Review: Slow Gods

Slow Gods by Claire North
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'd never read any of this author's work before, but after seeing a couple of glowing reviews I decided to take a chance on it. I'm glad I did, as it's one of the best books I've read so far this year.

This is a space opera, but it's unlike any space opera I've ever read before. Most space operas have casts of thousands and galactic- or universe-wide stakes. This book has plenty of characters, but it's told entirely through the eyes of one Mawukana na-Vdnaze, a protagonist who starts out as human, then becomes something utterly inhuman, and is slowly working his way back to something close to human as the story ends. This is all summed up in a terrific opening line: "My name is Mawukana na-Vdnaze, and I am a very poor copy of myself."

It's also the story of the Shine, a fascistic interplanetary regime who commits atrocities against its own people and who is brought down in the end. It is brought down by a huge, ancient artificial intelligence called the Slow, who traverses the cosmos and tends to descend on settled planets to warn them of momentous upcoming events. In the story, the Slow may as well be a god, given how it seems to predict the future and manipulates events...and possibly manipulated Mawukana's existence and life. That is left ambiguous in the story, but the implication is definitely there.

It's also the story of the author's version of FTL travel, known as arcspace: an alternate dimension that ships use to jump across the lightyears, which can only be accessed by a ship operated by an organic Pilot. In the Shine, people are forced into this position and used until they die and/or go insane. Mawukana was a Shine Pilot, and on one arcspace jump he died. Then something in those fathomless depths brought him back to life, recreating him out of the stuff of arcspace itself, leaving him immortal and impossible to kill, and utterly inhuman. At the beginning of the book, he is pretty much an inhuman monster, and over the course of the story he becomes....less so. He learns to feel, to regret, to help others--and even to love, a love so profound it will guide him through the rest of his days.

All these elements are brought together by the chunk of hard SF that sets off the plot: a binary star system collapses on itself, and the resulting shock waves of radiation will obliterate all life within an 83 light-year radius. This includes several Shine worlds, and the Shine, as befits a corporate fascist, refuses to acknowledge this is happening (at least for its employees and its indentured workers/slaves--its Managers and Executors get free rides out, of course). The Slow is the one who warns the people in these various systems of what is coming, and it is the Slow who orchestrates the downfall of the Shine, sacrificing (Mawukana figures) nearly two billion people to save many billions more.

This story is beautifully told, with lovely prose and many different, well-thought-out and fascinating cultures. Time-wise, it covers over two hundred years, the entirety of Mawukana's life and then some. It's not flashy or bursting with glorious battles, but it grows on you from that opening line. This is a terrific story that gets my highest recommendation.

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Review: Oathbound

Oathbound by Tracy Deonn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book, the third in the young-adult Legendborn Cycle, succumbs to what could be called "creeping-pageism." That is, each successive book veers more and more into Brandon Sanderson-style brickbat territory, since this book is a whopping 642 pages.

Unfortunately, I don't think the ever-expanding length does the story any favors. The pacing is my major issue with this book, as so many of the scenes and conversations meander on and on for pages and don't need to. If you're invested in the characters, as I suppose I still am, you can give the book a bit of a side-eye and overlook this, but I can also envison a newbie to this series putting the book down in frustration. (Not to mention that you absolutely should not start the series with this book; it sorely needs a "the story so far" prologue. I don't know why series authors are so resistant to this.) It's not till the last quarter of the book that the story really gets going, and it took me several days to work my way through the previous three-quarters.

Which is too bad, as both the main protagonists Bree Matthews and Nick Davis go through some nice character development, and another main character, Selwyn Kane, becomes at the very least an anti-hero and possibly an all-out villain, due to a...rather frustrating plot twist in the book's final pages. The secret Arthurian society that rejected Bree, the reborn Arthur Pendragon, as their ruler, still has their racist and misogynist head up their ass, as they will not accept a young Black woman as their leader. This all seems to be setting up an explosive fourth book, but I really wish this one hadn't dragged so much to get there.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I didn't like this book nearly as much as the first two. I hope the series isn't getting into diminishing-returns territory, as the first book in particular was very affecting. We shall see.



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Review: Snake-Eater

Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

T. Kingfisher regularly writes whimsical fantasies (when she's not venturing into gut-churning horror) with mature protagonists and dogs that don't die. This is another one of those, as close to a "cozy" fantasy as we're ever likely to see from her. (It's also got a terrific cover, depicting a roadrunner, a nasty miniature dinosaur that does in fact regularly hunt and kill rattlesnakes.)

This time around, our protagonist is Selena, a woman who comes across as somewhere on the autism spectrum or at least neurodivergent, who flees an emotionally abusive relationship to visit her aunt Amelia, who lives in Quartz Creek, a tiny, isolated Southwestern town. She uses nearly the last of her money to get there, only to find that her aunt died the year before. She does not know what to do, but a couple of the people she meets in town urge her to stay at least the night in her aunt's empty house (including her closest neighbor, Grandma Billy, who is an unmitigated delight). Selena stays the one night, which gradually morphs into more and more nights as she meets and makes friends with more people in Quartz Creek. (She does not want to return to her former partner Walter, who we don't meet until nearly the end of the book, where he turns out to be a patronizing, gaslighting SOB who Selena is well rid of.) Selena had contemplated moving on after she found out about her aunt's death, but as the days slowly slide by and she settles in despite herself, she begins to imagine making a life in Quartz Creek.

Of course, it isn't that easy. She gradually discovers there are spirits in the desert, including a little "squash god" caring for the garden she plants in the back yard. There is also a rather more malevolent spirit, the titular Snake-Eater, a roadrunner god who we discover manifested in physical form and had a relationship with her aunt. Snake-Eater thinks Selena has come to take her aunt's place, and the storyline turns into her struggle to be free of him.

Throughout, the author exhibits a sense of droll humor about all this that had me laughing out loud several times. For instance:

"He's a god," said Grandma reasonably. "Or nearly one, anyway. I've never been clear on the difference. Maybe a spirit instead, though I call him a god to be polite."

"You're saying...there's a god...in my garden." Selena hoped the words did not sound as mad out loud as in her head.

"Nothing to worry about. It's not like he's gonna be peeping at you in the shower. And if he likes you, you'll get a better crop than you might otherwise."

As the story progresses, Snake-Eater becomes more obsessed with Selena, leading to a confrontation in another world with the roadrunner god, Selena, Grandma Billy, and Father Aguirre (another delightful character, who turns out to be a were-javelina). Selena ends up shooting Snake-Eater and weakening him to the point where he won't be a bother to her or anyone else during her lifetime. She returns to Quartz Creek, looks at the home and friends she has made, and decides to stay.

There isn't any romance in this one (and may I say that I really like the author's understated, slow burn, mature romances) because it isn't necessary. Selena's entire character arc is learning to trust herself and the friends she makes in Quartz Creek, and stepping out from under Walter's--and ultimately Snake-Eater's--shadow. These are relatively small stakes, but they're no less important to the characters and the story. This is a delightful little book, highly recommended.



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Review: Hole in the Sky

Hole in the Sky by Daniel H. Wilson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had high hopes for this book, since I own the author's Robopocalypse and Robogenesis. However, while it had a fairly solid setup, the ending fell flat for me.

This may be because the book is primarily a thriller, and written in a very cinematic way, as if it's a not very subtle pitch to be a blockbuster movie. There are four main characters: 1) the Man Downstairs, who observes and babysits a quantum computer deep underground who has tapped into the forward-background flow of time in the universe and makes predictions that always come true. Lately, the Pattern, as it's called, has been spouting gibberish that gradually becomes not-gibberish, evolving into the readable thoughts of....something. Something the Pattern has tapped into that terrifies the Man Downstairs; 2) Gavin Clark, an agent for the Department of Defense who investigates what used to be called Unidentified Flying Objects, and who is dispatched by the Man Downstairs with a Pattern-derived warning of "first contact imminent"; 3) Mikayla Johnson, a project manager with the Voyager team at Nasa Johnson Space Center who stumbles across anomalous data in the Voyager readouts, data that points to one thng: a large object headed our way; and 4) Jim Hardgray, a Cherokee man trying to reconcile with his estranged daughter Tawny, who gets caught up in the whirlwind of planet-altering events when the unidentified object detected by Mikayla Johnson reaches Earth and touches down at the Spiro Mound, an ancient buried Native city in Oklahoma.

All well and good, so far. This is a story of first contact, and all the worldwide upheaval that would entail. The descriptions of how it is discovered, and how the nations of the world prepare for it (the United States, per usual, immediately starts gearing up for war) is what makes this book more of a thriller than a SF story, at least at first. However, it's when the object reaches Earth and lands literally atop the Spiro Mounds is when the disappointment begins setting in, at least for me. Because it's at that point that the story takes a turn into mysticism and extradimenionsional Lovecraftian entities, and that simply didn't set well with me.

Look, I understand why the story took the turn it did. The author is an enrolled member of the Cherokee nation, and the swerve the story takes is drawn directly from the history, myths and legends of the Cherokee people. I don't want to sound like I'm putting any of that down. But as the characters descend into the hidden underground city of the Spiro Mounds, we discover that all the tunnels and chambers here, once mapped and revealed, show an ancient extradimensional reality-bending...god-brain asleep under the Earth's surface? A god-brain linked to a ship apparently made out of nanotechnology, that the Voyager probes reaching beyond our solar system woke up and compelled to return home? And said god-brain can be manipulated by the thoughts and desires of Jim Hardgray, in much the same way his ancestors evidently sang it to sleep fifteen thousand years ago, to the point where he can not only use the god-brain's power to recreate the bomb meant to destroy it, but also to resurrect his deceased son, dead for two years?

I mean, especially that last, that's not going to come back to bite humanity in the ass. No sirree.

Well, due to Jim Hardgray's knowledge of the ancient Cherokee language and stories, the god-brain is defeated...kinda? At least until Jim's son realizes what he really is, which I guess could be the storyline for a sequel if the author ever wished to write it. And the chapters of all those extradimensional reality-twisting alien horrors coming to life are well-written and dripping with atmosphere. But as far as I am concerned, the climax of the book does not live up to all that came before, which is a shame. (For a really excellent Native-authored fantasy combining horror with searing commentary on this country's Native American genocide, try Stephen Graham Jones' The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. You won't regret it.)

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Review: Outlaw Planet

Outlaw Planet by M.R. Carey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is set in the author's Pandominion universe. It is not the third book in the series, and is pretty much a self-contained stand-alone. I own the two Pandominion books but have not yet read them. However, I enjoyed this so much those books have been bumped up my TBR pile, and I daresay I will go hunting down the author's other books as well.

This is the story of multiversal travel to the titular "outlaw planet," where time works very differently--i.e., much faster--than the rest of the Pandominion. We have a weird Western, genetic engineering, an eternal war that is fought over and over again, artificial intelligence, mind control, and at the heart a thousand-year-old war crime that is slowly unraveled with fair clues and deft pacing, leading to a climax where the protagonists struggle and sacrifice to do what is right and save the planet's indigenous population.

Our protagonist is Dog-Bitch Bess, a genetically engineered, uplifted Labrador, made sentient and bipedal like all the planet's other inhabitants. She is introduced via a five-page prologue that is like a Western tall tale, and it's only when you get to the end of the book that you can reread it with fresh eyes. The entire first few chapters of the book are like that, laying out the worldbuilding and the background of Bess's life in a deliberate, old-fashioned manner. The fact that we are told right away that our main characters are not human beings is a clever way of drawing the reader in, and the rest of the worldbuilding is revealed in the same steady peeling of layers. Bess, or Elizabeth Indigo Sandpiper, leaves home and takes a job teaching in a small town of Ottomankie, in the southern district called the Echelon. She spends nine years there, falling in love with her fellow teacher Martha Good, while in the background the rumblings of civil war between the Echelon and the northern Parity territory are slowly brought to the forefront. When the civil war breaks out, Martha is killed, and Elizabeth in her grief turns outlaw and vows revenge, becoming the notorious irregular Dog-Bitch Bess.

There are many more layers than this to the story, of course, and each one is fascinating. There is so-called "Precursor" tech, from a high-technology past scattered across the continent, in the form of incredibly tall white dream-towers that do....what? We find out, and the answer is chilling. There are sentient drones and high-powered weapons, the latter of which provides our second protagonist, the gun Wakeful Slim that becomes Bess's companion and friend. There are the Pugfaces, wandering tribes that are just a little bit different than the rest of the uplifted animals, and when their origins are revealed they tie back in with that same thousand-year-old mystery. There is Bess's obsession with revenge for the loss of her lover, a revenge that is slowly turned as she understands just what has been done to her and the rest of the people on her world. Instead of looking inward to her personal hatred, she begins to look outward, and vows to bring the dream-towers down. And this is the story of how Bess, Wakeful Slim, and the Pugface engineer Dima Saraband do just that.

This is not a fast-paced narrative, and given the depths of the worldbuilding and mystery, it shouldn't be. Don't get impatient as you read it. As the clues are laid and the secrets are revealed, the story becomes incredibly satisfying. It all comes to a head in a poignant two-page epilogue which might bring a tear to your eye (it did mine). Those emotions are fully earned. I didn't expect to get this kind of story, but damn if it wasn't one of the best books I've read so far this year.



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Review: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cory Doctorow coined the word "enshittification" in 2022, and it is defined thusly by Wikipedia:

"Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a process in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize short-term profits for shareholders."

This book expands on that, explaining exactly how this works and giving four detailed examples: Facebook, Amazon, Apple's iPhone, and Twitter. It is no coincidence that the people running these entities are four of the worst people on the planet: Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Elon Musk. If there ever was a proof that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," it's these four.

Most of this book will simply set your hair on fire, as Doctorow lays out how corporations screw over everyone else. There are far too many horrifying details to list, but I think this quote from p. 100 pretty much sums it up.

The CEOs who do this got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I'm altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further." It works with surprising consistency, and tech executives are so confident in the lessons of the Darth Vader MBA that they come over all affronted and hurt when their customers balk.

The news is not quite all dire, of course--this is pointed out in Part Four, The Cure. This goes into various antitrust actions around the world, with particular emphasis on Europe (which is light-years beyond the US, both law- and regulation-wise). Still, this book is a depressing read, as it shows clearly that after four years of vigorous antitrust actions and enforcement by the Biden administration, this country has backslid terribly (which is no more to be expected, with an ignorant entitled asshole trust fund reality show manbaby taking back the office). I don't know if we'll ever be able to claw ourselves out of this mess, but this book shows the way to do it, if you can get past your initial rage over what is happening.


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Review: Absolute Superman, Vol. 1: Last Dust of Krypton

Absolute Superman, Vol. 1: Last Dust of Krypton by Jason Aaron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third of DC's All In reboot/reimagining universe that I've so far read, and while Absolute Wonder Woman is by far the best, this one does come in second. (The best-selling title of the series is apparently Absolute Batman, which puzzles me, as I didn't like that at all.) The gimmick of the series is taking familiar characters and completely upending their origins, and by doing so drilling down to the essence of what makes them Superman and Wonder Woman. With Diana in The Last Amazon, even though she was raised on an island in Hell with the sorceress Circe instead of Themyscira with her mother and the other Amazons, the qualities of kindness and compassion that makes her Wonder Woman come through even more strongly. (That, and The Last Amazon is simply a fantastic banger of a story that you should read right now.)

With Absolute Superman, I think it's a little more of a work in progress. The bones of Superman's origin are all there--Krypton still blows up and Kal-El comes to Earth to be with Jonathan and Martha Kent--but the timing of these events is different. To begin with, Kal-El stayed on Krypton until he was twelve years old; he saw the rottenness of Kryptonian society, the extreme social stratification and castes, and how the ruling class exploited everyone and everything until they mined Krypton so deep it tore itself apart. He saw how the Science League treated his parents, refusing to recognize their accomplishments and sentencing them to death when his father Jor-El discovered what was going on. He was himself censured for writing his own school essays instead of relying on the Luminarium's AI (which is a scary little detail in this day and age of enshittified artificial intelligence). He witnessed Krypton's death throes from his parents' hastily constructed ship as it launched, until a final explosion from the dying planet tore the ship apart and cast everyone into space. A fragment from the ship enclosed Kal-El, keeping him alive, but he never saw his parents again.

He eventually reaches Earth, after a year and a half of travel alone in deep space, which sets him up for some major PTSD down the line. But Earth is different as well--it's ruled over by the global Lazarus Corporation, which exploits people pretty much as Krypton's ruling class used to do (and as we find out, uses extraterrestrial technology, with Superman's classic villain Brainiac behind the scenes running it). Kal-El does crash-land on the Kents' farm, but he's there for only about a month before Lazarus shows up and he has to flee. He spends the next five years hiding in the shadows, bouncing from place to place, fighting the Lazarus Corporation and helping people as best he can.

So as the story starts, Superman is a traumatized eighteen-year-old kid, coming into his powers but not at all in control of them, and having flashbacks to Krypton. The nobleness and goodness of the classic Superman character is still there, but it's deeply buried. He is quite capable of making major mistakes, and his rage from his lingering trauma pretty much guarantees he'll do just that. It's a fascinating take on the character.

Lois Lane and Jimmy Olson also show up, in completely different guises--Lois is a Lazarus agent tasked with hunting Superman down, and Jimmy Olson is a guerrilla fighter working for the Omega Men, the revolutionary group fighting the Lazarus Corporation. We haven't delved as deeply into their characters as yet, but Lois in particular is also a nice new take that should be interesting to follow.

For me, this isn't the best of the new universe, but it's certainly worth reading.

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Review: You Weren't Meant to Be Human

You Weren't Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Many horror novels are written in response to real-world horrors, and that's definitely the case with this one. It's stated in the first (one-sentence) chapter:

Crane doesn't know this yet, but he's been pregnant for almost three months already.

There you go. Character established and themes stated in one fell swoop. A pregnant trans man is a difficult thing indeed, in a country where the federal right to abortion has fallen and trans people are being persecuted. Add in an apparent alien Hive, an ugly slimy mass of flies and worms that takes up residence in back rooms and recruits humans to do its bidding, and you have visceral horror on more than one level.

(There are explicit content warnings at the beginning of this book. PAY ATTENTION TO THEM. They are accurate. If you have trouble with graphic violence and gore, self-harm, dubious consent, abuse, domestic violence, forced pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion and childbirth, do not tackle this book.)

Crane is our protagonist, a mute (by choice) autistic trans man who is more than a little fucked up, who left home and found a sort of refuge with a hive in Washville, West Virginia and its humans. (The Appalachian country and mindset is something the author obviously knows well, and is depicted well enough to become a secondary character.) Crane's sort-of boyfriend, Levi, is a domestic abuser and manipulator who is also the hive's enforcer, tracking down and terminating anyone who tries to flee. Crane and Levi have a disturbing, twisted relationship that Crane nevertheless does not want to leave. He has found what he considers a place with the hive, and he wants to stick with the life he's made.

But that life is upended when he discovers he's pregnant.

This book is set a little bit in the future, as ten unnamed states have passed laws declaring abortion to be murder, and West Virginia is evidently one of them. (Although I can easily see that happening in real life. Conservatives are never content with merely restricting and/or banning abortion; they inevitably want to prosecute and imprison women for it.) Crane does not want the child, and attempts to flee to some friends in DC who can set him up with an abortion. Unfortunately, the night before the procedure is scheduled, he is tracked down by another hive's enforcer, who we gradually find out is an experiment--he's little more than a bunch of mature worms in a human suit. Stagger, as Crane names him, forces him to return to Washville. There, Levi tells Crane the hive wants him to have the baby, so he will have the fucking baby.

The rest of the book follows Crane through the forced pregnancy, the discomforts and pains of which are described in graphic terms. In Crane's case, this is complicated by his growing gender dysphoria--he can hardly stand his breasts getting bigger, for example. He also finds out that Levi has impregnated others, and there is a bloody scene of a self-induced abortion that nearly results in the girl bleeding to death. All through the pregnancy, Crane wonders why the hive is doing this. We don't find out till the very end, after the child--a girl--is born, and Crane realizes the hive is going to set her up to be a breeder, just as they have done with him.

The book's climax is the most gruesome part of all, and yet we understand why Crane does what he does. (I won't go into detail; suffice to say that this shares a plot point with Toni Morrison's Beloved.) He also takes out Levi with a hammer, and tears the hive into little alien bits. Finally, he flees back to his parents, who stumbled across him at a Washville gas station while he was in labor. (I appreciated that the author did not depict his parents as abusive; Crane's issues are the result of a world that will not accept what he is, which is why he tried to find a home with the hive.)

This book is raw, in your face, and takes no prisoners, and I'm sure some will decry it as over-the-top. But with the road this country is currently taking, we need stories that lay out the true horrors of what they are doing. The author does not flinch in portraying these horrors, and we should not look away.

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Review: Of Monsters and Mainframes

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was...okay. It's a mashup of science fiction/science fantasy and a monster movie, as all four of the classic monsters make their appearance: Dracula, Frankensten, the Werewolf and the Mummy. Characters from the books--Victor Frankenstein, Wilhelmina Murray, Renfield, et cetera--also show up, and the nominal main character is the anxiety-ridden, AI-powered starship the Demeter.

This book is not for someone looking to read about serious, nuanced issues. It's frothy and fast-paced (except for the sagging middle--I almost gave up a couple of times, as Demeter seemed to be spinning in circles and getting nowhere, but the last third of the book tightened up considerably) and has a very old-fashioned, pulpish feel. It also deals with found family, as Demeter adopts the four monsters that travel aboard her, and she falls in love with her medical AI, Steward. At the end, after Dracula has been torn to pieces by the werewolf, Agnus, Demeter is repaired and retrofitted for a long exploratory voyage, and she and her newfound crew and family head out.

Having said all this, I think this book is ultimately pretty forgettable. If you want a far better story dealing with Dracula and a ship named the Demeter, watch the movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. That film has setting and a creepy atmosphere in abundance, and is just better told than this story, I think.

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Review: Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler by Susana M. Morris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Octavia Butler has been gone for nearly twenty years (she died in 2006) and she is still sorely missed. I never knew her, but according to this book, by all accounts she was a kind and generous person. But I have her books, her enduring legacy, and that is what this slim volume delves into: their themes and the ideas that Octavia circled back to again and again. She was apparently a keen observer both of human behavior and of history, and the most fascinating part of this book is how both Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents extrapolated the excesses and horrors of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich into a future President who boasted of "Making America Great Again."

Sound familiar?

I don't think she would have been the least bit surprised by Donald Trump. She would have been disgusted, as I am, but not surprised. And that's the saddest part of all, that for the last twenty years we have been deprived of her intellect, her ability, and her razor-keen observations of the world. It's almost enough to make one weep, thinking of what could have been.

But we do have her past works, and the legacy of her genius. Her "positive obsession," which has inspired so many people. This is a good introduction to her work, perhaps not as deep as some, but brisk and relatable. If it motivates you to read her books and stories, so much the better. We need her voice and her vision today.

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