tachyondecay's reviews
2026 reviews

Some good reviews by people I trust brought this new standalone novel from Ann Leckie to my attention. Translation State, similar to Provenance, is set in the universe of her Imperial Radch trilogy but tells a different story. This one enlightens us ever so slightly as to the nature of the Presger, but really, of course, it’s about what it means to be human.

The story alternates among three viewpoint characters: Enae, Qven, and Reet. Enae (sie/hir) is young, recently bereaved of hir grandmother, a kind of family matriarch. At a loss for what to do yet utterly free, Enae cautiously undertakes a job that will take her away from everything sie has ever known. Qven is a Presger Translator: human in appearance yet alien in physiology, eir journey is one of defection and refuge. Reet has been living an unassuming life on a space station until one day someone tells him that he might be the long-lost, last living descendant of an important autocrat. When he meets Qven, though, everything changes.

It has been years since I read the other Radch books. This one benefits from the multiple perspectives—whereas the trilogy is largely Breq’s story, Translation State is a tripartite story featuring three very different protagonists. They don’t always want the same thing, which leads to some very interesting moments as the novel approaches climax. Each has a story worthwhile in its own right. When Leckie welds them together, she creates something that is just as complex, if more understated, as her original trilogy of self-discovery and self-actualization.

I probably identified with Enae’s character the most, despite superficially having very little resemblance to hir life. I liked how game Enae is. How sie doesn’t back down from a challenge. While far from a Mary Sue in terms of capabilities, Enae is no doormat, and hir combination of compassion and perspicacity proves enchanting. It’s easy to dismiss Enae, I think, because hir story seems the least connected to the overall theme of what it means to be human. Yet I would argue that Enae’s role as investigator is crucial. We needed a third perspective, beyond Qven and Reet, for us to glimpse why their struggle is so important without getting lost in the middle of it.

Qven and Reet were a bit harder for me to love—but I loved Reet’s family dynamics, and I really like how Qven and Reet bond after they meet. The chapters where Qven is growing up as a juvenile Presger Translator are fascinating and probably some of the most original, thought-provoking science fiction I’ve read in a while.

Indeed, Leckie showcases her incredible gift for writing about aliens and alienness here. The Presger have always been a cipher and, as is our nature, readers have always wanted to know more about them. Leckie doesn’t show all her cards here—which is a good thing. Nothing ruins an ineffable race more than discovering they are, in fact, effable! It’s clear the Presger’s nature transcends space-time in a way that we mere mortals cannot grasp. However, this book does provide more insight into the Translators, and through them, the Presger.

One thing that strikes me as fascinating is that the book never fully establishes why Qven becomes so attached to the idea of being human. The Translators are part human, part Presger. Alien in their being and nature, they nevertheless must have some human qualities so that they can move among us. Yet Qven is the first (second?) Translator to rebel against eir purpose, if you will, or at least on the first or second to live and tell the tale. Though some of this is a response to trauma, it’s still interesting that Qven can’t put aside eir individuality and assimilate into the role eir clade needs. Leckie’s commenting on the inexorable nature of humanity here: it appears our genes are always bound to gunk up the works.

If you have enjoyed Leckie’s other books, you will like Translation State as well. You might miss the grand space opera and associated battles—though there is some action here and there. But it’s clear that Leckie is enjoying exploring different corners of her universe while she asks big questions, and that is truly the best use of science fiction. If you are new to Leckie, this is a fine place to start. You might feel a little out of the loop, for the book refers to events that took place in the trilogy—but understanding this book doesn’t depend on a knowledge of those events, so they might as well be backstory inserted into the background as flavour text.

I’m here for the creativity and fun that Leckie is having as she expands the universe she started with her Radch novels. From cultures outside the Radch to actual aliens to everything in between, there’s so much to see here. You won’t get all the answers, and that might be frustrating at first, but it’s so much better that way.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I came across Marlo Mack’s podcast of the same name and listened to many of the episodes. She discontinued it for a time, at her daughter’s request, which spoke highly of her commitment to putting her daughter’s needs before any possibility of notoriety or listenership. The podcast briefly got an update last December, where Mack mentions she might podcast infrequently with updates about her life and less about her daughter’s, which makes sense. In any event, I knew immediately I needed to read this book. How to Be a Girl is

Just as heads up this review will be a little more personal than most, given how entwined this book’s subject is with my identity as a trans woman.

Mack tells her story chronologically, which makes sense, starting with her daughter’s insistence that she’s a girl. This occurs as Mack is in the process of divorcing her daughter’s father, who to his credit seems like a good dude in the sense that he accepts his daughter’s gender identity pretty willingly. Mack does not sugarcoat or suppress the anxiety, discomfort, and reluctance that she feels. She struggles with the revelation. Hopes it isn’t true. Tries to find any possible alternative, up to and including the idea that her son might a gay and effeminate boy—but still a boy. It’s a long road for her to come to terms with things, and she’s plenty critical enough of herself—I won’t judge her.

That’s one reason I wanted to read How to Be a Girl. I came to my identity as a woman later in life, when I was thirty (though, in hindsight, I think I had inklings as far back as Grade 7 or 8, maybe younger). My coming out to my (supportive and affirming) parents was far more expository than beseeching: I was letting them know what I had decided, not requesting their help. In the case of M., as Mack refers to her daughter throughout this book, at three or four years old, she is so dependent on her parents’ good will. This is the first of many stark differences between my gender journey and M.’s, and it’s why I’m glad I read this book. Every trans experience is different, and even though this is not a memoir of a trans person, it is a transgender memoir of a kind, and I will keep collecting these stories as I live my own.

Mack shares some of the details of reconciling with M.’s identity: the visits to therapists and psychiatrists, the paperwork and sorting out of procedures at school. I can’t imagine what supportive parents go through as they navigate these bureaucratic and social hurdles on behalf of their trans children. This should be required reading for cis people in positions of policymaking power at school boards and similar authorities: there is a difference between being tolerant of trans and gender-diverse kids and actually working to dismantle the systemic barriers that make it harder for them to learn, grow, and succeed. Mack is great at crystallizing those barriers, both from her perspective as a mother and from what she shares of M.’s perspective.

On that note, the perspicacity and simplicity of M.’s understanding of her gender and how she relates to her friends is beautiful. I appreciate Mack’s willingness to step out of the way and repeat her daughter’s wisdom as verbatim as she can remember. Trans kids are, ultimately, kids. They just want to have a childhood, live their life. Mack marvels at M.’s resilience even as she bemoans M.’s precocious understanding that she is different from other girls and exists at a disadvantage in the system as it is set up. So we marvel and bemoan as well.

This was a hard book for me to read. “There but for the grace of God…” and all that. I often (like, weekly) contemplate how my life could have been different had I transitioned sooner. I likely would have had a much harder time, to be brutally honest. Transitioning at thirty, well into my career in a union job in a country with imperfect but progressive human rights protections for gender identity … I did it from a position of immense privilege. Transitioning at twenty-three just as I was moving to England? At seventeen, on the cusp of university? At ten, still in elementary school? Wow. Even as I mourn the childhood I didn’t have, I can’t conceive of what that childhood could have been like.

So it’s hard, reading Mack’s memoir, because even as I feel for her and M., I’m also incredibly envious. I want M.’s childhood. I want her life. No, that’s not precisely it—I don’t really want to be coming of age during this tumultuous time for trans rights. But I’m getting emotional as I write this paragraph because I’m reflecting on how the massive sense of loss welling up from within me. Even though my transition has been an exceedingly happy one. Even though my parents have both been unfailingly affirming from the moment I came out. Through no individual person’s fault but rather through the fault of the society in which I grew up, I missed out in a way that M. won’t, thanks to Mack and her advocacy.

That’s the power of this book. It’s a simple memoir told simply—Mack is not an exceptional writer, but her words are raw and honest. She avoids sensationalizing. She avoid being dramatic. When sucky stuff happens, she sketches an outline of the incident. Even those individual incidents are few and far between for the family, emphasizing how anti-transness and transphobia, much like racism, are more about systemic acts than individual ones. It isn’t the people in Mack or M.’s world that give them problems so much as it is the systems that make it hard for M. to live authentically—and, though this book was published just prior to the surge of anti-trans lawmaking the United States, the legislation or lack thereof to support transition, especially for trans kids.

I don’t know what else to tell you. This book is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s not perfect. If you have read other trans memoirs or memoirs of trans parents, you will recognize many of the themes here—though like I said, every journey is unique. Mack herself acknowledges the privileges she and M. have, being white in America, being middle class enough to afford (if barely) a private school that’s more inclusive and affirming. Racialized trans kids have it even harder. Privilege aside, though, Mack’s story—and her daughter’s story, but M. is not old enough to tell it from her point of view yet and may never want to tell it, which is totally valid—matters.

Would I recommend this to other trans people? Sure, though be prepared to find it provocative-on-the-verge-of-triggering like I did. More obviously, this memoir is for the cis folks in the room. You need to do your homework, especially if you’re a parent or becoming one soon—because, yeah, your kid could be trans. And that isn’t a bad thing. It’s just a thing, one thing among many that our society happens to make more difficult at the moment. So do your research. Read this book. Prepare yourself for the possibility, and if your kid doesn’t end up questioning their gender, cool—you’ll be ready to support your parent friends whose kids do go through this. The more we can do that, the more we can tear down these systems, the more kids who get to grow up like M.—or even more smoothly. And the fewer who grow up and realize later, like me—or who never grow up at all.

Sorry to end it on a downer. It’s a good book. It’s important. But that’s really what this comes down to: survival. How to Be a Girl is a story of trust, of believing one’s child, and of coming through to the other side stronger as a family.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Another “New Books” shelf find at the library. I’d heard of Kiersten White as an author of Buffy tie-in novels (though I had never read any). The description of this book was interesting enough for me to try it. Just under three hundred pages, its pacing is quick enough I finished it in a single day. Mister Magic is a great example of a serviceable urban fantasy thriller that doesn’t wow yet still entertains. That being said, if you pay enough attention, there’s deeper magic at work here.

It has been thirty years since the abrupt end of a children’s TV show called Mister Magic. Though whispers about the show abound online as former viewers share their recollections, no official record of the show exists: no production notes, no official profile online, no recordings. Val is one of the five former cast members who survived—the sixth’s tragic death was why the show ended—though she has no memory of her involvement. When two of her fellow cast members track her down on a farm, she decides to go with them to a reunion podcast recording in the very house where the show was filmed. That’s when things get … weird. There was magic involved in the production of Mister Magic, but it’s nothing like what you would expect.

The first part of this book is standard, perhaps pedestrian, horror-movie-style setup. Val’s memory of childhood has faded away; all she knows is life on Gloria’s farm, an able assistant at the riding camp for rich horse girls. Her life is thrown into upset, first by her father’s death and then by the arrival of Javier and Marcus. Once the three of them make it to the house and meet up with Isaac and Jenny, things kick into a higher gear. It’s still fairly predictable until the climax, but White is very good at hitting the right notes.

Probably the best scenes were the one-on-one interviews between each cast member and the … entity … posing as a podcast host. These were pitch-perfect creepiness. Similarly, I enjoyed how much time White spends unpacking Val’s trauma: her attempt to visit her mother and get answers, her anxiety around reminiscing about a TV show she doesn’t remember being on.

That being said, I kind of wish we had spent more time with the other characters, seen things more from their point of view.

There are additional layers to Mister Magic that are metaphors for White’s own experiences leaving Mormonism. These are probably the most successful at reaching me: I found the book’s theme about letting your kids grow up and make their own mistakes, instead of holding them by the hand and guiding them through everything, very compelling. In this way, the climax of the book, Val’s fateful actions, and the revelations around the nature of the eponymous Mister Magic character are all extremely satisfying.

Alas, there isn’t enough meat on the bones of these broad points to turn this into a truly gripping horror story. I keep thinking about Just Like Home, by Sarah Gailey (also a Buffy-adjacent writer), which is probably the most recent horror novel I’ve read that has stuck with me—I don’t actually have a separate shelf for tracking horror, which shows how often I read it. Mister Magic satisfies the creepy vibe I want and hints at the twisted supernatural elements lurking below the surface of our daily life … yet until we got to the climax, I never truly felt like Val or anyone else was in danger. There wasn’t the tension I need from my horror.

In the end, this is not one I would recommend. It has its moments, and like I said, I found it to be a fairly quick read. But I’m not sure there’s enough unique qualities here to make it memorable.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Embodiment is so strange. We all have bodies, but we don’t all have the same body. Some bodies are judged more than others. In “You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People, Aubrey Gordon debunks twenty prevalent anti-fatness myths. Anti-fat bias is consistently the only form of discrimination that has increased over the past decades (other types have decreased or stayed roughly the same), and sometimes it is so pervasive that we don’t even realize we are engaging in it.

Gordon, a white fat woman and cohost of the podcast Maintenance Phase, organizes her myth-busting into four parts: “Being Fat Is a Choice,” “But What About Your Health?,” “Fat Acceptance Glorifies Obesity,” and “Fat People Should….” She makes it clear that this book is an introductory guide aimed at thin readers like myself and designed to get us thinking about our implicit biases and the systemic biases of society. Most chapters include calls to action at the end: concrete steps someone can take to challenge the discrimination described in that chapter.

Some of these myths I had already heard debunked, many from a longread written by Michael Hobbes, Gordon’s podcast cohost, in The Huffington Post called “Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong.”. I already knew that being fat is not a choice, that exercise is not usually an effective way to lose weight, that there are many factors—some genetic or epigenetic—that contribute to weight gain. I knew the BMI is racist and anti-fat bullshit. Nevertheless, it was good to refresh myself and to hear about more of the science (or questionable science, in the case of studies that supposedly validate anti-fatness).

I’ve long wondered how to take action against anti-fatness with what power I have as a thin person and an educator. Once upon a time, a student of mine chose to write a research essay all about the obesity epidemic. She tried to argue that fat acceptance is unhealthy. I remember being so uncomfortable reading it, but I also wasn’t sure how to challenge the student effectively. How do I speak up on an issue with which I have so little experience? Then again, I challenge students who inadvertently share racist myths all the time—why should this be different? So reading “You Just Need to Lose Weight” is important to me professionally as well as personally.

On a personal note, there are connections I made while reading between Gordon’s discussion of body acceptance and my own journey in my thirties with transition. Even as my dysphoria decreases, I find myself surprisingly vulnerable to the anti-fat messages our society targets all women with. I find myself far more concerned about, obsessing over, my weight and my body shape than I did pre-transition. I won’t equate this to the struggles of fat people (especially fat trans women), for that would put me into Myth Nineteen territory—but I wanted to share for a moment the connections I was making to my own experiences. What I took from this was how, like any liberation in our society, challenging anti-fatness “lifts all boats.” It helps thin people as well as fat people—and I am not saying that’s why we should do it; obviously we should challenge anti-fatness simply because it’s the right thing to do. But I think it is important to note that anti-fatness shares its roots with anti-transness, anti-Blackness, etc.: white supremacist and patriarchal desires to control people’s bodies, particularly the bodies of people who aren’t white men.

For that reason, I’m pleased that Gordon’s thesis trends more towards the systemic rather than the individual. Her points at the end of each chapter are individual actions (because that’s all we can do as individual readers). Yet her aims are social and systemic. This isn’t just about being “nicer” to fat people or more tolerant. This is about moving the fucking needle, about dismantling the systems that make it hard and expensive for fat people to fly or find clothing, the medical biases that prevent fat people from receiving dignified care.

This slim volume packs more of a punch than you would expect, and I highly recommend every thin person reads it. I love how careful and inclusive it is when talking about gender, race, and disability. I love how focused and organized it is. I love how Gordon doesn’t coddle the reader, challenging us while simultaneously—I hope—motivating us to do better. This is a book that should make a difference.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Damn, I don’t think I can write a review that’s going to do this book justice. It’s not just because I’m a white woman, and I’m going to miss a thousand little elements that Alicia Elliott has put in her for her fellow Indigenous readers. It’s not just because I read this weeks ago and am behind on writing reviews, so my memory has faded a bit. No, it’s mostly because And Then She Fell is just one of those novels, the ones where I feel like I, as a reader, have let it down. I’m awestruck by it, and I’m not sure I have the words. This is a must-read (with the caveat that it is very heavy and triggering, of course, especially for racialized readers), and it’s a sign, following on from her essay collection, that Elliott deserves a spot in the new canon of CanLit (with the caveat that I am not sure such a canon, with all of its nationalist undertones, is a desirable or useful thing any more).

Alice is a Haudenosaunee woman from Six Nations who has just had a baby, Dawn, and is nominally working on a novel that retells the Haudenosaunee creation story. Her husband, Steve, is tenure track at a university in Toronto. He and Alice have just moved into a beautiful house in a neighbourhood where no one looks like Alice. As she endures microaggressions and postpartum depression, Alice looks back on a series of strange incidents in her life. Was she just hearing voices? Was she hearing her ancestors or spirits? Is she paranoid, or is her next-door neighbour out to get her and have Children’s Aid Society take away her kid? At times a thriller, at times a deeply personal story of mental illness and trauma, And Then She Fell is always, always a story about how our choices in responding to the world shape us.

Elliott does interesting things with perspective. The prologue is told from a limited third-person point of view, carrying us through Alice’s early life on the reserve, her narrow avoidance of an encounter with a fuckboy named Mason, thanks to the strange incident where Pocahontas (from the Disney Pocahontas) speaks directly to her from the television. Then the novel shifts to first person. As Alice’s mental illness worsens, her narration becomes increasingly unreliable: did she really run into Mason? Did Steve really say those things, did he mean it the way Alice interprets it? There are enough jagged breaks in the narrative that Elliott has us questioning every event, every detail, wondering what is “real” and what isn’t. Then again, this book might very well be saying that “reality” is an overrated concept.

Women are, of course, less readily taken seriously than men in our society. This goes double for Indigenous women. And Then She Fell is a story about women, about Indigenous women, and the bonds between them. All the major characters in this story are women, from Alice herself to her aunties and cousins, daughter, descendant. The men, even Steve, are secondary. They exist on the periphery of these events and are not a part of the fabric of meaning-making of them. Similarly, Elliott draws a boundary between Alice’s femme relations and the white women she often finds herself surrounded by.

Elliott pulls no punches in describing the relentless thrum of racism running through Alice’s days. Less big events and more microaggressions, Alice details what it feels like to move through her neighbourhood as a visibly Indigenous woman. The judgment, the double standards, especially around how she looks, what she buys at a liquor store, how she parents her children. Elliott lays bare the myriad ways that Canada, despite its pledges of reconciliation, continues to police Indigenous women. Probably one of the most visceral experiences reading this book as a white woman is feeling how Alice has to have her shields up 24/7, especially now that she lives off reserve. There’s no escape.

One of the questions beating within the heart of this story is, to what extent does intergenerational trauma influence one’s mental health and stability? Mental illness affects people of all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Yet not everyone has the same family history of enduring centuries of colonialism. When your people have undergone gaslighting on a generational scale, that’s a whole different type of trauma. How much of Alice’s unravelling is genetic, environmental, intergenerational? Can we even parse it out in that way, and if we can, should we?

As Alice’s postpartum depression deepens and her and Steve start to drift further apart, I found myself wishing things would work out between them. I wanted this book to have a happy ending. I wanted there to be some kind of revelation at the climax that would help Alice turn it all around. While I won’t spoil the ending for you, I feel safe warning you that Elliott doesn’t let us off that easy. Which is for the best. This book has teeth, teeth which it has no problem sinking into you, dear reader, and which will not let you go.

To say that the final act of And Then She Fell has a twist is an understatement. The twist transcends genre. I think many people will compare it to something like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse for how Elliott describes things, which is apt. Nevertheless I was more reminded of Jo Walton’s My Real Children. In this final act, Elliott hammers home the theme lurking beneath this entire story: life isn’t about working towards some indefinite “happy” ending; life is everything we get, the good and the bad, and there is no way to pull it apart and optimize for the good.

In a way it reminds me of that famous speech at the end of “Vincent and the Doctor,” where the Doctor tells Amy that life is a series of good things and bad things, and you hope that the good outweighs the bad. Except Elliott takes this one step further, admonishes us that sometimes the good doesn’t outweigh the bad. Sometimes a life sucks, but it is and was, and if we could go back and change that, it wouldn’t be our life anymore. This might feel fatalist, but I think it might be more appropriate to call it circular. In the end, Alice’s story (by which I mean her life) overlaps with the creation story she is trying to work up the nerve to tell.

I really … I really appreciate this message. Again, that might feel weird given how addicted our culture is to the idea that “everything [should be] awesome.” This theme grounds me. I’m entering my mid-thirties, and I’m really starting to coming to terms with the fact that I am an adult and this is my life. I look back and wonder what I might have done differently, and I look forward and wonder what I might try to do in the future. And it’s so tempting to try to optimize my happiness. So I need art that grabs me by the collar and pulls me back and says, “No, Kara. You can’t do that.” Not shouldn’t. Can’t. Can’t be done.

This is the brilliance of Alicia Elliott’s first novel: the layers. It’s about mental illness, about racism, about connection and isolation. It’s about choices and what we leave for our descendants. It’s about who we are in relation to our wider society, and the responsibilities we have for telling stories with accuracy and grace. It’s about all of these things, speaks on all of these levels, and more spectacularly, it never stumbles, not once.

I never thought I would write this sentence, but my favourite part of this book was the cockroaches.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

I am a firm believer that there is room for a wide range of literature. As much as my favourite form of storytelling is a juicy and straightforward novel, I enjoy short stories and novellas, stage plays and movies, video games and songs. Foster, by Claire Keegan, is an example of why I’m grateful that, at least for now, publishing has niches that have room for smaller, quieter tales. Although not something I would have picked up for myself (it was a gift), Foster is perfect in that it sets out with realistic goals and accomplishes them.

Set in Ireland, this novella follows an unnamed young girl sent to live on the farm of some relatives for the summer. She comes from a large family and is apprehensive about living with a childless couple—but as the summer progresses, they show her a tenderness and love that she could not have expected simply because she had no frame of reference for it. Far from a fairy tale, however, Foster is a story of juxtaposition: reminisces and the reality of the narrator’s family of origin continuously intrude upon her stable summer.

I don’t know much about Ireland. So one thing that immediately struck me as I read Foster was how deeply Irish it is—in a good way. Keegan traces geography as the narrator arrives at the Kinsella farm, casually references aspects of Irish life—especially rural life, on a farm—that most readers outside of Ireland, and perhaps a good few within, would not get on a first read. That’s the beauty when a talented author turns her hand to a novella: the limits of the form encourage a crispness of language and worldbuilding that novels usually don’t. Much like the long and languid summer over which it takes place, Foster evinces an effortless timelessness: there are newspapers and cooktops and Weetabix (for skincare, lol), television and cars and telephones. But there’s no web, no cell phones, no constant sense of connection and surveillance and participation. The narrator is isolated but not alone, disconnected but not dissatisfied.

This sense of utopia is undercut then by the narrator’s distinct feeling of being out of place. She’s unused to being the centre of attention, for she comes from a very large, Catholic family. The care she receives from both the Kinsellas feels uncomfortable—itchy. Mrs. Kinsella’s fussing over her cleanliness, complimenting her appearance, gently reproaching her for not cleaning out her earwax—to which, the narrator responds, her mother didn’t always have the time. Mr. Kinsella’s comfortable silences and the companionableness that the narrator feels with him as they are out on the land, something more subdued and powerful than the brooding silences of her father. One of life’s ironies is simply that we don’t get to choose our family of origin, nor do we have a great deal of control, at least as children, how we end up relating to our parents. Some people have beautiful childhoods; others have turbulent ones; most of us have something in between. Keegan captures this fundamental disconnect here, encouraging us to reflect on what it means to feel at home someplace.

Honestly, there’s a part of me that is suspicious of how much I liked Foster. I feel like I shouldn’t like it. It defies so much of what I personally enjoy about stories. Maybe that’s why I like it though. I appreciate its stubborn avoidance of any direct, external conflicts. I like that it never names the narrator. Keegan displays such confidence in how she restricts her narrative in its timeline and scope, almost as if she is challenging the reader to say, “No, this isn’t enough.” Except it is.

Foster is a sufficient story. It doesn’t grandstand or stunt. It invites you in, sits you down, and just as you are getting comfortable, sends you on your way.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Every time someone mentions iCarly, I feel old. This teen sitcom bookended my university years, 2007–2012, and as such its actors are my contemporaries even though they play younger roles. It’s easily the kind of show I would have watched had it premiered five years prior. As it is, I never got into it, and so I knew precious little of Miranda Cosgrove, Nathan Kress, or indeed, Jennette McCurdy. So when my best friend gave me I’m Glad My Mom Died for Christmas a couple years prior, I shelved it with mild interest, waiting for the right moment to pull it down and start reading.

This might not have been the right moment, but I read it. Wow. It has been a while since I read a book simultaneously so heavy yet so easy to get through. I’m not sure if McCurdy had a ghostwriter, but I really liked how she organized her thoughts and shared her story here. This memoir, pretty much chronological, starts in McCurdy’s early years as her mother pushes her into acting. It brings us through the iCarly years (McCurdy’s “big break”), past that, and then takes us just past her mother’s death. Divided into “Before” and “After” sections, the book is, not surprisingly, largely about McCurdy’s relationship with her mother and how that has influenced her career (not to mention her entire life). It’s equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

McCurdy slices through stereotypes about actors like a Jedi with a light-sabre. She wasn’t born into the biz. Her family doesn’t come from wealth. She also wasn’t “discovered.” She gets into acting because her mom is incredibly stubborn and ambitious on her behalf, and when she slowly begins to find success, she isn’t launched into stardom overnight. Most of her money goes to her mother and her family’s bills, and even when she does splurge on something like a home, it proves a bit much for her. Similarly, McCurdy belies the conventional notions of child actors: she isn’t spoiled, and if she is a bit out of touch with what a typical childhood and adolescence is like, it might be more because she grew up Mormon and homeschooled than because she grew up acting.

In this sense, I’m Glad My Mom Died is a clarion call to reform the acting business, especially where child actors are concerned. I don’t think anything that McCurdy shares in this book is surprising or even shocking. We have heard this story before, probably too many times—we just don’t listen. Tacitly, as a society, we accept that experiences like McCurdy’s are the price we pay so that we can have an endless rotating cast of child faces on our screens.

Consider, for instance, everything she writes about Dan Schneider. McCurdy calls him only “the Creator” in this book, but it’s transparently obvious to whom she refers. Serendipitously, I started this just after Quiet on Set premiered (though I haven’t watched it yet), which does refer to Schneider by name. Everything I heard about him in the media surrounding this documentary matches with what McCurdy shares here. The structure of our television and movie industry is such that people who enjoy abusing positions of power find it relatively easy to carve out their own little fiefdoms—and we let them, because they are “geniuses” and “auteurs.”

McCurdy’s abusive relationship with her mom is a whole other thing. It’s hard, reading her recollection of what her mom did to her. She strives to maintain a present tense, describing each memory as if it is happening in real-time rather than editorializing it. So she’ll be like, “Yeah, my mom showered with me,” and we the readers will be yelling, “That’s sexual abuse!” at the book until our voices are hoarse, but it isn’t until much later in the book that McCurdy processes that memory from that point of view. While effective at conveying how normalized her mom’s abusive behaviour felt, it’s also incredibly jarring. It’s no wonder McCurdy struggled to maintain even basic friendships, let alone deeper platonic or romantic relationships, even after her mom’s death.

Good for her for quitting acting. Good for her for getting out. All these “where are they now” articles that talk about has-been stars who haven’t had another hit since their early days of acting tend to downplay any actor who has successfully left the business on their terms. It’s easy for me to say this, I guess, as someone who didn’t watch iCarly and didn’t fall in love with Sam Puckett. Most of the actors I’ve enjoyed who have since left acting seem to have done so because they joined cults and went to prison (yikes, Allison Mack). Though not a big part of this book, McCurdy occasionally mentions how unsettling it has been to have people recognize her almost exclusively as Sam, to request that she identify herself with Sam in a way that is essentially traumatic for her. I joke sometimes about being a fangirl, but I’m not sure I will ever have it in me to obsess so much over any one person, character, or TV show. (I mean, I did name myself after Kara Danvers, and I adore Melissa Benoist and Nicole Maines, but I like to think I do this at a healthy distance….)

I’m Glad My Mom Died is a stellar if sad story. I hope that sharing it has helped McCurdy make some peace with how long it took her to get off the rails of her mother’s ambition and find her own. I wish her luck in whatever she is putting her hand to these days—even if it’s just growing a garden or, you know, existing. Everyone deserves to walk their own path.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Another satisfying conclusion to a fantasy trilogy? What have I done to deserve this? Freya Marske joins a small yet hallowed group of authors for wrapping her fantasy series with aplomb. A Power Unbound brings together the threads from the previous two books, resolving the story of the Last Contract and the more personal stories of the characters Marske has breathed into life over two novels. I was so excited to read this, and it does not disappoint.

As usual, spoilers for the first two books but not for this one.

This book is told primarily from the limited third-person perspective of Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn. Featured in the previous two books as a remote, unforgiving chap who had lost or given up his magic, Jack becomes more accessible to us in this third book. We learn more about his tragic past, the incident that claimed the life of his twin sister and robbed him of his magic. We also see how far Jack will go to take care of the people he loves. That includes family, friends, and lovers—because yes, there is more romance here. As the equinox approaches, the bad guys looking to bring together the three pieces of the Last Contract are dogging every move of Jack and his allies. It will take everyone working together to outwit and outfight those who would take the magic of England for themselves.

I’m not sure what I can say that I haven’t already said in my reviews of A Marvellous Light or A Restless Truth … Marske is just a phenomenal storyteller. She knows how to set up a conflict, ratchet up the tension scene after scene, and then pay it off with a big, desperate climax.

As far as character goes, the standout is, of course, the other perspective character, Alan. As we get to know this journalist/smutty writer better, we learn what drives him: the big family he feels responsible for taking care of, his desire to better himself in a world where upwards mobility is frowned upon. It’s through Alan and his attraction to Jack that we finally see fully Lord Hawthorn’s cold exterior melt—and yes, I mean that in every way, including the romantic.

Like with the first two books, the romance and smut here did nothing for me and were, if anything, things I skipped over—if spice is your thing, though, then whew, yes, read these! Nevertheless, I love the mixture of queer smut and fantasy set in Edwardian England. This is a rich, layered setting that Marske uses to her full advantage.

Probably the standout aspect of this novel, however, is simply the way Marske finally brings this series to a close. I love how she wraps this up! Without going into spoilers, let’s say that the story of the Last Contract is definitively resolved. Is there room for more stories with these characters? Certainly. But don’t worry about any cliffhangers connected to the main plot. I love how Marske plumbs the depth of this world that she has created, bringing together the threads of magic: faerie, ley lines and the land, spirits and ghosts—it all comes back, and it’s all put together in a way that makes sense.

Paramount to the plot is the theme of one’s connection to the land. One’s heritage. It’s so interesting to see this appear in a non-Indigenous story. Marske positions the contractual magic of English magicians against the land-based magic of hedge witches and sorcerers, essentially positing that contractual magic is associated with the rise of mercantilism and capitalism in England, whereas land-based magic is far more humanist, natural, forgiving. It’s a beautiful, anticapitalist sentiment lurking beneath a book that, after all, has relatively well-off people as several of its main characters.

My only complaint is that, since this book follows Jack and Alan, we don’t get to spend as much time with Maud, Violet, Edwin, or Robyn. I expected as much given how Marske changed things up for A Restless Truth. Nevertheless, I’m left wistful for more stories, especially from Maud’s point of view because I have a soft spot for her!

Beyond that, this is a fitting and feels-worthy conclusion to one of the most original, fulfilling, and spicy fantasy trilogies I have read in the past decade. If you like historical fantasy set in England, don’t mind a little queer romance/smut, and want a tense mystery along the way, then stop sleeping on this series. Read these books: you won’t regret it.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This book has been on my to-read list for ages. People keep recommending it to me (shout out to Meagan in particular). In true Kara fashion, I bought Wordslut and then allowed it to languish on my physical to-read shelf for … I don’t know, years? Meanwhile, I listened religiously (pun intended) to the Sounds Like a Cult podcast that Amanda Montell cohosted. The time has come, however, to talk about language from a feminist perspective! Let’s go.

Montell is a linguist, among other things, and curious about the origins of gendered language in English. Why does buddy have positive, not to mention gender-neutral, connotations, whereas sissy is a pejorative usually directed at men? They’re both colloquialisms for brother and sister, respectively (something I didn’t know, though which seems obvious, now that Montell explains it to me). Beyond words, though, Montell also explores linguistic phenomena such as vocal fry, uptalk, the word “like,” etc.—phenomena that are often feminine-coded and therefore derided by more “serious” speakers of language. Along the way, there are intersectional discussions of AAVE, appropriation therefrom, language connected to 2SLGBTQ+ communities, and more. For a relatively short book, Wordslut is packed with useful tidbits and ideas.

In the first few chapters, I was hesitant about what shape my review might take: most of what Montell was saying was stuff I already knew. I needn’t have worried, however, for as the book goes on there was plenty of material that was new to me—and that’s why I read nonfiction, ultimately. Chapters 3 and 4 are among my favourite; Chapter 7 was fascinating; Chapter 10 was, uh, enthralling; the final chapter, while short, offers a thoughtful and realistic meditation on what we might expect from language shifts in the future.

Chapter 3 covers “girl talk,” i.e., how women talk to each other when not in mixed company. Montell debunks some very outdated ideas about the differences in how genders use language. Then she discusses how women and men tend to use hedges differently (these are words like “just” or “you know”) as well as minimal linguistic responses (“mmhmm”). Although some of her points won’t be surprising to many of us—for example, women tend to be more collaborative in their speech, while men tend to take turns and the dominant person tends to talk the most—I loved how deep she dives into this topic and supports it with empirical research. For example, women tend to use hedges less to communicate insecurity than to soften their own sense of confidence in their topic.

As someone who has been in transition for four years now, I have been fascinated by the way my own speech has changed to reflect my new relationship with gender and relationality to other women. I’m not talking about my voice (which I am too lazy to do much about because voice coaching/therapy takes, you know, effort). Rather, I’ve definitely noticed that the way I speak, my diction and patterns, has shifted to emulate how the women in my social circles speak. I’m not consciously setting out to do it, but it’s happening kind of by osmosis. I’ll always have my own idiosyncratic features, like my cryptic, Teal’c-inspired “Indeed” that I throw in to many a conversation. But I definitely feel more empowered now that I have this wider, scientific understanding of girl talk!

Chapter 4 is one of several that pushes back against the policing of language. Montell establishes that linguistic innovation is in fact normative, and it’s often underrepresented or marginalized groups that engage in such innovation. She provides a host of examples from English and other languages around the world. Whether it’s uptalk or the use of the word “like” (which has more functions in speech than I realized!), whatever trend currently observed among teenage girls and criticized swiftly thereafter tends to spread to the rest of the population in a couple of decades. As with any moral panic, the current linguistic moral panics are not special, just the latest in a long line of excuses old white people look for to clutch pearls.

In this sense, Wordslut succeeds in its goal to get the reader thinking about language as a feminist or revolutionary concept. I like how Montell clearly put in the work to speak to researchers, journalists, and others who think and breathe language. I like how she challenges us to be more concrete in how we think about what we say and write.

The limitations of the book are equally clear: it is a pop linguistics book, not a deep treatise on these subjects, and it’s grounded firmly in white feminism despite attempts at intersectionality. If you’re looking for a more detailed examination of how, say, Black feminists in the 1970s like the Combahee River Collective changed the language, you won’t find that here. This book is designed to make its white women readers feel simultaneously erudite and salacious: ooh, I’m reading about all these slang words for my genitals! At no point, however, does the book truly push a white reader to feel at all uncomfortable or complicit in cultural appropriation or our role of judging racialized people if their accents, diction, or cultural references aren’t too our liking. The subtitle of this book purports to want a “taking back” of English, yet I’m not sure it was ever really taken from me at any point, and I want to own up to that.

All of this is to say: I really enjoyed Wordslut. It’s smart and sassy and easy to read. Montell’s voice is crisp, edifying yet also entertaining. I learned a lot, and I’ll join the legion of people already recommending this book. At the same time, I hope we are honest with ourselves when talking about books like this that trade on revolutionary language while falling short of much in the way of revolutionary action (though, credit where it is due, Montell has some harsh words for capitalism in here, and of course for misogyny!).

It’s like, you know, a totally great read about getting the patriarchy out of our language, y’all.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Although I have never dealt with loss of this magnitude, I understand how it can reshape someone. Bad Cree is a story about the shape of loss, the way grief carves itself into your soul even when you think you haven’t let it. Jessica Johns uses traditional Cree stories to explore the power of family, of trusting yourself, and confronting those parts of yourself that you would prefer not to look at. It’s a “horror” story in a sense, a suspense story too, but it’s also a story of growth, renewal, and hope.

Mackenzie is Cree but living in Vancouver. She starts to have unsettling dreams, and when she wakes, sometimes she brings back a part of the dream into the waking world. So she heads back home to Treaty 8 territory, the site of her dreams and her family. As Mackenzie seeks to uncover the source of her dreams, she must confront unresolved grief, tension with her siblings and mother, and memories of her lost sister.

Bad Cree pulls you into the story immediately and never lets you go. Mackenzie is a solid protagonist whom you feel like you get to know from page one. The way she is handling her unexpected dream magic feels so grounded and believable, right down to how she’s trying to casually dismiss it while talking to her friend even though, at the same time, she’s really freaked out and having trouble sleeping. The text messages from her dead sister aren’t helping either. Johns carefully unspools Mackenzie in such a way that all of her actions make sense.

As Mackenzie returns home, Johns unspools the rest of the backstory while simultaneously pushing the main plot forward. I love how we get to know each of the women in Mackenzie’s family. How, as she reveals her dreaming to them, they each provide a new piece of the puzzle, like the aunt who also has such dreams or the cousin who trained herself not to dream for this reason. Mackenzie’s family feels like so many families you have been in or met. They come together for Mackenzie, yet there remains tension among them, particularly become Mackenzie and her surviving sister over Mackenzie’s “abandonment.” Family are the people you call not just when you need them but when you need them and have no other choice.

Still, they all come together for her, each in their own way. The cover copy bills Bad Cree as a novel of female & femme friendship and family, and it’s right. There’s something very uplifting, especially juxtaposed against the horror lurking beneath this story, about so many competent and caring women coming together to help out. They don’t always agree on the best course of action, but they all contribute to success in the face of this threat. Nothing demonstrates this better than the climax, where they prepare to confront the threat directly. I love how Mackenzie’s mother and the aunties prepare the younger women for their trip, see them off. There aren’t really many men in this story—mostly just Mackenzie’s father, on the periphery—and that must be on purpose.

As a white girl, it isn’t for me to comment on the “Indigeneity” of this story. But I can see the shape of the circular storytelling happening here, the way Johns keeps revolving around the pivot point of Sabrina’s death, of Mackenzie’s memory of her and Sabrina on the lake, moving us around and through these focal points. Parts of this novel are so understated, and it works incredibly well because it allows you to focus on what matters: Mackenzie, her memories, her dreams, her family.

Here’s the thing: Bad Cree isn’t just great Indigenous storytelling (though I am sure it is that); it’s great storytelling, full stop. Alternatively heartbreaking, sympathetic, pulse-pounding, and exciting, this is a novel that knows what it’s about and pulls off its goals without breaking a sweat (though you, reader, might). I nearly passed on it because I’m not much of a horror girlie, and I’m glad I pushed myself past that apprehension, because there is a beautiful story here.

Also, Kokum stopping by at the end just to say, “What’s up”? Priceless. Perfection.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.