I wanted to like this more than I actually did; the concept was great but the execution was heavy-handed and the plot essentially went nowhere. Six out of seven witches in a coven have come together, and a two-dimensional evil witchhunter (thinly veiled symbol of the patriarchy) has ramped up his efforts to hunt down the last witch before she can join them and bring about some nebulous prophesied change. The witches, who have all escaped some form or other of sexist sadness, don’t seem to have gained any particular magic from their having done so; the ones with magic seem to have had it already. Basically this was super girls-against-the-man! women have ancient and mysterious powers! which I would ordinarily be down with but there should really have been a lot more thinking going into plotting, worldbuilding, and character arcs. I stubbornly made it to the end and the payoff was… less than worth it.
Category: quick reaction
In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan
Excellent book, I want to push it at all misfit teenagers (and the adults they grow up to be). It’s a self-aware portal fantasy, done super well. 13 year old Elliot, upon discovering that he can enter a magical world, immediately tries to improve it: he smuggles in ballpoint pens to use instead of quills, calls out cross-species racism, and promotes diplomacy over war. His changing relationships with his warrior peers, elf Serene and awkward scion Luke, work as a beautiful heart to the story. (Fans of the relationship dynamic in Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series will enjoy this one too.) I couldn’t wait to finish this book and also never wanted it to end.
A Gift of Dragons, by Anne McCaffrey
The kid read Dragonsong and liked it, so I went looking for more Pern material that might be suitable for young adults. This short story collection isn’t it; the stories cover bullying (The Smallest Dragonboy), reinforcing traditional gender roles (Ever the Twain), and deep dives into the series and society of Pern which I don’t feel like dragging the kid into (The Girl who Heard Dragons, Runner of Pern). Pern was a huge part of my adolescence but I feel like it might not be aging well; certainly there’s better stuff out there these days.
Hotline, by Dimitri Nasrallah
This book was tearing up the review scene in Canada so I gave it a shot. The pace is slow and patient, mostly moving through mundane details and only hinting at the broader picture, but builds on itself until the smallest actions carry huge emotional weight. Muna is a Lebanese immigrant teacher whose French skills are not as useful as she had hoped they would be in Montreal; to support herself and her son Omar, she takes a job at a call center selling a weight loss program. It’s hard scrabbling out a living as a single mom in the Montreal winter, but in Muna’s life, the small victories and occasional moments of grace balance out the casual racism and institutional disregard. The gradual unfolding of the events in Lebanon that drove her to Montreal are illuminating as well. Really well done storytelling.
The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett
For some reason I never read the Tiffany Aching subset of the Discworld books, so when I saw this volume at the used book store, I picked it up for the kid. He absolutely loved it and demanded more (dear Libraries ACT, you need to stock up). Tiffany is an excellent version of the practical Pratchett heroine; she pushes back aginst dogma, does her own research, and forges ahead with determination. The Wee Free Men are excellent supporting characters, as are Tiffany’s fellow countrymen. Fine middle-grade reading material, entertaining without being dogmatic.
Lords of Uncreation, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
I was so excited to read this conclusion to Tchaikovsky’s Final Archtecture trilogy and it absolutely did not disappoint (except when I reached the end and realized that I wouldn’t be spending any more time with these characters). It’s classic space opera with an extremely existential threat to humanity (and humanity’s various alien sometime-allies), with plenty of facets looking out only for themselves. As usual with Tchaikovsky’s novels, no matter how weird things get, it’s the beautiful character work that pulls the reader along; most of the arcs end well, and some end excellently.
Paul takes the form of a mortal girl, by Andrea Lawlor
Paul Polydoris is a queer teenage bartender in a college town in 1993; he can change the shape of his body at will and frequently does, assuming whatever shape and gender that will get him laid (which is depicted quite graphically). After romping his way through various parts of the queer scene, Paul takes on the form of “Polly” and accompanies his friend to a lesbian retreat, where he falls in love with a girl named Diane and eventually follows her to San Francisco. Paul is filled with an intense longing to belong to someone and to give them his whole heart; at the same time; he chafes at being restricted to just one form and one role, restlessly changeable both outside and in. With such a mutable character it’s hard to have any kind of growth arc, and indeed, the lack of any kind of arc was one of the worst things about this story. Without any particular self-reflection on Paul’s part, his endless sexual escapades began to feel like just another part of the character he was performing, each encounter yet another experience he wasn’t learning from. I can’t tell if this book is a love letter to the queer scene of the early 90s, or a condemnation of the fact that the scene seemed to force people into rigid gender roles. Maybe, like the protagonist, the author also wants to have it both ways.
Goodbye, Vitamin, by Rachel Khong
I honestly wasn’t grabbed by the book at first, but as I read, I slowly became invested. Ruth, escaping from a failed engagement and tepid career, returns home for the holidays and finds herself sticking around to help her mother care for her father, whose dementia is worse than Ruth had realized. Ruth finds herself settling into the mundanity of basing her father’s diet off of online nutrition research, slowly mending fences with her mother, and colluding with a pack of her father’s former university students to create for him the illusion of a normal life. Interspersed with the story are her father’s journal entries from when he was besotted with her as a child; I like how they reflected the role reversal now taking place between them.
A Girl and Five Brave Horses, by Sonora Carver
In 1923, then-teenage Sonora answered an ad by William Carver looking for a “diving girl” to ride a horse as it plunged 11 feet from a tall platform into a pool of water below. She ended up joining Carver’s traveling entertainment act, performing around the country, and eventually marrying Carver’s son. In 1931, she hit the water wrong during a dive and suffered retinal detachment, eventually going blind; despite that, she continued to dive horses until their show ended when war broke out in 1942. The writing style of the book is straightforward and simplistic, with Carver demonstrating classic 1920s “spunky girl” attitude – unafraid to speak her mind, but always acknowledging that the men around her had the power and she had to persuade them before she could have her way. I was particularly interested by her detailed description of how both girls and horses were trained to dive (only a few actually took to the training; she makes it clear that in her time with the show, no girl or horse was ever pushed beyond their comfort zone), and the construction of the diving platform and pool. Her account of her blindness and how she dealt with it (and how she preferred others to treat her) is actually a great section on dealing with disability from someone who never had to consider the issue before.: A Girl and Five Brave Horses, by Sonora Carver
How Decent Folk Behave, by Maxine Beneba Clarke
An incredibly powerful collection of poetry from Clarke, who is an Australian poet of Afro-Caribbean descent. The poems center the reader in Clarke’s world and viewpoint, a place where women and people of color have it hard; even as she paints that world in heartbreaking detail, she colors it with her fierce resolve to fight back, to stand together, to grow strong. The title is actually a line from the poem “something sure,” in which a Black mother sits her son down and tells him to pay attention: she is raising him to be a good man, one who knows “how decent folk behave,” but he needs to know: there are times when other men can be a danger to women, and when those times arise, she needs her son to be the kind of man who will step in, to intervene as only a fellow man can. It’s chilling, heartbreaking, and beautiful.