Reading roundup
48. N.K.Jemisin, The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth #1) -- So I read Jemisin's debut Hundred Thousand Kingdoms books, the first two, and was underwhelmed. People were praising them to the skies, but to me, the first book was a perfectly ordinary, middle-of-the-road high fantasy story, with the (important, I agree) distinction of a world that did not have the default of white protagonists, patriarchy, and probably a few other things I don't remember. And also had a threesome with gods in it, which was not relevant to my interests, so all of the time spent on that was rather tedious. Overall the way the gods were written didn't really work for me, which is why I gave up after book 2. The first book had simplistic evil villains and boring-to-me plot and characters, except for one or two secondary ones; the second book was better (some more interesting to me ideas, and I liked Oree as the POV character) but was still mired in the same universe I didn't care about. When Jemisin's second series came out and it still seemed to be all about gods and other things I did not care about, I didn't even bother picking up those books, and had basically written her off as a not-my-wavelength author, and figured that whatever people saw in her books, I was just not going to get it (it's sad, but it happens). So when The Fifth Season came out, even though it sounded like an interesting premise (and a departure from the bloody gods), I wasn't going to bother either. But then posts started appearing on my flist about how good the book was, and many of them began with confessions that Jemisin's earlier books hadn't worked for them either, but this one really did. And then, presumably in preparation for book 2's release, The Fifth Season eBook was on sale for <$5, which is my threshold for checking out an eBook I'm not sure about, and I figured, what the hell.
And yes. It's really, really good. Full of terrible things happening, but very readable nonetheless, vivid and clever and interesting and grounded and human. This is one of those rare books where even I think going in without spoilers is for the best, so most of my blathering will be spoiler-cut, but I will thus try to give a non-spoilery summary as well, because, seriously, read this book -- it's good. It's not my FAVORITE for the year, because too grim, but I think this will be 2016's Ancillary Justice for me -- a book I really admire for both the ambition and the craft involved in pulling it off, and also seriously enjoyed reading.
I don't know if Jemisin's matured enough as an author that she can pull off the really ambitious things well now, and more subtly, or if she's gotten the more self-indulgent ideas out of her system in the earlier books, but this one definitely worked for me on several levels above the 'Kingdoms'/Inheritance books. The worldbuilding is very, very neat. We have a world that's been post-apocalyptic long enough that this is all that anybody remembers; and not just one apocalypse, but a series of them, leaving artefacts of dead civilizations all over the place, as well as more prosaic remains of more recent disasters. I really liked the way the reveal of worldbuilding was handled -- it's a very deft combination of in media res stuff that's never explained (because it's 'everybody knows' kind of stuff), history/natural science of the kind in-universe people would learn in school, and snippets of 'primary documents' from the world, from scientific reports to commandment-like recitations to legends. The balance and melding of this is really well done. And then there are the things that *aren't* mentioned, which are also significant (I spoiled myself for this bit accidentally, but could still appreciate the clever way that was done). There is a glossary in the back, explaining all of the terms dropped into the text, but I only read it after I finished the book, and was able to follow along just fine. I think the reading experience without the glossary is better, actually, but it's there.
The structure of the book is also very interesting -- three strands with alternating chapters, although they don't interweave in any predictable fashion, and a framing narrator for the story. One of the strands is narrated in second person, which makes sense by the end, but was definitely something to get used to at first. I've not entirely decided whether it fully pays off, but it also didn't bother me, so that's fine overall. Most of the writing tricks worked for me -- the second person narration, on the whole, the parenthetical asides, the snatches of "primary documents" -- but a couple did not: the broken lines in action scenes. Fortunately these were not too common. The narration is quite neat in general, in those sections where it's most present. I can't quite put my finger on what does that, but something about the conversational style, personal storytelling, and occasional dry humour helped offset the grimness.
Because the plot sure is grim, in all three threads. There's infanticide, child abuse of various kinds, extreme prejudice against a marginalized group (complete with what is functionally slavery, with forced breeding programs and lynchings), and, well, you know, apocalypse and stuff. I was going to say that the only thing we don't see onscreen is cannibalism, but even that's mentioned in passing, although in a historical context, and then it gets complicated. So, like. All the warnings apply. But almost none of it felt gratuitous, and all of it was used to good effect, and as I said above, the style keeps the book from feeling overwhelmingly dark despite the things going on, which is one of the things that especially impressed me about it.
Like Jemisin's previous worlds, this one has no white default -- I think all of the major and secondary human characters are POCs (though races in this world are not the same as on ours). There's a prominent gay character, and a secondary character who is a transwoman, and a poly relationship. Given the warnings above, most of them don't exactly get happy stories, but not to any disproportional degree from the non-LGBT characters.
Speaking of characters, I can't say I've bonded to any of them -- probably more due to the general terribleness of the setting and not expecting anything good to happen to them -- but I liked them, and I liked reading about them. They are definitely more memorable for me than the characters of Jemisin's previous books.
OK, now speaking freely, with SPOILERS:
I figured out that the three threads were about the same person, at different parts of her life, pretty early on, and was pleased to see how the "sostykovka", the contact between them, unfolded. I think Syenite's thread was most interesting to me, even though it was probably the most tragic -- not only is she forced to admit to herself just how awful everything is with the system she had bought into as a child (since the alternative to that is death, or worse), but one knows from Essun's timeline that the brief happy interlude she enjoys on the island is going to come to some awful end which will force her to become a new person entirely. But even knowing that I did not guess how awful, and the revelation that she had smothered Coru, to keep him out of the Fulcrum's hands, the context that gives for Essun's thread, her husband killing their toddler son because he learns the boy is an orogene, for her feelings of guilt about that, for her need for revenge -- wow. That was quite a sucker punch.
Syenite's thread does also have the few things that didn't fully work for me in the book -- the threesome (must there always be a threesome in Jemisin's books? *sigh* I liked all the individual relationships (the Syen-Alabaster one as a platonic one, of course), and I liked Syen being willing to give up Innon for Alabaster, but I really did not think the threesome was needed or added anything to the book), and the thing with the node maintainers. On the latter, this was the one part where the trauma parade went beyond my suspension of disbelief -- I could buy Alabaster's children being harvested for node maintenance, given the power they would have inherited from him and the difficulty in controlling him; I can buy the artificial vegetative state the node maintainers are kept in (though the technology and medicine involved do seem to exceed what we see elsewhere, these things could be just kept a secret, like everything associated with node maintainers), but the thing where the node maintainer would've set off a catastrophic shake/volcano/whatever, because not only was he being abused by someone who gets off on helplessness (and pedophilia), but also wanted him somewhat conscious for it? That seems like a bit much in the sense that given the possible risk involved, I have a hard time believing the doctor or guards or whoever arranged the transaction would actually allow that, even if the likelihood of th enode maintainer acting out in that way was small. But both of these things were fairly small blips on a thread and a book I otherwise enjoyed.
It was actually Damaya's thread that was hardest for me to read, because while I knew that something would turn Syenite into Essun, Essun seemed to have had a fairly happy life, until the current events of her thread (so it wasn't until Coru appeared that Syen's thread turned truly tragic for me), I knew that Damaya was going to grow up into Syenite, with all the bitterness and denial there. Plus the Fulcrum is a very harsh subversion of the magic school trope I so love -- it makes sense, and it's awful, and all the staples of the young-protagonist-at-school genre -- the bullying ppers, the alliance with the weird outcast kid, sneaking around forbidden places without the gronwups knowing, making a friend from outside of the school, facing a difficult test with harder-than-normal odds -- are played dark, and very effectively so.
(Here is a thing that I found very surprising: Jemisin's post about why she wrote the threads the way she did -- where she apparently did it because she expected people to find Essun unlikeable. I... actually found her the most likeable of the three, which made sense to me, given that she's the most mature. Damaya is pitiful at the start, but too malleable for me to really like her -- I can't blame her for this, given the situation she finds herself in, but there was not enough there for me to latch onto. Syenite is *interesting*, but at the beginning she was too complacent about the system and too self-centered for me to like her very much, and though she grew into a person I liked, by that point it was clear to me she was growing into Essun, so... Maybe it's that I'm closest to Essun in age and phase of life, but I found her the most sympathetic, and I thought the way Jemisin handled her trauma -- which she'd expected to make Essun unlikeable? -- was really well done. Anyway, huh.)
Speaking of the "friend from outside the school", I totally did not see Binof = Tonkee coming, but I bought the reveal once made, because they do both have the same manner, the same curiosity and, um, the highhandedness of a Leader, I guess. I'd been trying to decide whether Tonkee or Alabaster was my favorite, but once this was revealed, Tonkee pulled ahead, because I'd also liked Binof, in her early appearance. (I also liked the way Tonkee being trans* was handled; Essun has no idea at first, then notices and just kind of shrugs, without it affecting anything between them, but there are practical implications to Tonkee, like having to shave once she runs out of whatever potion/hormone/whatever she was using before the apocalypse.)
Speaking of things I did not guess/notice, THE MOON. At least until I read a review where it was mentioned and I spoiled myself for it. But I would not have noticed it, I'm quite certain, until the very end. Apparently some people caught that just from the description of the night sky which included stars but no moon, and the interlude that basically tells you to look for what was missing (nicely played!), and the story of the collective-you (the orogenes, presumably) killing Father Earth's only child... All of that was very nicely set up, and since I was already spoiled by the time I got to some of it (the interlude and the story), I could see how it had been done. It seems like the orogenes must have destroyed the moon in an attempt to... do something, and thereby wrecked everything to hell. I'm definitely curious to read the sequel and learn more about that. (Incidentally, like many other readers, it seems, I kept thinking that the Earth in the book is our Earth, post continental collisions or something. But apparently not, according to Word of God.)
I liked so much about the worldbuilding. Not just the nature of orogeny and the way it's treated, from the broad strokes to the small details like them taking professional names based on minerals (and Syenite and Corundum as names especially), and not just the preparedness of the world for global catastrophe, the lore and mythology and history around "the Fifth Season" as a concept, but all the various implications -- metallurgy and astronomy being considered false sciences, etc. I'm not sure how I feel about the stone eaters and the obelisks yet, because they are still so very mysterious, but I'm definitely intrigued. I like the worldbuilding of the societies, too, use-names and comm-names, and the way it all fits together. And the swearing by rust, though other, real swearwords exist, too.
Quotes:
"And then he reaches forth with all the fine control that the world has brainwashed and backstabbed and brutalized out of him, and all the sensitivity that his masters have bred into him through generations of rape and coercion and highly unnatural selection."
"Uncontrollable tears would be better than uncontrollable vomiting, but hey, you can't choose your grief."
"It might have been easier to bear, somehow, if Jija had been violent beforehand. Then you could have blamed yourself for poor judgment or complacencyd, and not just for the sin of reproducing."
Essun, on Hoa: "And someone must be looking for him. Some mother, somewhere, whose child is not dead."
Syenite and Alabaster: "In the morning they copulate. There are no better words she can use for the act -- vulgarities don't fit because it's too dull, and euphemisms aren't necessary to downplay its intimacy because it's not intimate."
alabaster: "You've agreed to pay the Fulcrum such a vast sum -- I know it's vast because you're getting me."
Syenite using the obelisk for the first time, with Alabaster in control: "Something engages. Something else shunts open. It's beyond her, too complex to perceive in full. Something pours through somewhere, wrm with friction. Someplace inside her smooths out, intensifies. Burns."
Essun on Tonkee: "No one but a geomest would know so many useless facts, so thoroughly."
Tonkee: "We might have tooth-files and a 'juicy stupid people' recipe book."
"You have no idea what to do with a monster who can turn living things into statuary, but you do know how to handle an unhappy child. || Also, you have a lot of experience with children who are secretly monsters."
Stonelore: "Beware ground on loose rock. Beware hale strangers. Beware sudden silence."
"grits -- and that's what she is now, an unimportant bit of rock ready to be polished into usefulness, or at least to help grind other, better rocks"
"you finally do pull the masks out of your runny-sack -- you have four, fortunately, horribly"
The use-castes: "Judge all by their usefulness: the leaders and the hearty, the fecund and the crafty, the wise and the deadly, and a few strong backs to guard them all" -- so that's Leadership, Resilient (I think), Breeder, Innovator, [something], [something] and Strongback. Are the wise lorists? Is that a caste? It doesn't seem to be. And what about the deadly ones? - warriors?
"[Syenite] is already starting to wince every time a stranger is introduced to her as Somefool Innovator Wherever"
"You should have told Jija, before you ever married him, before you ever slept with him [...] Then if the urge to kill a rogga had hit him, he would've inflicted it on you, not Uche."
"This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable and safe for years."
"You've read accounts of attempts by the Sixth University at ?Arcara to capture a stone eater for study, two Seasons back. The result was the Seventh University at Dibars, which got built only after they dug enough books out of the rubble of the Sixth."
"This is stonelore: Honor in safety, survival under threat."
"And even after the Season ended and green things grew and the livestock turned herbivorous or stopped hibernating"
So, yeah. Highly recommended and totally lives up to the hype, and I didn't expect to say that about a Jemisin book at this point. I hope it wins the Hugo in a couple of weeks, and I think it was more worthy of the Nebula than Uprooted, much as I loved Uprooted last year.
49. Rainbow Rowell, Carry On -- OK, OK, you guys. I read it. I even liked it. (And possibly I would have liked it more if I'd read it before Fangirl -- not more than Fangirl, I mean, but more than I liked it now.) L had told me that she started kind of enjoying it around 5% and genuinely enjoying it around 40%, and my impressions were the same. I dropped it at 4% before, but as soon as Simon got to Watford and we got Penny's POV, it got better, and then really hit its stride at Book Three, which is at the 40% mark. But it's still...
OK, I spent a long time pondering what it is about this book that continues to bug me despite the many things I did enjoy, and I think it's just the blatantly (but unacknowledgedly) transformative nature of it. I obviously have nothing against transformative works, and I have enjoyed some books that are transformative works of out-of-copyright material. I've also enjoyed books that are not set in the same world as the work they are transforming but clearly exist in dialogue with them, like Libba Bray's Beauty Queens, which exists in counterpoint to Golding's Lord of the Flies, which (I learned not long ago) is itself a deconstruction of an earlier book, The Coral Island (though that one I haven't read). But this one's doing something -- too many somethings, maybe -- that isn't working for me at its very foundation. It's probably an artefact of how the book came about -- the universe first existing as a proxy for Harry Potter in Fangirl -- but still. SPOILERS from here
I feel like it was trying to be too many things which couldn't quite coexist: A pretty good Harry/Draco fic. (There were lines Baz said that I had to stop and figure out whether I'd read them before coming from fanon!Draco, or if they just sounded like that.) A decent Hogwarts pastiche. (There are some original bits that would slot in very nicely into Hogwarts, the adorable-sounding and endangered snow devils, the worsegers ("like badgers, but worse") and kitchen skinks, the floor that's an echo of another floor.) Maybe even a potentially interesting original fantasy... I originally found the 'power of words' magic silly, in Fangirl, but it eventually grew on me here, with the nuances of spells decaying/needing to be preserved (e.g. by encouraging a Victorian obsession in the !Muggles), being able to spot phrases that are sticky enough to make new spells (like "Call Me Maybe", LOL), and the way this means they don't use common phrases, which could have power, "in vain" and say stuff like "for Heaven's snakes" instead -- and the use of "Simon says" at the climax. A lot of the first half of the book, though, seems to be a deconstruction of Hogwarts, mostly. And an interesting one, at times, but it's weird to read a deconstruction of a specific book. Because for all that Rowell talks about her take on "the Chosen One" as an archetype, it's very clearly specifically Harry Potter and Hogwarts and the Wizarding World. Most of the reasons for that again go back to the origin of the story within Fangirl, but just because she'd painted herself into this corner doesn't make it any more palatable to me.
I do find the deconstruction interesting. There's the way Watford feels much more like a school that would turn out actual educated young people capable of functioning in a modern world, much more so than Hogwarts -- studying languages and politics and other recognizeable courses. Of course, the magic of Simon's world is much more closely linked to present-day reality than the magic of Harry's, but still. The deconstruction of Simon as the Chosen One worked for me, too -- the way he, unlike Harry, is aware how all this is likely to end -- with him being deployed, as a bomb would be, which he is unlikely to come back from. The commentary on Harry/Ginny via Simon/Agatha, where the thing he misses most about the relationship is really spending time with her parents, the substitute family there. The most interesting thing for me was the take on the Dumbledore, via the Mage, because the Mage is a really interesting character. JKR's actual Dumbledore is far from perfect himself, but it was interesting to see an actual revolutionary visionary in charge, and what the rule of well-intentioned extremism would look like. But, in the "could've worked as full-fledged original fantasy" column, I actually really liked the conflict between the old ways of doing things at Watford (exclusive admission, power trials, money) and the Mage's new ways, and the way such changes don't come about easily, and how they can be seen from the side ("Can't be too picky with the cannon fodder.") I also liked the take on the Harry-and-Voldemort-are-linked thing, where instead of being an accident of the villain's actions (unless you think of the Mage as the villain, I guess), it's an artefact of what Simon *is*, something the hero is doing himself, without realizing it. That was actually an interesting take on things, and one that I thought could be at the center of an actual non-derivative book with better effect. As it is, I guessed that twist fairly early on, and also guessed that the Mage had caused the whole thing by trying to create the Great Mage (though, of course, I had the advantage of knowing the Mage was Simon's father from Fangirl). Anyway, all this stuff was neat to think about, but... for me it still undermined the overall... wholeness of the book, I guess, its solidity -- sort of like trying to build a real house on a foundation of Legos. Hogwarts Legos. :P
Which is a pity, because one thing Rowell always does well is characters and character interactions, and once those started taking center stage, and not the catching-you-up-on-the-worldbuilding-and-presumed-seven-years-of-plot that is required because this is not actually fanfic of an existing book, the book really hit its stride. Once again, because of the Fangirl origins, the characters at the start were very clearly HP analogues -- Penelope of the polysyllabic first name and simple last name and academic brilliance is clearly Hermione (but also Ron, as it turns out, with the big cheerful family and the older brother who is basically Percy; I was kind of annoyed that there was no actual Ron in this book, because Ron is my favorite) -- she even gets a "she's changed over the summer" line, which made me sniker. But also, I liked the acknowledgement that all that sidekicking about would take its toll on being able to study, in a real school, that is, with an academic focus, and thus that Penny was doing less well than Baz, despite being as smart as him or even smarter -- just as I liked that Simon isn't on the school's football team, because being involved in major magical crises makes one miss games a lot. Ebb the goatherd is Hagrid, Harry Simon's weird groundskeeper friend; Miss Possibelf is Mcgonagall, and so on. The teachers never got beyond that, and one might think there were no other students at the school at all -- Baz's "minions" come up once or twice, but that's about it. But the characters who get POV did, and I liked the way they worked. (Including Ebb, who does get a POV, very briefly. She is still more role than character, but I liked that role -- the powerful wizard who is not interested in using that power, who just wants to stay at the school where she'd been happy before her brother's change and herd goats.)
I ended up really liking Penny, and her family. (And randomly, I liked that unlike Hermione, she actually had some nicknames that were used more often that her full name. I don't know many people with a four- or even three-syllable name who do not.) Penny's family were my favorite, I think -- the combination of abstracted professor and overly-educated parents, the way the kids tended to fend for themselves -- I liked all of it. With Penny herself, I like her view of friendships (to be kept strictly limited), and that she's the one who befriends Simon. I also liked Agatha, who is the least, mmm, "stenciled" character of the lot, if you know what I mean. Before I read the book, ikel89 said that Agatha was like what we'd wanted Jessamyn in the Infernal Devices books to be, and yes, actually. I don't think I've seen a character in fantasy before who wanted a normal life, free of magic and danger and adventure, and was treated sympathetically for this rather than punished. Because she does the right thing where it counts -- she goes to try to warn Simon when she thinks that nobody else will be able to do so -- but as soon as the cavalry arrives, she runs away. And I was happy that she got the normal life in California that she wanted, even if the woman she drew inspiration from (Lucy) did not. I liked Agatha and Penny's friendship -- that it wasn't always easy, that they didn't necessarily share the same priorities or values, that Agatha was jealous of Penny's closeness with Simon, but they tried. Also, from her first appearance and till the very end, I really liked Baz's Aunt Fiona, and getting her POV only made me like her more. More Fiona is what this book needed. I think she might've been my favorite overall.
I've gotten this far without talking about Simon and Baz or Simon/Baz. It was cute? I think I've read too much real Harry/Draco to be able to really appreciate this ersatz version. I like them individually well enough. My favorite thing about Baz was his mutual admiration society with Penny, but I also liked his family (Fiona, of course, but others, too), and the backstory with his mother (whom I would have liked to see more of), and the way the family treats his vampirism (reminding him he's flammable but otherwise not talking about it). For Simon, the detail I liked best about him was the way he was constantly eating, or noticing food -- it's a detail that makes a lot of sense for his background, and also in retrospect works kind of neatly with the whole Humdrum reveal -- he's constantly pulling in energy, as he does with magic. (And it was cute that he was worried Baz had an eating disorder, because Baz doesn't like eating where other people can see -- except for Simon.)
As for the relationship... *shrugs* I mean, the hero's obsession with his peer-antagonist turns out to be rooted in attraction -- that fic's been done SO many times. Baz's UST pining is well done, but very ficcy. Simon kissing him out of the blue as a way to stop his suicidal impulse didn't really work for me, in the moment; I did like the way Simon realizes later that there were other ways to stop Baz, and doesn't think too much about the "does this mean I'm gay" thing, because as even his therapist says, that's not one of his top things to work through at that point. I did like his insistent repetition of "Or not" while Baz is explaining all the reasons this will end badly. I can see them being good for each other, and it's sweet, but... there isn't actually a weight of seven years of them being roommates, and, like the Watford setting, it's a fanfic relationship for a canon that doesn't really exist. I keep coming back to this, but yeah.
The ending gets its own paragraph because... huh. On the one hand, I like that unlike Harry, whose sacrifice ends up being largely symbolic -- he has to walk to his death, knowingly, but returns from the dead unscathed and unchanged -- Simon actually loses something by his willing sacrifice. (BTW, "the Insiduous Humdrum" is still the stupidest name ever, even though it's explained how it came about in this book.) Simon losing the magic he could never fully control makes sense, though I hadn't seen it coming -- I just hadn't thought of that. And Simon's reaction to that, expecting Penny and Baz to abandon him, feeling like he'd been an impostor all along -- I liked the way that was done, too. I can also understand Simon choosing not to come back to finish Watford, and Penny, too (and Baz coming back because no Pitch ever dropped out of school). And I liked that Simon and Penny do get that apartment together after all, rather than Simon and Baz immediately shacking up. On the other hand, the invisible wings and tail? WTF. And also WHY.
Oh, I sould probably mention the plot, too? I mean, there was a longfic level of plot, sort of, as a backdrop to the relationship. Like I said, I knew the Mage was Simon's father already, so from there it was very easy to figure out Lucy being his mother -- actually, I think it's obvious even without that? -- and the Mage bringing Simon about as the Greatest Mage and thus also creating the Humdrum. I also immediately guessed that Baz had been kidden away by the numpties to prevent his mother's Visitation, and at that point also guessed that the Mage was behind the attack on Watford that killed Natasha, and thus behind Baz's kidnapping as well.
So... where does that leave me? Lots of things I enjoyed about the book, but with a constant nagging feeling of "but did this really need to be done like this?" In the afterword/acknowledgements, Rowell writes that the story of Simon and Baz would not leave her alone after she was done with Fangirl, so maybe the answer is yes, just because she wanted to write their story. And it's not like, by existing, Carry On is taking away space from the non-derivative stories that could be told in its place, with characters which would be less blatant HP Expies, and a fully realized magical world. So it's no skin off my nose, really, and I did enjoy it on the whole. But... not the way I would enjoy a standalone book, but more on the level of AU fanfic or fannish meta. Which is probably OK. So... *shrug*
Quotes:
"In Trixie's defence, I say, she is half pixie. And most pixies are a little manic."
Penny: When have you ever hurt anyone but yourself?
Simon: Smoke and mirros, Penny -- should I make a list? I'll start with the decapitations. I'll start with yesterday.
P: Those were battles, and they don't count.
S: I think they count.
P: They count differently.
The Mage: "Wouldn't it be more important to teach the least powerful? To help them make the most of what they do have? Should we teach only poets to read?"
Simon and Agatha, about show jumping:
"Any luck?" I ask now.
"Some," she says. "Mostly skill."
Penny shakes her head. "If I caught Micah holding hands with Baz, I'd want an explanation."
"So would I."
"Simon."
"Penny. Of course you'd want an explanation. That's you. You like to demand explanations and then tell everyone why their explanations are crap."
"You don't send bombs on reconnaissance missions or invite them to strategy meetings. You wait until you've run out of options, then you drop them."
Penny, limiting how much Simon can talk about Baz:
Penny: "And, beyond that: up to but no more than ten per cent of our total conversation."
"I'm not going to do maths every time I talk to you about Baz."
"Then err on the side of not whinging about him constantly."
Aunt Fiona: "The front seat's for people who haven't been kidnapped by fucking numpties."
"In America, they think that you become more powerful the more magic you use."
"Just like fossil fuels."
Baz: "Pnelope Bunce is a fierce magician, I don't mind saying. Well, I don't mind saying now that she's standing momentarily on my side of things. No wonder Snow follows her around like a congenitally stupid dog on a very short leash. I'm fairly certai we don't know anything now that we didn't know before, but Bunce is so sharp and confident that every minute with her in the room feels like progress."
Baz on Simon pulling back his magic: "It feels like the tide going out -- if the tide were made of heroin and fire."
Baz telling Simon he was just flirting with Agatha to piss him off:
Baz: Look, I'll stop. I'll leave Wellbelove alone from now on. She doesn't matter to me.
Simon: That makes it worse!
Baz: Then I won't stop! Is that better? I'll damned well marry her, and we'll have the best-looking kids in the history of magic, and we'll name them all Simon just to get under your skin.
"Simon Snow is still going to die kissing me. || Just not today."
"[Penny] thinks I solve everything with my sword. But apparently, I can also solve things with my mouth -- because, so far, every time I lean into Baz, he shuts up and closes his eyes."
Penny: "We aren't conspiring against the Mage! We're conspiring... apart from him."
Agatha: "Penny says I should honour Ebb's memory by helping to build a better World of Mages. But maybe I'll honour her memory by fucking right off, the way she tried to."
50. Caitlen Rubino-Bradway, Ordinary Magic -- present from aome, and apparently just what I wanted to read after Carry On-induced Hogwarts nostalgia. aome described this book as "Harry Potter in reverse", and that's a good way to think of it -- a girl from a magical family in a country where everyone has magic turns out, on her 12th birthday, to be an "ord" -- someone with no magical abilities of her own, a Squib, basically. And the book is about how she adjusts to that, how her family accommodates her "disability" and the public stigma of having an ord in the family, the special school she goes to with other kids like her, and dealing with the dangers a young ord faces in a world where they don't have nearly as much protection from scary magical creatures like redcaps and are also valuable as a tool to 'normals' (i.e. magical humans) who are happy to use them but don't consider them people. The book ends with a major point unresolved, though not really a cliffhanger, as the protagonist herself is safe, and I need to see if there are sequels to it, because it was a cute world and a neatly written book. SPOILERS from here
My favorite thing about the book was the Hale family, and I preferred the early section and some of the holiday interludes to Abby's time at school (though I did like her school friends also, and the teachers were also entertaining). It's a nice sitcom-y balance, with Abby as the baby of the family, her swotty seventeen-year-old brother Jeffrey; her other brother, the goofy Gil, who is apparently quite powerful magically, but has chosen to write very successful romance novels under a female pen name (which several of Abby's teachers turn out to be huge fans of); her beautiful and fashion-conscious sister Olivia; and her eldest sister, the super-talented and protective Alexa, who is clearly dating the young king, although Abby does not realize it yet (and the parents presumably don't know, although Gil and Olivia do, or assume it anyway). I liked all of Abby's siblings and the interplay between them, and her parents -- mama-bear mother (who runs a bakery) and calmly cheerful father (who makes flying (I think?) carpets) -- and I liked the way the mom and dad were clearly very in love with each other (which probably helps explain the five kids :P)
Because of the stigma around ords, families are expected to give up their ord children -- sell them off, in the past, or just sort of abandon them to the special school -- that seems to be the case with all of Abby's school friends except Peter, whose mother is an ord herself. I thought this was handled pretty well, too -- Abby's family really is wonderful, and as the baby of the family, she is really used to being indulged, so it makes sense for her to gush about them and for them to be constantly checking up on her (especially since Alexa is associated with the school), and it also makes sense for the other kids at the school to resent her, even if there are friends. Fran, especially, who makes excuses for her parents not having time to see her when it's obvious (to her, too) that they've just washed their hands of her. I think my favorite arc here was Fred, though, the son of a rich family whose father keeps sending him presents and care packages, but more along the lines of a bribe to keep him away from actually being in their lives now that he's an ord. The way Fred stumbles through "I've got -- I had -- I grew up with three brothers" and "We, they -- there's a vacation house there. My brother Arthur really likes it, and we went -- they go there very other Yuletide." before finally deciding that the man he's been calling Father is really "Mr Randall" to him and that he might as well take advantage of the new normal by taking all the money he's willing to give for a good cause (recovering the kidnapped students), was both heartbreaking and adorable. I think Fred might be my favorite in this all -- I found the way he was adopted into the Hale family summer break really sweet, and just the way he and Abby act as siblings (the Hales need another boy for gender parity anyway...) And I like Peter, too, who is loved, but unlike the other kids has known he was (almost certain to be) an ord all his life, and seeing how ords are treated through his mother, rather than having the privilege of being presumed magical like the rest -- and they way it's made him cynical and bitter and standoffish and 'golem'-like. I thought Peter was well done, too. His friendship/whatever with Abby is a bit twee for my taste, but I like the way he fits into the friend group.
This is midgrade, I think, given the protagonist's age and the writing, but one thing that impressed me was the way PTSD is very present here, although nobody actually calls it that. Unlike a lot of book heroes and fantasy heroes in particular, the kids don't just blithely shrug off the effects of kidnapping or attack. Abby and Fred suffer from nightmares and need someone to wake them up and reasure them, Abby flinches away from people after being captured even though she knows rationally that she is safe and these are her teachers and friends, tertiary character Cesar has clearly come from some very rough place, the way he is about food and not liking to be touched and going berserk in a fight. After the attack on their dormitory, the children don't like sleeping back in their rooms, although the work of putting the school back together at least gives them something to do to wear themselves out. It's all seen through Abby's eyes of an initially sheltered 12-year-old from a loving family, but I thought it was well done.
Because it's midgrade, the worldbuilding is a little on the silly side, which is somewhat at odds with the serious way things like prejudice/discrimination, (magical) disability, trauma, etc. are treated. I'm not sure I buy the whole magical premise, for example -- ords are valuable to adventurers because they are unaffected by magic, so can walk through traps like magical fire, and just stroll in through magical wards. But ords are NOT immune to, say, ordinary fire started by magical means, or magic used to launch real rocks, or whatever. So... why wouldn't a competent booby-trap builder account for that and use magic triggers to launch attacks that would be corporeal? Sure, ords are very rare, and don't have a high life expectancy, but given that they EXIST, wouldn't you account for them? OK, it's probably harder to do that way, but still... And the royal dungeons -- King Steve is clearly planning on mainstreaming ords and has quite of few of them living in his capital, now. Wouldn't you want to be sure that, like, you had some actual locks on the palace and dungeon, in case some of those ords turn out to be unscrupulous/desparate? It's clearly a case of me thinking too hard about this, but like I said, given the thoughtful treatment of several serious issues, this gap in logic kind of jumped out.
There's also a fair bit of stuff that just sounds whimsical and cute, including the way King Stephen is normally referred to by everyone as "King Steve" (there's also Barbarian Mike). And there are cute worldbuilding details like: "the [sideshow] basilisk was a cockatrice (but Ms. acartney said people get those two mixed up a lot, though I don't know how because one is a poisonous snake and the other is a poisonous chicken)." and the spoon that wouldn't give Abby more sugar with her tea because, as King Steve explains, "She's been hearing too much about the evils of refined sugar, and [...] not enough about minding her own business."
But the serious issues are treated pretty well, not too grim for a kid's book, not too simplistic. I had a slightly hard time swallowing the way people who'd known Abby all her life -- not just twelve-year-olds, which I could well believe, but the Guild members and teacher -- instantly dismissing her as a "thing" as soon as it turned out she was an ord. But OK, there's prejudice, and it seems like the country has only recently been trying to change the way ords are viewed. And overall I liked the acknowledgement that having a king pass some laws about treating the ords like people isn't in itself enough -- it's a long process, and prejudice lingers, and you can't actually mandate decency on the human level. I didn't buy it from a magical perspective (why would stuff have to be unhexed so it could be used by Abby? Whatever magic there is on the magical whatevers would just be transparent to her -- she would not be able to use it to open cupbroard doors or turn on the shower, but she should still be able to do it by normal means), but I liked thematically that the first thing Abby's family did was go through and make accommodations, make the house accessible to non-magical her so that she could live in it like a nominal adult rather than a kid who always requires assistance. (Though, again, 11-12 is pretty old to still need someone to open the cupboard for you at breakfast and turn on the hot water -- given that kids cannot use magic until 12 -- that's why nobody realized Abby was an ord till then -- it makes no sense not to have such basic things have duplicate non-magical controls to operate them. Maybe you don't need your 11-year-old to wash dishes, because magic is so labor-saving, but seems like it would be way more efficient to have them able to get their own breakfast and clothes...) I like that there's range and nuance in how the magical normals treat ords, from disgust and fear (even though being ord is not catching, of course) to a sort of professional benevolence, and things aren't always what they seem: I particularly liked the interlude with Dave the professional ord, who finds it an easy an sometimes entertaining job to be an ord in a cage, and Frank the sideshow master: "Ever since King Steve passed that law, it's like 'you're free, do you know you're free, because you're free.'"
I also found it interesting the way the antagonists, Barbarian Mike and Trixie were treated. Trixie has very little in the way of redeeming qualities, but Barbarian Mike managed to be both awful and wridly sympathetic. Awful because kidnapping children to use them for trap diffusal, of course, but also more interestingly the way he treats Abby -- not unkindly and even fondly, but not as a person, calling her Zoe because he doesn't think she looks like an Abby, and clearly not feeling the least guilt over how he's treated her. But at the same time he is perfectly willing to sacrifice himself for Trixie, and Abby's pity for him during his imprisonment is catching, too. It's an interesting choice for an antagonist in a mid-grade, and one who commits such a serious crime, so very premeditatedly.
Quote:
"Mom laughed. [...] 'You mean they're threatening to make their kids stupid if my daughter keeps coming to school." (about other parents threatening to pull their kids out)
Currently reading: the Witcher short stories, Rainbow Rowell's Landline, and still (slowly) The King of Elfland's Daughter, between 33$ and 66% in each.
And yes. It's really, really good. Full of terrible things happening, but very readable nonetheless, vivid and clever and interesting and grounded and human. This is one of those rare books where even I think going in without spoilers is for the best, so most of my blathering will be spoiler-cut, but I will thus try to give a non-spoilery summary as well, because, seriously, read this book -- it's good. It's not my FAVORITE for the year, because too grim, but I think this will be 2016's Ancillary Justice for me -- a book I really admire for both the ambition and the craft involved in pulling it off, and also seriously enjoyed reading.
I don't know if Jemisin's matured enough as an author that she can pull off the really ambitious things well now, and more subtly, or if she's gotten the more self-indulgent ideas out of her system in the earlier books, but this one definitely worked for me on several levels above the 'Kingdoms'/Inheritance books. The worldbuilding is very, very neat. We have a world that's been post-apocalyptic long enough that this is all that anybody remembers; and not just one apocalypse, but a series of them, leaving artefacts of dead civilizations all over the place, as well as more prosaic remains of more recent disasters. I really liked the way the reveal of worldbuilding was handled -- it's a very deft combination of in media res stuff that's never explained (because it's 'everybody knows' kind of stuff), history/natural science of the kind in-universe people would learn in school, and snippets of 'primary documents' from the world, from scientific reports to commandment-like recitations to legends. The balance and melding of this is really well done. And then there are the things that *aren't* mentioned, which are also significant (I spoiled myself for this bit accidentally, but could still appreciate the clever way that was done). There is a glossary in the back, explaining all of the terms dropped into the text, but I only read it after I finished the book, and was able to follow along just fine. I think the reading experience without the glossary is better, actually, but it's there.
The structure of the book is also very interesting -- three strands with alternating chapters, although they don't interweave in any predictable fashion, and a framing narrator for the story. One of the strands is narrated in second person, which makes sense by the end, but was definitely something to get used to at first. I've not entirely decided whether it fully pays off, but it also didn't bother me, so that's fine overall. Most of the writing tricks worked for me -- the second person narration, on the whole, the parenthetical asides, the snatches of "primary documents" -- but a couple did not: the broken lines in action scenes. Fortunately these were not too common. The narration is quite neat in general, in those sections where it's most present. I can't quite put my finger on what does that, but something about the conversational style, personal storytelling, and occasional dry humour helped offset the grimness.
Because the plot sure is grim, in all three threads. There's infanticide, child abuse of various kinds, extreme prejudice against a marginalized group (complete with what is functionally slavery, with forced breeding programs and lynchings), and, well, you know, apocalypse and stuff. I was going to say that the only thing we don't see onscreen is cannibalism, but even that's mentioned in passing, although in a historical context, and then it gets complicated. So, like. All the warnings apply. But almost none of it felt gratuitous, and all of it was used to good effect, and as I said above, the style keeps the book from feeling overwhelmingly dark despite the things going on, which is one of the things that especially impressed me about it.
Like Jemisin's previous worlds, this one has no white default -- I think all of the major and secondary human characters are POCs (though races in this world are not the same as on ours). There's a prominent gay character, and a secondary character who is a transwoman, and a poly relationship. Given the warnings above, most of them don't exactly get happy stories, but not to any disproportional degree from the non-LGBT characters.
Speaking of characters, I can't say I've bonded to any of them -- probably more due to the general terribleness of the setting and not expecting anything good to happen to them -- but I liked them, and I liked reading about them. They are definitely more memorable for me than the characters of Jemisin's previous books.
OK, now speaking freely, with SPOILERS:
I figured out that the three threads were about the same person, at different parts of her life, pretty early on, and was pleased to see how the "sostykovka", the contact between them, unfolded. I think Syenite's thread was most interesting to me, even though it was probably the most tragic -- not only is she forced to admit to herself just how awful everything is with the system she had bought into as a child (since the alternative to that is death, or worse), but one knows from Essun's timeline that the brief happy interlude she enjoys on the island is going to come to some awful end which will force her to become a new person entirely. But even knowing that I did not guess how awful, and the revelation that she had smothered Coru, to keep him out of the Fulcrum's hands, the context that gives for Essun's thread, her husband killing their toddler son because he learns the boy is an orogene, for her feelings of guilt about that, for her need for revenge -- wow. That was quite a sucker punch.
Syenite's thread does also have the few things that didn't fully work for me in the book -- the threesome (must there always be a threesome in Jemisin's books? *sigh* I liked all the individual relationships (the Syen-Alabaster one as a platonic one, of course), and I liked Syen being willing to give up Innon for Alabaster, but I really did not think the threesome was needed or added anything to the book), and the thing with the node maintainers. On the latter, this was the one part where the trauma parade went beyond my suspension of disbelief -- I could buy Alabaster's children being harvested for node maintenance, given the power they would have inherited from him and the difficulty in controlling him; I can buy the artificial vegetative state the node maintainers are kept in (though the technology and medicine involved do seem to exceed what we see elsewhere, these things could be just kept a secret, like everything associated with node maintainers), but the thing where the node maintainer would've set off a catastrophic shake/volcano/whatever, because not only was he being abused by someone who gets off on helplessness (and pedophilia), but also wanted him somewhat conscious for it? That seems like a bit much in the sense that given the possible risk involved, I have a hard time believing the doctor or guards or whoever arranged the transaction would actually allow that, even if the likelihood of th enode maintainer acting out in that way was small. But both of these things were fairly small blips on a thread and a book I otherwise enjoyed.
It was actually Damaya's thread that was hardest for me to read, because while I knew that something would turn Syenite into Essun, Essun seemed to have had a fairly happy life, until the current events of her thread (so it wasn't until Coru appeared that Syen's thread turned truly tragic for me), I knew that Damaya was going to grow up into Syenite, with all the bitterness and denial there. Plus the Fulcrum is a very harsh subversion of the magic school trope I so love -- it makes sense, and it's awful, and all the staples of the young-protagonist-at-school genre -- the bullying ppers, the alliance with the weird outcast kid, sneaking around forbidden places without the gronwups knowing, making a friend from outside of the school, facing a difficult test with harder-than-normal odds -- are played dark, and very effectively so.
(Here is a thing that I found very surprising: Jemisin's post about why she wrote the threads the way she did -- where she apparently did it because she expected people to find Essun unlikeable. I... actually found her the most likeable of the three, which made sense to me, given that she's the most mature. Damaya is pitiful at the start, but too malleable for me to really like her -- I can't blame her for this, given the situation she finds herself in, but there was not enough there for me to latch onto. Syenite is *interesting*, but at the beginning she was too complacent about the system and too self-centered for me to like her very much, and though she grew into a person I liked, by that point it was clear to me she was growing into Essun, so... Maybe it's that I'm closest to Essun in age and phase of life, but I found her the most sympathetic, and I thought the way Jemisin handled her trauma -- which she'd expected to make Essun unlikeable? -- was really well done. Anyway, huh.)
Speaking of the "friend from outside the school", I totally did not see Binof = Tonkee coming, but I bought the reveal once made, because they do both have the same manner, the same curiosity and, um, the highhandedness of a Leader, I guess. I'd been trying to decide whether Tonkee or Alabaster was my favorite, but once this was revealed, Tonkee pulled ahead, because I'd also liked Binof, in her early appearance. (I also liked the way Tonkee being trans* was handled; Essun has no idea at first, then notices and just kind of shrugs, without it affecting anything between them, but there are practical implications to Tonkee, like having to shave once she runs out of whatever potion/hormone/whatever she was using before the apocalypse.)
Speaking of things I did not guess/notice, THE MOON. At least until I read a review where it was mentioned and I spoiled myself for it. But I would not have noticed it, I'm quite certain, until the very end. Apparently some people caught that just from the description of the night sky which included stars but no moon, and the interlude that basically tells you to look for what was missing (nicely played!), and the story of the collective-you (the orogenes, presumably) killing Father Earth's only child... All of that was very nicely set up, and since I was already spoiled by the time I got to some of it (the interlude and the story), I could see how it had been done. It seems like the orogenes must have destroyed the moon in an attempt to... do something, and thereby wrecked everything to hell. I'm definitely curious to read the sequel and learn more about that. (Incidentally, like many other readers, it seems, I kept thinking that the Earth in the book is our Earth, post continental collisions or something. But apparently not, according to Word of God.)
I liked so much about the worldbuilding. Not just the nature of orogeny and the way it's treated, from the broad strokes to the small details like them taking professional names based on minerals (and Syenite and Corundum as names especially), and not just the preparedness of the world for global catastrophe, the lore and mythology and history around "the Fifth Season" as a concept, but all the various implications -- metallurgy and astronomy being considered false sciences, etc. I'm not sure how I feel about the stone eaters and the obelisks yet, because they are still so very mysterious, but I'm definitely intrigued. I like the worldbuilding of the societies, too, use-names and comm-names, and the way it all fits together. And the swearing by rust, though other, real swearwords exist, too.
Quotes:
"And then he reaches forth with all the fine control that the world has brainwashed and backstabbed and brutalized out of him, and all the sensitivity that his masters have bred into him through generations of rape and coercion and highly unnatural selection."
"Uncontrollable tears would be better than uncontrollable vomiting, but hey, you can't choose your grief."
"It might have been easier to bear, somehow, if Jija had been violent beforehand. Then you could have blamed yourself for poor judgment or complacencyd, and not just for the sin of reproducing."
Essun, on Hoa: "And someone must be looking for him. Some mother, somewhere, whose child is not dead."
Syenite and Alabaster: "In the morning they copulate. There are no better words she can use for the act -- vulgarities don't fit because it's too dull, and euphemisms aren't necessary to downplay its intimacy because it's not intimate."
alabaster: "You've agreed to pay the Fulcrum such a vast sum -- I know it's vast because you're getting me."
Syenite using the obelisk for the first time, with Alabaster in control: "Something engages. Something else shunts open. It's beyond her, too complex to perceive in full. Something pours through somewhere, wrm with friction. Someplace inside her smooths out, intensifies. Burns."
Essun on Tonkee: "No one but a geomest would know so many useless facts, so thoroughly."
Tonkee: "We might have tooth-files and a 'juicy stupid people' recipe book."
"You have no idea what to do with a monster who can turn living things into statuary, but you do know how to handle an unhappy child. || Also, you have a lot of experience with children who are secretly monsters."
Stonelore: "Beware ground on loose rock. Beware hale strangers. Beware sudden silence."
"grits -- and that's what she is now, an unimportant bit of rock ready to be polished into usefulness, or at least to help grind other, better rocks"
"you finally do pull the masks out of your runny-sack -- you have four, fortunately, horribly"
The use-castes: "Judge all by their usefulness: the leaders and the hearty, the fecund and the crafty, the wise and the deadly, and a few strong backs to guard them all" -- so that's Leadership, Resilient (I think), Breeder, Innovator, [something], [something] and Strongback. Are the wise lorists? Is that a caste? It doesn't seem to be. And what about the deadly ones? - warriors?
"[Syenite] is already starting to wince every time a stranger is introduced to her as Somefool Innovator Wherever"
"You should have told Jija, before you ever married him, before you ever slept with him [...] Then if the urge to kill a rogga had hit him, he would've inflicted it on you, not Uche."
"This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable and safe for years."
"You've read accounts of attempts by the Sixth University at ?Arcara to capture a stone eater for study, two Seasons back. The result was the Seventh University at Dibars, which got built only after they dug enough books out of the rubble of the Sixth."
"This is stonelore: Honor in safety, survival under threat."
"And even after the Season ended and green things grew and the livestock turned herbivorous or stopped hibernating"
So, yeah. Highly recommended and totally lives up to the hype, and I didn't expect to say that about a Jemisin book at this point. I hope it wins the Hugo in a couple of weeks, and I think it was more worthy of the Nebula than Uprooted, much as I loved Uprooted last year.
49. Rainbow Rowell, Carry On -- OK, OK, you guys. I read it. I even liked it. (And possibly I would have liked it more if I'd read it before Fangirl -- not more than Fangirl, I mean, but more than I liked it now.) L had told me that she started kind of enjoying it around 5% and genuinely enjoying it around 40%, and my impressions were the same. I dropped it at 4% before, but as soon as Simon got to Watford and we got Penny's POV, it got better, and then really hit its stride at Book Three, which is at the 40% mark. But it's still...
OK, I spent a long time pondering what it is about this book that continues to bug me despite the many things I did enjoy, and I think it's just the blatantly (but unacknowledgedly) transformative nature of it. I obviously have nothing against transformative works, and I have enjoyed some books that are transformative works of out-of-copyright material. I've also enjoyed books that are not set in the same world as the work they are transforming but clearly exist in dialogue with them, like Libba Bray's Beauty Queens, which exists in counterpoint to Golding's Lord of the Flies, which (I learned not long ago) is itself a deconstruction of an earlier book, The Coral Island (though that one I haven't read). But this one's doing something -- too many somethings, maybe -- that isn't working for me at its very foundation. It's probably an artefact of how the book came about -- the universe first existing as a proxy for Harry Potter in Fangirl -- but still. SPOILERS from here
I feel like it was trying to be too many things which couldn't quite coexist: A pretty good Harry/Draco fic. (There were lines Baz said that I had to stop and figure out whether I'd read them before coming from fanon!Draco, or if they just sounded like that.) A decent Hogwarts pastiche. (There are some original bits that would slot in very nicely into Hogwarts, the adorable-sounding and endangered snow devils, the worsegers ("like badgers, but worse") and kitchen skinks, the floor that's an echo of another floor.) Maybe even a potentially interesting original fantasy... I originally found the 'power of words' magic silly, in Fangirl, but it eventually grew on me here, with the nuances of spells decaying/needing to be preserved (e.g. by encouraging a Victorian obsession in the !Muggles), being able to spot phrases that are sticky enough to make new spells (like "Call Me Maybe", LOL), and the way this means they don't use common phrases, which could have power, "in vain" and say stuff like "for Heaven's snakes" instead -- and the use of "Simon says" at the climax. A lot of the first half of the book, though, seems to be a deconstruction of Hogwarts, mostly. And an interesting one, at times, but it's weird to read a deconstruction of a specific book. Because for all that Rowell talks about her take on "the Chosen One" as an archetype, it's very clearly specifically Harry Potter and Hogwarts and the Wizarding World. Most of the reasons for that again go back to the origin of the story within Fangirl, but just because she'd painted herself into this corner doesn't make it any more palatable to me.
I do find the deconstruction interesting. There's the way Watford feels much more like a school that would turn out actual educated young people capable of functioning in a modern world, much more so than Hogwarts -- studying languages and politics and other recognizeable courses. Of course, the magic of Simon's world is much more closely linked to present-day reality than the magic of Harry's, but still. The deconstruction of Simon as the Chosen One worked for me, too -- the way he, unlike Harry, is aware how all this is likely to end -- with him being deployed, as a bomb would be, which he is unlikely to come back from. The commentary on Harry/Ginny via Simon/Agatha, where the thing he misses most about the relationship is really spending time with her parents, the substitute family there. The most interesting thing for me was the take on the Dumbledore, via the Mage, because the Mage is a really interesting character. JKR's actual Dumbledore is far from perfect himself, but it was interesting to see an actual revolutionary visionary in charge, and what the rule of well-intentioned extremism would look like. But, in the "could've worked as full-fledged original fantasy" column, I actually really liked the conflict between the old ways of doing things at Watford (exclusive admission, power trials, money) and the Mage's new ways, and the way such changes don't come about easily, and how they can be seen from the side ("Can't be too picky with the cannon fodder.") I also liked the take on the Harry-and-Voldemort-are-linked thing, where instead of being an accident of the villain's actions (unless you think of the Mage as the villain, I guess), it's an artefact of what Simon *is*, something the hero is doing himself, without realizing it. That was actually an interesting take on things, and one that I thought could be at the center of an actual non-derivative book with better effect. As it is, I guessed that twist fairly early on, and also guessed that the Mage had caused the whole thing by trying to create the Great Mage (though, of course, I had the advantage of knowing the Mage was Simon's father from Fangirl). Anyway, all this stuff was neat to think about, but... for me it still undermined the overall... wholeness of the book, I guess, its solidity -- sort of like trying to build a real house on a foundation of Legos. Hogwarts Legos. :P
Which is a pity, because one thing Rowell always does well is characters and character interactions, and once those started taking center stage, and not the catching-you-up-on-the-worldbuilding-and-presumed-seven-years-of-plot that is required because this is not actually fanfic of an existing book, the book really hit its stride. Once again, because of the Fangirl origins, the characters at the start were very clearly HP analogues -- Penelope of the polysyllabic first name and simple last name and academic brilliance is clearly Hermione (but also Ron, as it turns out, with the big cheerful family and the older brother who is basically Percy; I was kind of annoyed that there was no actual Ron in this book, because Ron is my favorite) -- she even gets a "she's changed over the summer" line, which made me sniker. But also, I liked the acknowledgement that all that sidekicking about would take its toll on being able to study, in a real school, that is, with an academic focus, and thus that Penny was doing less well than Baz, despite being as smart as him or even smarter -- just as I liked that Simon isn't on the school's football team, because being involved in major magical crises makes one miss games a lot. Ebb the goatherd is Hagrid, Harry Simon's weird groundskeeper friend; Miss Possibelf is Mcgonagall, and so on. The teachers never got beyond that, and one might think there were no other students at the school at all -- Baz's "minions" come up once or twice, but that's about it. But the characters who get POV did, and I liked the way they worked. (Including Ebb, who does get a POV, very briefly. She is still more role than character, but I liked that role -- the powerful wizard who is not interested in using that power, who just wants to stay at the school where she'd been happy before her brother's change and herd goats.)
I ended up really liking Penny, and her family. (And randomly, I liked that unlike Hermione, she actually had some nicknames that were used more often that her full name. I don't know many people with a four- or even three-syllable name who do not.) Penny's family were my favorite, I think -- the combination of abstracted professor and overly-educated parents, the way the kids tended to fend for themselves -- I liked all of it. With Penny herself, I like her view of friendships (to be kept strictly limited), and that she's the one who befriends Simon. I also liked Agatha, who is the least, mmm, "stenciled" character of the lot, if you know what I mean. Before I read the book, ikel89 said that Agatha was like what we'd wanted Jessamyn in the Infernal Devices books to be, and yes, actually. I don't think I've seen a character in fantasy before who wanted a normal life, free of magic and danger and adventure, and was treated sympathetically for this rather than punished. Because she does the right thing where it counts -- she goes to try to warn Simon when she thinks that nobody else will be able to do so -- but as soon as the cavalry arrives, she runs away. And I was happy that she got the normal life in California that she wanted, even if the woman she drew inspiration from (Lucy) did not. I liked Agatha and Penny's friendship -- that it wasn't always easy, that they didn't necessarily share the same priorities or values, that Agatha was jealous of Penny's closeness with Simon, but they tried. Also, from her first appearance and till the very end, I really liked Baz's Aunt Fiona, and getting her POV only made me like her more. More Fiona is what this book needed. I think she might've been my favorite overall.
I've gotten this far without talking about Simon and Baz or Simon/Baz. It was cute? I think I've read too much real Harry/Draco to be able to really appreciate this ersatz version. I like them individually well enough. My favorite thing about Baz was his mutual admiration society with Penny, but I also liked his family (Fiona, of course, but others, too), and the backstory with his mother (whom I would have liked to see more of), and the way the family treats his vampirism (reminding him he's flammable but otherwise not talking about it). For Simon, the detail I liked best about him was the way he was constantly eating, or noticing food -- it's a detail that makes a lot of sense for his background, and also in retrospect works kind of neatly with the whole Humdrum reveal -- he's constantly pulling in energy, as he does with magic. (And it was cute that he was worried Baz had an eating disorder, because Baz doesn't like eating where other people can see -- except for Simon.)
As for the relationship... *shrugs* I mean, the hero's obsession with his peer-antagonist turns out to be rooted in attraction -- that fic's been done SO many times. Baz's UST pining is well done, but very ficcy. Simon kissing him out of the blue as a way to stop his suicidal impulse didn't really work for me, in the moment; I did like the way Simon realizes later that there were other ways to stop Baz, and doesn't think too much about the "does this mean I'm gay" thing, because as even his therapist says, that's not one of his top things to work through at that point. I did like his insistent repetition of "Or not" while Baz is explaining all the reasons this will end badly. I can see them being good for each other, and it's sweet, but... there isn't actually a weight of seven years of them being roommates, and, like the Watford setting, it's a fanfic relationship for a canon that doesn't really exist. I keep coming back to this, but yeah.
The ending gets its own paragraph because... huh. On the one hand, I like that unlike Harry, whose sacrifice ends up being largely symbolic -- he has to walk to his death, knowingly, but returns from the dead unscathed and unchanged -- Simon actually loses something by his willing sacrifice. (BTW, "the Insiduous Humdrum" is still the stupidest name ever, even though it's explained how it came about in this book.) Simon losing the magic he could never fully control makes sense, though I hadn't seen it coming -- I just hadn't thought of that. And Simon's reaction to that, expecting Penny and Baz to abandon him, feeling like he'd been an impostor all along -- I liked the way that was done, too. I can also understand Simon choosing not to come back to finish Watford, and Penny, too (and Baz coming back because no Pitch ever dropped out of school). And I liked that Simon and Penny do get that apartment together after all, rather than Simon and Baz immediately shacking up. On the other hand, the invisible wings and tail? WTF. And also WHY.
Oh, I sould probably mention the plot, too? I mean, there was a longfic level of plot, sort of, as a backdrop to the relationship. Like I said, I knew the Mage was Simon's father already, so from there it was very easy to figure out Lucy being his mother -- actually, I think it's obvious even without that? -- and the Mage bringing Simon about as the Greatest Mage and thus also creating the Humdrum. I also immediately guessed that Baz had been kidden away by the numpties to prevent his mother's Visitation, and at that point also guessed that the Mage was behind the attack on Watford that killed Natasha, and thus behind Baz's kidnapping as well.
So... where does that leave me? Lots of things I enjoyed about the book, but with a constant nagging feeling of "but did this really need to be done like this?" In the afterword/acknowledgements, Rowell writes that the story of Simon and Baz would not leave her alone after she was done with Fangirl, so maybe the answer is yes, just because she wanted to write their story. And it's not like, by existing, Carry On is taking away space from the non-derivative stories that could be told in its place, with characters which would be less blatant HP Expies, and a fully realized magical world. So it's no skin off my nose, really, and I did enjoy it on the whole. But... not the way I would enjoy a standalone book, but more on the level of AU fanfic or fannish meta. Which is probably OK. So... *shrug*
Quotes:
"In Trixie's defence, I say, she is half pixie. And most pixies are a little manic."
Penny: When have you ever hurt anyone but yourself?
Simon: Smoke and mirros, Penny -- should I make a list? I'll start with the decapitations. I'll start with yesterday.
P: Those were battles, and they don't count.
S: I think they count.
P: They count differently.
The Mage: "Wouldn't it be more important to teach the least powerful? To help them make the most of what they do have? Should we teach only poets to read?"
Simon and Agatha, about show jumping:
"Any luck?" I ask now.
"Some," she says. "Mostly skill."
Penny shakes her head. "If I caught Micah holding hands with Baz, I'd want an explanation."
"So would I."
"Simon."
"Penny. Of course you'd want an explanation. That's you. You like to demand explanations and then tell everyone why their explanations are crap."
"You don't send bombs on reconnaissance missions or invite them to strategy meetings. You wait until you've run out of options, then you drop them."
Penny, limiting how much Simon can talk about Baz:
Penny: "And, beyond that: up to but no more than ten per cent of our total conversation."
"I'm not going to do maths every time I talk to you about Baz."
"Then err on the side of not whinging about him constantly."
Aunt Fiona: "The front seat's for people who haven't been kidnapped by fucking numpties."
"In America, they think that you become more powerful the more magic you use."
"Just like fossil fuels."
Baz: "Pnelope Bunce is a fierce magician, I don't mind saying. Well, I don't mind saying now that she's standing momentarily on my side of things. No wonder Snow follows her around like a congenitally stupid dog on a very short leash. I'm fairly certai we don't know anything now that we didn't know before, but Bunce is so sharp and confident that every minute with her in the room feels like progress."
Baz on Simon pulling back his magic: "It feels like the tide going out -- if the tide were made of heroin and fire."
Baz telling Simon he was just flirting with Agatha to piss him off:
Baz: Look, I'll stop. I'll leave Wellbelove alone from now on. She doesn't matter to me.
Simon: That makes it worse!
Baz: Then I won't stop! Is that better? I'll damned well marry her, and we'll have the best-looking kids in the history of magic, and we'll name them all Simon just to get under your skin.
"Simon Snow is still going to die kissing me. || Just not today."
"[Penny] thinks I solve everything with my sword. But apparently, I can also solve things with my mouth -- because, so far, every time I lean into Baz, he shuts up and closes his eyes."
Penny: "We aren't conspiring against the Mage! We're conspiring... apart from him."
Agatha: "Penny says I should honour Ebb's memory by helping to build a better World of Mages. But maybe I'll honour her memory by fucking right off, the way she tried to."
50. Caitlen Rubino-Bradway, Ordinary Magic -- present from aome, and apparently just what I wanted to read after Carry On-induced Hogwarts nostalgia. aome described this book as "Harry Potter in reverse", and that's a good way to think of it -- a girl from a magical family in a country where everyone has magic turns out, on her 12th birthday, to be an "ord" -- someone with no magical abilities of her own, a Squib, basically. And the book is about how she adjusts to that, how her family accommodates her "disability" and the public stigma of having an ord in the family, the special school she goes to with other kids like her, and dealing with the dangers a young ord faces in a world where they don't have nearly as much protection from scary magical creatures like redcaps and are also valuable as a tool to 'normals' (i.e. magical humans) who are happy to use them but don't consider them people. The book ends with a major point unresolved, though not really a cliffhanger, as the protagonist herself is safe, and I need to see if there are sequels to it, because it was a cute world and a neatly written book. SPOILERS from here
My favorite thing about the book was the Hale family, and I preferred the early section and some of the holiday interludes to Abby's time at school (though I did like her school friends also, and the teachers were also entertaining). It's a nice sitcom-y balance, with Abby as the baby of the family, her swotty seventeen-year-old brother Jeffrey; her other brother, the goofy Gil, who is apparently quite powerful magically, but has chosen to write very successful romance novels under a female pen name (which several of Abby's teachers turn out to be huge fans of); her beautiful and fashion-conscious sister Olivia; and her eldest sister, the super-talented and protective Alexa, who is clearly dating the young king, although Abby does not realize it yet (and the parents presumably don't know, although Gil and Olivia do, or assume it anyway). I liked all of Abby's siblings and the interplay between them, and her parents -- mama-bear mother (who runs a bakery) and calmly cheerful father (who makes flying (I think?) carpets) -- and I liked the way the mom and dad were clearly very in love with each other (which probably helps explain the five kids :P)
Because of the stigma around ords, families are expected to give up their ord children -- sell them off, in the past, or just sort of abandon them to the special school -- that seems to be the case with all of Abby's school friends except Peter, whose mother is an ord herself. I thought this was handled pretty well, too -- Abby's family really is wonderful, and as the baby of the family, she is really used to being indulged, so it makes sense for her to gush about them and for them to be constantly checking up on her (especially since Alexa is associated with the school), and it also makes sense for the other kids at the school to resent her, even if there are friends. Fran, especially, who makes excuses for her parents not having time to see her when it's obvious (to her, too) that they've just washed their hands of her. I think my favorite arc here was Fred, though, the son of a rich family whose father keeps sending him presents and care packages, but more along the lines of a bribe to keep him away from actually being in their lives now that he's an ord. The way Fred stumbles through "I've got -- I had -- I grew up with three brothers" and "We, they -- there's a vacation house there. My brother Arthur really likes it, and we went -- they go there very other Yuletide." before finally deciding that the man he's been calling Father is really "Mr Randall" to him and that he might as well take advantage of the new normal by taking all the money he's willing to give for a good cause (recovering the kidnapped students), was both heartbreaking and adorable. I think Fred might be my favorite in this all -- I found the way he was adopted into the Hale family summer break really sweet, and just the way he and Abby act as siblings (the Hales need another boy for gender parity anyway...) And I like Peter, too, who is loved, but unlike the other kids has known he was (almost certain to be) an ord all his life, and seeing how ords are treated through his mother, rather than having the privilege of being presumed magical like the rest -- and they way it's made him cynical and bitter and standoffish and 'golem'-like. I thought Peter was well done, too. His friendship/whatever with Abby is a bit twee for my taste, but I like the way he fits into the friend group.
This is midgrade, I think, given the protagonist's age and the writing, but one thing that impressed me was the way PTSD is very present here, although nobody actually calls it that. Unlike a lot of book heroes and fantasy heroes in particular, the kids don't just blithely shrug off the effects of kidnapping or attack. Abby and Fred suffer from nightmares and need someone to wake them up and reasure them, Abby flinches away from people after being captured even though she knows rationally that she is safe and these are her teachers and friends, tertiary character Cesar has clearly come from some very rough place, the way he is about food and not liking to be touched and going berserk in a fight. After the attack on their dormitory, the children don't like sleeping back in their rooms, although the work of putting the school back together at least gives them something to do to wear themselves out. It's all seen through Abby's eyes of an initially sheltered 12-year-old from a loving family, but I thought it was well done.
Because it's midgrade, the worldbuilding is a little on the silly side, which is somewhat at odds with the serious way things like prejudice/discrimination, (magical) disability, trauma, etc. are treated. I'm not sure I buy the whole magical premise, for example -- ords are valuable to adventurers because they are unaffected by magic, so can walk through traps like magical fire, and just stroll in through magical wards. But ords are NOT immune to, say, ordinary fire started by magical means, or magic used to launch real rocks, or whatever. So... why wouldn't a competent booby-trap builder account for that and use magic triggers to launch attacks that would be corporeal? Sure, ords are very rare, and don't have a high life expectancy, but given that they EXIST, wouldn't you account for them? OK, it's probably harder to do that way, but still... And the royal dungeons -- King Steve is clearly planning on mainstreaming ords and has quite of few of them living in his capital, now. Wouldn't you want to be sure that, like, you had some actual locks on the palace and dungeon, in case some of those ords turn out to be unscrupulous/desparate? It's clearly a case of me thinking too hard about this, but like I said, given the thoughtful treatment of several serious issues, this gap in logic kind of jumped out.
There's also a fair bit of stuff that just sounds whimsical and cute, including the way King Stephen is normally referred to by everyone as "King Steve" (there's also Barbarian Mike). And there are cute worldbuilding details like: "the [sideshow] basilisk was a cockatrice (but Ms. acartney said people get those two mixed up a lot, though I don't know how because one is a poisonous snake and the other is a poisonous chicken)." and the spoon that wouldn't give Abby more sugar with her tea because, as King Steve explains, "She's been hearing too much about the evils of refined sugar, and [...] not enough about minding her own business."
But the serious issues are treated pretty well, not too grim for a kid's book, not too simplistic. I had a slightly hard time swallowing the way people who'd known Abby all her life -- not just twelve-year-olds, which I could well believe, but the Guild members and teacher -- instantly dismissing her as a "thing" as soon as it turned out she was an ord. But OK, there's prejudice, and it seems like the country has only recently been trying to change the way ords are viewed. And overall I liked the acknowledgement that having a king pass some laws about treating the ords like people isn't in itself enough -- it's a long process, and prejudice lingers, and you can't actually mandate decency on the human level. I didn't buy it from a magical perspective (why would stuff have to be unhexed so it could be used by Abby? Whatever magic there is on the magical whatevers would just be transparent to her -- she would not be able to use it to open cupbroard doors or turn on the shower, but she should still be able to do it by normal means), but I liked thematically that the first thing Abby's family did was go through and make accommodations, make the house accessible to non-magical her so that she could live in it like a nominal adult rather than a kid who always requires assistance. (Though, again, 11-12 is pretty old to still need someone to open the cupboard for you at breakfast and turn on the hot water -- given that kids cannot use magic until 12 -- that's why nobody realized Abby was an ord till then -- it makes no sense not to have such basic things have duplicate non-magical controls to operate them. Maybe you don't need your 11-year-old to wash dishes, because magic is so labor-saving, but seems like it would be way more efficient to have them able to get their own breakfast and clothes...) I like that there's range and nuance in how the magical normals treat ords, from disgust and fear (even though being ord is not catching, of course) to a sort of professional benevolence, and things aren't always what they seem: I particularly liked the interlude with Dave the professional ord, who finds it an easy an sometimes entertaining job to be an ord in a cage, and Frank the sideshow master: "Ever since King Steve passed that law, it's like 'you're free, do you know you're free, because you're free.'"
I also found it interesting the way the antagonists, Barbarian Mike and Trixie were treated. Trixie has very little in the way of redeeming qualities, but Barbarian Mike managed to be both awful and wridly sympathetic. Awful because kidnapping children to use them for trap diffusal, of course, but also more interestingly the way he treats Abby -- not unkindly and even fondly, but not as a person, calling her Zoe because he doesn't think she looks like an Abby, and clearly not feeling the least guilt over how he's treated her. But at the same time he is perfectly willing to sacrifice himself for Trixie, and Abby's pity for him during his imprisonment is catching, too. It's an interesting choice for an antagonist in a mid-grade, and one who commits such a serious crime, so very premeditatedly.
Quote:
"Mom laughed. [...] 'You mean they're threatening to make their kids stupid if my daughter keeps coming to school." (about other parents threatening to pull their kids out)
Currently reading: the Witcher short stories, Rainbow Rowell's Landline, and still (slowly) The King of Elfland's Daughter, between 33$ and 66% in each.