Review: The Light at the Bottom of the World

The Light at the Bottom of the World by London Shah
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I went back and forth with this book, vacillating between finishing it and hurling it against the wall. I came close to doing the latter a couple of times, but in the end, the characters pulled me through. And believe me, there was a lot to overcome to get me to finish it, all of which I will get into. Let's just say that for me the good parts of the book were (just) enough to overtake the bad parts, and that may not be true for everybody. Because this book has some major failings.

To be blunt, the worldbuilding sucks. I realize this is supposed to be a post-climate-change, post-disaster dystopia, which is fine. I've read those before and will again, and done right they're some of my favorite stories. However, for that type of story to work, your world, pre- and post-disaster, has to be plausible. This book started out with a somewhat unusual setting, a world of undersea cities--specifically, London--with titanium domes over the residential areas and some of the historic buildings, and acrylic train tubes connecting them. Everyone gets around in personal submersibles instead of cars. The year is 2099. Eh? That gave me the first twinge of unease...that's not very far away, and London is--a thousand feet underwater? And the very first page states this change happened only sixty-five years ago? (Which would have been 2035, since in the book we're almost to the end of the year and century.) I read on, coming to my second point of unease, on page 17:

Firstly, there's no dry land up there--only a few mountain peaks. Secondly, discovering dry land wouldn't even begin to solve my problem.

That was the first place I considered stopping, which I will tackle in just a minute. But the protagonist Leyla's sitation was intriguing, so I decided to plow ahead. I wondered if this was supposed to be some post-climate-change setting, which I was (grudgingly) prepared to grant, even though I knew it wouldn't happen like that. Then I got to pages 38/39:

Commentary from the footage on screens echoes around the space. There are repeated mentions of "Operation Ark" and "the Resurrection Council." Loud boos sound in the room as images of the asteroid approaching Earth flash on the screen. They still have several years before it hits, the prime minister at the time insists. Human beings will survive, no matter how much the sea levels rise. The best scientists around the world are planning the most suitable course of action and preservation, the PM assures Old Worlders.

On-screen, footage now switches to computerized graphics. I tense. The asteroid hits Earth. It's as good as the end of the world. Billions die instantly. Continental shifts occur. All the water previously held in deep subterranean reservoirs is released at an alarming rate. Soon the entire planet is submerged. Only 10 percent of Britons survive the disaster.

That was when the book slammed down on the table.

WHAT ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME

Now, since then I've googled "subterranean reservoirs," and apparently this is a (possibly) real thing. There might be a huge underground ocean, not liquid water in the traditional sense but water trapped inside the molecular structure of minerals in the mantle rock. This news broke in 2014, and at the time there was only one example of this material, called "ringwoodite," brought up by a volcanic eruption from approximately 250-400 miles down (the stated depths varied). The articles I found suggest that the volume of water could be three times the size of the current volume of the oceans. I couldn't find anything more recent, and what I read stated that this reservoir was so far found only under the North American continent.

After reading this, I can understand why the author used this plot point, but these articles do not lessen the implausibility of the idea. Here's why.

You know what happened the last time an asteroid of that (apparent) size hit Earth? That little event that took place sixty-five million years ago that had something to do with the dinosaurs? Does anybody see any little dinos (that is, non-bird dinosaurs) running around? Why not? Because they all went extinct, that's why! Furthermore, they sure as hell didn't die off due to flooding. The only flood was the tsunami thrown up by the initial impact (and perhaps a chain of tsunamis--see here), and while that wave penetrated inland for hundreds or thousands of miles, it certainly didn't flood the way the author is talking about. What killed the dinosaurs, and 75-90% of life on Earth, was fire: global firestorms--this first item proven by the layer of soot found in rocks from the time period all over the planet--acid rain, destruction of the ozone layer, an impact winter (later on, after the soot settled to Earth), and then a general heating of the globe due to the massive release of greenhouse gases. Here's a neat graphic from this article illustrating the sequence of events.



Anybody see anything about planetwide flooding anywhere in that list?

Also, according to these articles, an asteroid strike comparable to the dinosaur-killer would not have penetrated deep enough into the Earth's mantle to release the huge underground ocean. The existing Chicxulub crater is thought to have been only 18 miles deep at the time of impact, and the subterranean reservoir certainly wasn't released then. So it's a nice idea, but it simply wouldn't have happened.

Furthermore, the book contradicts itself in terms of the stated effects. Remember my first quote? "Only a few mountain peaks" of dry land? Where would those peaks be exactly? The highest mountains on earth are the Himalayan mountain range, culminating in the mighty Mount Everest at just over 29,000 feet. So for only a "few" mountain peaks to be left, global sea levels would have to rise something on the order of...25,000 feet. At least. But it's stated right on page 5 of the book, when the protagonist is driving her submersible through the London streets, that "Light from the countless solar spheres a thousand feet up on the ocean's surface highlights the watery depths."

SORRY, THIS DOES NOT COMPUTE. You can't have it both ways. Right now, London averages only a few dozen feet above sea level; let's be extremely generous and say 200. Add one thousand more feet of water on top of that. Simple math states that the planet would in no way be inundated with water. Hell, the town I live is famously a "mile high" (5200 feet). All of the current coasts would be gone, but there would still be a great deal of dry land remaining, and almost all the current mountain ranges.

Of course, that doesn't account for the fact that civilization would be wiped out and the human species would probably be headed towards extinction, along with most other life on Earth. There certainly wouldn't be any sort of industrial complex remaining, above sea level or below (where are they getting the people, materials, infrastructure and supply chains to construct all those submersibles, submarines, titanium domes, and acrylic tubes, for example?). Also, if the asteroid strike is in 2035, the technology needed to construct and support those undersea habitats would not be there. That's only 15 years in the future! The pressure at the stated 1000-foot depth would be, according to this nifty calculator, about 450 pounds per square inch. Not to mention all the problems of human beings attempting to live at those depths (the risk of "the bends" would be a continuous, ongoing thing, for instance).

Nope. Nope. Nope. The more I think about it, the more impossible this scenario sounds. And if I could come up with all this, the editor certainly should have been able to.

Now, having said that, I didn't abandon the book. That's because as much as I hated the worldbuilding and tried to push it out of my mind, I liked the characters. Oh, occasionally Leyla would make a typically dumb teenage decision that made me want to pound on her submarine and yell "ARGH DON'T DO THAT," but for the most part she was a well-written character. She was brave, determined, fiercely loyal to her father, and ever optimistic and hopeful, even in the face of terrible odds. Her love interest, the young man named Ari who turned out to be...something else entirely, was also well-drawn, and I appreciated that their romance was a sweet slow burn. And the AI Navigator, Oscar, running Leyla's submarine, provided a few laughs and a bit of snarky British attitude.

So all this was just enough to make me finish the book and keep it. It may be for you as well. It depends on your tolerance for egregious scientific mistakes (although, to be fair, if the author followed the science of her disaster and world to its logical end we wouldn't have a story). Just be aware that you've got a lot to overlook.

View all my reviews

Streamin' Meemies: Star Trek: Picard Season 1 Ep 1, "Remembrance"

This is the second Star Trek series on CBS All Access, and for this one, the producers managed to pull off the seemingly impossible: lure Jean-Luc himself, Patrick Stewart, back into the saddle. Previously, Stewart had resisted all attempts to persuade him to revisit his iconic character after the last movie, the not-well-received Nemesis in 2002. It was only when he was given considerable input into the storyline (he's credited as an executive producer) that he agreed to come aboard.

(Oh yeah, SPOILERS. TONS of spoilers. EVERY LINE FROM HERE ON OUT is a spoiler. Proceed at your own risk.)

So now we have an aged and at least in this episode, a hermitlike and defeated Jean-Luc, having left Starfleet behind some ten years before, living out his final years at his family's vineyard in France. The opening scene sets the stakes: a dream sequence in which Picard is playing poker with the deceased Commander Data (who sacrificed himself to save Picard's life in Nemesis) on board the Enterprise-D. Data, seemingly convinced he holds a powerful hand, tells Picard to "call or fold," and Picard proceeds to sloooowwwwly make himself a cup of Earl Grey, offering Data first milk and then sugar and taking a deliberate sip from it. Data rightly notes that his Captain is stalling, and Picard sets the cup down, looks at his friend, and says, with that wonderful Patrick Stewart delivery which carries all sorts of nuances, "I don't want the game to end."

Then the table starts quivering and the coins begin to shake, and Data and Picard look out the viewports to see the face of Mars. Picard protests that he didn't know their course would take them past Mars, and he and Data look on in horror as the planet begins to blossom with--perhaps nuclear explosions (although I don't think it's ever specifically stated). The screen fills with white light, and Picard snaps out of his nightmare with the help of his dog, a pit bull fittingly named Number One.

So right away we see that Picard is haunted by two things: the death of Commander Data and the destruction of the Utopia Planitia shipyards on Mars (and apparently the planet as well, as it's stated that it's "still burning" ten years later, although with the lack of an atmosphere on Mars I don't know what there is to burn). As we find out, this is a future where Starfleet has retreated from its former ideals into a suspicious, isolationist society, and the story behind the second tragedy is what led Picard to resign from Starfleet. This is revealed via an interview done with Picard on its ten-year anniversary, where the interviewer ambushes him with the demand that he talk about what happened. Ten years before, the Romulan sun was going supernova, and Picard persuaded them to mount a humanitarian mission and personally led the armada of ten thousand ships to rescue nine hundred million refugees. But a rogue army of "synths" (androids seemingly made in the mold of Data, although later descriptions make them sound closer to Blade Runner's replicants--flesh and blood clones with a positronic brain--which is a really interesting bit, at least to me) took advantage of the understandable chaos of the rescue mission to stage the attack on Mars and take 92,000 lives. As a result Starfleet abandoned the rescue mission and banned synths altogether, and Picard, after fighting so valiantly during The Next Generation to establish Data's sentience and rights as a person, resigned in disgust.

I think this is the strongest scene in the entire episode, as the interviewer asks Picard: "Why should the Federation go out of its way to help its oldest enemy?"

"Because millions of lives were at stake."

"Romulan lives."

"No. Lives."

Oh my goodness, Patrick Stewart still has it. These two words, delivered softly and deliberately with just the right are-you-kidding-me tilt to the head, gave me goose bumps. A minute later, he explodes in fury as the interviewer confronts him with why he retired: "Because Starfleet was no longer Starfleet!" This was so raw one could easily see Picard's anguish, and what that decision cost him, ten years later.

The first new character introduced, a young Asian woman named Dahj, ties the two storylines together. We meet Dahj having a celebratory drink with her boyfriend, having just been accepted to study "quantum consciousness" at the Daystrom Institute. The young man gets up to get Dahj a smoothie from the replicator, and suddenly several black-clad assassin types beam into the apartment. One throws a knife into the young man's chest, and the others tackle Dahj, yelling "Where is it?" (They first speak an alien language before switching to English. At that point they are not identified as Romulans, something we find out later.) One of them says, "She's not activated yet," and they envelop Dahj's head in a black bag. This turns out to be a very foolish and prophetic decision, as Dahj promptly "activates" and kicks their asses, taking out all of them. Afterwards she goes to kneel over her boyfriend's body. In her understandable terror and hysteria, her head snaps up--and in her mind's eye, she sees Picard's face looking back at her.

She flees into the night and passes a storefront where Picard's interview is being broadcast, and now knows where to go to find him. (In fact, she does quite a bit of abrupt planet-hopping through this episode. One assumes there are ubiquitous planetary transporters in the Star Trek universe, but it would have been nice to see one in action.) The next morning, Picard is sitting in his yard with his dog, and Dahj, having tracked him down, approaches. She explains what happened, crying and shaking, and tells Picard she somehow knew to come to him, that she would be safe there. He takes her into his house and talks to her, and during the conversation points out her double-ringed necklace (which of course turns out to be important later). Then he asks his two Romulan employees, Laris and Zhaben (who apparently talked him into agreeing to the interview) to put her to bed.

There follows another dream sequence, and Picard sees Data again, standing amongst the grapes daubing at a canvas. He goes down to see what is going on, and lo and behold Data's canvas shows a white-clad young woman standing on a cliff overlooking the sea--a woman without a face. Picard approaches and Data holds out his brush, inviting his captain to finish the painting.

"I don't know how," Picard says, again with that wonderful Patrick Stewart delivery.

"That is not true, Captain," Data says, insisting Picard take the brush.

He does, and wakes up, now knowing exactly what Data was referring to. This same painting hangs above his mantle, painted by Data thirty years before--and showing Dahj's face.

At that point Laris and Zhaben rush into the room, saying that Dahj has disappeared, her bed empty. Picard, seized by the revelation of his dream, says there is something he has to take care of, and beams to Starfleet HQ in San Francisco. Here there is a huge building that is a "quantum archive," a nifty little place with all sorts of (fanservice) memorabilia, including the banner from "Captain Picard Day" aboard the Enterprise-D. Picard summons the object he stored here--the twin to the painting hanging on his wall, gifted to him by Data. He summons the "archivist," apparently an artificial projection on order of Voyager's Emergency Medical Technician, and asks her what the painting's name is. The answer: "Daughter."

Meanwhile, Dahj, afraid of endangering the people who have been kind to her, flees to Paris. She calls her mother (there aren't any cell phones in this future, but rather invisible holo-phones operated by waggling one's fingers in the air) and tells her what happened. Her mother, or the woman pretending to be Dahj's mother, gives the game away by mentioning Picard's name when Dahj has not said anything about it. Their conversation, and her mother's insistence that she return to Picard, apparently "activates" Dahj again; she wiggles her fingers and manipulates her phone project-a-screen, and tracks down Picard's location.

So when Picard comes out of the Quantum Archive, there Dahj is, waiting for him.

There follows another very good scene where Picard sits Dahj down and gently explains what he thinks she is: Data's daughter, a rather up-to-date, very human-looking android. This, admittedly, is quite a leap to make on somewhat scanty evidence, and the only point in the episode I felt was rushed because The Plot Said This Is How It Must Be. Having said that, Patrick Stewart was again marvelous, carefully bringing Dahj along to his conclusions and urging her to be like the man he thinks is her father, the friend who sacrificed his life for him. Isa Briones as Dahj, in this scene and the earlier scene in the vineyard, doesn't do a bad job at all showing her character's shock, confusion and fear, and yet Sir Patrick Stewart absolutely dwarfs her in terms of acting ability. I would have been intimidated as all hell to even be in a scene with him, and wonder what he had to do to talk his young co-stars through it.

But Dahj doesn't even have time to process this, as her "activation" clicks in once again, and she says her enemies have found them. There follows a wild chase up several flights of stairs, where the point is driven home that Picard (and Stewart) is no longer a spring chicken, as Dahj has to help him get to the roof. (I hope they keep up this theme of the aging hero on what is possibly their last ride. That seems to me to be a rich vein to explore, especially with this character.) She runs away to confront the intruders, the same black-helmeted assassins as before, and it is during this fight that she throws one down and his helmet rolls away, and Picard (and the audience) sees that they are Romulan. Dahj makes a good account of herself, but one of the Romulans spits some green gunky acid on her which eats into the artificial skin and causes her to explode, even as Picard runs up, screaming "No!"

He wakes up in his living room with a worried-looking Laris and Zhaben hovering over him, which is another rushed scene--wasn't he taken to a hospital, and didn't the police want to talk to him? Or maybe not, as it's stated that the Romulan assassins didn't show up on the security footage, leading Zhaben to comment that they must have been using cloaking devices.  In any event, Picard is overcome by guilt: Dahj came to him for protection, and he couldn't help her. But this also leads to a epiphany as to how he's spent the last ten years: "I haven't been living," he declares as he gets up from the couch. "I've been waiting to die."

Apparently he's going to do something about that, as we next see him striding down the hallways of the Daystrom Institute, where he meets with the director of said institution, hollowed out and nearly shut down after the synth ban: Dr. Agnes Jurati. (Aside: Agnes? Really? That name isn't even heard now anymore. I can't imagine it would still be around at the end of the 24th century.) This scene is where the most plot bombshells are dropped, including: the rogue synths came from this institution (and what were they making them for, pray tell? This carries an unfortunate, nasty whiff of mass production for possibly forced labor); the Daystrom Institute's former boss was Dr. Bruce Maddox, the scientist who Picard battled for Data's rights and freedom in the TNG episode "The Measure of a Man"; the pieces of B4, the prototype Data tried to download himself into in Nemesis, are displayed with the definitive establishment that he did not succeed; but on the other hand, Dr. Maddox was working on some Star Trek technobabble theory wherein he could recreate, if not the entirety of Commander Data, at least his essence, from a single positronic neuron. Then Picard shows Dr. Jurati Dahj's necklace (and this is a bit of a plot hole--where did he get that? Did the police give it to him from her smoldering remains? Wouldn't they have kept it as evidence, or something?) and the last bombshell is dropped. She remarks, "You could create them that way," and Picard immediately seizes on the plural. Turns out Maddox's theory posited creating flesh and blood sentient androids as twins. (Why? I hope that question gets answered somewhere down the line.)

So: Dahj has a sister out there somewhere, and presumably the Romulans are after her too.

At that point, we shift to the Romulan refugee facility, a huge starbase of some sort, as Romulan warbirds are shown cruising through force screens and into its interior. Dahj's sister is shown. A young, good-looking Romulan man strides down the walkway to greet her. They strike up a conversation and start flirting, and the camera pulls back on a long, gorgeous tracking shot to show just what the "refugee facility" is--the remains of an abandoned Borg cube.

Roll credits.

Whew. What an introduction. This episode's heavy lifting involves establishing the twin storylines the season will pursue--all the regulars haven't even shown their faces yet. Still, it was such a treat to see Patrick Stewart again, and know his Jean-Luc Picard is in a very different place as a character: disillusioned and beaten, retreating from life. I really appreciated the slower, more thoughtful pace of this episode--which, again, fits perfectly with Picard's character--and hope they keep it up. (From the previews, there are going to be some epic action sequences, but I would think they would let other people charge into the breach most of the time instead of their lead. Or at least I hope so, as it would look very silly to have a 79-year-old Patrick Stewart running around like an invincible action hero.)

The most notable thing about the episode, to me, was the fact that following the Mars attack, the Federation has--if not turned bad (at least not that we've seen, not yet), has started down a rather unsavory road. Actually, even before that, if they were mass-manufacturing "synths." Of course, if anyone could bring them back to the light, it is Jean-Luc Picard.

This has grabbed me from the get-go, and I am looking forward to the rest of the season.

Review: Bitter Root, Vol. 1: Family Business

Bitter Root, Vol. 1: Family Business by David F. Walker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I struggled to finish this, picking it up and putting it down several times, and about halfway through I figured out why: the art. I didn't like the art at all. The colors are thick and kludgy, laden with piss-yellows, puke-greens, and clotted-blood reds, and I didn't care for the style. Once I finished, I decided this would have worked better for me as a straight ahead print book, as the story is fascinating.

A tale of an African American family in the 1920's, in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance, who hunt monsters? Yes, please. There are two kinds of monsters here, the "jinoos" which per the description of one of the characters, are "people with corrupted souls," and actual demons streaming into the world through a portal, a la the Buffy-verse. Our family, the Sangeryes, has to tackle both of them: from the matriarch, the aged but still scrappy Ma Etta, to Blink, the younger female cousin who yearns to fight and finally gets to do so, to Berg, who tosses out four- and five-syllable words on the search for "sagacious insight." There's a great deal of backstory here just hinted at, and I would have loved to read more of it. (In fact, the essays at the end of the volume, from various African-American academics, were the most interesting parts, to me.) Unfortunately, I thought the off-putting art didn't set well, and that's fatal for a graphic novel. It's too bad.

View all my reviews

Review: Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I occasionally like to pick up some non-fiction, and this tale from Ronan Farrow, the journalist who (together with the New York Times' Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey) brought down sexual harasser and rapist Harvey Weinstein is one for the ages. Ronan is as meticulous and detailed in this book as he is in his reporting (this is one of the few nonfiction books with dialogue, for instance), and as a result it reads like a thriller. It even has a secret spy outfit called Black Cube, hired by Weinstein to get dirt on his accusers and the journalists trying to bring the truth out. Weinstein and his army of lawyers tried their best to intimidate women and spike the story, and succeeded in scaring NBC News because of Weinstein's knowledge of the network's secret: that their star anchor Matt Lauer was a slimeball very much in Weinstein's mold, with a trail of harassment/rape incidents of his own.

It's so heartbreaking to read story after story, woman after woman with similar tales of harassment and rape, buried by the power Harvey Weinstein held over them in Hollywood and his use of payouts and (especially) nondisclosure agreements (which NBC News also used to bury complaints). The more sources Ronan Farrow discovered and got on the record, the more skittish NBC became, finally ordering him to stop his reporting. Eventually he took the story to the New Yorker, and he--together with Kantor and Twohey--won the Pulitzer Prize.

Weinstein is the main villain here, but Matt Lauer and Donald Trump are the secondary assholes. At least Matt Lauer was kicked out on his rear, although I honestly don't know how Ronan's bosses, Andy Lack and Noah Oppenheim, live with themselves and their cowardice (they're still at NBC News). After this book was published, Ronan Farrow appeared one more time on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program to discuss it. So I guess he had the much-deserved last word after all. (He also, in the cutest thing ever, proposed to his boyfriend in the pages of this book.)

This is not an easy read, and if you have blood pressure problems you might want to double up on your medication before starting it. Pulling the curtain back on the culture of power and corporate complicity, of sacrificing women and their legitimate complaints because of the supposed need to, in Matt Lauer's case, keep NBC's cash cow "happy," is infuriating. But the courage of the women who went on the record and told their stories, and finally got a bit of justice, is an inspiring thing. This is one of the outstanding nonfiction books of last year, and a testament to the necessity and power of investigative journalism. Read it.

View all my reviews

Streamin' Meemies: The Witcher, Season 1

I knew nothing about The Witcher before it appeared on Netflix. I have neither read the books nor played the games (I'm not much of a gamer). But there was quite a bit of buzz about it on websites I frequent, so I decided to give it a try.

Now, apparently, The Witcher has taken the world by storm. Supposedly it has even more streams than The Mandalorian, which is something of a feat. I guess you could say Geralt of Rivia "tossed the coin" heard round the world.

(Yes, I occasionally unleash terrible puns in this space. To make you feel better, here is Baby Yoda playing the infamous song. There are all kinds of mashup videos on You Tube, and this is one of the longest.)

This is one of the few Netflix series I have deliberately went back and rewatched. Not for love's sake (although I might do that too), but simply to make more sense of it. If you have heard anything about The Witcher, it's probably the fact that the Season 1 timeline is convoluted, to put it mildly. As soon as I started my second watch, I could pick out the clues (most in dialogue, with a few physical tipoffs like a brunette Mousesack--the mage of Cintra-- in one episode becoming a grizzled greybeard in others). There are three different timelines, with Yennefer of Vengerberg's the longest, Geralt's in the middle--although I gather he's at least as old as Yennefer, if not older: magery and witchery does seem to prevent aging on the Continent, at least until a sword cuts you open. The shortest timeline is Princess Cirilla's, and as such it is rather streeeeeettttchhhhhhed over the course of eight episodes. But everyone is lined up and intertwined at the end.

Henry Cavill is our Geralt, and he is most pleasant to look at, whether in baths or out. He gets a tremendous amount of mileage out of his two favorite phrases, "hmmm" and "fuck"--it's even more efficient than "I am Groot." He makes a point in his storyline of refusing to kill things except when absolutely necessary, which would seem to put him at odds with his supposed profession. He would dearly love to bail out of the Witcher train, I think, but he's been caring about "monsters and money" for so long he doesn't have any idea how to care for anything else...until he meets Yennefer and his "child of Surprise," Ciri.

Yennefer of Vengerberg, played by Anya Chalotra, is the second protagonist, and in many ways she's the lead. A sorceress discovered and whisked away by Tissaia of Aretuza when young because of her ability to generate "portals"--instant transportation gateways to other parts of the world--Yennefer is deeply flawed and fascinating to watch. She is ambitious and power-hungry, and trades away parts of her body for even more power. (This is viewed as problematic by some, that she gave away her womb and ovaries for power and beauty and thirty years later decides she wants her fertility back. Yet even in the two or three episodes where this is talked about, she never comes out and says, "I want a baby." Tissaia and Geralt beat her over the head with the subject, assuming they know what she is thinking, but those words never leave her mouth. Instead, she says, "I want the choice," and "I want everything"--the latter, pretty forcefully at times. She never denies that a court mage's lifestyle is hardly compatible with parenting. So while that "everything" might include a baby, I think it's the possibility that she wants rather than a child in and of itself. At least, that's the vibe I got from her.) She is also, during the first three episodes, suffering from a twisted spine due to her quarter-elven hybrid blood, which is cured during the same ritual that cost her her reproductive organs. I'm not qualified to wade into the (possible) ableism in this, but just be aware that plot point is present.

The third protagonist is Freya Allan's Princess Cirilla, or Ciri, the Lion Cub of Cintra, whose kingdom is destroyed and her grandmother Queen Calanthe killed in the first episode, and who is sent fleeing from the castle in search of her "destiny," Geralt of Rivia. The complicated backstory of this plays out across the entire first season. Ciri is very young (supposedly twelve, although the actor looks three or four years older) and sheltered, and possesses a magic power she was seemingly unaware of and cannot control. She spends the entire season running and hiding from her Nilfgaardian pursuers (and meeting up with various humans, shapeshifters, elves, and other beings along the way, including some fantastic, badass Dryad Amazons), until she finally finds Geralt in the last minutes of episode 8. It's never revealed what she actually is or why everybody wants her. Presumably season two will get into this.

The main takeaway I get from The Witcher, which struck me from the first episode, was the great and varied number of female characters. Sorceresses, princesses, queens, ordinary people, even a pair of black dragon shapeshifters (in episode 6, "Rare Species"). So. Many. Women. It was so refreshing. I'm bloody tired of "Smurfette Syndrome" (I'm looking at you, Rogue One) where there's only one major female character--and furthermore, there's no justifiable in-story reason for there being only one major female character. With the tremendous number of women in The Witcher, we can run the gamut of humanity, as we should. Good, bad and in between; black, white and gray (in terms of moral code, not color); innocent and cynical; royalty and commoner. My second favorite character is Ciri's grandmother, Queen Calanthe, who was not a terribly nice person; she is impulsive and manipulative. But damn, she was great to watch. Additionally, all of these women have their own storylines, wants, and desires, and they're clearly not there to serve the interests of the male characters. It's such a breath of fresh air, I can hardly believe it. (And yeah, the showrunner is also a woman, Lauren Schmidt Hissrich. That might have something to do with it? Ya think?)

(Having said that, I really hope they dial back the nudity in Season 2. I don't think it's particularly gratuitous--well, the sorcerer Stregobor's nude live female garden gnomes in episode 1, "The End's Beginning," is a bit cringe-inducing, as is the castle orgy in episode 5, "Bottled Appetites," even if the latter does provide one of the funniest moments in the series: Geralt striding between all the writhing bodies to Yennefer, holding up a pitcher, and deadpanning, "I brought you some apple juice." Or at least, if they feel so compelled to show Yennefer's breasts, they also show Geralt's rear end, if not his dangly bits. I think Henry Cavill would be up for it.)

I suppose this could be viewed as a low-rent Game of Thrones (and I must say, I've got to be just about the only person on the planet who has never watched that or read the books). But I think The Witcher has a campy charm all its own. It definitely has a secret weapon: the music. The soundtrack is going to drop 1/24, including the current planetary earworm, "Toss a Coin To Your Witcher." Here's a video with lyrics:

And here's a very good metal cover of said earworm:

I don't know if this show qualifies as high art, but it's certainly entertaining. And there's a lot of Hollywood screenwriters and showrunners who could follow its lead and, y'know, include more women. Come on, we're fifty percent of the population! Witness us!

Review: Magic for Liars

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a magical murder mystery that's also an exploration of familial bonds and how easily they can be twisted. It touches on the lies we tell each other and the lies we tell ourselves, and at the end, is a stark illustration of the old saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Ivy Gamble is a private investigator in a world where magic is real and those who possess it go off to attend magical boarding schools (although the Osthorne Academy for Young Mages is definitely not Hogwarts, nor is it intended to be). She is approached by said headmaster at Osthorne Academy to solve a murder. But Osthorne is also where her twin sister Tabitha works, the sister who wields magic as Ivy cannot, and who has been estranged from her for seventeen years, since the death of their mother from cancer.

Ivy knows she shouldn't take the job, but she does anyway. This humble beginning spirals into a story that rips open the festering wounds between Ivy and her sister and lays Ivy's own hard-drinking character defects bare. I suppose you could call Ivy an unreliable narrator, but the lies she tells herself are easily discernible from the context. Even the book's ending may be a lie. We just don't know.

The mystery is well constructed and the clues are fairly planted, and when the identity and motivation of the murderer is revealed the reader (or at least this reader) says, "Oh, of course." The character study of the protagonist and her sister is given equal importance, and the two storylines are expertly woven together. The pacing is good and the tension is expertly ramped up. This is also one of the few books I've ever read where (view spoiler)[abortion--in this case magical abortion--is a pivotal plot point, and no one angsts over it. It's just a medical procedure that one of the teenage mages needs done. That approach was rather refreshing. (hide spoiler)]

This was a very solid, absorbing read, and definitely one of my favorite books from last year.

View all my reviews

Review: Queen of the Conquered

Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was not an easy book to read. That's the first thing to say about it. It's very grimdark, not only in terms of the plot and characters--there's definitely no happy ending in this one, the protagonist almost gets killed several times, and even in the final pages we have no idea if she's going to live or die--but in terms of the themes. This book pulls no punches: the terrible history and legacy of white supremacy is thoroughly explored, not only in how it twists the conquerer, but how it damages the conquered.

Sigourney Rose lives on the island of Lund Helle, one of a group of islands conquered centuries ago by the pale-skinned Fjern, who then enslave the native population. She is only "free" (relatively so) because of an ancestor who saved and purchased his freedom, and the ancestor's master's wife who insisted her husband honor the deal and grant the newly freed slave his own island. But the "kongelig," the ruling families, have always resented the Roses because they dared to consider themselves equal to their oppressors, and in the book's prologue, Sigourney's entire family is murdered because of it. She is rescued and fostered by a kongelig on a neighboring island, and spends several years on the mainland, until she masters her "kraft" (her magical power, although in this universe most "krafts" seem to be variations of what are essentially psi powers). Then she returns, bent on carrying out her revenge, murdering those who killed her family, and freeing her people.

Of course, this does not go as planned, and in the process the entire rotten heart of the system is laid bare. As Audre Lorde so eloquently stated, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," which could be used as the subtitle of this book. In trying to gain the regency of the islands and carry out her revenge, Sigourney moves from oppressed to oppressor, from rebel to collaborator. She marries the son of one of the ruling families to gain power, and watches as the kongelig are cut down one by one. The back half of this book is a murder mystery and an interesting twist on the "white savior" trope, as (view spoiler)[ the murderers are revealed to be the slaves themselves, working to overthrow their masters. This is deftly woven in, as Sigourney is shown as having been used as a pawn and a distraction, to herself, the rest of the kongelig, and ultimately the reader: her people are freeing themselves without needing help from anyone else. (hide spoiler)]

There's a delicate, risky highwire act to having Sigourney as the central character, because she is not a good person by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, her entire life and worldview has been twisted by the system she has been born into, but there's something else I don't think anyone has commented on: her use of her "kraft" is simply horrifying. She is a telepath, and she invades people's minds and controls them without thinking twice about it. There is no discussion or even acknowledgment of the ethics of this. It illustrates the central truth of her character: to kill monsters, she must become one.

There are many layers to this book, and just as many trigger warnings needed. It's not for the fainthearted, I can tell you that, or those who can't face the truth of what white supremacy and slavery is. I'm not sure I'm glad this book exists, but there's no denying the need for it.

View all my reviews

Review: Fortuna

Fortuna by Kristyn Merbeth
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I've had a run of bad books lately, and unfortunately this is another one. The worldbuilding in this one, while not outstanding, is adequate, and the setup could have been interesting. But the characters did this book in about halfway through.

I don't demand that my characters be likable. An unlikable character, if well-written with clear motivations and shades of grey, can be compelling. None of these characters meet that bar, except possibly for Corvus, and in the end he wasn't enough to overcome my active dislike of all the rest. I especially hated Scorpia, the 27-year-old purportedly grown woman who acts twelve at best, and who careens wildly between stubborn, impulsive, and Too Stupid To Live. Her jealousy, pride, and ambition gets everyone around her in trouble (I mean, smuggling in a creepy living plant from another planet, banned for good reason, that could spread and contaminate an entire biosphere? Come on now!). After yet another of Scorpia's reckless, dumb decisions, I had had it. Book, meet wall--or rather bed, bouncing indignantly from the pillows.

Bah. The library is getting quite a few unexpected windfalls from me lately. I can only hope my next book is better.

View all my reviews

Review: The Body: A Guide for Occupants

The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I came to Bill Bryson via his travel books, which are absorbing and hilarious. I think my favorite is In a Sunburned Country. It reinforced my determination to never, ever live in Australia, but I thoroughly enjoyed his travels through it. This book, unfortunately, is lacking that trademark humor and whimsy--there's flashes of it here and there, but since he's figuratively dissecting the human body from head to toe, turning us inside out, and showing what makes us tick (at least as much as can be known), he simply hasn't got room for it. With that breadth of subject matter, this is of necessity a very thick book.

(That said, I do have one nit to pick. In chapter 18, "In the Beginning: Conception and Birth," on page 294, in describing the embryo's growth, he states this: "Now things speed up considerably. After three weeks, the budding embryo has a beating heart." This is not true. See here, here, and also here. This so-called "heartbeat" is just a flutter, and there is no proper heart as yet. I point this out because stuff like this is used to prop up "heartbeat" abortion bills, and as much as I like Bill Bryson, inaccuracies that support unconstitutional laws passed to punish women must be called out.)

I do wish he could have narrowed his focus a bit, as I think that would have made for a better book. Still, this is readable and entertaining, and I appreciate his effort and research.

View all my reviews