Ancillary Justice

This book is like the best Star Trek set-up ever; minus the Star Trek. On the show(s), the crew would always blunder into some ongoing epic drama and proceed to stick their sweaty faces in, mucking up the works and making it all about THEM for 60 minutes. I mean, come on Kirk, did you not get enough attention as a child? For real.

Ann Leckie's crafted a unique novel; one that manages to be fast-paced and action-packed while still diving into complex philosophical issues. How will humanity change when technology allows for immortality? When AI makes our objects sentient? When an individual can be split among thousands of bodies? When AI reaches a certain threshold, what differentiates it from a human? Deep thoughts, yo.

i09 named it the best book of 2013, and it's definitely deserving of accolades. Lately I've appreciate novels that assume I'm smart enough to figure it out, and dive into their worlds without too much exposition or hand-holding. That definitely applies here, as from the first page we're immediately on Breq's quest for justice with her, and the back story is revealed in flashbacks over the course of the novel. I did find the gender swapping slightly confusing (in the Radch society, everyone is a "her" regardless of gender - unless I just missed the point and this is actually a lesbian space opera, in which case, even better), but I appreciate the attention to detail that Leckie brought to her world.

So, if you like Star Trek but wish the episodes would delve more into the societal structures & struggles of the Gorn, the Borg, the Cardassians...etc - this book is for you.* Or if you just like kick-ass space quests.

4 androgynous, yet sexy, space jumpsuits out of 5.

As always, you can follow along with everything I'm reading here.

*Yes, I know this book is actually about humans, not aliens. You get my point. NERD!

Wool

Much like its namesake fabric, I overall think Wool is pretty great. It's got a kick-ass/take names female protagonist. She is not a sexy teen, romantic angst is not her raison d'etre, and she is good with a wrench. Stoic Power Dream Girl? Howey's dystopia is richly imagined and gets more disturbing and claustrophobic with every detail. ALSO, there are a lot of stairs in the world of Wool, and I swear that just reading so much about people walking up & down them actually made my glutes *slightly* tighter (I want to believe!). There are tons of original ideas in the novel, and I felt like I was reading a new writer with a brain chock full o' fresh - Hallelujah.

But you know how it is - you get a cozy wool sweater, you bundle up in it, and halfway through the day the itching begins. This book definitely had a few itchy spots. Unfortunately, this is a book that's all about the plot and action and twists - and most of my issues were with said twists. So, through the MAGIC of contrasting colors, I present to you some secret text. If you've read the book, highlight below for my spoilery complaints:

[The kids in the second silo?! First of all, they were willing to murder Solo but then came along quietly when Juliette spoke sternly to them? Nope.

Why make Bernard into this grand evil character/super villain, and then deny us the pleasure of seeing him get his come-uppance? I know the twist at the end wouldn't work with the readers knowing it was Bernard and not Lukas, but that didn't play for me either - why would Bernard try to leave the blanket anyway? Was he committing suicide? It doesn't make sense that he would murder anyone who tried to interfere without a thought, but then just lose the will to live when caught & challenged.

Also, the romance. It felt pretty shoe-horned in. I'd have rather had Lukas be Juliette's estranged brother, or maybe a female friend she makes...the book didn't need a star-crossed lovers motif. I'm always incredulous when people fall in love, to the point of risking their lives for each other, via a couple deep conversations and lingering glances. My heart is made of stone and I like it that way - and yes, I think The Notebook is a bad movie. DEAL WITH IT.]

If you've haven't read the book, should you? I'm leaning toward yes - I'll be picking up the next in the series and hoping that Howey keeps getting better & better. I think the world he created is fascinating, and I'd love to see some novels set in it that focus more on the day-to-day of the inhabitants, and maybe the mysteries of their past, vs. political conspiracies & military action. The stage is set, he just needs the right play.

3 stairmasters set to EXTREME out of 5.

Divergent

I'm usually pretty good at suspending my disbelief. I'd rather be immersed in a different world and accept the fact that the rules are a lil' bendy, than read tomes filled with the details of a depressingly plausible life. There's a place on my bookshelf for Jonathan Franzen, but it's not my HAPPY place, you know?*

A dystopian tale though, now that is definitely my happy place (irony alert lulz). Divergent is set in a future Chicago, where the population is divided into five factions based on the values humanity has considered necessary for balance and order: Abnegation (they run the government...wouldn't that be nice?), Amity, Erudite, Candor, and Dauntless. I would have also included Lusty, Witty, and Goofy - but that's just me. Anyway, five factions, all with different tasks and duties, and kids get to pick their factions (and their futures) when they turn sixteen. The novel follows one girl, Beatrice, who chooses to leave her birth faction for the brave and thrill-seeking Dauntless. The COOL KIDS FUCK YEAH! They do mixed-martial arts and get tattoos and pierce their FACES. Do you even DAUNTLESS, BRO?

And here is where my belief, floating happily along, is rudely kicked in the nards. Poor guy never had a chance. Apparently, to get around future Chicago, the Dauntless run alongside moving trains and jump on them. When they want to get off, they jump off. *Record scratch*

Yes: their system of transportation is jumping on and off moving trains. Because they are brave. At this point my belief is writhing on the ground in agony, struggling with the following:

• During one of the first train-jumping scenes, someone dies. Does this happen often? At what point do they reconsider their everyday mode of transportation due to the fact that it's killing their troops? 
• Who is driving these trains? When they start up for the day, are people allowed to get on then? Or do they have to wait until the trains get up to full speed?
• The trains seem to run all around the city but then also into the country. Who designed these trains?! They seem to use them for training exercises/to move troops but then also they are just running all the time for people to jump on them whenever. Is there a schedule? Is there a plan?
• It's not like they are so brave, so lacking of daunt, that they have to do everything in the most extreme way possible, because obviously that would be ridiculous. They don't eat by shooting potato cannons into their face-holes, they don't get dressed by jumping into their outfits from the roof, and they don't have sex by loading their naked bodies into giant slingshots and trying to collide in mid-air at 90 mph (yes - I've been reading your diary. WEIRD, DUDE). They do many, many normal things in non-brave ways so WHY THE DEATH-DEFYING PUBLIC TRANSPORT?
• I KNOW YOU ARE BRAVE BUT YOU ARE LITERALLY JUMPING ON AND OFF RANDOM RUNAWAY DEATH TRAINS WITH GHOST PILOTS FOR NO REASON JUST TO GET MORE MILK OR VISIT YOUR GRANDMOTHER. 

And so I spent most of the book thinking about the above, unable to focus on Beatrice's angst, teen romance, or the intricacies of inter-faction politics. 

RIP to my belief. He was hit by a train. Never even saw it coming.

1.5 teeny tiny British conductors out 5.

*Sorry, Franzie. Maybe throw some dragons in your next book?

The Orphan Master's Son

This one is a doozy. It feels like historical fiction, because everything about North Korea's oppressive regime seems like something that should no longer exist in the world. It feels like satire, or parody, for the same reasons. It's almost reminiscent of Catch-22 in some parts...but then you stop reading and start Googling to get more information on North Korea and...you stop smirking. Quickly.

What Adam Johnson has written is a sweeping tragic romance /adventure story; a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that explores what might be lost by people living in a society where every intimacy is suspect and self-expression is a dangerous endeavor. And imagines what they might be able to hold onto, despite it all. It took me a few chapters to get into it - I almost felt a little culture shock. But by the half-way point, I couldn't put it down. The story of Jun Do, an orphan, wanders improbably from nefarious missions to fishing boats to Texas (!) to prison camps...and that's just the first half. Johnson never loses the thread, and his characters are beautifully and hauntingly realized. Even when inserting a real-life figure into his fiction, it's done skillfully and naturally enough that you don't find yourself raising your eyebrows and saying 'Hey! That guy!' (aka The Forrest Gump effect).

Read this book. Go where it takes you. Learn more - and consider a donation. Feel all the things!

4.5 Dear Leaders out of 5.

Shadow and Bone & Siege and Storm: A Sexy Kick-Ass YA Twofer

A friend* sent me both these books, the first in Bardugo's Grisha Trilogy. I was more than a little over the whole "YA heroine in a dystopian world finds her inner strength and also there's a love trilogy and also Jennifer Lawrence could totally play her in the movie" - you know, that old chestnut. But I'm a sucker for a book with a map in the beginning, and a killer session with Rasputin by Boney M in Just Dance 2 had just gotten me a new high score, so I was open to a story set in an alternate reality best described as Tsarist Russia + witches. And lo -  I was rewarded. 

What I love about this series is that it's dark as shiiiiit. So much YA fiction doesn't have teeth (It took Harry Potter four books before a kid died - where's the fun in that?). Bardugo's Ravka is a messed up land ruled by a milquetoast King and a sexy and mysterious Grisha (basically a wizaaaaaard but sexier? Like, Manganiello stubble instead of a long grey beard? You got it) called the Darkling.  There's a literal rift across the country, in the form of the Unsea, an area of permanent darkness and man-eating monsters; and a metaphorical one, between the powerful Grisha army and the rest of the population, who both need & fear the Grishas' power. Enter the heroine, Alina Starkov. And yes, she's great and written with depth - but The Darkling is the star here, people. So much so that my only criticism is that the books lose some oomph when the story strays too far from the powerful commander-in-chief and his murky motives. 

I read both books in a weekend. I want more. Also CAPES, can capes come back in style? There are mad capes in these books.

In conclusion: Hunger Games? More like HUNGER LAMES. Books 1 & 2 of the Grisha trilogy: 4 dramatic cape swishes out of 5. 

*the friend works for MacMillan, who published these books. Thanks Claire! I need to disclose that? To the 20 people who read this blog? MOM I MADE IT I GOT A FREE BOOK! 

LoveStar

It's another take on that old chestnut: Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall helplessly in love. Circumstances wrench them apart, and he must fight to get her back.

Except in this case the "circumstances" involve a genetics program that matches everyone on earth with their true love (1 in 5 people gets matched with someone from China), created by a corporate genius scientist who also invented a funeral system called LoveDeath that sends your body into space and has you re-enter the atmosphere at a pre-approved time & location so your loved ones can watch you burn up like a shooting star - oh also people can communicate wirelessly because he discovered that's what birds do (?) and they are genetically engineering real-live Mickey Mouses (Mice?) to take the place of cats & dogs, and also giant wolves with zippers in their stomachs! Oh, man.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's not really that old chestnut. It is a new, genetically engineered weirdo chestnut with, like, spikes and stuff, and it's one of the most original things I have read in awhile. Iceland, what are you guys smoking over there? And can I get some?

4 pretty shooting stars that are actually dead, frozen corpses out of 5

After the Apocalypse

I have definitely crafted an apocalypse survival plan with a few people ("you get the guns, I'll get the cans - we make our way north and rendezvous at my parent's cottage in Nova Scotia where we can seal off the only road onto the island.") But if zombies *actually* happened I would probably be caught wearing impractical high heels, ignore the warnings, and get taken down within the first 10 minutes while standing in line for an iced coffee.

We all think we're much more heroic and resourceful than we really are, and it's easy to picture ourselves rising from the ashes, the demise of processed food finally helping us sculpt some wicked abs, which we display at all times while wielding a machete and scavenging for supplies like a warrior princess (No? Just my daydreams? Cool). Maureen F. McHugh's nine stories, all set in some sort of post-apocalypse or dystopian future (those pesky zombies, dirty bomb attacks, economic depression, drought), immerse you in stories that feel much more realistic and more raw than those found in most end of the world dramas. There's nothing glossy or cartoonish about a resentful mother dragging her whiny teenager through a starving America, or a Mad Cow-like illness infecting the chicken nugget supply and damning a generation to a slow, paralyzing dementia. It would all be really, really depressing if it wasn't such a breath of fresh air in what can admittedly be a somewhat stagnant genre.

4 death-dealing processed nuggets out of 5! That is probably the way we're all going to go out, actually.

Ready Player One

This is a book perfect for gaming nerds, and I really enjoyed it - despite being TOO nerdy for it. See, I never played the adventure, shoot 'em up, wizard & dragon games. My favorite computer game was Civilization. Yes - you could spend the game waging war and taking over the earth, which I suppose would be pretty badass. I say "suppose" because I always preferred to win using SCIENCE and become the first civilization to reach Alpha Centauri. I WAS SUCH A GODDAMNED NERD.

Anyway, I have friends now and I have kissed a boy, so it's fine. And my lack of experience with 80s arcade staples and dice-based adventures did not diminish my enjoyment of Ready Player One. It's set in a dystopian future where everyone spends most of their time plugged into a massive online role-playing game. When the eccentric, 80s-obssesed creator dies, he wills his vast fortune and control of the game to whoever can first solve a series of clues that will lead them to three challenges, three keys, and three gates.

My only complaint is a pretty literal deus ex machina that pops up near the end - but by that time you're already casting the inevitable movie version of the story* so I guess I'll allow it.

4 epic Rush guitar solos out of 5.

*Wade = Donald Glover , Art3mis = Lena Dunham, Sorrento = Willem Dafoe. Are you telling me you wouldn't watch that movie? Exactly.