The book’s subtitle is “Changing the Autism Conversation,” and Garcia does this by putting the voices of autistic people front and center, in direct contrast to most autism research which is written by neurotypical people and (he says) is more focused on finding a “cure” for autism, or on forcing autistic people to behave according to neurotypical norms, as opposed to helping them find ways to exist within the world that work for them. Funding for the autistic community also follows those lines. I definitely found it especially eye-opening when he interviewed nonverbal autistic people; without knowing it, I’d fallen into the trap of assuming that people who couldn’t communicate on my terms had little to say to me, which is far from the truth. Garcia also delves into the problems made worse by intersectionality; autism diagnoses (and solutions) have historically been focused towards cisgender white men. Unfortunately the book gets extremely dry and repetitive, which made it hard to get through, but I appreciated the perspectives provided, from people who often aren’t consulted before decisions are made that have a huge impact on them.
Author: librarykat
Phoenix Extravagant, by Yoon Ha Lee
The narrator in this book, Gyen Jebi, is a nonbinary artist who just wants to make art and would rather ignore the intricacies of politics and war, which allows the author to paper over a lot of the details of strategy and occupation. Jebi is a native of an alternate version of Korea, in a region under the control of an alternate version of Japan; as an alt-Korean, they find themselves without employment options as the alt-Japanese crack down on the local culture and language. To their militant sister’s dismay, they pursue a position with the local government, and find themselves unwillingly helping the war effort against their own people; no spoilers but it’s a really pointed reference to cultural erasure committed by colonizers. Jebi tries to find ways to express their rebellion, despite their pacifist artistic temperament and their inconvenient attraction to a certain deadly swordswoman. I really liked the characters, particularly the mecha steampunk (silkpunk?) dragon which reminded me a lot of Temeraire; pity it didn’t show up until quite a ways into the book. Although it would have been easy to make the rebellion into the good guys fighting against the occupiers for freedom, the author instead turns the book into a denunciation of war. Both sides are problematic, violence is terrible, and innocent dragons and dreamy artists are the ones who are the most unready to deal.
The Verifiers, by Jane Pek
I finally listened to an audiobook all the way through without falling asleep! I think this is actually due more to the strength of the narrator, Eunice Wong, who did an amazing job and colored the characters beautifully, than to the book itself which dragged a bit in parts. The protagonist is Claudia Lin, a lesbian Chinese-American New Yorker who works for a detective agency dedicated exclusively to verifying claims that people make on dating apps. She keeps a lot of secrets herself, namely from her mom (who is impatiently waiting for her to find a nice Chinese boy) and her siblings (who think she is still working at the finance job that her brother found for her). Claudia’s narration is peppered with literary and pop culture references, but that doesn’t save her from coming across as annoyingly naive; the mystery that should drive the book is confused and not terribly interesting. There’s a running theme of interrogating the lies we tell ourselves to attract the people we think we need, which gets a bit lost in the unnecessarily complicated plot. What really animated the story for me was Claudia’s interactions with her family; all the characters, as well as their simmering frustrations with one another, come alive in Eunice Wong’s reading, and I liked how their unique inputs ended up meshing with the mystery-solving plotline in the end.
Legendborn, by Tracy Deonn
When E mentioned that she was reading this book, she called it a “big standard American YA fantasy with racism in North Carolina layered in,” which is a perfect summary. It’s got Cassandra Clare levels of ridiculously attractive teenagers, complex secret magical societies going back centuries, evil monsters to fight, etc, etc. The special sauce in this one is definitely the viewpoint of the Black narrator, who has to navigate racism in the real world alongside the magical one, and whose link to the magical world is intertwined with the race trauma of the country’s history. Narrator Bree, at sixteen, gets admitted into an early college program at UNC Chapel Hill, but finds herself embroiled in an ongoing magical conflict while still having to deal with issues on the home front. Deonn does an amazing job capturing the feeling of being a member of a visible minority going into a snooty, exclusively white environment, where you are almost certainly not welcome, but holding your head up anyway. And I absolutely loved how the plot defiantly made a space for Black people inside the extremely white background of Arthurian legend. Even the developing love triangle doesn’t look like it’ll be too annoying (and the love triangle is a standard building block of the Arthur myth, after all). Very promising start; the sequel is supposed to come out in a couple of months and I will definitely be getting in line.
The Anomaly, by Hervé Le Tellier
This book, about a planeload of passengers caught up in an anomalous event, took forever to get started. I swear the entire first half of the book was taken up in introducing a large variety of characters, each so different that it felt almost as if they were starring in a different style of book: the noir contract killer, the entertainment mag pop star, the family of a hair-trigger veteran, the depressed author, the couple growing apart, etc, etc; none of these had anything to do with the others except that they had all been on the same plane, and eventually FBI or Interpol or someone shows up to collect them. The second half segues into what happens with that plane, and how the event changes each of the lives of the passengers. It felt less like a novel than a philosophical thought experiment; even though Le Tellier did a good job bringing life to each of the characters, there were so very many of them that you really didn’t grow to care about any of them in particular.
Network Effect, by Martha Wells
After four Murderbot novellas, I was surprised to find that this was a full-length novel (ebooks are so deceptive!). Happily, the awesomeness carried well throughout the longer length; it felt like a movie after watching episodes of a TV show. I love how the characters care so much for one another without having to rely on hormones or attraction to make it work; Murderbot is a spiky ball of reactions that feels emotions so deeply that it literally cannot deal, and it’s really touching to watch its friends (both human and bot) try to soothe a creature that hates to be hugged and doesn’t want to admit any weakness. I loved the plot, which created drama and tension without feeling forced; I loved the characters, both puzzled human and exasperated bot, and I loved the action, which gets intense at times but remains friendly and readable due to Murderbot’s awesome narrative voice. Great worldbuilding too, using the previous novellas as a foundation for establishing corporate greed and cruelty. Such good stuff; I can’t believe I finished an entire novel’s worth of Murderbot and am still left wanting more.
Beautiful Country, by Qian Julie Wang
“Beautiful Country” is the literal translation of the Chinese characters for “America.” When Wang was a little girl, her parents flew to the US to escape persecution in China (they were college professors who criticized the government). The family became undocumented immigrants in Brooklyn after their temporary visas expired, working in sweatshops and sifting through garbage for food and supplies. Her father enrolled her in a public school but her teachers and peers spoke English and Cantonese, not Mandarin, and she ended up in a special-needs classroom where she taught herself to read through picture books. Eventually she managed to get back into a normal classroom, but had to purposefully dumb down her writing when teachers accused her of plagiarism; she also had to hide their illegal status and learned to swallow insults as she tried to fit in with her American classmates. Her family was eventually able to emigrate to Canada and then legally return to the US, where she graduated from Swarthmore and Yale; it’s easy to point to hers as a success story, but her account highlights all the gaps through which children can fall, and all the ways in which talented professionals are wasted (between sweatshop jobs, her mother taught herself English and got a degree in computer science, yet was frustratingly unable to use it due to her illegal status). Wang does not provide answers, only wishing to shine a light on her traumatic upbringing.
Whiskeyjack, by Victoria Goddard
Third in the Greenwing and Dart series. This one finally finishes clearing things up for poor bespelled Jemis Greenwing, and sets Dart up for hopefully some resolution of his own in following books. Usually I get a little annoyed with authors when they bring in entire invented fields of literature for their scholars to criticize, but somehow Goddard makes it work; Jemis is such an enthusiastic scholar, and his investigation of clues and hidden puzzles so enthralling, that you really appreciate being along for the ride. The adventure surrounding the investigation doesn’t hurt either: will Jemis be arrested (again) for a crime he didn’t commit (again)? Will he finally be rid of the curses piling up on him? Will he finally clear his name with the gossiping villagers? Great combination of fantasy nerdiness and occasional derring-do; right up my alley.
Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire
Seventh(?) in the Wayward Children series, this one is less about any one particular child’s journey than about the doorway universe as a whole, which weakens the (usually stellar) character work even as it lays the groundwork for further stories. The insertion of a couple of the characters into the “evil” school counterpart is a bit contrived, but you could tell McGuire wanted to explore the concept of the other school and what made it tick; I’m sure we’ll come back and explore it in following books.
This Place: 150 Years Retold
This is a collaborative graphic novel anthology, each story highlighting a person or a historical moment in the Indigenous people’s fight to survive in Canada. As the foreword says, each Indigenous story is a post-apocalyptic survival tale, which makes every Indigenous person a hero. Each contribution is prefaced with a timeline of events, unavoidable evidence of the government’s ongoing determination to stamp out Native cultures and Native people, and the stories shine a light on atrocities that the government would prefer to paper over, as well as on heroes that should be more widely celebrated. The book actually reminded me most of Four Hundred Souls, Ibram Kendi and Keisha Blain’s collaborative history of African America; like that book, it draws an unmistakable line from the government’s first racist actions to those of today, and also leaves you awed by the strength of all those who fought and survived.