50books_poc

Stories of Your Life & Others boasts an incredible pedigree and came to me highly recommended from a wide variety of individuals. Virtually every story in the book has been previously published by a big name literary magazine (Asimov's, Omni, etc) and have won awards. I came to the book with high expectations and was left  disappointed. 

The problem with Stories of Your Life is one that is often levelled at sci-fi writers by its detractors; the ideas are good, the writing is flat. In fact, in this case, their often isn't much of a story there at all. In Understand a man becomes hyper intelligent as a result of a clinical drug study. The story is about 40 pages long and a good 35 of those is spent simply describing the man's new found intelligence. Some conflict does eventually arise (a great conflict in fact), but is quickly dealt with in the last few pages of the story. This is pretty much the problem with the rest of the stories in the book. Chiang may be great at coming up with new worlds and interesting concepts, but he is flat out terrible at building a story. 

There are a few stories in the collection that manage to escape this tendency of Chiang's to get lost in the science of things. Tower of Babylon, based on the bible story of the Tower of Babel, is interesting and gripping and comes together in a great way. Story of Your Life is messy, but the execution is interesting, even if it's not perfect. 

One thing I did appreciate about the book is that there is a section of notes in the back where Chiang talks a little bit about the inspiration behind each story. They're never more than a few paragraphs long, but I thought they were a great addition to the book.

13. The Young Inferno by John Agard and Satoshi Kitamura is a verse retelling of Dante's Inferno embedded in a picture book. I liked Kitamura's stark, black and white, art style but in the art-as-storytelling stakes it seemed to me to lack variety. It also clashed with one of the text's spelled out messages: "My teacher said, 'You've got a point. Quite right. / It just shows that neither beast nor man / can be divided into black and white.' " Except this is a black and white book in several senses. Agard's verse text didn't work for me as either narrative or poetry. (Note to self: don't read retellings of Christian morality stories unless they're specifically subversive in some way.) However, I'm probably about as far from the target audience of hoodie-clad schoolboys as it's possible to be so who cares about my opinion anyway? I just hope this isn't picked up from the teen, graphic novel, section of the library by a reluctant reader who is consequently discouraged further. Agard writes good poetry but this isn't it. Kitamura's first and second illustrations are both interesting as art, especially the way Our Hero is represented as a negative (in the photographic sense) of himself, but the only illustration which wholly won me over is the fossil landscape in illo 4.

14. Too Black, Too Strong by Benjamin Zephaniah is an extremely powerful collection of individually skillful and soulful poems. Ben is one of the most humane people I've met and it shows through in every word of his work. Most people know him as a Rastafarian lyricist who wrote that "funny" poem about turkeys and Christmas, and maybe as that political poet who refused to accept the Order of the British Empire he was awarded, or that black British man who was bereaved of a family member by police violence (although that describes too many people), but his work is so much more: witty, political, memorial, deeply spiritual, widely literary, and linguistically sophisticated. There are several example poems at my dw journal.

15. Fiere* by Jackie Kay is her latest, 2011, poetry collection. I've loved Kay's writing since the first time I encountered it, years ago. Amongst other forms, she's an extremely accomplished poet in both Scots** and English. Kay's poems aren't generally confessional (in the strictest literary sense of that word) but they do contain enough autobiography that I feel some minimum background aids understanding, and that's provided in the brief blurb on the back. Kay is multiracial, her mother was a Scottish Highlander and her father was a Nigerian Igbo. She was born in Edinburgh and raised by white Scottish adoptive parents. There are two example poems, the ecstasy and the agony of human relationships, at my dw journal.

* "fiere", Scots, meaning "companion/friend/equal"
** Scots, which is primarily related to English, not Scottish Gaelic which is a different language.

Tags: women writers, african-caribbean, black british, britain, british, british-african-caribbean, caribbean, black scottish, scottish, guyanese, poetry, japanese, biracial, multiracial, children's books, sf/fantasy, fiction, guyanese-british, igbo, young adult

(A lightly-edited dump of my Goodreads reviews.)

Suckerpunch by Hernandez, David
Hooked me in at the start but the way events followed each other more realistically than determined by a story shape didn't quite work for me. (There was a story shape, it was just more in the gaps between the events.

Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1) by Butler, Octavia E.
So many consent issues... Very good: it's got the claustrophobia, the every-exit-is-a-deadend feel, that I'd normally associate with horror, but manages to retain an optimism about it. The aliens are convincinly alien, and the frustration of their refusal to listen is steadfast without becoming unbelievable.

Straight - A novel in the Irish-Maori tradition by O'Leary, Michael
Straight is the second book in the trilogy; I came to it without having read the first, but felt it stood alone well enough that I had no trouble following the plot. Unfortunately that plot -- the protagonist discovering his father may have been a Nazi, then getting blackmailed and kidnapped by Nazis -- was way too melodramatic for me to take seriously. The prose (especially the dialogue) clunked badly for me, too. I did like the motif of dreamland vs reality vs realism though: that played out well.

My Name Is Number 4 by Ye, Ting-xing
Most disasters bring people and communities together; it seems as if the Cultural Revolution was designed to tear them apart. But this book shows that the struggle to survive and to keep relationships alive is always worth making. --Excuse shallow triteness; reading this book in the aftermath of earthquake I have deeper thoughts on disasters and communities but verbalising is harder especially for fear of simplifying. It was a good book anyway.

People-faces, The by Cherrington, Lisa
This is mostly Nikki's story, of how she's affected by her brother's mental illness and her journey in understanding it - caught between Māori and Pākehā models of understanding - and her journey alongside that of getting to know herself and her strengths. Her grandmother tells her that the dolphin Tepuhi is her guardian, but her grandmother is demonstrably not infallible and with the repeated point that Joshua is of the sea while Nikki is of the land, I think the book bears out that the real/more effective guardian for her is the pīwaiwaka.

Her brother's story is told in the gaps between, and completes the book.

Despite the focus on Nikki and Joshua, we get to see various other points of view, showing the further impact on the rest of their family and their motivations. Some of the point of view shifts are a bit clunky, for example when we get a single scene from the Pākehā doctor's point of view, or just a couple from Nikki's boyfriend.

But this is well-told; the author (of Ngāti Hine) is a clinical psychologist and has worked in Māori mental health services, and the emotions of the story ring very true to me.

Cereus Blooms at Night: A Novel by Mootoo, Shani
This was a fantastic read but at times a very hard one; serious trigger warnings for child abuse (verbal, physical, sexual).

It begins as a beautifully sweet story about racial and sexual and gender identity; about family separations made by force or by choice, and about forbidden liaisons both healthy and unhealthy. Set in the country of Lantanacamara, colonised by the Shivering Northern Wetlands -- more an open code than fantasy countries -- the story focuses on three generations of locals, straight and gay, cis and trans, more and less inculturated by Wetlandish education. The narrator begins by disclaiming any significant role in the story; instantly I want to know more about him, and (though he was right that this is more Mala's story) I was not disappointed.

The main story, switching among its several timelines, grows darker and winds tighter with perfect pacing. Revelations are neither too delayed nor too forced. And as it heads towards the catastrophe we've foreseen, through horror worse than we could have imagined at the start, so it brings us towards its equally inevitable -- and no less satisfying -- eucatastrophe.

#7: The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez.

( The Gilda Stories )

Octavia Butler is one of those authors I always meant to read but never got around to. This is the first book of hers that I've read, and it didn't disappoint. There is probably little new that I can say about an author who is so well-known, but humor me while I give my impressions anyway.

Kindred is the story of a black American woman, Dana, who finds herself mysteriously and unwantedly transported to another time and place -- antebellum Maryland. She quickly realizes that the reason for her time-traveling is her ancestor Rufus, a white boy who somehow involuntarily calls her to him whenever his life is in danger. Whenever Dana's own life is threatened, she, also involuntarily, returns to her own time.

There are a few rules -- each time she visits Rufus, he is years older, though little time has passed for her. She is able to bring things with her to the past by touching them, including her husband Kevin, who is white. The mechanism of the time travel is unimportant, and is never explained. We don't question why, for example, the carpet she's standing on doesn't travel with her! It's not that kind of a book.

This is not a Quantum Leap story, where she is supposed to make things better than they originally were; it's a Back to the Future story, where she must simply ensure that Rufus's child is born so that she in turn can live. There doesn't seem to be much danger, actually, of Dana not surviving, or at least I never thought it was likely. The real tension comes from wondering how Dana will cope with living as a slave in the months between her time traveling, and wondering just how much Rufus will grow up to be a product of his time.

( More discussion, no real spoilers )

Overall, I liked it a lot. I look forward to reading Butler's other work.

tags: a: butler octavia, african-american, sf/fantasy

14. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

A sort-of fantasy novel about Tilo, a 'Mistress of Spices'- immortal, mystical women, trained in magic and secret knowledge, sent out into the world to help people. Tilo is sent to Oakland, California, where she slowly becomes personally involved in the lives of the people around her, and begins to reveal her own backstory.

This novel is very hard to describe, because it doesn't have much of a plot for most of its length. Instead, it's full of beautiful, poetic descriptions of spices and food, magic, Oakland and imaginary places like the Island where Mistresses are trained. Some parts are very realistic; others involve rampaging pirate queens or singing sea serpents. It took me a while to get into this book, because the beginning is very slow, but by the end I was in love. The language is incredibly evocative, and the resolution felt just right. I really grew to like the characters, particularly Tilo, who shows herself to be much more of a flawed human than any mystical fairy.

Highly recommended.

A gorgeous, haunting comic book with echoes of everything from the very best bits of Stephen King to some of the very worst bits of American history, with detours into a very creepy take on Alice in Wonderland, not to mention Br’er Rabbit.

Lee is a tiny but very determined little black girl living in Charon, Mississippi, 1933, on the banks of a bayou full of strange beings whom no one but she sees, or at least no one but she acknowledges. When her white friend Lily is taken by a folk song-humming monster, Lee’s father is jailed for kidnapping Lily (basically because he’s black) and is under threat of being lynched.

Lee ventures into the bayou to save her father and her friend, and so begins her journey into a twisted Wonderland in which the racism and weight of history that exists above the bayou also plays out below, enacted by monsters and giants, butterfly-winged spirits and talking dogs.

This is one of the most purely American works I’ve read in a while, and it gains a lot if you can catch at least some of the passing references to history and folklore. I’ve heard the argument that so much American fantasy is set elsewhere because America doesn’t have enough history and folklore to draw on. Apart from that this leaves out most of America's actual (Indian) history and folklore, this brief book alone proves that even recent history and folklore is sufficient for fantasy: though this volume is short, it’s the start of a series with a distinctly epic feel.

The art is gorgeous, often with a pastoral, children’s book illustration feel, which only makes a lot of the often-horrific images even more disturbing. Some panels, like one of Lee standing against the sunrise with the silhouette of a crow flying overhead, are simply beautiful. The colors are almost translucent, like watercolors.

I liked this a lot, and will definitely be following it. It’s beautiful to look at, deals with a lot of folklore and history that’s very close to my heart, and Lee is exactly the sort of heroine I adore, a prickly, real-feeling person who ventures into completely unknown and dangerous territory armed with nothing but love, courage, and a big historic axe. (And, eventually, a shotgun she borrowed from a swamp monster.)

Bayou

Volume 2, which is available for pre-order now, comes out in January. Bayou Vol. 2

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Sarwat Chadda, Devil's Kiss

The Knights Templar are still present in modern-day London (though there's not many of them left), and they have a secret mission to fight the forces of evil: vampires, ghouls, ghosts, and so forth. Billi's dad, Arthur (a white British Christian), is the head of the Knights Templar, and ever since her mom (a Pakistani Muslim) died as a result of the Templar's work, he's been cold and closed off to her, focused only on the mission. Billi feels pressured to follow in his footsteps and join the Templars, but she wants her own life, her own friends, and for her dad to pay attention to her.

I really liked this book; it's fast-paced, with an exciting plot (involving the Ten Plagues of Exodus), and interesting characters (including appearances by the Angel of Death and Lucifer), and some genuinely scary moments. I was a bit confused by the fact that everyone in the Templar has a name from the Arthurian legends, some of which are names you would expect to see in modern London (Arthur, Kay) and some which you wouldn't (Gawain, Percival). But this patten is never mentioned in the book, and Arthurian legends have nothing to do with the plot, so I didn't understand what was up with that. There's a sequel that's just come out that I haven't read yet, so maybe it plays a part in the next book.

My favorite parts were moments when the characters dealt with issues regarding Knights Templar in the modern world. For instance, there a long-running argument between Arthur and Gwaine on emphasizing the "demon fighting" aspect of their mission over the "killing people of other religions" part of it. It's mentioned that Billi was raised as a Muslim, but had to convert to Christianity to join the Templars. This isn't a major part of the book, but for me, it made the whole thing feel much more real. I would have liked more exploration of how the Templars have changed and adjusted to the present, actually. Again: maybe in the sequel!

A fun read, and one I recommend.

This is a mostly terrific book: it's a story about families, immigrants, fathers and sons, regret, identity, and, oh, time travel. And meeting Luke Skywalker's son, Linus. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe takes a unique approach to the above themes and also to the concept of time travel itself. It's a twisty, strange ride, full of sadness and humour, and a definite postmodern touch (such as the fact the protagonist is named Charles Yu). Yu's perspective on immigrant life and the effects it can have on families and identity is very insightful in particular. The novel does meander a bit, and the sentences become a bit ridiculously long and convoluted for no good reason as it goes on, sometimes putting me in a daze, but overall it's a striking and successful story. (I recommend against reading the Kindle version on a phone, however - there are charts and diagrams and other supplemental asides, which are very cool, but were mainly unreadable on that device...)