Review: Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I didn't like this as well as the first book I read by this author, Testosterone Rex. In this book, she gets a lot further into the scientific weeds, and the narrative lacks the breezy, funny style of Rex. Still, this book is impressive for the depth and thoroughness of her research, which was absolutely necessary given the subject. Taken together, the two books pretty much close the door on the idea that male and female traits are "hard-wired," showing instead that culture, and the gendered expectations of the society we live in, account for almost all of the differences we see between men and women. It's an important subject, but just be aware going in that this is not going to be light reading.

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Review: Black Panther: World of Wakanda

Black Panther: World of Wakanda by Roxane Gay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a prequel to Ta-Nehisi Coates' run on Black Panther, expanding the backstory of two ex-Dora Milaje, Ayo and Aneka. I was a bit iffy about Coates' first collected volume, A Nation Under Our Feet; Coates is a fine non-fiction writer, but he clearly had a lot to learn about writing fiction and writing comics.

Thankfully, Roxane Gay doesn't have this problem. The reader sees right away that she knows how to create characters and tell a story. The love story of Ayo and Aneka is interwoven with the larger politics of Wakanda, and while King T'Challa is pretty much absent here, he casts a huge shadow over the entire storyline. (The only reason I haven't rated this higher is that the story jumps around quite a bit timewise, and several important story beats depend on events taking place in other comics. Damn crossovers. I hate them.) We see some of the inner workings of the Dora Milaje, the female bodyguards and guardians of Wakandan royalty, and it's fascinating.

Ayo/Aneka comprise the first four issues of this collection. No. #5 is the backstory of Zenzi, another Coates villain. This little story is very short and a bit trite--it could have used some more fleshing out. Perhaps by getting rid of the odd and superfluous final issue, the tale of someone in New York called the White Tiger (a sort of anti-Black Panther? at least that's how he comes across). I didn't really know who Kevin "Kasper" Cole was, and cared for him even less.

Unfortunately, this entire series has been cancelled, so we won't be getting any more World of Wakanda. This is too bad. If Roxane Gay could've had the chance to continue, I think she might have turned out something really good.


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Review: Cosmic Powers: The Saga Anthology of Far-Away Galaxies

Cosmic Powers: The Saga Anthology of Far-Away Galaxies by John Joseph Adams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

John Joseph Adams pretty much has the golden touch as an editor. I own several of his anthologies, and they've consistently been among the better SFF collections out there. This book definitely follows in that tradition. Some of these stories are outrageously over-the-top (in keeping with the bright, eye-watering cover art), but that is part of the theme, and the charm, of this book.

The standout story in this anthology, so far, seems to be "Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance," Tobias S. Buckell's far-future, sprawling space opera that is at the same time an intense character study. Seanan McGuire contributes a story with equal parts humor and hard science (hers takes place inside a Dyson sphere), and Aliette de Bodard's tale of war and the price civilians pay is heartbreaking. My second favorite story is probably "Warped Passages," Kameron Hurley's excellent prequel/origin story to her fantastic space opera The Stars Are Legion. (If you're going to read new-to-you authors based on this collection, start with Buckell and Hurley.) But there's something for everyone here, and while I liked some stories less than others, there's not a stinker in the bunch.

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Review: Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler

Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler by Alexandra Pierce
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book drives home, once again, what a tremendous loss Octavia E. Butler's death was. Much has been made about how her "Parable" books predicted, in many respects, the rise of our execrable President. I wish Octavia was here to commiserate with the rest of us about his election, and write thoughtful, heartfelt essays about what to do next and how to go on...but the writers in this collection seem eminently capable of picking up her torch and carrying it.

Some of the essays here brings the reader to tears, with so many people of color talking about what Octavia Butler, an African-American woman writing powerful, feminist science fiction, means to them. Essay after essay, relating how a young person of color saw no one who looked like him or her in any of the SF they read...until they picked up Kindred, or Wild Seed. Some of the most affecting pieces are in Section Four, "I Am an Octavia E. Butler Scholar," which are essays from people of color who won the scholarship to Clarion (the famed writing workshop where Butler got her start) established in Butler's name. This book is sad, but it is also a joy to read, and I hope it finds a wider audience.

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Review: Black Bolt, Vol. 1: Hard Time

Black Bolt, Vol. 1: Hard Time by Saladin Ahmed
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know very little about Blackagar Boltagon and the Inhumans, and this volume was not intended to rectify that. Having been torn away from his everyday surroundings and cast into a galactic prison by his traitorous older brother Maximus (who has apparently been impersonating Black Bolt at home), the King of the Inhumans is utterly alone, trying to find his way out of said prison. The story here is what he discovers about himself in the process, leavened by the tragic story of his fellow prisoners, Crusher Creel in particular.

The lack of background and context to this story is the reason I didn't rate it higher, although Black Bolt did grow on me. Two of his fellow prisoners, Raava (who talks about herself in third person) and the multi-eyed girl Blinky, were interesting. The art, by Christian Ward, is not subtle at all--it's bright and explosive. And one of my faves, the dimension-hopping dog Lockjaw, makes an appearance. This volume was not top-tier, but it has enough pluses for me to keep checking the series out.

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Review: Arabella and the Battle of Venus

Arabella and the Battle of Venus by David D. Levine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Last year, the first book in this series, Arabella of Mars, won the Andre Norton Award for Best Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. This book continues that story, set in the same swashbuckling, throwback world, to the time of Jules Verne-esque SF when no one knew that Venus wasn't actually a swampy jungle planet.

Real science is obviously out the door here, but Levine's universe is well-thought-out and cleverly weaves in some historical figures circa 1815, namely Napoleon Bonaparte and Lord Nelson. (This time frame and people seems to provide some rich inspiration--Naomi Novik's Temeraire series mines much of the same territory, if confined to planet Earth.) Arabella Ashby's fiance, Captain Prakash Singh of the Honorable Mars Company airship Diana, has been captured on Venus by Napoleon's troops, and Arabella hires another airship to take her to Venus, with the intent of bribing sufficient people to secure Captain Singh's release.

Of course, this does not go well. At all. This storyline is a lot darker than the previous book, and our characters are really up against it. The pacing is very good, and the plot ticks away nicely until the last third of the book, when everything explodes. Levine writes some of the best action sequences I have read in a long time--the Diana's escape from Venus had me on the edge of my seat, and the final battle between the English and French fleets was just mesmerizing. There are prices to be paid in stories like these, and in this case, Arabella is the one that pays--she loses a foot in the battle. If this is handled right, it will (hopefully) mean interesting things for her characterization in the next book.

This time period is rife with other issues as well--sexism, colonialism, slavery, et cetera, that I did feel weren't really touched upon. In this particular storyline, there wasn't really room for it, but it is something that I think needs to be broached. Perhaps that will be tackled in the next book. In the meantime, this is an old-fashioned, rip-roaring adventure, and highly recommended.

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