Review: A Stranger in the Citadel

A Stranger in the Citadel by Tobias S. Buckell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book was a bit disappointing, and the reason for that is the sketchy worldbuilding. It's a takeoff of Fahrenheit 451 set in the far future, and a very weird far future at that. It starts out with a fantasy feel, but clues are gradually dropped to make the reader realize that this is a story of humanity separated from its home planet, placed in some sort of dystopian "preserve" where all their needs are taken care of....as long as they give up literacy and reading.

What bugs me about this setup is that it's never fully explained. The reader doesn't know who put humanity there, or what "there" even is....there's a scene where the two protagonists climb up to the "rim of the world," and look over the edge through the clouds at a fist-sized Earth far below. Which almost sounds like some sort of Dyson sphere encircling the planet? Except that would cut off sunlight from Earth, and it would be dead.

I understand the background and worldbuilding is not the focus of this story. This is a tale of what happens to humanity when their stories and knowledge are taken away from them and they are given a life with no needs or struggles (except that humanity, being what it is, starts separating into the have, the have-nots, the privileged rulers and the downtrodden ruled anyway). The second main protagonist, Ishmael (I kept waiting for him to say, "Call me Ishmael," but the author showed a bit of restraint), is the titular "Stranger in the Citadel," the librarian and gatherer of old forgotten knowledge whose existence is forbidden. He is captured and brought to the city of Ninetha, and presented to its ruler, the Lord Musketer. His youngest daughter, Lilith, is the main protagonist and narrator, the person who at first believes wholeheartedly in the gods' orders of "You shall not suffer a librarian to live," but undergoes a painful awakening.

Which is all well and good, and Lilith undergoes a nice character arc. The problem for me is without sufficient worldbuilding to provide context for the story, it kind of fell flat. The "archangel" the characters end up battling at the climax (which sounded like some sort of librarian-hunter android), who has pursued Ishmael and Lilith throughout the book, provides a few clues that only create more frustrating questions. The story is also extremely fast-paced, dialogue-heavy and description-light, which is appropriate for the Audible Original version it was first created as. But I wish that when it was made into a print version, the author had slowed down and expanded the background so the story would make more sense.

As it is, there are glimmers of something interesting, but the story does not go into the depth necessary to bring it out. Which is too bad, as I think that could have made for a better book.

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Review: System Collapse

System Collapse by Martha Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the seventh book in an immensely popular series that basically resurrected the author's career. Her protagonist and narrator, the nonhuman cyborg and "security unit" who calls itself Murderbot, is a dream character: conflicted, anxious, cranky, unsure of how to relate to the humans around it, fighting with its unfortunate tendency to have emotions, and in this book, in the grips of PTSD from the previous novel, Network Effect . Murderbot, as it calls itself, basically wants to be left alone to watch its shows, which in this universe is never going to happen.

This book is quite a bit shorter than Network Effect, and almost reads like a chopped-off section of the previous book. This is not necessarily a bad thing if you're caught up with the series, but this is definitely not an entry point for a new reader. If you haven't dipped into the Murderbot Diaries before, you would be best served by at least reading the previous book. Or ideally the entire series, as Murderbot is delightful. In this story, the aftereffects from the previous story are affecting it to the point of it having human-style flashbacks which shut it down entirely. But it has to push on and protect its humans, who are trying to save a planet and its colonists from corporate slavery (the Murderbot universe is a prime example of capitalism taken to extremes). They are clashing with the representatives of a rival corporation, Barish-Estranza, and also dealing with the previous book's alien infestation. It all makes for a fast-paced stew, with Murderbot's struggles and increased anxiousness the cherry on top.

I don't think this book is as good as Network Effect, but Murderbot makes a few emotional breakthroughs along the way (small ones, as it still hates the idea of even having emotions, but hey, baby steps):

I know I needed trauma recovery, I just didn't want to help figure it out for anybody else when I was still figuring it out for myself. But at least I knew now that was what I needed. I wanted to send a message to Dr. Bharadwaj about it--I don't know why, but just telling her stuff made it easier for me to figure out what I wanted to do. I had asked ART for a detailed description of what its trauma recovery treatment entailed and it had sent me the file, I just hadn't been able to make myself open it yet.

Presumably this trauma recovery will take up the next book, along with Murderbot's and ART's (which stands for Asshole Research Transport) further adventures. This isn't the best book of the series, but it's certainly worth reading.

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Review: The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This medical horror/ghost story covers a period in British history (the Victorian era) that was frankly terrible. There was rampant misogyny, sexism, and medical experimentation, according to the foreward/afterward:

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth was inspired by Victorian England's sordid history of labeling certain people "ill" or "other" to justify cruelty against them. Threats of violence enforced strict social norms, often targeting women, queer and disabled people, and other marginalized folks.

While terrible things were done to all kinds of people deemed "unfit" by Victorian society, when it comes to medical experimentation, so much of that pain and hurt was inflicted on racial minorities in particular, and it would be incorrect not to acknowledge that.

This book has a content warning before you start, and it needs one. There is a lot of medical/surgical/supernatural gore in this story, so if you're sensitive to that kind of thing, it's better to skip this book. (This was also the case with the author's previous novel, Hell Followed With Us, but I found both books to be worth reading despite this.)

The protagonist here is Silas/Gloria Bell, the trans son of a family who is trying to marry him off against his will (as was done in those days). This alternate history postulates that sixty years previously, the Veil between the realm of the living and the dead thinned to the point where it could be seen and opened by certain people: men and women born with violet eyes. The Royal Speaker Society has taken control of these people and their powers, and women have been banned from doing spirit-work altogether (as soon as they were found to be superior at the job, a law was passed by Parliament to restrict it to men only). But violet-eyed daughters are highly prized by the Society for breeding further Speakers (yeah, Victorian England was just a nasty-ass place), and as our story opens, Silas is attending his brother's wedding and being informed by his parents that he will soon be engaged as well.

Silas/Gloria is autistic, and this seems to be an accurate and sensitive characterization. He has trouble interacting with people, but has a razor-sharp mind when it comes to solving problems and performing surgery (which he has been teaching himself, dissecting various deceased farm animals; he has also been aided and educated in medicine by his older brother George). (This is also where the content warnings come in, as Silas performs surgeries on various characters, including a Caesarian section/abortion on a young woman who has been raped.) He tries to run away to escape his fate, but is caught and sent to Braxton's Finishing School and Sanitorium, a horrorshow of a place for people like him deemed "Veil-sick" (actually, anybody rebelling against the suffocating societal norms and the Royal Speaker Society's rules). There he will be "cured" and trained to be an obedient wife.

The mystery and horror of the plot is what is happening at Braxton's to people like Silas. He meets the person his parents were trying to force him to marry, only to discover this person is trans like himself; her name is Daphne. They end up falling for each other. This relationship feels really sudden and a bit forced, which is the only nitpick I have about the book; but at the same time, I can understand Silas's surprise and elation and finding someone like him. There are also scenes of physical torture (strangling) at the hands of the Braxton Headmaster, who is trying to force Silas's masculinity out of him.

The last third of the book gets more into the horror/ghost story, but the real horror lies in the misogynist and repressive people around Silas. He and Daphne do manage to make their escape, however, and bring down the Braxton school and its terrible Headmaster. This is a harrowing story in spots, but it speaks to people learning to accept who they are and fighting for their right to exist as themselves. That is a universal theme, and unfortunately it is even more applicable to the world today.



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Review: Starling House

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've long been a fan of Alix E. Harrow, but this book elevates her to a whole new level. It is her unique twist on a Southern gothic haunted-house ghost story. It is also, as is a running theme with her work, a treatise on the power of stories, with nested layers of stories within stories, emerging from generations in the past; and how we use our personal stories to make our own hell, which can spill out and affect everyone around us. It is about otherworldly monsters and human monsters, and how they each feed upon and arise from the other. Finally, it is about the families we find and the homes we make, and how to throw off our previous guilt and despair and live to fight another day, no matter how the world around us seeks to crush us.

And it's all wrapped up in some of the most beautiful, evocative prose you will ever have the pleasure of reading. One random example:

(describing the titular Starling House, p. 21)

The windows are filmy eyes above rotten sills. Empty nests sag from the eaves. The foundation is cracked and slanted, as if the entire thing is sliding into the open mouth of the earth. The stone walls are covered with the bare, twisting tendons of some creeping vine--honeysuckle, I figure, which is only ever a show tune away from gaining sentience and demanding to be fed. The only sign that anyone lives inside is the slow bleed of woodsmoke from a leaning chimney.

Towards the end of the book, as Opal describes how Eden has always rejected her (p. 281):

And I do know. I know what it is for your own people to turn their backs on you as easily as turning a page. I know all about cold shoulders and sideways looks, about being the only girl in sixth grade who didn't get a birthday invitation. I know the way people talk loud and slow to my brother, as if he might not speak English, the way they watch him in grocery stores even though everybody knows I'm the thief. Now I know about my mother, who was cast out for the ordinary sin of sex, and the far greater sin of refusing to be sorry about it.

Our first of two protagonists, narrating the first-person sections of the story (the other, Arthur Starling, has a third-person narrative) is Opal McCoy (although as she discovers, that isn't her real name), a white-trash daughter of the town of Eden, Kentucky. Opal's mother was killed in a car accident eleven years ago--she drove her red Corvette into the river with Opal aboard, and Opal does not remember how she got out. Ever since, she has been living on the fringe, lying, stealing and scheming to send her younger brother, Jasper, to a boarding school away from Eden. One night after work she walks home past Starling House, the hulking mansion on the edge of Eden that figures prominently in the town's history and myth. Long ago a mysterious young girl, Eleanor Starling, married into Eden's ruling coal family, the Gravelys, and all three brothers eventually died under mysterious circumstances. Eleanor built Starling House years later and wrote a children's book, The Underland, which tells a ghost story of demons in another world. And then she disappears, but the demons, called Beasts, are still there, coming out of Starling House on foggy nights. To contain them, the House draws Wardens to itself, and teaches them to fight. Arthur Starling, the other protagonist, is the current Warden, and he swears he will be the last.

That fateful night Opal is drawn to Starling House after dreaming about it for years, and even though Arthur comes to meet her at the gate and tells her to run, she returns. Arthur, burdened by years of guilt and loneliness, offers Opal the job of cleaning it, and since Opal needs more money to secure Jasper's tuition at the boarding school away from Eden, she accepts. Over the next several months she cleans Starling House from top to bottom, and slowly discovers its and Arthur's secrets. But since all of these characters' stories (and Starling House is definitely another character, sentient and quirky) interact with and feed upon one another, Opal has unwittingly been working for the man who let one of his Beasts slip past him one night....the same night Opal's mother died. Opal's and Arthur's slow-burn romance is cut short, and Arthur, driven by his guilt, will do anything to get Opal and her brother away from him and away from Eden, including granting the mineral rights to the property to the current generation of Gravelys, who want to reactivate the coal mines.

The climax ramps up to the ghostly demons being set free, and both Arthur and Opal descending into the Underland to stop them. There the final story of Eleanor Starling is revealed, along with the true origin of the Underland. Opal takes the Underland as her own and puts Eleanor to rest, and frees Arthur of his terrible obligation.

This is a wonderfully dense and layered story, and I think it would reward multiple readings. There are so many facets to the themes and plot, and the characters are real people, fallible and flawed and struggling. There are also several footnotes as the story goes along, and you realize that even though Opal is telling this story, someone else is writing it--and it isn't until the final pages that you find out who that is.

I think this book is fantastic. I've loved everything the author has written so far, but this is her best yet, and the best book I've read this year.








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Review: The Spice Must Flow: The Story of Dune, from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies

The Spice Must Flow: The Story of Dune, from Cult Novels to Visionary Sci-Fi Movies by Ryan Britt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is neither your typical author biography, or a dissection of the themes and philosophies of the titular novel. It touches on both subjects a bit, but that is not the author's focus. Instead, Ryan Britt details the publishing history of the Dune series, its film history, and how Dune and especially its sandworms has gradually been absorbed into the popular culture.

The sections on the various film/TV incarnations of Dune, including the famous Alejandro Jodorowsky non-filmed version, were the most interesting to me. Each version gets its own in-depth chapter, with various actor/director/producer interviews. (It also helps that Denis Villeneuve's Dune is one of my favorite movies of the past few years.) The author also points out how Dune the book influenced cinema as a whole, as even the versions not made inspired other films and filmmakers, including Alien and George Lucas.

This is not a long book, but it is a well-researched and well-told story. From the forward:

What I hope lifelong fans get from this book is a larger view of the sweep of the Dune phenomenon and how its journey is as improbable as it is amazing. I hope, by experiencing the real-life story of Dune, you fall in love with the science fiction world of the novels, films, and TV versions all over again.

Maybe Herbert purists will be disappointed that this is not a deep dive into Duneworld, but the author does exactly what he set out to do. This is an entertaining, informative book.

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