalaanlizlim—and second, that she would fail at it completely. … She’d spent half her life studying Teixcalaanli literature and she was just barely good enough to follow this game, recognize a few of the referents. If she tried herself she’d—oh, they wouldn’t laugh. They’d be indulgent. Indulgent of the poor, ignorant barbarian playing so hard at civilization and—

Mahit slipped back, away from the circle of clever young people...and tried not to feel like she was going to cry. There wasn’t any point in crying over this. ... One department or another, clamoring. She’d read that poem in her collections, on the Station, and thought she’d understood. She hadn’t.

On the surface level, this is a key moment of character development for Mahit, who up until this point has been convinced that she can be Teixcalaanli enough if she tries. But in this moment she realises that, to these people, born in the heart of the Empire, she will always be a barbarian, an outsider. Her mastery of their culture means nothing - but then again, can she truly “master” the culture when she was never born into it to begin with? She can try to fit in, as best as she can, and she might find a space for herself within it, even find someone she can love and who will love her back, but no one will ever believe that she is genuinely Teixcalaanli.

And is assimilation really what Mahit wants? As Ambassador one of her main goals is to maintain Lsel’s independence, to prevent it from being absorbed into the Empire. But there was a time when she wanted otherwise:
(Some other life. Some other life when she’d come here alone, imagoless in truth, and—studied, wrote poetry, learned the rhythms of other ways of speaking that didn’t come out of a textbook. Some other life, but the walls between lives felt so thin sometimes.)

The above was Mahit’s dream, when she’d still been studying in the hopes of becoming, if not Lsel’s Ambassador to Teixcalaan, then of taking the citizenship exams and finding her place that way. But by the time she thinks the above thoughts, she’s already well on her way to deciding that maybe that’s not what she wants, either. The dream of the life she could have had and the reality of the life she is currently living show her that, while she can’t ever be Teixcalaanli, she can never really be wholly Stationer, either:
Mahit felt that way now… Very distant. A certain kind of free.

Not, in the end, quite home.

It is these questions of belonging and not-belonging, of loving that which can erase one’s culture, that is the beating heart of this novel, and where I derive most of my enjoyment reading it. To be sure, the plot itself is very well done, but it is how that plot plays with these themes of imperialism and colonisation as seen through the lenses of language and literature that made me think back to that time when I was sixteen, when I thought of Europe as “the world”. Like Mahit, I, too, wished to see the world: not only because I was a teenager and because I wanted to travel without my parents’ supervision, but because it was a place I had spent a lot of time reading about while I was growing up. When I said I wanted to see “the world”, I meant that I wanted to stand in the shattered sunlight streaming through the stained glass of Notre Dame de Paris; to drift lazily amidst the waterways of Venice on a gold-gilt afternoon; to tap my toes against the bustle-humming cobblestones of London as I decided which play to see. I wanted to see the places and experience things I’d only ever read about, to follow in the footsteps of the many, many writers whose works I’d read as I was growing up.

But just like Mahit, who I am now is not who I was when I was sixteen, nor even when I was twenty-one, which is when I took the trip. Life experience plus education have since added nuances to my simplistic enjoyment of European and Anglo-Saxon culture, forcing me to see the shadows created by the light. Now, when I look up at the grand churches of Italy and France, I think not only of their beauty and grand history, but also about the immense harm Roman Catholicism has done to women, queer people, and colonised cultures. When I think about wandering London’s streets, I think not only of the history, but also how much damage the British Empire has done to its colonies. Worse, the harm caused by Empire does not merely cut deep, but lingers, continuing to do damage in the present. I look at my country and its history and wonder: who might I be now, if Europeans had not gone around the world, stealing entire countries and crushing entire cultures? Empire (in the form of Spain and later the United States) destroyed so much of my people’s identity. Sometimes, looking back, it feels like whatever was there before Empire arrived on my country’s shores has been completely erased, reduced to cinders, near-useless for the process of building one’s identity, whether as a person or as a country.

And yet, perversely, I still have affection for Empire. Like Mahit, I am immersed in the language and literature of Empire: of English, which, as the main language of the United States and of the internet, may be considered the most imperial of languages. I read and write largely in English; indeed, I feel more comfortable using English than my native language. The way I view everything, from myself to the world around me, is influenced by what I have read - most of which is in English.

But, knowing what I know now, I try not to get swept away in all of it. Nowadays, I try to be more aware, more circumspect of the things I read, and try to be careful not to paint too perfect an image in my mind - though I admit, I do still slip into those daydreams sometimes. I am still very fond of European and Anglo-Saxon culture, still sometimes dream of living in Florence or London, but I do try to remember not to burnish the idylls too brightly.

In light of all of that, reading about Mahit’s conflicting feelings about Teixcalaanli culture and language is, to me, like looking into a mirror of my own thoughts and feelings about my relationship with Empire. It is a relationship that is complex and complicated, and more often than not it can feel as though I belong nowhere: “Not, in the end, quite home”, to quote the novel. This might seem terribly bleak, but these are very important questions, not least because they touch me so deeply. I do not want to shy away from such questions just because they do not make me smile - indeed, I think that makes them even more important.

Overall, A Memory Called Empire is an entertaining read, but for readers who have a history with Empire - those from former colonies, for example, especially those who have traveled abroad or have immigrated to Europe or North America - will find that this book may touch a deep, perhaps unaddressed, part of their experience. Mahit’s thoughts about imperialism and colonialism, and their relationship with language, literature, and culture, all ask the reader to look inward, and to consider their relationship with Empire - not just in the overt history they have been taught, but on a more personal, more intimate level. As I have said, these are very hard questions, but they are important ones, and I am glad the novel made me ask them of myself. I hope other readers will consider sharing the experience.
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Posted by: sleepwalkingdreamer at Jan 11th, 2021, 12:52 pm in

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TITLE: The Only Good Indians
AUTHOR: Stephen Graham Jones
GENRE: Horror
PUBLISHED: July 14, 2020
RATING: ★★★★★

PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism

I remember a time in the mid-’90s to around the early aughts, when slasher films became immensely popular. Movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer, the Scream series, Urban Legend, and Final Destination were in the pop culture zeitgeist when I was in late elementary to early high school. Despite their near-ubiquity, though, I wasn’t really interested in them. It might be because I really wasn’t all that interested in the horror genre, period (not least because I’m a self-confessed scaredy cat), but even afterwards, when I did begin to engage with the horror genre, I’ve only ever considered the slasher genre with passing interest. I suppose it’s that they just never really seemed all that scary to me – or at least, not in the way that I prefer. A slasher movie might be scary while I’m watching it, but that fear doesn’t really stick around after the credits roll.

Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians is entirely different, even though it would definitely fall under the slasher category if it were turned into a movie. It tells the story of four Blackfeet men, who did something they really shouldn’t have ten years ago. They get caught, but they go on with their lives, thinking they can put the event behind them. But that isn’t quite true: the past has come back – not to haunt them, but to hunt and kill them. And it won’t stop hunting them until it exacts its revenge.

While I’m still not very interested in slasher films, I’ve glimpsed enough of them that I’m familiar with the tropes and conventions of the genre. Most slasher films focus on a killer who relentlessly pursues and murders their victims in graphically gruesome ways – all except for one: the “Final Girl”, or sometimes the “Final Boy”, the last one standing who confronts the killer and lives to tell the story (after a fashion). Different slasher films from different decades riff and play with these tropes and a whole host of others, but for the most part, these are the tropes that remain the same across most of them, and may therefore be said to define the genre.

The Only Good Indians definitely has those tropes: four young men who commit a terrible act are hunted down to the last by a vicious killer who is connected to that terrible act. It also has a “Final Girl”: the daughter of one of the four men. This is unsurprising, as Jones deliberately built the novel to be “a slasher, but in the way a slasher hasn’t been done before”. And Jones certainly manages to accomplish that.

The first notable distinction is the emphasis on questions of tradition and identity. While it’s not something that’s put at the very forefront of the narrative, questions of what it means to be Blackfeet in specific and American Indian in general permeate the novel. Take the following excerpt:
“I’ve never done one at night,” Gabe says then, leaning back in Jo’s chair, the chair not quite bending. Yet.

“A sweat?” Cassidy says.

“There’s nothing, like, against doing it at night, is there?” Gabe asks.

“Let me check the big Indian rule book,” Cassidy says. “Oh yeah. You can’t do anything, according to it. You’ve got to do everything just like it’s been done for two hundred years.”

“Two thousand.”

They laugh together.

While it’s treated as a lighthearted moment, the above excerpt does ask a few interesting questions about tradition and heritage, and how those play into contemporary life. While there’s something to be said about preserving traditions, it’s also true that it’s important to live in the here-and-now, to adjust to the realities of the world and of life as it exists right now. The way the Blackfeet live now is vastly different from the way the Blackfeet used to live – to say nothing of how people’s values, both as individuals and as groups, have shifted over the generations. How much can one bend tradition without losing the essence of said tradition? How does one even define the essence of a tradition anyway? These are hard questions, ones that are not restricted to just the Blackfeet.

It’s a similar question that the individual characters in the novel ask about the lives they’re leading. Of the four young-men-now-grown, two still live on the reservation: Gabriel, or Gabe, and Cassidy, or Cass (or whichever new nickname he’s decided he prefers). The other two live off the reservation. One of them, Lewis, is married to a white woman named Peta. Take a look at the following excerpt:
… “She finally figure out you’re Indian, enit?”

What Cass and Gabe and Ricky had told him when he was running off with Peta was that he should get his return address tattooed on his forearm, so he could get his ass shipped back home when she got tired of playing Dr. Quinn and the Red Man.

“You wish she’d figure it out,” Lewis tells Cass on the phone, … “She even let me hang my Indian junk on all the walls.”

“Like Indian-Indian,” Cass says, “or Indian just because an Indian owns it?”



The headline flashes through his head: INDIAN MAN HAS NO ROOTS, THINKS HE’S STILL INDIAN IF HE TALKS LIKE AN INDIAN.

Throughout his narrative, Lewis has to contend with questions of what it means to be a Blackfeet living outside the reservation, and what that means for himself as a person and his connection to both his past and his future. There is a moment in the story when he thinks about children, and how Peta decided she didn’t want any:
The headline kicks up in Lewis’s head…: not the FULLBLOOD TO DILUTE BLOODLINE he’d always expected if he married white…but FULLBLOOD BETRAYS EVERY DEAD INDIAN BEFORE HIM. It’s the guilt of having some pristine Native swimmers…cocked and loaded but never pushing them downstream, meaning the few of his ancestors who made it through raids and plagues, massacres and genocide, diabetes and all the wobbly-tired cars the rest of America was done with, those Indians may as well have just stood up into that big Gatling gun of history, yeah?

According to this website, there are 17,321 members of the Blackfeet Nation living in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana. That isn’t a lot of people at all, even if one counts Blackfeet who live outside the reservation. But that population is one of the larger ones for American Indians – a group that makes up roughly 2% of the total population of the United States. When one considers these numbers, and remembers the violent and tragic history that American Indians suffered at the hands of white colonists, then Lewis’s guilt makes a lot of sense – and, again, poses some interesting questions about heritage, bloodlines, and how that intersects with history.

In the case of Ricky, the other member of the quartet who lives outside the reservation, his narrative confronts issues of racism, and the microaggressions that American Indians have to deal with, like in the following excerpt:
… Ricky ran away to North Dakota. His plan was Minneapolis…but then halfway there the oil crew had been hiring, and said they liked Indians because of their built-in cold resistance. It meant they might not slip off in winter.

Ricky…had nodded yeah, Blackfeet didn’t care about the cold, and no, he wouldn’t leave them shorthanded in the middle of a week. What he didn’t say was that you don’t get cold-resistant because your jackets suck, you just stop complaining about it after a while, because complaining doesn’t make you any warmer. …

While Ricky’s story is brief compared to Lewis’s, his story is, perhaps, the one that most graphically illustrates the kind of violence that American Indians must deal with from white people – both the physical and nonphysical kind – throughout history.

This introduces the second element that distinguishes this novel from the slasher stories that inspired it: it’s about specific kinds of guilt, and how the four characters deal with it. Here is how Lewis views it, when he thinks about the moment when everything changed for him and his friends:
… That craziness, that heat of the moment, the blood in his temples, smoke in the air, it was like–he hates himself the most for this–it was probably what it was like a century and more ago, when soldiers gathered up on ridges above Blackfeet encampments to turn the cranks on their big guns, terraforming this new land for their occupation. Fertilize it with blood. …

In the moment that he and his friends do the thing that will come back to hunt them ten years later, he compares the incident to the many massacres that white colonisers perpetrated on American Indians, stealing land, resources, and lives to exercise their authority from the East Coast to the West. In the moment this event happens, Lewis identifies, not with his ancestors, but with those who murdered his ancestors – and that weighs on him, becomes the albatross around his neck for the next ten years, compounding with his own guilt about leaving the reservation to marry a white woman and not have children.

But this is only how Lewis, specifically, frames the fateful event. The others have their own guilts to bear (or run away from, as the case may be), and not all of them are even directly related to the events of that night, so they frame things differently as laid out in their respective narratives. But what is clear, is that what happened ten years ago altered the trajectories of their respective lives, and now that it’s coming back to get them, they have no choice but to face the reality of what they have done, because it is intertwined with who they are, the people around them, and everything they have become.

While The Only Good Indians turns an excellent spotlight on the themes I’ve mentioned, I do find myself wishing that some thought had been given to the theme of feminism in the context of the American Indian experience, both past and present. While the fact that the Final Girl is a daughter of one of the four who participated in the instigating event says some very interesting things about generational guilt and how young women tend to pay the price and bear the consequences of it, I think it would have been nice to get a little more development for the killer – who is, in fact, a woman. The importance of this is difficult to explain in full, given that to do so would require diving into spoilers, but suffice to say that I wish more time had been devoted to really fleshing her out as a character – though I suspect that, given her nature, there is only so much characterisation that can actually be done, and Jones has done what he can without sacrificing the other aspects that make this novel such a good read.

Overall, The Only Good Indians is a truly chilling horror novel, which starts out slow and creeping before slowly gaining speed until, by the last few chapters, the reader will hurtle through the pages at top speed to get to the conclusion. It will likely occur to readers to compare The Only Good Indians to the film (and the book) I Know What You Did Last Summer. The comparison is warranted; after all, both play with themes of guilt, doing what is morally right, and dealing with the consequences of one’s actions. But the themes of tradition, identity, and a very specific type of guilt distinguish The Only Good Indians from I Know What You Did…, and the other slasher films that inspired and inform it, so that it stands very well on its own as a fine example of its genre.
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Posted by: sleepwalkingdreamer at Jan 5th, 2021, 2:42 pm in

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TITLE: Thirteen Storeys
AUTHOR: Jonathan Sims
GENRE: Horror
PUBLISHED: November 26, 2020
RATING: ★★★★★

PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism

Real life is often more terrifying than fiction. This is something I’ve come to understand in light of everything that has happened and is still happening this year, during which I have read very few books, and most of what I’ve read has been either romance, or horror. Both make the perfect brain-candy, albeit for different reasons. In the case of romance, it’s nice to escape into a world where love is indeed true and happily-ever-after does exist, even if it hurts to get there in some stories (though the heartache is also what makes that ending so sweet). As for horror, it’s because of the catharsis. The current state of the world is such that it can often feel like there’s no end in sight; in a horror novel, there’s always an ending. It might not be a happy ending, and it might not be an absolutely conclusive ending, but it is still an ending.

But one thing I’ve never stopped looking for in my reading, both before the pandemic and during it, are themes that speak to me of broader issues. If this pandemic can be said to have done anything helpful for humanity, it’s to expose the web of injustice that pervades our society, in such a way that many people will remember it long after the pandemic has ended – and move towards ensuring that those injustices are resolved for the better. And Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims most certainly does just that.

Readers who have heard about Sims before probably know him for his work as the creator of the horror podcast The Magnus Archives, and will likely find that Thirteen Storeys feels very similar to the aforementioned podcast series. Like The Magnus Archives, Thirteen Storeys is a set of standalone short stories, connected to each other by the setting and the occasional cameos some characters make in the stories the others tell, with the final chapter acting as the climax that brings all the characters, and their stories, together. Also like The Magnus Archives, there is a larger, overarching plot that brings the stories together, which is hinted at across the chapters and revealed in its entirety at the novel’s climax.

As a fan of Sims’ podcast, Thirteen Storeys is a delight because of how familiar it feels: like a text version of The Magnus Archives, but still different enough to be its own creature. It shares plenty of its DNA with its podcast sibling, but Thirteen Storeys’ storytelling feels sharper, more focused. Sims uses the confines of Banyan Court to best advantage, with the building providing a metaphorical sort of structure to the stories even as it stands as an actual, physical structure in the novel itself.

Even with that more narrowed focus, though, the individual stories are still interesting and diverse, offering different flavours of fear to appeal to (or creep out) the individual reader. The stories show the wide range of influences Sims draws upon, with nods from Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson to H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. The characters, too, are diverse – not just in terms of their demographics, but in their personalities as well. What they do share in common, though, is that none of them can be considered genuinely “good” people. Some are more reprehensible than others, of course, and I admit to feeling some schadenfreude when certain characters were made to suffer, but even the most sympathetic of the characters presented in this novel is hardly a saint. Take, for example, the following quote, which comes from the second chapter/story:

… He understood poverty and degradation without having to actually experience it. You don’t need to actually touch art.

This is from one of the more reprehensible characters I mentioned earlier: an art dealer who has some rather shady dealings and, as the above excerpt makes clear, some disgusting prejudices of his own. He is one of the most memorable characters: partially because of his portrayal, but also because his tale is genuinely scary, with nods to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. It also helps that by the end of the chapter/story it might be argued that he gets what he deserves.

But as I have also mentioned, not all of the characters are terrible people, as the following excerpt shows:

… A burning need to find the heart of this place, to push her way through a fog of history to the pure essence of greed and dispassionate cruelty; a world where people are allowed to suffer out of sight simply because it is easier. She’d seen glimpses of it since she was a child. Could she be better or was it her fate too? Perhaps tonight she would find out.

The above comes from the seventh chapter/story, and the protagonist of this chapter/story is focused on unearthing the mystery that lies at the heart of Banyan Court itself. She gets close, but not quite close enough – that reveal is saved for the climax.

While this structure is interesting and has allowed Sims to tell a story that’s different from more traditional haunted house tales, it does mean the reader will have to keep track of quite a few characters – which might be a bit of an issue even for readers who are accustomed to reading genres like fantasy and science fiction, where tracking multiple characters across multiple chapters and even multiple books is commonplace. This might be because each character has only one chapter in which to make themselves memorable to the reader, which works in the case of some characters, but maybe not in others.

But if there is one thing that truly makes this novel stand out, it’s the central theme. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is a statement that many people have encountered at one point or another – and it is, sadly, one that all too often turns out to be true. Except in very rare cases, anyone who gets even a scrap of power is likely to abuse that power: a tendency that escalates the more power someone is given. And since money is the easiest path to, and source of, power, it should come as no surprise that the wealthiest people are also the ones most prone to abusing their power. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk: just googling these names will lead to many stories showing how so much of their wealth is built on the abuse and exploitation of the less fortunate. And they are not the only ones who have done so: a quick peek through history will show that, all too often, the acquisition and maintenance of great wealth tends to come at the expense of those who are most vulnerable to exploitation.

This notion of exploitation and abuse in order to serve the greed of a few (or of one) is the novel’s thematic core. To explain how that works would be difficult, since it would mean spoiling the entire story, but suffice to say that Sims does not attempt to hide this theme at all, instead using it as the spine around which everything else is built, the thread that binds it all together.

Overall, Thirteen Storeys is an exceptional read. While some readers may have trouble keeping track of all the characters, each of those characters is fascinating on their own, though readers will certainly have their favourites. The structure might not be typical of haunted house stories, but it lends itself well to the tale (or tales?) that Sims weaves, offering the reader glimpses of the monster at the heart of the tale before finally revealing all in the final, thirteenth chapter. Fans of The Magnus Archives are sure to enjoy this novel, but I also believe that it makes an excellent introduction to readers who have never encountered Sims’ podcast before, giving said readers a taste of the brand of fiction he does so well. I also recommend the audiobook version of this novel, which is read by a full voice cast, including Sims himself, and is quite the treat even for those who have not encountered Sims’ podcast.
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Posted by: tchristin at Jan 2nd, 2021, 5:40 pm in

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TITLE: Snow
AUTHOR: John Banville
GENRE: Fiction > Mystery/Thriller
PUBLISHED: 2020
RATING: ★★★★☆
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