Book Review: The Thief and the Wild, by Seann Barbour
This Southern-flavored steampunk fantasy is as easy to sink into as a hammock, with a nice breezy tone most of the time, narrated by a sympathetic protagonist with a wry point of view, relating an exciting plot that moves around a bayou town, up and down, and eventually strikes out into the wilderness, with a cataclysmic confrontation at the climax.
Book review: Smothermoss by Alisa Alering
Smothermoss is entrancingly immersive, with entirely evocative language, fascinating fantastic elements, exciting action, and two very vividly drawn protagonists, sisters who have little in common and feel a lot of friction but eventually come together, with a bit of supernatural succor, to face a fearsome foe.
Book review: Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi
It’s an interesting work of alternate history in which a naive young girl has to grow up fast when she is abducted and installed in a foreign court as the intended bride of a warrior king. Ignorant at first, Òdòdó learns fast that kindness can conceal cruelty, and tenderness can be a distraction from tyranny; eventually, she learns how to make allies and take control of her own life, and more.
Liberty’s Daughter and Thoughts on Worker Bees
Content Warnings: Plot spoilers (after a further warning) for Liberty’s Daughter by Naomi Kritzer and A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge, and exploitation discussion. Continuing my 2024 Hugo Awards Finalists reading, I gobbled up Liberty’s Daughter by Naomi Kritzer in one sitting. This was my first book in the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book category, so I can’t rank it yet, but I certainly found it age-appropriate, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Some of those thoughts relate to other books, and some relate to current topics. In Liberty’s Daughter, Beck Garrison lives a fairly privileged life on a “seastead” where people have connected floating platforms and actual ships to form a network of communities independent of normal, landlocked countries. All of them are fairly libertarian, and one site recognizes no laws at all. That hasn’t been a problem for Beck before the beginning of this book, because she’s the daughter of an important man. However, when she starts helping a debt slave to track down a missing sister, she stumbles into trouble. With the help of a friend and various other people, she exposes some horrible things that have been happening out of public view. Her moral stands not only have strongly negative personal consequences, at least in the short term, but roil her entire society. I like Beck a lot more than some YA protagonists I’ve encountered. Her father calls her stubborn and selfish, but really, she’s smart, active, persistent, and brave. She’s naive at first, but knows a lot about how her society works, on the surface at least, and how to persuade people to do things and cooperate with each other. She can be too impulsive for her own safety, but partly that’s because she believes in doing what’s right and helping other people. Some people may think that things work out a little too easily for her, but to me, it’s not too surprising that her natural leadership, abilities to figure things out and get things done, and good heart are recognized by others. And anyway, things don’t go her way all the time. Liking Beck is a large part of why I like this book, but I also like how social issues are explored. I’d mentioned a debt slave. Most of the grunt labor in this collective is done by “bond workers” who are sort of a combination of indentured servants and company-store workers, usually going gradually deeper in debt rather than working their way out, and health issues can make that decline a lot sharper and faster. Revelations about what happened to the missing sister, who’s a bond worker herself, lead to some collective actions. MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW! Beck helps to avert a violent reaction from the bosses, but just as things seem to be calming down, a wave of sickness with symptoms of obsessive behavior sweeps over the seastead. Eventually, Beck and her allies discover that the epidemic is an engineered virus that got out of control – a virus that was supposed to turn discontented bond slaves into happy workers. But the so-called “worker-bee” virus works TOO well in this respect, even from the view of the bosses; as it brings unanticipated side effects, the ensuing societal breakdown leads to more illnesses and other problems. This reminded me strongly of the Focused workers in A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge. That’s a really great book where a whole lot is going on, but the relevant bit is that one faction uses a technology-activated virus to attack enemies or turn some of their own people into brilliant super-specialists who only care about their projects, so they can make even more scientific advances (and are thus highly unlikely to examine society and their place in it). Some workers manage to realize this and think past their induced condition, and even to start thinking about rebellion, but usually they get caught and are reset to “happy” worker-bee status by an MRI-like procedure. The streaming series Severance (2022) approaches this from a slightly different angle. I haven’t watched it, since I don’t have Apple TV+, but I understand that workers at a fictional company agree to a procedure that severs their work memories and personal memories, which supposedly helps them concentrate more efficiently at work. Naturally, this leads to exploitation. The show won critical acclaim and a lot of buzz, and a second season is planned. When I was seeing ads for that show, I was reminded of a horrific series of advertisements some years ago where people had TVs/computer monitors instead of heads (like Prince Robot’s people in Saga), so you could see that even when they were off work, going about their daily lives, playing tennis or whatever, they were still thinking about work. This was supposed to show how dedicated the company’s employees were to serving the viewers, the implied customers, but to me and some friends, it exemplified expectations of depersonalization and exploitation of workers. It seems that a growing number of science fiction creatives are thinking about this trend. In the past, fears have been expressed of work-focused robots replacing humans (or human worker classes being bred and later genetically designed, from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to C.J. Cherryh’s Cyteen and beyond); more recently, the trend in fiction has been of taking humans themselves and just cutting out the parts that don’t directly serve capitalism, making individual lives far less rich and rewarding, and damaging the creativity, diverse thinking, and even the problem-solving skills of all humanity. These days, of course, that implied desirability of always concentrating on work is far closer to reality. Even without worker-bee drugs or Focused/Severance-type modifications, increasing numbers of jobs include the expectation that employees will be available 24/7 by text and email, and on-call for just-in-time scheduling even for ordinary, non-emergency shift work. Other societal trends are also keep people’s minds mostly on work and away from volunteerism (numbers are way down) and activism. Whether that’s more or less
Book Review: Lost Ark Dreaming, by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
I had forgotten the publisher’s description of Lost Ark Dreaming, by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, by the time it surfaced atop my to-be-read pile. So I went in cold, and it turned out that the water was fine! This is a gripping novella that starts fast and keeps moving with swift assurance, amid brief interludes and “historical excerpts” that give more context to the action, while deftly building characters whose revealed motivations make even some surprising decisions feel natural. I enjoyed it quite a lot. Suyi Davies Okungbowa is a rising star in speculative fiction, a Nommo Award winner who has appeared twice before on Skiffy and Fanty’s website. Tonya Moore interviewed him about his work in general and specifically his The Nameless Republic trilogy. Paul Weimer’s review of the first two books in that series praised the immersive worldbuilding and said, “the two books really feel like to me a study and critique of decaying imperial power, and what happens when that eroding power slips…” Power is a major focus in this novella, too, although it’s unrelated to his previous books. Tiers of power are given physical reality, as the Uppers, Midders, and Lowers live in their respective floors of offshore towers after the seas rose and drowned Lagos, Nigeria, and surrounding coastal areas. The higher Up that one lives, the more authority, light, fresh air, and space one has; Midders keep things running and try to keep themselves from falling in status; and Lowers work and scramble to survive, down in the dark, dank floors below sea level. This novella starts off feeling like a combination of climate fiction and science fiction, although faith and fantasy elements also make themselves known eventually. Although most of the viewpoint characters (a Midder, an Upper, and a Lower) start out trying to focus on the here-and-now, and submerging past traumas (the Upper has done this so successfully that the reader sees only his ambitions throughout much of the book), events force them to confront their memories and longings for connection with other people, with the environment, and with the Unknown. Lost Ark Dreaming starts with Yekini rushing to get to work, but she hardly has time to start stressing out about the effects of lateness on her career as an analyst in civil service before she’s sent on her first solo field assignment—as a punishment? Unfortunately, it’s a trip to the Undersea levels; more unfortunately, she has to shepherd an Upper official, Ngozi, there, protecting him while trying to make him feel sufficiently deferred to; even more unfortunately, when a Lowers-level head of safety, Tuoyo, leads them to the site of a breach that she’d already patched, Yekini discovers indications of an intruder. Things rapidly spin out of all their control to go from bad to worse. Some readers may be annoyed that the novella is slightly open-ended, with no sure societal resolution to the climactic events of the finale. But the protagonists all make important decisions, including some self-sacrifices aimed at helping their community. To me, this has a hopeful ending, and I can say I am very well satisfied with the book. Along with the strong plot and characterization, the language craft in this book is worth mentioning. The Interludes are poetically dreamy, and some of the “historical excerpts” are intentionally distant and formal, but most of the prose is vivid and active. Descriptions put the reader right there: “The Lowers smelled like a damp cloth that had been locked in a steel box for years… the air weighed a ton, and Yekini’s lungs worked hard to draw it in. Her chest felt waterlogged, like a bad cough brewing.” A lot of the worldbuilding here is concrete, but I also love what the author can do with just one sentence: “Ensconced within the [glass] pendant was a flash of color, the only valuable part of the necklace—a small remnant of an aged, wrinkled orange peel.” That sets the reader imagining what kind of ruined world makes a relic like that so valuable. I love the little details like that. Finally, I’ll also mention that some elements of African culture that are woven throughout Lost Ark Dreaming enhanced my enjoyment of it—I say African rather than Yoruban, although that language is specifically mentioned, because refugees of various backgrounds have made their way to the towers, and some elements of religion, for example, have evolved to fit current circumstances. These elements strongly affect some characters’ motivations and decisions. There are further things I’d like to say about works that this novella is clearly in conversation with, but that would give away major spoilers, so I’ll stop here. Just know that Lost Ark Dreaming has my strong recommendation. Lost Ark Dreaming’s expected release date is May 21, so there’s still a short time to give it some extra love by pre-ordering it. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250890757/lostarkdreaming Content warnings: Blood, past traumas, threatened violence, offscreen mass deaths, bad air and filth, class oppression. Comparisons: Per the publisher’s description, “The brutally engineered class divisions of Snowpiercer meets Rivers Solomon’s The Deep …” Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of this novella for review purposes.
Book Review: Archangels of Funk, by Andrea Hairston
I loved Redwood and Wildfire when I found it in the New Books section of the library a few years ago, so I was excited to have the opportunity to read a new book set in that world, Archangels of Funk, which was published on May 7. This is a fantastic near-future book that combines magic and hopepunk with vibrant, joyful optimism, where a diverse community works together to survive and thrive as an independent cooperative amid an increasingly corpocratic world. Redwood and Wildfire was set in the American South of the 1890s, with magic, and told how Black teen Redwood Phipps and her eventual love, Aidan Wildfire Cooper, moved through time and became part of the early days of the film industry. Somehow I had missed the middle book in the series, Will Do Magic for Small Change, about their granddaughter, Cinnamon Jones, but I’m happy to say that I didn’t have any problem moving from the first book to the third; I’m sure to have missed some nuances and callbacks, but I didn’t experience any puzzlement or feel that there were any missing pieces. In fact, I’d say that a new reader could probably start with this book (although Redwood and Wildfire, at least, is great and worth finding); there are certainly references to the characters and events of Redwood and Wildfire, but they are explained well enough that there isn’t any significant missing context. Archangels of Funk is told (in third person past tense) following several points of view, including a Border Collie, another dog who’s a cyberghost, some Circus-Bots, and a friend, but the main protagonist is Cinnamon Jones. She’s a tech wizard who’s a leader in her community of farmers and Water Wars refugees but who tries to avoid being noticed by the wider world. An older woman, she’s had her share of past glories and heartbreaks. Her focus now is on helping others while honoring her ancestors and the spirits of her heritage; she doesn’t think she can change the world, but she fights to keep her corner of it viable and unique. There is a LOT going on in this book. It starts two days before the community’s annual Next World Festival, which Cinnamon runs, as she searches for one of her missing Circus-Bots. These are theatrical junk-sculptures that she had built and animated with computer code and hidden hoodoo. She finds a Circus-Bot sheltering a little girl who’d fled from child-snatchers. The Festival is an ongoing tight-time focus throughout most of the book, but there are also echoes from Cinnamon’s past that come to confront her, including former lovers and betrayers, and people who try to lure her to sell her secrets and sell out. Other subplots include various theft/con attempts, a couple of security guards who are basically just trying to get by at the start, but whom Cinnamon and the community try to influence to actually do good and be good people, an ancestral spirit who helps Cinnamon and the community but who is fading, and several budding or recurring romances. Redwood and Wildfire is bright and dark and jangly and eventually soothing. It’s a hard world, but when has it not been? It can be overwhelming, but Hairston passionately demonstrates in her writing that community ties of love and hope, and occasionally offering second chances to people, can make hearts soar. There are oppressive systems and a lot of exploitative individuals, but it is very much worth continuing to fight for a better world in small ways that add up to big things. I adore this book and the people in it. This is one of my favorite books so far this year. Please give it a try. Content Warnings: Deaths, threats, betrayals Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this ebook from the publisher.
