Review: You Weren't Meant to Be Human

You Weren't Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Many horror novels are written in response to real-world horrors, and that's definitely the case with this one. It's stated in the first (one-sentence) chapter:

Crane doesn't know this yet, but he's been pregnant for almost three months already.

There you go. Character established and themes stated in one fell swoop. A pregnant trans man is a difficult thing indeed, in a country where the federal right to abortion has fallen and trans people are being persecuted. Add in an apparent alien Hive, an ugly slimy mass of flies and worms that takes up residence in back rooms and recruits humans to do its bidding, and you have visceral horror on more than one level.

(There are explicit content warnings at the beginning of this book. PAY ATTENTION TO THEM. They are accurate. If you have trouble with graphic violence and gore, self-harm, dubious consent, abuse, domestic violence, forced pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion and childbirth, do not tackle this book.)

Crane is our protagonist, a mute (by choice) autistic trans man who is more than a little fucked up, who left home and found a sort of refuge with a hive in Washville, West Virginia and its humans. (The Appalachian country and mindset is something the author obviously knows well, and is depicted well enough to become a secondary character.) Crane's sort-of boyfriend, Levi, is a domestic abuser and manipulator who is also the hive's enforcer, tracking down and terminating anyone who tries to flee. Crane and Levi have a disturbing, twisted relationship that Crane nevertheless does not want to leave. He has found what he considers a place with the hive, and he wants to stick with the life he's made.

But that life is upended when he discovers he's pregnant.

This book is set a little bit in the future, as ten unnamed states have passed laws declaring abortion to be murder, and West Virginia is evidently one of them. (Although I can easily see that happening in real life. Conservatives are never content with merely restricting and/or banning abortion; they inevitably want to prosecute and imprison women for it.) Crane does not want the child, and attempts to flee to some friends in DC who can set him up with an abortion. Unfortunately, the night before the procedure is scheduled, he is tracked down by another hive's enforcer, who we gradually find out is an experiment--he's little more than a bunch of mature worms in a human suit. Stagger, as Crane names him, forces him to return to Washville. There, Levi tells Crane the hive wants him to have the baby, so he will have the fucking baby.

The rest of the book follows Crane through the forced pregnancy, the discomforts and pains of which are described in graphic terms. In Crane's case, this is complicated by his growing gender dysphoria--he can hardly stand his breasts getting bigger, for example. He also finds out that Levi has impregnated others, and there is a bloody scene of a self-induced abortion that nearly results in the girl bleeding to death. All through the pregnancy, Crane wonders why the hive is doing this. We don't find out till the very end, after the child--a girl--is born, and Crane realizes the hive is going to set her up to be a breeder, just as they have done with him.

The book's climax is the most gruesome part of all, and yet we understand why Crane does what he does. (I won't go into detail; suffice to say that this shares a plot point with Toni Morrison's Beloved.) He also takes out Levi with a hammer, and tears the hive into little alien bits. Finally, he flees back to his parents, who stumbled across him at a Washville gas station while he was in labor. (I appreciated that the author did not depict his parents as abusive; Crane's issues are the result of a world that will not accept what he is, which is why he tried to find a home with the hive.)

This book is raw, in your face, and takes no prisoners, and I'm sure some will decry it as over-the-top. But with the road this country is currently taking, we need stories that lay out the true horrors of what they are doing. The author does not flinch in portraying these horrors, and we should not look away.

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Review: Of Monsters and Mainframes

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was...okay. It's a mashup of science fiction/science fantasy and a monster movie, as all four of the classic monsters make their appearance: Dracula, Frankensten, the Werewolf and the Mummy. Characters from the books--Victor Frankenstein, Wilhelmina Murray, Renfield, et cetera--also show up, and the nominal main character is the anxiety-ridden, AI-powered starship the Demeter.

This book is not for someone looking to read about serious, nuanced issues. It's frothy and fast-paced (except for the sagging middle--I almost gave up a couple of times, as Demeter seemed to be spinning in circles and getting nowhere, but the last third of the book tightened up considerably) and has a very old-fashioned, pulpish feel. It also deals with found family, as Demeter adopts the four monsters that travel aboard her, and she falls in love with her medical AI, Steward. At the end, after Dracula has been torn to pieces by the werewolf, Agnus, Demeter is repaired and retrofitted for a long exploratory voyage, and she and her newfound crew and family head out.

Having said all this, I think this book is ultimately pretty forgettable. If you want a far better story dealing with Dracula and a ship named the Demeter, watch the movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. That film has setting and a creepy atmosphere in abundance, and is just better told than this story, I think.

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Review: Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler

Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler by Susana M. Morris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Octavia Butler has been gone for nearly twenty years (she died in 2006) and she is still sorely missed. I never knew her, but according to this book, by all accounts she was a kind and generous person. But I have her books, her enduring legacy, and that is what this slim volume delves into: their themes and the ideas that Octavia circled back to again and again. She was apparently a keen observer both of human behavior and of history, and the most fascinating part of this book is how both Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents extrapolated the excesses and horrors of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich into a future President who boasted of "Making America Great Again."

Sound familiar?

I don't think she would have been the least bit surprised by Donald Trump. She would have been disgusted, as I am, but not surprised. And that's the saddest part of all, that for the last twenty years we have been deprived of her intellect, her ability, and her razor-keen observations of the world. It's almost enough to make one weep, thinking of what could have been.

But we do have her past works, and the legacy of her genius. Her "positive obsession," which has inspired so many people. This is a good introduction to her work, perhaps not as deep as some, but brisk and relatable. If it motivates you to read her books and stories, so much the better. We need her voice and her vision today.

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Review: The Everlasting

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Alix E. Harrow is one of the few authors I buy sight unseen, as soon as a preorder link for one of her books goes up. I may not even know what it's about, and I'll still order it. My faith in her has consistently been rewarded, as with each subsequent release she seems to get better.

That pattern holds true with this book, which is not only her best, it's one of the best books I've read this year.

A running theme in her work is the power of stories, and how the stories we tell ourselves define who we are. This theme is expanded upon again in this book, as the story of the titular Una "Everlasting," a takeoff of Arthuriana/the Green Knight, is the defining tale of the country of Dominion. For a thousand years the legend of Una Everlasting, the female knight who served the first queen Yvanne and died a heroic, tragic death, has inspired the country and its rulers. There are many versions of the "Death of Una Everlasting," the book that the protagonist Owen Mallory, a scholar and war hero, is tasked with translating. This pristine book, newly discovered, is shipped anonymously to Mallory, and he takes up the task of its translation.

But as he soon discovers, there are many layers to the tale of Una Everlasting, and not all of them are true. He finds this out because the book, forged from a magical yew tree, has the power to make people travel through time--and Owen himself is sent back by the Minister of War, Vivian Rolfe, not to translate the book but to write it, and invent the legend that will found the nation.

Una Everlasting did exist, but as Owen discovers as he travels with her, her story is not at all what it was later made out to be. She is a hero, but she is also a complicated woman who is becoming disillusioned with her queen and does not want to live out the legend she has become. And Owen knows how the story ends, with her death. He knows the future, and as he comes to know the woman (and falls in love with her), he finds he wants to change the story so she can live.

But Vivian Rolfe, the master manipulator who sent him back, has her hooks into Una's story and time itself, as she navigates the endless alternate timelines spawned by Una's life and Owen's attempts at interference. At first obsessed with making sure her country of Dominion becomes what she thinks it should be, Vivian's ego gradually takes over (the epitome of "absolute power corrupts absolutely") and she wants to rule Dominion herself. She sends herself back to the many alternate timelines, becoming not only the first queen--"Yvanne," in the Dominion language, is an earlier version of "Vivian"--but other historical characters down the thousand-year timeline. She forces Una to die and return to the story of her final quest, over and over and over, and she forces Owen to go back and write Una's story once again, until he can get it "right," or what Vivian believes is right. There are four "Deaths of Una Everlasting" in this book, each more different and more heartbreaking, until the final confrontation between Una, Owen and Vivian at the very beginning of the legend.

These different variations of the same story, and Una and Owen's desperate quest to break free of Vivian, constitute this tragic, beautiful love story, exquisitely written. I've marked multiple pages where the lovely prose stood out, but here is just one example:

Once, there was a woman who wanted more than she was given. She wanted it so badly that she shattered time itself beneath her heel and pieced it back together in the way that suited her best. History no longer simply happened, like an accident; it was told, like a story. And the queen told it many times.

The story of Dominion had many villains over the years, shifting along with the borders of her empire, and many storytellers. But it only ever had one hero, and her name was Una Everlasting.

Una the dragon-slayer, Una the queen-maker, Una the tragedy. Una, who died and was resurrected a hundred times, until she fought as no mortal could fight, with the memory of every battle burned into her very bones. (There was awe in your voice, even now--but surely a dog might learn any trick, given a thousand years of practice.)

I was not alone, in your story. I was trailed always by a cowardly historian, a man chosen by the queen to lead me to my death, like a farmer driving a balking animal to the butcher. And so--here your voice turned bitter as burnt hair--the historian buried the hero, over and over, and wrote her tale in the queen's book.

Until at last they began to remember themselves, or at least each other. This the queen could not permit. So she told one final story--a story so perfect it gave her an empire and a crown, a thousand years from now--and hid the book away. But the historian stole it and ran back to his hero.

And now, finally, we might write our own ending.

This book tackles the enduring power of stories, for good and bad, and what myths and legends mean to a people and a nation. As I was reading it, I kept thinking of the famous question asked by the Hamilton musical: "Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?" I don't know if Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton's creator, meant for that question to be answered--but Alix E. Harrow's book answers it.

This book is damn near perfect. Do not miss it.

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Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Last Amazon--a Wonder Woman for the Ages

 I heard about this from someone I follow on Facebook. I also have Absolute Batman and Absolute Superman teed up on my library hold list, but I can't imagine them being better than this--or any other comic/graphic novel I read this year, as a matter of fact.

Folks, this is fan-fucking-tastic. 

Before this, I had read Grant Morrison's reboot of Wonder Woman from 2016. At the time, I sort of liked it, but looking back on it now...it has aged poorly, to say the least. The Suck Fairy had a field day with this book. Morrison's choice to cast Steve Trevor as African-American led to some extremely unfortunate imagery (Diana's putting a collar on him, for fuck's sake), and the whole thing comes off as some fratboy's fantasy of Wonder Woman and the Amazons, with no real understanding of Diana Prince as a character. I wouldn't go so far to say that Wonder Woman should always have a female writer, but it seems like a woman would have a far better chance of getting to the core of who she is.  

That is certainly true in this case. Kelly Thompson understands Wonder Woman inside and out, and shows it. This particular re-imagining dispenses with Themyscira, Hippolyta, and the Amazons altogether: the Amazons are banished by Zeus and baby Diana is taken away, and Apollo brings her to an island in Hell to be raised by the surprised and at first uncooperative sorceress Circe. Circe is banned from  even saying the word "Amazon," which leads to one of the most electrifying panels in this graphic novel, when Diana says "the word" and realizes what she is. 

In Morrison's version of Wonder Woman, Diana is young, naive and impulsive, with a great many--often painful--lessons to learn about "man's world." Here, because of her upbringing in Hell, Diana has already learned those lessons. She is, not quite cynical, but realistic, and sometimes world-weary. But the character's essential kindness and compassion always shows through. Even when she is killing monsters to save Gateway City, she never glories in it. She positions herself as defending Earth and always gives said monsters a choice: give up, retreat, and they may live. She is willing to sacrifice much to advance her cause. When Steve Trevor (not African-American this time around, although it wouldn't matter if he was, since Thompson completely avoids Morrison's problematic missteps with the character) is marooned in Hell, Diana finds a way out for him--by chopping off her right, dominant arm. (Later, she and Circe conjure a magical mechanical replacement for it.) Trevor returns the favor at the story's climax, when Diana uses one of her magic lassos to transform herself into Medusa and turn the monster threatening Gateway City to stone. Declaring that there is "she cut off her own arm to get me out of hell. There's no scenario where I leave her out there alone," Steve blindfolds himself and goes out to remind Diana of who she is, talking her down and returning her to herself. 

This first volume is mainly an introduction to a magic-wielding Diana who assumes the mantle of protector of Earth, but it also takes a deep dive into the character. Her relationship with her adoptive mother Circe is central to her character, far more than her relationship with Steve Trevor, which isn't even a romance at this point. She also rides the resurrected skeleton of the flying horse Pegasus, gifted her by a Titan who she briefly frees from his captivity. The final pages of the graphic novel are adorable little one-page stories of a young Diana, learning to wield magic and adopting all kinds of magical creatures over Circe's objections.

I don't know how long this particular reboot is going to last, but go forth and snatch it up while it's here. It's absolutely terrific. 

Review: Spread Me

Spread Me by Sarah Gailey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

John Carpenter's film The Thing is a classic movie of paranoia, alien invasion, and body horror that has only grown in stature since its 1982 release. Naturally, it has inspired scores of imitators. I don't know if this book is so much an imitator as a gender-flipped retelling (seeing as the original was definitely a sausage-fest) layered with a very healthy dollop of sex.

The basic story is the same: an isolated research station and the discovery of a lethal organism that picks off the inhabitants one by one. In this case, the station is in the middle of the New Mexico desert, with nobody within a hundred miles, and a seemingly never-ending series of sandstorms take out the phones and internet so no one can call for help. (But once you learn just where the invading organism comes from, the uncomfortable thought occurs that it's the desert itself, or rather the infected "cryptobiotic crust" within, that's causing the storms.) The "thing" here is strictly speaking not an alien, although since it's an unholy combination of a lichen and a giant virus that eats people alive and reconstitutes them in its own image, it could be termed as such. It's also intelligent and seeking to learn about humans--and it's fixated sexually on our protagonist, the station chief, Kinsey.

Naturally, Kinsey is fixated right back. She has a peculiar, particular sexual kink involving viruses and bacteriophages, which is made clear by a lengthy scene of her masturbating to a photo of a bacteriophage. But there is more than once kind of kink on display here, as seemingly all of the station's inhabitants (except Kinsey) take turns fucking each other. This also feeds the growing paranoia as the lichen monster settles in, as the surefire way of telling that Kinsey's coworkers have been replaced is that they start coming on to her. The body horror grows until, at the climax (heh), we see this:

The light illuminates the fullness of what they've become. It's a perfect, massive facsimile of the lichen's microscopic structure. Arms and legs frill around a wide net of body parts, lips and labia and nipples and ears all strung together across a sticky web of flesh. Lacelike fingers and toes tassel out to stick the creature to the wall. Grains of sand and pearly beads of moisture collect at the places where the long strands of skin intersect. Kinsey can't tell if the liquid is sweat or tears or plasma or pure slick pleasure. The creature's musk fills the airlock, more invasive and inescapable with every second, and Kinsey understands what it tried to tell her when it was pretending to be Domino. She can taste it on the air, just as it swore it could taste her. She can taste its desire. Her tongue curls inside her mouth, seeking more even as she desperately searches for a means of escape.

Of course, if this thing gets loose it will mean the end of the human race and likely all life on the planet, which is why Kinsey locks the lichen inside the research station at the end. (Although that really doesn't solve the problem, since sooner or later somebody will come looking for them.) She then drives out into the desert and joins with the lichen in its native habitat, burrowing into the cryptobiotic crust and letting it take her (in more ways than one).

If you like raw sex/erotica with your alien invasion/body horror, you will enjoy this. It isn't for those who want to see the invader eradicated, as the story ends with that definitely not the case. I respect the author in that they make clear what they want to do from the start, and the story carries its premise through. The ideas here are well told. For me, the ending was abrupt and ambiguous, as we know the lichen is still out there, waiting for someone to find it and fuck it again. It leaves the reader with an uneasy feeling as they close the back cover, which is no doubt the author's intent. I don't know if this book is better than John Carpenter's movie, but it is an effective counterpoint, I think.

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Review: Angel Maker

Angel Maker by Elizabeth Bear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The genre known as "steampunk," which usually encompasses alternate history, airships and clockwork automatons, had its heyday about ten years ago, which is when the first book in this series, Karen Memory, came out. It has somewhat (forgive me) lost its steam since then, to the point where the author was forced to self-publish this to get it out in the world.

That's traditional publishing's loss. This book may not be quite as good as the first, but it is definitely another Rollicking Good Story, with liberal use of historical characters (one of which will surprise the heck out of you). It also has some deep lore about horses and the burgeoning silent film industry of the late 19th-century American West. All this is topped off with a murder mystery, a sweet understated romance between Karen and her wife Priya, a discussion of the hard work and compromises necessary to make a relationship succeed, and an exploration of toxic people and what drives them.

It's held together by Karen's voice, which for me is the main attraction of these books. Karen is an excellent character, smart and pragmatic and determined. She's worked as a prostitute and faced down a Mad Scientist wielding a mind-control machine, and now she is trying to get established as a horse tamer. This book lands her and Priya in the middle of another murder mystery, but this setting is a film company making a silent movie in Rapid City. There are all the attendant quirky characters assocated with the film industry (including a yucky entitled rapist male star who definitely gets his comeuppance), as well as the horse of Karen's dreams, the titular Angel Maker.

There's also an automaton powered by tapes, gears and a mainspring named Cowboy, who is almost as interesting a character as Karen. Priya get to work some Mad Science of her own and lands an apprenticeship, and Karen wins her bet to own the stallion she has gentled. This is a complete story, but the ending is open and hints at further adventures. I certainly hope the author gets to write some more of these delightful stories.

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Review: What Stalks the Deep

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This third book in the Sworn Soldier series centers on Alex Easton, a non-binary retired soldier from a fictional European country, Gallacia, who has a habit of stumbling upon alien and/or supernatural beasties. The first in the series, What Moves the Dead, is a chilling retelling of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" with a creeping sentient fungus that can puppet dead bodies. What Stalks the Deep, inspired by--according to the author's afterword--H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness," moves the series in an interesting science fictional direction.

Alex and their friend Angus come to America at the request of Dr. James Denton, a character from the first book who stood beside Alex during the horrors of the "tarn" (the lake infected by the fungus in the first book). Denton has seen something he cannot handle, and urgently asks for Alex's help. Denton's cousin Oscar has disappeared in a played-out old coal mine in West Virginia, after writing Denton letters saying he had discovered something very strange within. Denton went to the mine but did not venture very far inside, as he said it just "felt wrong," the same way the Ushers' house and the tarn did. His first thought was to reach out to Alex for help, and despite their strong wish to run away from anything like the tarn, Alex comes.

The mystery of the Hollow Elk mine turns out to be an ancient hive-mind jellyfish-squid creature who has spent thousands of years asleep at the bottom of the mine, only to be awakened by modern blasting during the search for coal. Said blasting calved off a section of the creature, a Fragment (which is what it names itself) who cannot reunite with the "wholeness" and ventures into the human world to search for ways to return to the rest of its kin. This creature is a boneless, gooey shapeshifter who must use sticks absorbed into its body to walk, and in one memorable scene, it skitters along the ground with a human-looking torso atop a slimy centipede body with many legs. It is also intelligent and followed the human miners through the mine while it was being worked, eventually learning to read and write.

Fragment is the most interesting character in the entire book, as it helps Alex and their friends defend themselves against Sentry--another chunk of the hive mind originally intended to guard its people, who eventually came to want to be its own "wholeness." To survive, Sentry ended up eating organs from the bodies of nearby townspeople and impersonating a dog. Fragment talks to Alex and their friends about being human, and persuades them to see it as a person instead of a monster. At the end, with Sentry burned and gone, Denton and Angus help Fragment reunite with its wholeness, and the former owner of the pseudo-dog agrees to stay and guard the mine against any further intrusions.

Along the way, we learn a lot about coal mines and their various kinds of "damp," one of which plays a crucial role in the climax. As usual, Alex Easton is the down-to-earth practical sort of character with a dry wit at which the author excels. I really liked this, however, for the unexpected SF turn to the story. It's a nice exploration into the mind of an ancient alien sea creature. I hope, if there are any further books in this series, the author keeps that science-fictional bent.

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Review: The Library at Hellebore

The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Horror is currently in the midst of a resurgence, for what should be obvious reasons. Especially for those of us living in the US, the real-life horrors in the news each day require some sort of escape, I think. A chance to face down the monster, in a simple black and white world where they are evil and we are good, and send said monster whimpering back to its lair, never to be seen again.

Of course, that sort of thing can easily be twisted to make a monster out of something or someone that isn't monstrous at all (as is also happening in real life). People are far too easily categorized as "the Other," Not One of Us and therefore suspect, and when that happens, it calls into question exactly who is the monster. That's one of the themes this story tackles. This book is also part of a recent subgenre that could be called "dark acadamia" and/or "boarding school horror." There are several books I have read that are part of this category: Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy, R.F. Kuang's Katabasis and Babel, and Emily Tesh's The Incandescence (with the latter two being sterling examples and fantastic books you should absolutely pick up).

The Library at Hellebore is both of these, but it falls much further into the "dark" and "horror" end of the genre. In fact, it reminds me of a book I doubt many people remember nowadays: The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins. I read this book ten years ago, and to my knowledge there's never been a sequel to it. I don't know if Cassandra Khaw was inspired by that book, but hers is similar in a lot of ways.

Including, to be blunt, the sheer scale of the horrors within. This is one of the most gruesome books I have ever read, full of death and blood and guts and gore. If you have any aversion to full-on body horror, do not touch this with a ten-foot pole. At the same time, said death/blood/guts/gore is so beautifully, poetically written that I could not bring myself to abandon it, even as I was wincing and squinting my way through it (and had to take it in small doses with deep breaths after, which is why it took me several days to finish it).

This sounds like an oxymoron. I assure you it is not. Just a few examples of the prose (spoilers for delicate stomachs):

SPOILER

SPOILER 

SPOILER (also, do not eat while reading this, or the entire book for that matter)

This was neither the first time I'd come to with a body at my feet, nor was it even the first time I had returned to consciousness in a room transformed into a literal abattoir, but it was the first time I woke up relieved to be in a mess. The walls were soaked in effluvium. Every piece of linen on our beds was at least moderately pink with gore. The floor was a soup of viscera, intestines like ribbons unstrung over the scuffed wood; it'd been a deep gorgeous ebony once, but now, like the rest of our room, it was just red. (from p. 1)

The word hirsute didn't begin to describe Ford's abundance of beard and curls and overgrown brow, dark and sleek; he was a bear of a man, a figure cut straight from the annals of Viking history, a fact he recognized and celebrated, I think. No one else on campus swanned through the winters swaddled in a bearskin coat with the poor animal's head for a marching, still-attached-t0-the-body-by-a-strip-of-neck-fur toque, and if Ford wasn't quite so massive, so oppressively jacked, he'd have looked like any white trust-fund kid with a costume budget.

While there was no official route out, Hellebore wasn't inescapable. At least not if you were inventive. There was a canopied bend of road that curled behind the school's greenhouse, a monstrosity of plated glass and cast iron pained white. A behemoth disrobed of its meat, green where its lungs should have been, green along the carved ribs of its roof. Condensation slicked the glass like sweat: it seemed to pant some nights, heaving with life. Most of the time, Professor Fleur marched us past its front door when leading us to class. But on this day, we had to make use of the more circuitous route--a failed ritual had left a thin lamina of living godbrain over the usual path. If I hadn't already been looking, if I wasn't so desperate to get out of Hellebore, I might have missed it. 

The titular Library is where kids are taken, kids who abruptly awaken with deadly magic that can kill and overthrow governments. Many of them, like the protagonist Alessa Li, are girls who discover their powers under stress, such as when they are threatened with rape by their stepfathers. (Let's just say that in Alessa's case, the stepfather begged her to kill him.) She is told she will graduate in a year, once she has learned to control her powers, but she soon learns that won't be the case. It's likely neither she nor her fellow students will even be alive in a year. As she discovers, the faculty are not human at all, but eldritch horrors straight from the depths of Lovecraft who will kill and consume the students one by one over the course of three days, until only one is remaining.

This is the story of how Alessa fights, kills, and ultimately survives. It is told in a somewhat non-linear fashion, flashing back and forth between times Before and Days One, Two and Three of the trial (all helpfully noted in chapter headings). It is a bit of work to remember what's happened and keep up with the narrative, but I appreciated that the author didn't condescend to her audience, trusting that they could follow along. Over the course of those three days, and amidst much gore-soaked death, Alessa discovers how to defeat the faculty. The ending is a bit ambiguous, I think, as it implies that not only did she survive the bloody climax, she is now some kind of avenging spirit, coming for all those who would capture and use kids like her. She has learned how to be a monster, and she is good at it.

This is definitely not a book for the squeamish, but if you can handle it it has a lot to say about power, authority, and monstrosity. In its way, it is the perfect book for our times.






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Review: Flight of the Fallen

Flight of the Fallen by Hana Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second and final book in the Magebike Courier series, a recent trend I like. In the past, so many authors sold massive trilogies with only two books' worth of plot, and the middle volume was on many occasions a meandering underwhelming mess. The recent trend of duologies, however, means that if well done, the author sets up the characters and world and makes the stakes plain in the first book, and ramps up the tension and resolves all those plot/character threads in the second.

This second book does all that, and does it right. We learn much more about this world and its history, and the characters and their relationships are deepened. This series also dips its toes into what I personally like to call "science fantasy." We discover there is actually something of a science fictional background for this universe--the world and its civilization was a colony planet abandoned by its colonizers, the long-ago Road Builders. Whether these Road Builders were human is left up in the air, although it's plausible to this reader that they were. The Road Builders were not the greatest bunch of people, however, as evidenced by the fact that their descendants, the people living in the wasteland cities, were apparently genetically engineered by the Road Builders and abandoned as "useless and abhorrent." But these descendants have powers that come down firmly on the fantasy side of the equation: Talents, which use a magical and increasingly rare substance called "mana" as their fuel.

In fact, the scarcity of mana fuels a major part of the plot, as our three main protagonists, Jin, Kadrin and Yi-Nereen, become embroiled in a search for the so-called "First City," the mythical original settlement of the Road Builders. This is necessary because the magical storms of the wastelands are becoming worse and more deadly, threatening to overcome the shieldcasters protecting the remaining kerinas, or cities. Yi-Nereen is an extremely powerful shieldcaster with a secret: she can literally steal another person's mana, and thus their Talent, from that person's body, and take it for her own. (She does just that in the first book to save Jin's life, and the aftermath of suddenly being made Talentless forms a major part of Jin's character arc.) The search for the First City also embroils those who wish to overthrow the tyrannical religious factions controlling the kerinas, in particular the main city in which most of the action takes place, Kerina Sol. As the magestorms destroy neighboring cities and Kerina Sol is forced to take in refugees, the tensions between the Talented and Talentless, and the rulers and the ruled, come to a boiling point. When a crisis strikes and Kerina Sol's mana spring appears to be drying up, Jin and Yi-Nereen, along with a couple of others, strike out across the wastelands on their search. They find the First City and the secrets of the Road Builders, and have a final showdown with Yi-Nereen's father Lai-Dan, who wants to take the First City as his own.

This story is mostly told through the rotating viewpoints of Jin, Kadrin and Yi-Nereen, who eventually end up becoming a polyamorous triad (and I rather appreciated the author's not writing an explicit sex scene when they get together). The book's ending focuses on Jin and what she has been through and learned, and wraps everything up in a nicely satisfying manner. This book is definitely better than the first, and it's nice to see the author leveling up like this.

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