tachyondecay's reviews
2024 reviews

Ambiguous antiheroes and antivillains are always my jam. Give me a book from the point of view of the bad guy. Give me a repentant antagonist—hell, give me an unrepentant one. Memoir of a Mad Scientist is exactly what it says on the tin, albeit with a tongue-in-cheek, slightly absurdist twist. Erin Z. Anderson has crafted a tale that gets you thinking about where to draw lines. How far is it OK to go in the name of science when lives are on the line? How do you reconcile a life of privilege with the growing awareness of its cost for others? Although it didn’t electrify me in the telling, this book nevertheless got me thinking and feeling in all the right ways. I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

Dr. Jarian Voss is a mad scientist. Well, not quite, but the next closest thing. Raised on a farm, he’s worked his entire life for the Coalition. They saved the planet. Now he does science for them. But the research institute where he’s sheltered from the inequities of everyday Coalition existence starts to feel like a less-than-gilded cage as security steps up, his bosses keep getting replaced, and now he’s been assigned to a high-pressure cybernetic experiment with a subject who … maybe consented. Wait, is Voss the baddie?

This is the essential question at the heart of Memoir of a Mad Scientist. Or rather, one might say the question is: once you know you’re a baddie, what do you do about it? Voss is arguably a hero with an F in good; he has the best of intentions but his morality shades towards amoral—or at the very least, he keeps his head down and thinks his science can be apolitical. As the story unfolds, it quickly becomes evident that this is not the case, and he has to take sides and make hard choices.

I read this at the very start of the year, after Donald Trump had been reelected president of the nation to the south of mine but before his inauguration. Now, writing this review the weekend he kicked off a trade war with my country, I am thinking a lot about resistance versus collaboration. This novel hits, for that is exactly the choice Voss has to make, again and again and again. Anderson demonstrates with chilling accuracy just how easy it is to sell your soul by saying you’ll give in just this one time because then next time you’ll be in a better position to resist. (You won’t.)

Voss is an interesting protagonist because I definitely don’t like him—he’s so cringe—but I still sympathize with him and at the very least appreciate his growth. Probably the part that’s hardest for me to swallow is his naivety, yet I suppose that is part of his privilege, the cosseted way he’s been raised and coddled as a member of the intelligentsia. I admire Anderson’s choice to write a main character who isn’t a squeaky-clean hero but rather someone with a laundry list of flaws, for like it or not, all of us are probably somewhat closer to Voss than we are to any of the Nazi-punching heroes in our comics. In a book full of cyborgs and space lasers, Jarian Voss grounds us as the most realistic element.

Indeed, Memoir of a Mad Scientist is a book that walks the line between surrealism and realism with grace. The title alone should say enough, but if you need to look further, consider Voss’s relationship with his boss, who is stressed out and overworked. He could be a caricature, but Anderson humanizes him, has him level just so slightly with Voss, and then of course later in the novel Voss gets a little more … perspective, shall we say? Similarly, Voss’s ambivalent relationship with the rebels showcases how often the novel veers into surrealist set pieces: cloak-and-dagger dead drops and pseudonyms, allies who could also be enemies and vice versa.

Anderson’s writing style didn’t always work for me, and there were times I was frustrated with how simplistically the characters and their relationships seemed to be developed and telegraphed. Some of that I’ll chalk up to the surreal atmosphere, as described above—some of these characters are more archetype than actual person. Reading this book felt, at times, a bit like watching a stage play with actors who are overeager, or a movie that knows it’s a little over the top—it’s not a bad experience, but it’s one I have to be in mood to seek out.

Finally, the resolution was a bit rushed—after feeling like it took forever to get to the climax—and morally uncomplicated. While I can appreciate the scenario Anderson constructs and the message it sends, I wanted to see more from Voss and his allies. I wanted some reckoning, wanted to see some deeper moral calculus at work.

All in all, I was neither blown away nor disappointed by this one. It’s a solid story sadly resonant with the mood of our current times, with a protagonist in whom you will hate seeing the less heroic parts of yourself. Memoir of a Mad Scientist reminds us that the baddies don’t always twirl moustaches and laugh maniacally—sometimes they’re us, going along with it, so as not to rock the boat or bite the hand that feeds. This is what science fiction is for.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Tanya Huff is an author who deserves, in my opinion, far more hype than she seems to receive. First, she’s Canadian (represent!), she’s queer (represent!), and she writes fantasy novels that are unapologetically queer and even sometimes unapologetically Canadian (re-pruh-sent!). I often describe her as an author I like but don’t love in the sense that I’ve seldom given her books a glowing review—Sing the Four Quarters is the first time I’ve rated one of her books more than three stars. Nevertheless, I respect her writing and her game.

Sing the Four Quarters takes place in the Kingdom of Shkoder, an unassuming place that just wants to mind its business, if it weren’t for those mean, nasty Cemandians breathing their expansionist breaths down their mountain pass. Annice is a bard, kind of a singing wizard, if you will. She was also a princess, but when her dad died and she joined up with the bards, her brother—now king—made her forswear her title, you know, like you do. Now she walks around the country, carrying tales, observing, and reporting back. But when she accidentally gets pregnant (another no-no, according to her brother the king) and the father ends up accused of treason, Annice needs to act fast.

Based on past experiences with Huff—I’ve liked her contemporary fantasy more than her secondary-world fantasy—I was nervous about reading Sing the Four Quarters. I picked it up from my used bookstore as an omnibus edition collected with the sequel, and it has sat on my shelf for a year or so. I was avoiding it. This book is from the nineties, just following The Fire’s Stone, which I had completely forgotten I had read! Nevertheless, my disappointment with what I viewed as clichés (though I suppose they weren’t yet, back when Huff wrote it) must have sunk deep into my bones, and the apprehension I felt twisting in my gut when I looked at this old-school cover stems from that.

Let me tell you: I could not have been more wrong. Sing the Four Quarters fucking rocks. I laughed, I cried, I cheered … this is what fantasy should be.

Right off in the first chapter, the first twenty pages, two things. First, the main character and a random, male side character she meets along the way both sit down to just … knit. Perfunctory like. Love it. Second, so many people are queer. Annice is bi or pan and living with another woman, and it’s just … there, on the page. Polyamorous too, I guess, given that Annice’s partner reacts not with anger when she learns Annice is pregnant but rather a rueful chuckle of, “This is what you get for sleeping with men!” and that sent me. I, of course, as an ace girlie, don’t see the appeal of sleeping with any gender, but as a sapphic-aligned girlie I am on Stasya’s side for sure. (The two of them and Pjerin form an excellent throuple, though!)

Seriously, after recent political events, it’s just such a breath of fresh air to be reading a fantasy novel from the 1995 that’s blatantly queernormative. I know this wasn’t Huff’s first time doing that, nor is she alone among her contemporaries. There’s something about seeing it during a time of backlash against queer people that is incredibly heartening. It isn’t “woke” or “diversity” to put queer people into genre fiction in 2025 because people were doing it thirty years ago. This, alone, would have endeared me to Huff forever.

Unlike, The Fire’s Stone, however, which apparently didn’t impress me, this story is actually … good?

I love the magic system. I thought I wouldn’t—ugh, singing wizards? How trite! How uninteresing! Again, I was just wrong. The bards are cool. The kigh are cool. In particular, I appreciate how Huff doesn’t bother with much exposition. Bards are basically elemental mages, they invoke spirits called kigh that are always mischievous, often mysterious, and so on. It’s an important dimension to the book but not the dimension; at its forefront, Sing the Four Quarters is a book about family, damn it, and Annice is Dominic Toretto.

I don’t want to go into spoilers. However, let me say that Huff makes a really significant plot choice early in the book that made me sit up and take notice. Annice basically has to go on the run—she’s committing treason by having this baby, and the baby daddy is also accused of treason for an unrelated thing (what bad luck). Let’s just say that it looks like Huff is setting up the pieces such that some characters will be her enemy. Almost immediately after she does that, however, she goes, “Haha, just kidding,” and those characters figure out it’s all a setup and start trying to help Annice as best they can from a distance. I love this. I hate plots based on shallow misunderstandings and miscommunication, and Huff neatly sidestepping this trope is a joy to see.

Annice’s ferocity is also a wonderful trait in a protagonist. I just love how she butts heads with Pjerin when they’re together. How fiercely she loves Stasya. How recalcitrant she is with Theron. She is such a firebrand of a woman, and I want to be her (minus the having-a-kid part). One of my number one complaints in fantasy novels featuring princesses as protagonists, even with female authors, is that the princess gets so little to do, has so little agency. That’s definitely not the case here.

The supporting cast is also delightful. Really, the only stinker was Otik, who begins as a semi-credible threat but quickly turns into a cartoonish oaf to be quickly dispatched. I don’t know if this is just a misfire on the part of Huff’s humour (which otherwise is resplendent yet unassuming in this story) or if I’m just reading him as campier than he should be. Either way, it’s not worth thinking that much about.

In the backdrop to this family squabble, of course, there is a far wider political plot that threatens the sovereignty of Shkoder. I don’t really care, to be honest. However, Huff does a good job of demonstrating how a single person can manipulate ignorant people into believing basically whatever—does this sound familiar?—and it was satisfying to see the villains of this piece dealt with.

At the climax of this story—because Annice is pregnant, and when a main character is pregnant, you know they never go into labour during a lull in the action—I found myself crying genuine tears of concern and joy at the same time. I was actively talking back to the book, cheering on Annice and her allies while also afraid for their survival. Somehow, Huff manages to dial up the tension and the stakes so gradually that I was like a lobster in a pot of water slow to come to a boil. I didn’t notice it was happening until saltwater was trickling down my cheeks even as I laughed at the same time.

Fiction should make you feel things. If that is the standard by which I measure books, then Sing the Four Quarters is an excellent book. I love when I’m proved wrong, when a book surprises me as thoroughly and expertly as this one did. Rather than feeling apprehensive about reading the next book, I am now excited. Hell yeah, Tanya Huff. You did good.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

A few years ago, probably during lockdown, I watched the excellent Netflix documentary Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know about the Event Horizon Telescope and the effort to photograph the supermassive black hole at the centre of galaxy M87. Black holes have always captivated me ever since, as a wee lass, science and science fiction came on my radar. How could they not? So even though Marcus Chown is a new-to-me science writer, I was excited to read A Crack in Everything. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.

Chown follows a sensible, largely chronological path in telling the story of black holes. We begin on the front, during the First World War, with Karl Schwarzschild. From there we dance in the footsteps of Einstein, Chandrasekhar, Roy Kerr, and so many others. Chown touches on the theoretical physics and the experimental, on the astronomical and the metaphysical. Each step of the way, he grounds us by reminding us that black holes, mysterious though they may be, are simply one more interesting phenomenon in a cosmos replete with white dwarfs, neutron stars and pulsars, quasars (themselves powered by supermassive black holes), dust clouds, and more. We live in a universe of wonders, and A Crack in Everything showcases and celebrates this.

Each chapter has an evocative title and a tantalizing synopsis. The book’s dazzling narrative presentation is anchored in interviews Chown conducted with as many of the people involved as he could reach. This book is particularly timely in that some of them have since passed or will pass soon, given their age, and it’s so valuable to have that oral history of these discoveries from them.

I was not prepared for how lush and descriptive Chown’s writing would be. If you have been traumatized by physics textbooks, there’s no equations to be found here. More history than pop science, A Crack in Everything focuses less on the physics explanations and more on the human stories behind them. Though by no means a unique approach, it’s one I am coming to find increasingly valuable.

In particular, I appreciate how sensitive Chown is to the need to reverse the erasure of women from STEM history. (If you are curious, Cecilia Payne and Henrietta Leavitt, both important figures in this book, are featured prominently in The Glass Universe.) He introduces us to Louise Webster, one half, along with Paul Murdin, of the duo who linked the X-ray source in Cygnus to a black hole. Feryal Özel and Katie Boumann and others working on the Event Horizon Telescope. And shout-out to Sandra O’Neill, the undergrad student who discovered the second-ever pair of supermassive black holes left over from two galaxies colliding.

When it comes to what little actual science is here, I won’t pretend to understand all or even most of it. But I love learning how science is done, and Chown makes that incredibly accessible. This is a beautiful companion to the EHT documentary on Netflix, but the book is so much more than that. From Shwarzschild’s letters from the front to simultaneous discoveries around the world, science is often a story of communication and collaboration. Even as wars rage, scientists collaborate. Even as people are displaced, funding hard to find, scientists collaborate. A Crack in Everything is a great reminder that what we know comes down to the collective efforts of humanity, not just a couple of geniuses who eventually become household names.

Black holes are some of the most massive objects in the universe. Some of the biggest objects. And even some of the smallest, I guess, if they are microscopic. Whatever they are, whatever additional secrets these singularities hold … there is no questioning the effect they have on our imagination. For as long as we have been human, and perhaps a good deal longer, our species has looked up at the stars and wondered. That hasn’t changed—just the tools we use to do it. A Crack in Everything is a detailed and beautifully written book telling the story of one of the most enigmatic features of our universe. If you like science and science history, read this book.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Another novella, another threat from the mysterious Fragments that prey upon unprepared travellers in Nerezia. This time, Horace and eir companions are at sea! Their ocean crossing is a necessary step in their quest to get answers for Aliyah. Stories from the Deep introduces another new form for the Fragments to take: a violent, terrifying kraken. Yet without going into spoilers, all I’ll say is that Claudie Arseneault once again emphasizes the possibility of waking up and not choosing violence. I received a copy of the book in exchange for a review.

I will say that, in contrast to the previous three novellas, this one falls flatter for me despite the creature feature. Each adventure thus far has had something very specific for me to point to and say, “Ooh, this was really cool.” Even The Sea Spirit Festival, which like this story doesn’t introduce a new cast member or really advance the overall arc, had an entire new city to explore and an excellent interplay between Horace and Aliyah as the latter takes on the eponymous entity. Beside this, Aliyah’s dealings with the kraken—a sea beast rather than sea spirit—feel like an echo rather than a full-throated reprise.

Beyond that, Stories from the Deep continues the overarching narrative of this series. Not only does it further advance our heroes in their travels, of course, but it continues to throw hints our way about the nature of the Fragments. This is the mystery that I, personally, find most intriguing—I like the characters well enough, and I’m looking forward to the next book revealing more of Rumi’s backstory, but really I’m just hooked on learning how the Fragments came to be, and what (if anything) the Archivists have kept back from us (damn inscrutable monks). The nature of the kraken cleaves to Aliyah’s catchphrase of “your story is my story” in a very literal, intense way.

I highlighted The Chronicles of Nerezia in my recent 2024 book awards blog post, giving it the bespoke “Cozy With a Cuppa” award. Additionally, this series is a perfect example of how to tell an interesting story without violent confrontation. At every turn, Arseneault pits our heroes against formidable foes, putting them into situations that many authors would then escalate into violence. While combat has its place in this world—as the training sessions between Horace and Keza demonstrate—it’s notable that the main conflict in each story is always resolved through more peaceable, congressive ways.

Stories from the Deep is no exception, and this is where it truly shines, in my opinion. Aliyah’s compassion and empathy, bolstered by Horace’s determination, Keza’s obstinacy, and Rumi’s ingenuity, becomes a powerful force for good. Whereas meeting force with force often merely reinforces and redoubles the violence of the moment, this group’s ability to absorb force with kindness and cleverness always results in creative and interesting resolutions to their problems. This applies to conflict within the group as well as without: one of my favourite scenes involves Horace slyly manipulating Keza into sharing the same opinion with Aliyah that e just shared, knowing it will have more weight coming from the irascible felnexi.

This is not the book to start with if you’ve stumbled across this series. Do yourself a favour and start from the beginning, or at the very least, go one back to The Sea Spirit Festival. This installment is a solid entry that does the heavy lifting of getting the crew from one continent to another. Despite its high stakes, it isn’t the most exciting or rewarding of these chronicles—but every so often, you need to take a break and fight a sea monster.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Nothing like a brilliant conclusion to a story well told. I cried—happy tears and sad—and also cheered out loud a couple of times as I made my way through Labyrinth’s Heart. M.A. Carrick successfully sticks the landing, tying up a truly impressive number of loose threads to conclude this story of con artist Ren’s inadvertent quest to save the city of Nadežra. Thus concludes one of the best fantasy trilogies I have ever read.

Spoilers for the first two books but not for this one.

The Mask of Mirrors introduced us to Ren, aka Arenza, aka Renata. Donning multiple identities like so many cloaks, Ren begins a confidence scheme by posing as a farflung relative of the Traementis, one of the noble houses of Nadežra. Two books later, and Renata is officially a member of House Traementis—and attempting to balance her loyalties to this new family with her connections to her Vraszenian people, despite not knowing her clan, and her pledge to rid the city of the influences of Kaius Rex’s numinat-imbued medallions. After the events of The Liar’s Knot, Ren and her allies feel the pressure to find a way to destroy the medallions as soon as possible. Their corrupting influence only grows stronger. Meanwhile, the Great Dream approaches, as well as the conclusion to a Vraszenian grand cycle—and the Vraszenian rebels longing to free Nadežra of Liganti oversight are growing restless.

I’ve said this before and will say it again: more books need to include a “story so far” synopsis like this one does. Well done to the authors and editor!

Labyrinth’s Heart brings me such joy because it taps directly into a part of my youth that feels so distant. When I was in my preteens and teens, I would curl up in an armchair in our living room and read doorstopper fantasy for hours on end—we’re talking 600 to 800 pages, even more, Game of Thrones or later Recluce books, that kind of thing. Now in my thirties, I have responsibilities (groan), and such free time feels rarer—and all the more precious.

I also love how complex this narrative is. For some people, that’s a dealbreaker—most of the more critical reviews of this trilogy talk about the various names and plots making it too confusing. Hey, I can relate: I have never been able to get into the Malazan books for exactly the same reason. Can I explain why I bounce off those but not this trilogy? Of course not! So, as usual, your mileage may vary.

And look, I’m not going to pretend I hold in my head a complete understanding of the cultures, histories, and ideas contained herein. My brain kind of fuzzes out some of it, glossing over it just enough that I get the gist. Sometimes this means I miss subtle details—for example, although she was introduced as such in the previous book, it wasn’t until this book that I picked up on Esmierka (a very minor side character) being a trans woman! That’s neat. (In general, the low-key, queernormative vibe of Rook & Rose has been lovely.) For whatever reason, M.A. Carrick write in such a way that allows me to bob along the surface of the story, periodically diving deeper as and when I desire.

The complexity allows for so many interesting, overlapping stories. Pattern, threads, and weaving are all important motifs in this trilogy, and Carrick reify that with the nature of their plots as well. This isn’t just about destroying the medallions—it’s also about Vraszenian independence, about Ren learning more about her heritage, about Vargo and Alsius’s relationship, about Grey and Ren getting married … there is just so much going on, and all of it is interesting and complicated. Although Ren is a focal point, there are side characters like Koszar Andrejek who are off plotting their own plots regardless of what Ren decides she’s doing. Then you have the people who barely recognize Ren or her allies because of how big, far-flung, and insular the city can be. As a result, Nadežra truly feels like a living, breathing, London-sized city where our main characters have outsize yet not singular influence.

As important as these bigger plots are, however, Labyrinth’s Heart truly shines at the level of individuals and families. Ren’s confidence scheme comes to a head in this book: without going into spoilers, let’s just say her house of cards comes tumbling down in all the ways you might expect. Carrick unspools the ramifications in a realistic, sometimes heartbreaking way. It isn’t until the final few acts that we see the rays of hope we all want, and I was able to start cheering again. At the same time, through careful foreshadowing and even more overt dialogue, Carrick makes clear that even if some rifts are healed, others will remain open. Such is the consequence of making choices: Ren cannot be everything to everyone, and some of her identities must slip away if she is ever to have something real with others.

Nevertheless, one of the most powerful themes in this trilogy has always been about chosen family mattering as much as one’s family of origin. Not more, mind you—blood relation is still important to both the Vraszenian and the Liganti characters here, albeit in slightly different ways. Yet adoption was always a part of the Liganti nobility’s traditions, and the fluidity of Ren’s sense of belonging to various Vraszenian clans, along with the tradition of knot oaths, underscores how much one’s sense of belonging is far more than just blood. Labyrinth’s Heart is full of endings, yet it is also one, huge beginning.

Tanaquis remains a favourite character of mine—what can I say, I identify with character who seeks knowledge almost to the point of destruction!

Finally, although there is plenty of room for Carrick to further explore this universe, as far as Ren and Grey and Vargo’s stories go … I am satiated. It’s rare for me to say this. Usually after I finish a series, I beg for more—give me that sequel series. Show me these characters in ten years! I … don’t need that here. Indeed, if I have any criticism of this book, it is just how neatly Carrick wraps up all the threads. Having woven so many throughout the trilogy, the last act of this book is such a careful accounting that it almost feels too tidy by the end. Everything gets wrapped up, sometimes conveniently. I can’t deny, however, that it is satisfying.

Labyrinth’s Heart is a showstopping finale and powerhouse fantasy novel. If you like secondary-world fantasy set in a diverse city with powder-keg politics (quite, uh, literally) and a con artist protagonist, then what are you waiting for?

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

My ride or die and I finally caught up on For All Mankind, the latest season of which sees an incipient society on Mars against the wishes of the suits back home. So it felt like a good time to pick up Emergent Mars—I received a copy of this book far too long ago in exchange for a review—and see Russell Klyford’s take on a similar idea. Unfortunately, while Klyford’s storytelling is competent, the characterization is uneven (and the manuscript could have used a more thorough copyedit), and ultimately the story doesn’t do anything particularly new or exciting with its tropes.

Ailia Bax is a former war correspondent, now on a tech journalist beat as a result of her PTSD. With much cajoling from her therapist, she accepts a contract to go to Mars and interview people there. When she arrives, however, life on Mars is like nothing she was led to expect. As she works her way down her interview list, Ailia learns more about the politics of this planet. But the machinations of an anonymous terrorist and the ulterior motives of her employers back on Earth have Ailia raising her hackles: she is no one’s pawn, and she is determined to uncover the truth at the beating heart of this newborn society.

The big sell of Emergent Mars lies in Klyford’s relatively hard approach to the science in this science fiction. Life on Mars is challenging and often dangerous, something Ailia experiences for herself more than once. There are few easy solutions to the challenges that face people here, and Mars is still quite dependent on Earth for some of its most basic and necessary supplies. Consequently, this lays the foundation for the political tension in the plot as Ailia learns about the competing visions for Mars’ future. Klyford uses her interviews with prominent administrators, researchers, and others to lay out a possible vision for “economic democracy” on Mars, a Martian nation that is united, cooperative, and resolute in seeking a productive yet independent relationship with Earth.

Now, much of this book is a series of talking heads conversations between Ailia and her respondents. Each person she interviews lectures the reader on the possible society they could achieve here on Mars. Ailia’s role for most of the novel is simply to be the proxy for the reader, at times incredulous or skeptical. I’m reminded a bit of For Us, the Living, one of Heinlein’s earliest works and similar in the ways its protagonist is expected to soak up the exposition about a possible world. Although Emergent Mars is not straightforwardly utopian, it picks up the threads of utopia in an attempt to create an atmosphere of hope.

With this in mind, much of one’s enjoyment of the novel will depend on how interested one is in thought experiments. I’m rather impatient with this approach to storytelling in science fiction these days: I wanted more than Emergent Mars is willing to deliver. Although Klyford sets up some interesting characters (including Ailia herself), they tend to come cross like NPCs in a video game instead of real people who coalesce into a community around her. Klyford attempts to infuse his cast with diversity, yet it feels uneven and stilted. At no point do we ever see the distinctive base cultures or cohesive Martian society that the characters insist is there.

Likewise, the parallel plot of the Slow Bomber is itself quite a slow burn. There is no urgency, except at the very end, to this mystery, even when one of Ailia’s closest friends is caught up in one of the bombings. Ailia’s involvement in solving the mystery feels unearned, her epiphany coming seemingly by chance after literally zero effort prior to this to investigate or learn more about the Slow Bomber.

I don’t want to damn Emergent Mars with faint praise. Klyford, to his credit, wants to present a coherent and compelling vision of Martian society as a tonic to the existential dread that seems to be overtaking us these days. In this sense, I wish him great success, for is that not one of the most significant roles science fiction can play? However, there’s a difference between poignant but flat thought experiments masquerading as a science-fiction thriller and character-driven political thrillers masquerading as planetary romance. Emergent Mars is too much the former for my taste, as much as it strives to be the latter.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

 Books like this are really tough to review. Sixteen years ago, I read Shake Hands With the Devil, and I was humbled. I Am Malala is a similarly humbling memoir. Malala Yousafzai went through a terrible ordeal that catapulted her into the world’s consciousness. More than that, however, the book she has written here with the assistance of Christina Lamb is a testimony. For Western readers like myself, it’s a crash course in the history of Pakistan, in the Taliban’s oppression of women, and how the legacy of British colonialism and American imperialism has allowed corruption and persecution to flourish. Against this backdrop, Yousafzai always brings it back to one thesis: everyone deserves education. As an educator, I can get behind that.

Most of this book is backstory. Yousafzai spends the first few chapters telling the history of her country and her family. She briefly explains Partition, and she discusses her paternal grandfather’s influence on her father, etc. Because she was only sixteen when she wrote this, much of the book is a retelling of what others have told her. She details her father’s attempts to bring education to Swat for all genders. She discusses the rise of the Taliban, the military coups that destabilize Pakistan and allow more hardline elements of Islam to gain influence, especially in rural regions like Swat. She explains how the character of her town of Mingora changes as the Taliban and other reactionary forces take power.

I’m reading this ten years later, on the eve of Donald Trump’s second presidency (!), a year into a genocide in Palestine (and similar genocides or cleansings ongoing in Congo, Sudan, etc.). Hearing Yousafzai tell us, in very plain language, about how her life gradually changed under the Taliban (and even afterwards), felt like a premonition of what might occur, perhaps in a slightly different form, as fascism rises again here in the West.

The power of this story lies in that plain language. That is not to say that Yousafzai and Lamb lack fluency or facility for telling a story, and there is plenty of beautiful description and prose here. However, it’s clear they made a deliberate description to keep this narrative mostly linear and very direct. In a world where conflicts in southwest Asia and the Middle East are often explained away as “complicated,” Yousafzai is determined to give Western readers no excuses to put this book aside or look away.

So as the DVD shops close, dancers go underground, and people’s houses are raided so their TVs can be apprehended, Yousafzai explains how some of her fellow townspeople started to comply in advance. She explains how the authorities were no help. She explains how even attending school as a girl became an act of defiance, and at one point, she has to hide her schoolbooks for safekeeping while she and her family evacuate their town for a time. She shares all of this as matter-of-factly as if she was talking about popping down to a shop for groceries—because when she lived it, that’s what it was like. This was her life.

Her point, however, is that this isn’t just her life. Malala Yousafzai has become, as her book’s subtitle acknowledges, known as “the girl who was shot for by the Taliban.” She has become known as an activist for women’s education. Yet she is far from alone in these experiences. Yousafzai was one of many, many people—many girls—who grew up in this situation. In this sense, she acknowledges towards the end of the book how she has become a symbol for something greater. She is understandably uncomfortable with this role, though I don’t think at the time she wrote this book she fully comprehended or was capable of exploring that yet. I would be curious to read more from her now, a decade later, about how she feels her role has evolved.

It is so easy for those of us who grow up privileged with education and safety to discount the stories we hear in the news or elsewhere as just that—stories. We have an obligation to learn. It’s not an exaggeration for me to say that even though I have done my best to learn a little bit about Pakistan and its complicated genesis, about Islam and its complicated relationship with the West, about the experiences of girls and women in Pakistan, I can’t really begin to describe how quickly I Am Malala put me in my place. Reading alone isn’t enough, of course. But it’s one way to avoid sticking your head in the sand. As Yousafzai has spent her life campaigning about: education is essential to our health and success.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Some books are plodding and predictable (even if they are ultimately rewarding). Others are byzantine and meandering (even if they are ultimately rewarding). The Message is a secret, third type: it is a careful bundle of missives about the struggle for liberation. Writing about events and stories across space and time, Ta-Nehisi Coates unifies these long essays under the guise of talking to his workshop students about writing. The title belies its simplicity by taking on so many meanings.

First, Coates visits Dakar, Senegal, and ruminates on being an African American visiting Africa. What does it mean to be Black in a country populated mostly by Black people? I am reminded of Esi Edugyan’s similar reflections in Out of the Sun. This theme, of the way place can reinforce how much race is just a social construct, continues throughout The Message. Coates seeks to understand how even though different communities around the world experience oppression in slightly different ways, we are all connected; the fight is one.

This first essay gives way to a longer, more drawn out meditation on resistance in the United States. Located temporally in 2020, that fateful summer of protests triggered by George Floyd’s murder, this essay is spiritually connected to the previous one. What I learned here—what I have been learning, the more I read Black authors like Coates and Lorde and Oluo and others—is how deeply the tradition of African American scholarship goes on the subjects of freedom and struggle. It’s very easy for those of us who are not Black and (in my case) not American to view these subjects in facile ways, to understand the history of enslavement in the Americas as a simplistic story of good people and bad people, White people vs Black people, and so on. Coates’s discussion is a rich one, but he built it on the shoulders of the giants who came before him.

There is so much in this essay that I recognized—either as something I related to, or as something familiar to me from my different positionality. For an example of the latter: Coates mentions being a lacklustre student when he was younger, for school didn’t challenge him, yet this was viewed as defiance and noncompliance by his teacher. As a white educator, I am complicit in a similarly racist system here in Canada, where Black students are disproportionately disciplined or viewed as more aggressive than their peers. From here, Coates moves on to discussing the rise in book bans, censorship, and other ills insidiously making their way through classrooms and legislatures in the United States (as well as Canada), including his own personal connection thereto. He deftly weaves in and out of his personal narrative while still offering a wider perspective. At one point, he says:

 

Mmm. Yes. As an English teacher, as a book reviewer, as a media criticism podcaster … yes, I feel this so hard! I teach English to adults seeking their high school diploma; most are not “readers” in the classical tradition I have grown into. They want a diploma and the skills needed for college courses or the workplace. Yet I never stop trying to connect our English lessons to social justice, to history, to geography. I never stop sneaking in personal essays by marginalized voices or history lessons in the guise of “analyzing a text.” I say sneak, yet I am also explicit with them: I teach about storytelling, and why it is important beyond entertainment. For, as Coates says above, the stories we tell are the constraints we create for the society we can imagine.

 The next essay underscores this vividly when Coates describes his visit to Palestine and Israel—mere months before the October 7 Hamas attack that initiated Israel’s most recent episode of genocide against Palestinians. While it is important, as Coates notes, that we listen to Palestinian voices on Palestine, his voice here serves an important role as interlocutor and interloper. In the US, Coates is marginalized: a Black man in white supremacist society. In Israel and Palestine, his status is more conditional. Depending on how he is read, which gate he goes through, whom he’s with, he might first be pegged as Muslim, or he might be read as an American. One interpretation gives him far more status than the other. This essay is Coates discovering and attempting to come to terms with America’s inextricable complicity in Israel’s settler colonialism—and by extension, his own complicity. He connects this to the absence of Palestinian voices from the news rooms and journalism circuits where he himself has often been the lone Black journalist.

 Throughout, Coates writes with an enviable and exquisite command of language. His diction is delectable; his sentence structure second to none. Reading The Message is like floating along a river that is provoking you into deep thought. Whether or not you are well versed in the issues Coates covers here, you owe it to yourself to read this book, for it is simply beautifully written.

The Message challenges, documents, describes, decries, and clarifies. It is meditation, mea culpa, and even manifesto. It is a book unfortunately appropriate and sorely needed in the current times, with a second Trump presidency looming and the genocide in Palestine continuing seemingly unabated. With such darkness, hope sometimes feels fleeting. What can I do? What can I do? It seems trite to say that reading is resistance, but reading The Message, with its intention to spur his fellow writers into action, certainly feels like resistance. I guess what matters, of course, is where our reading and our writing goes from here, and the possible politics our art creates.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Wow, has it really been eight years since I read The Measure of All Things, by Ken Adler? It doesn’t feel that long. Referenced in Beyond Measure, that book satisfied my curiosity regarding the origins of the metre. I love history of science. In this book, James Vincent takes the story wider and further, investigating the origins of measurement and metrology (the science of measurement). It’s nerdy as all get out, but if that is your jam, then you’re in for a good time.

As with most such books, this one follows a loosely chronological structure. Starting in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, Vincent traces some of the earliest evidence of consistent units of measurement. He links units to their uses. Some of these are obvious—like facilitating trade—but as the book progresses, he addresses less obvious, less comfortable historical facts, such as metrology’s connections to colonization and eugenics. The book concludes where it starts, with Vincent’s journey to Paris to attend the celebration of the official redefinition of the kilogram and retirement of Le Grand K. In this way, the book lives up to its subtle of The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants.

We take our existing measurements for granted. By “we” I mean everyone currently alive; however, I should especially carve out millennials like myself who grew up long after metricization (here in Canada), decimalization in places like the UK, etc. (Though, to be real for a moment, Canada’s commitment culturally to the metric system has always been suspect: I still bake in Fahrenheit, talk about my height in feet and inches, and quantify my weight in pounds, at least informally.) I’ve never in my lifetime gone through a serious upheaval or change in standards of measurement. So it can be a little tough to imagine, and for some even to conceive, that such shifts must have occurred in history. There was a time before the metre. There was a time before real measurement. Yeah. Wow.

The earliest parts of this book are also helpful in belying the stereotype that ancient cultures were unsophisticated. Vincent testifies to the impressive work Egyptians put into measuring the depth of the Nile, constructing entire stone structures for this purpose. The feats of engineering these civilizations went to just to measure things properly, even if these measurements were often linked to religion, are marvelous. In contrast, as soon as Vincent transitions into talking about the absolute free-for-all that was medieval England, all I can do is shake my head. Britain, what were you even doing with your life? Things get better with the Enlightenment, of course, though the chaotic birth of the metric system amid the French Revolution and Napoleonic era remains a wild tale.

For me, the last chapters were the most fulfilling and interesting. Vincent discusses how land survey was vital to the American colonization of Indigenous lands, and of course a land survey needs reliable, standard measurements. This part of the book reminded me a bit of How to Hide an Empire: I greatly appreciate books about colonialism that focus on the immense bureaucracies set up to support it. Often we discuss colonialism as a philosophy or force in the world, but it’s important too that we remember it’s a system, created by humans and executed not just by armies but by everyday employees (like myself, as a teacher) just doing what their policies and procedures lay out for them.

Similarly, I don’t know if I was aware that Galton, father of eugenics, also invented regression! I knew of the connections around eugenics, race science, and the obsession with measurement as a way of understanding human fitness at the end of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Vincent admirably illustrates why the statistical techniques Galton developed were so seductive and seemed to support the terrible idea of eugenics. It’s a compelling parable about the dangers of following science where one thinks it leads without stopping to interrogate the human biases that lead an investigator down that path.

Finally, Vincent ponders how the elevation of metrology to a science so exacting as to rely on quantum mechanics for its definitions might have also made it less knowable as a result. For the majority of history, he points out, the quest has been to make it easier for anyone to independently verify a measurement standard. The original intention of defining the metre relative to dimensions of the Earth was so that someone else could, theoretically, verify the metre’s length through their own measuring and calculating. Now one needs atomic clocks and other instruments, not to mention a firm grasp of subatomic particle theory, in order to do that. To be clear, Vincent isn’t trying to criticize or condemn the modern metre. If anything, this level of precision is beyond commendable. But I think it’s an interesting and useful observation nonetheless.

All in all, Beyond Measure’s thesis is that humanity’s quest for more precise, more consistent measurement has often been a boon to our societies, but it has also always been exploited as a tool for political wrangling and control. Measurement is not an objective activity. This is ironic given our tendency to view quantitative variables are more reliable than qualitative ones. However, this book firmly establishes that metrology has always altered its flow in response to the politics of the day. Like any broad survey of history, it cannot do any of these topics justice—that’s what more narrowly scoped books are for—but it presents its broad ideas clearly. I learned a lot.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

New Kate Quinn just dropped? Um, yes please. The Briar Club is yet another historical installment in Quinn’s quest to tell the stories of women as they live through and participate in parts of history usually relegated to the heroics of men. In this novel—standalone from the others, though with some notable, subtle connections to reward her longstanding readers—Quinn weaves together the complicated narratives of six women living in a boardinghouse in Washington, D.C., at the height of the Korean War and the Red Scare. Accurately billed as a novel of female friendship, The Briar Club is so, so much more. It’s a testament to the narrative prowess of Quinn herself, as well as the diverse and sometimes erased lives of women of this era.

The Briar Club is told through a rather intriguing frame story. It’s Thanksgiving 1954, and Briarwood House itself comes alive and provides the third-person perspective as police arrive to take charge of a murder scene. After a quick scene in 1954, she whisks us back across the previous three years, starting with the arrival of Grace March at Briarwood House and the inception of the eponymous Thursday night dinner club. Grace’s subtle yet inexorable presence, kindness, and penchant for meddling upends the lives of the women (and young man, Pete) in Briarwood House. Each chapter, punctuated by the frame story, unspools the backstory of one of these intriguing women: Nora, courted by the scion of organized crime; Fliss, a young and exhausted mother separated from her husband by his Army service; Reka, a refugee who longs for the more sophisticated art world of her previous life; Bea, a baseball player reluctant to accept the end of her glory days; and Arlene, who has bought into the myth of the good housewife and the obedient, anti-Communist American.

The frame story is intriguing for two reasons. First, as mentioned, the house is ascribed a kind of sentience. I wasn’t expecting this from historical fiction; it’s a sentimental conceit that Quinn avoids taking too far. In the end, I was definitely on Briarwood House’s side.

The second reason the frame story matters is because of how Quinn conceals the identity of the murder victim (not to mention the murderer) for most of the book. Each brief chapter of the frame story reveals one or two salient details, while also revealing one or two other characters are still alive. You’re left wondering, “Is Bea the victim? Is Grace? Who’s dead?” It’s a really compelling mystery.

Each woman’s story is equally well told. As with any book with an ensemble cast, I always miss whoever was the previous centre of attention. Fortunately, Quinn manages to make each woman just so damn interesting. We often talk of there being no single experience of being a woman, and that is borne out here. These women are more or less feminist, more or less athletic, more or less queer. Some of the have lived long, embattled lives; others are younger, just embarking on the adventure of adulthood.

Quinn also captures the bite of fascism that crept into 1950s America through the advent of McCarthyism. From the respectability politics of Nora’s job to the ultimate secret of Grace’s past, fear of Communism permeated the working- and middle-class American experience.

But what confirms The Briar Club as one of my favourites of Quinn’s novels yet? Put simply, it’s the theme: kindness brings people together. Grace exemplifies this. Her well-meaning meddling, her kindness towards her fellow borders, Pete, Lina, and others, makes the world better. It’s an ideal I agreed with prior to reading (even though I’m not as extroverted as Grace and won’t be meddling in others’ lives any time soon). Reading this in 2024, as fascism rears its head again in the United States, I can’t help but feel … hope? Hope that as long as we find community in each other, we can get through the depredations of our day.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.