Author: kristen

The Heavenly Sword

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the heavenly sword

The Heavenly Sword by Alice Poon 

Genre: fantasy

I read it as a(n): digital ARC

Length: 390 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Alice Poon delivers the first of a duology epic fantasy based in Chinese mythology and kung fu. In this first novel, Sai’er is a simple village girl training in the ancient arts of kung fu. Thanks to a helpful sprite, she learns she is the reincarnation of the goddess Chang’e. She must go on a quest to stop the wicked Sky Wolf, who is reincarnated as the Ming Dynasty Emperor Zhu Di. Aided by her foster brother Binhong and several other friends, both mortal and supernatural, Sai’er embarks on an adventure rivaling any in the fantasy genre. 

I enjoyed this, as I did Poon’s earlier books. She does a terrific job of blending fantasy, mythology, and real history all together to make a credible story. I would almost categorize this book magical realism rather than fantasy simply because the elements of magic are so closely woven into the factual parts of the story. They just…belong. Of course Sai’er has a sprite friend. Of course she is an immortal sent to earth. It could be no other way. There isn’t any suspension of disbelief while reading this, it’s just the way things are in Sai’er’s life. So that is particularly well done on the author’s part.

I did have a little trouble, mostly in the earlier parts of the book, with the pacing. This is a very fast-paced story (which is fine, it adds to the kung fu feel of the plot for me), but sometimes I felt like I overlooked something when, for example, I thought we were in one place and then the narration kicked us over to a different place. For example, Sai’er and Binhong were traveling and one minute they were on a very steep staircase carved into a cliff and the next they were surrounded by imperial guards and there was a courtyard. The text hadn’t indicated any other setting prior to that so it was a little jarring to change settings like that. But then I got used to the pacing and it was fine after that.

I think for someone like me, whose experience with wuxia/kung fu extends to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and a handful of Jackie Chan films, this is a very good introduction to the genre. Poon talks about her lifelong love of wuxia (Chinese martial arts/kung fu novels), and references Jin Yong. I had never heard of him before so now I am tempted to read some of his works. Apparently, he’s big in the genre… I never would have learned about him had I not read this book. I always appreciate a book that teaches me something! 

I don’t think this necessarily has to be an adult novel, either. Yes, there’s some sex and gore, but I don’t think it was gratuitous or anything inappropriate for a teen to read. Maybe that’s just my Gen X showing. My parents had no clue what I was reading – or where I was, really – most of the time. So maybe take it with a grain of salt, but this read-all-of-Stephen-King’s-and-V.C.-Andrews’-then-published-works-by-the-time-I-was-12 GenXer thinks it’s totally fine for teen readers as well.

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The Ides of March

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vincenzo_camuccini_-_la_morte_di_cesare“Beware the Ides of March.” There are few among us who don’t know this phrase, uttered by a soothsayer to Julius Caesar before his assassination, made famous by Shakespeare’s pen. But what IS the Ides of March (what ARE the Ides? What is an Ide?)? Welp, originally, the calendar used to be more lunar. The earliest Roman calendars, in use around 753 BCE, had ten months and each month used three lunar marks: Kalends, Nones, and Ides. Kalends was the new moon, the first day of the month. Nones was the first quarter moon, usually around the fifth-seventh day. Ides was the full moon, usually around the 13th-15th. March 15th used to be the new year and was a time of celebration. Julius Caesar himself was the one who changed the Roman New Year from March to January. He consulted with astronomers, then added ten days and a leap year and thus was born the Julian calendar. People liked the new year being in March; maybe changing that holiday was the straw that broke the camel’s back and Caesar made his own bad luck. Probably not, but you know. I had to wonder. 

So the Ides weren’t originally associated with anything bad or doom and gloom. It was just part of the old calendar. I rather like it, myself. I have a dear friend whose birthday is on the Ides of March. It was after Caesar’s assassination that the date acquired its darker connotations, and mostly only after Shakespeare’s play. Other things have happened on March 15 that contributed to the date’s bad reputation: the classification of the SARS virus as a global health threat in 2003; Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939; a bigass blizzard in North Dakota in 1941, which occured without warning; and, probably the worst thing, online chat rooms debuted, triggering the demise of grammar across the globe…way back in 1971. Holy shit. I am an old. Not as old as ancient Roman stuff, but sometimes I feel like it. 

Here are a couple books I’ve enjoyed about the Roman Empire, either in a general sense or which were set specifically during Julius Caesar’s time. 

Roman coin

SPQR by Mary Beard

A great history of ancient Rome by one of the premiere Classicists of our time. This is a big book but it was a quick read nonetheless.

Calendar: Humanity’s Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year by David Ewing Duncan

Really this is here because it has a great section on the Roman calendar and how it got changed from the old system they used to the system Caesar implemented. Also, the idea of a microhistory about time has a pleasing irony to it.

The Gallic War by Julius Caesar

I figure a list of books about Julius Caesar ought to include something by the man himself. Gird your loins for some serious megalomaniacal commentary. His ego may have put Trump’s to shame. The difference is that Caesar was literate. 

The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George

As the title suggests, this focuses more on Cleopatra. But her story and Caesar’s are so entwined it is hard to imagine one without the other anymore, which is a little sad since Cleopatra was very much her own person, separate from any man. 

Caesar Against the Celts by Ramon L. Jiménez 

This makes for a good read-along with The Gallic Wars. 

Imperium by Robert Harris

A novel about Cicero, told from the first person point of view of Tiro, his real life scribe. Tiro really did write a biography of Cicero, which is now tragically lost to us. I would read the absolute shit out of that. I thought that was clever of Harris, because it lets him write his books as though Tiro is the author. I quite enjoyed this series. 

References:

Staff writers. “What Are the Ides of March?” History.com, 12 March 2014, http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-are-the-ides-of-march. 

Stezano, Martin. “Beware the Ides of March. But Why?” History.com, 13 March 2017, http://www.history.com/news/beware-the-ides-of-march-but-why. 

The Lido

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the lido

The Lido by Libby Page

Genre: contemporary fiction

I read it as a(n): hardback

Length: 310 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Kate is a young woman living in the Brixton neighborhood of London, working at a local newspaper. She isn’t in charge of any important articles – mostly ads for lost pets and new restaurants – and seems to be struggling to launch. Rosemary is an 86-year-old widow who has never traveled outside of Brixton and has a lifetime’s worth of experience. The two should never have crossed paths, until Kate is assigned to interview the people of Brixton who have lived much of their life around the Brockwell Lido, an outdoor swimming and rec area. Kate decides to learn more about the lido and help to prevent it from being paved over for tennis courts by a developer for luxury apartments. Rosemary decides she’s never met anyone more in need of a swim than Kate. Friendship ensues.

This was such a sweet book. It sort of had the same feel as A Man Called Ove in that there were several generations of people making unlikely friends with each other. Kate finds her stride over the months she works to interview the people who have put the lido at the center of their community, and she becomes friends not only with Rosemary but with several other members of the Brixton community. She learns that she can do hard things and do them well.

Rosemary sees Kate as a last hope of saving her beloved lido, where she has swum daily since it opened in the 1930s, where she met and fell in love with her husband George, and where she places her sense of self even more so than at her home. She learns that there is still a lot of life left to live even if George is gone and possibly her lido as well. 

I read this for my book club and I’m glad this is the one that was selected. It was a sweet, fast read that had all the warm fuzzy feels and a couple face leaks. 

Favorite quotes:

  • Kate felt more comfortable in her books than she does in real life. She liked to reread her favorite stories: knowing what was going to happen made her feel calm, as though she was directing the story herself (29). 
  • There are no cubicles free in the communal changing room so Kate peels off her clothes behind her towel. Fear of being seen naked brings out flexibility she didn’t know she had (44). 
  • …she will tell him about the protest and the ducks and how proud she felt standing with her friends underneath the banner and the lido clock. How she felt like she was a somebody (185).

Catch-Up Post: First Frost, Minimalista, The Sun Down Hotel, Cover Story, A Woman is No Man

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First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen

Genre: contemporary it/ magical realism

I read it as a(n): paperback

Length: 294 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The Waverley women are just a little different. They each have a talent that is unexplained, such as Claire being able to bake health into her food, or Bay always knowing where things and people belong. They have an apple tree that blooms out of season and that throws apples at people it doesn’t like. I want an apple tree like that.

This was a sweet and magical read about family, finding one’s own place, and necessary changes. The tone reminds me of Practical Magic, which is a high compliment. It is only the second book I’ve read by Sarah Addison Allen but I have loved them both and plan to read more by her.

Minimalista by Shiri Gill

Genre: nonfiction/ minimalism

I read it as a(n): hardback

Length: 308 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I can’t remember where I heard about this book but I’m big on minimalism – heh. I made a pun – and the way this book was broken down appealed to me. Even though I have my own ideas for how to minimize my home, I always like to learn about other techniques and how other people do it. I learned a few new tips and tricks in this book, which had some terrific commentary and lovely photos. 

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

Genre: horror

I read it as a(n): hardback

Length: 326 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 3 out of 5 stars

The Sun Down Motel was supposed to be a money-maker for its owners, who were banking on the fact that a theme park was going to be built in the small town of Fell, NY and it would become a tourist destination. But the theme park fell through and was never built, the Sun Down Motel fell into disrepair, and now it’s only fit for the ghosts and the men who made them. 

I’m not generally a fan of horror – I can’t suspend my disbelief long enough to buy into the paranormal – but this was a pretty fun read. It was mostly a mystery following 2 generations of women. There were ghosts but they were mostly there to help and didn’t take up a ton of time on the page.

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti

Genre: contemporary lit/ mystery

I read it as a(n): hardback

Length: 354 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 2 out of 5 stars

If Catch Me If You Can met The Devil Wears Prada and Inventing Anna, you would have this book. Lora wants nothing more than to become a writer and an editor at ELLE magazine. She’s thrilled when she lands an internship at ELLE, where she promptly falls in with Cat Wolff, a contributing editor and mysterious socialite. 

I liked that this story was told through Lora’s diary entries, emails between a few people, and FBI investigation documents. Mostly, though, there was absolutely nothing original about this story at all. It was a fast read, at least, but I suspected the ending about a quarter through, and figured it out entirely well before the end. 

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum

Genre: contemporary fiction

I read it as a(n): hardback

Length: 337 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A sort of dual timeline story about Isra, a young Palestinian woman whose arranged marriage brings her to Brooklyn, and her daughter, Deya, who is rebelling against the cultural expectations she is facing with her own arranged marriage looming. 

This was well written and I think it’s important to have novels that explore the experiences of women living in conservative and/or fundamental religious cultures. It was, however, fucking relentlessly depressing and I would kill myself if I had to live the lives of any of the women depicted in this story.

No Time Like the Past

kristen1 Comment

No Time Like the Past by Greg Cox 

Genre: sci-fi

I read it as a(n): paperback

Length: 388 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

On an away mission to a planetoid with a weird reading, Seven is swept back in time to the 23rd century. Specifically, to Kirk’s Enterprise. What follows is a quest through space-time to gather the scattered pieces of the device that sent Seven back while at the same time trying not to pollute the timeline, evading a band of Orions who want Seven for themselves, dealing with an unknown traitor, and getting Seven back to her time before the lack of regeneration does her in.

This was a fun read. Not the very best Trek book ever but not even close to the worst. I don’t generally enjoy crossover novels that much – a large part of why the vast collection of relaunch books irritate me – but this one was very well done. I think the crossover aspect was partly why it took me until the end of 2022 to read this one rather than when it was actually published.

The plot was interesting, if somewhat pedestrian, and I think Cox did a great job getting the interactions between Seven and the original crew right. Seven finally understood the relationship between Tuvok and Neelix after seeing the banter between Spock and Bones. It’s always a pleasure to see Spock and Bones bicker like an old married couple, when it’s done well.

My main issue was that the Orions were like a bad rash that keeps cropping up. A couple times it felt like they were dropped into the plot just because they were the Bad Guys in this story. It was a little forced in that regard. And there were a couple other scenes that I think could have been shorter or eliminated altogether. But in the scheme of things, that’s not so bad.

My favorite part wasn’t a single part, per se. It was the jaunt back through a few of the best episodes of TOS. I loved that. I would love more of it across all the Star Trek series, even if it means crossovers. Just so long as they’re standalone stories, please.

The Lunar Chronicles

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Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter by Marissa Meyer

Genre: sci-fi/fantasy

I read it as a(n): audiobook

Narrator: Rebecca Soler

Her Grace’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars for the series as a whole

The four main novels in the Lunar Chronicles series are all thoroughly tied up with each other, in the most delightful way possible. Cinder sets up most of the world-building and character introductions. The overarching plot is that Cinder, a young, part-cyborg mechanic from the Eastern Commonwealth (formerly China) and Kai, the Eastern Commonwealth’s Emperor, are trying to find Selene, the Lunar princess and rightful heir to Luna’s throne, who was long thought to have died in a fire as an infant. Kai doesn’t think that is true and is on a mission to find Selene and overthrow Levana, the evil Lunar Queen who killed her sister (the true queen) and her niece and took the Lunar throne for herself. The secondary plot is Levana’s determination to take over Earth, using what the Lunars call their “Gift” – the ability to sense and manipulate a person’s bioelectrical energy. As a result, Lunars can force humans or Lunars with weaker Gifts to do anything they want them to do. The Lunar gift has varying strength, apparently based on one’s social class, and the queen is the most powerful of all, followed by her thaumaturges, her highest councillors and advisors. They can force people to do anything from being silent to committing murder or suicide. The Lunar queen is one nasty bitch. Cinder plans to stop her.

Throughout the four books, Cinder is joined by Iko, the bubbly android with a faulty personality chip; Dr. Erland, the brilliant but unethical scientist trying to find a cure for a disease ravaging humanity; Carswell Thorn, an irreverent American spaceship captain who broke out of prison with Cinder; Scarlet, a French farmer whose missing grandmother knows something vital about Selene; a street fighter named Wolf who knows where Scarlet’s grandmother is; Cress, a Lunar girl who was born without the Lunar Gift and who has been kept alone on a satellite for years, forced to do technological spying for the Queen; Jason, a Royal Lunar guard who isn’t sure what side he should be on; and Winter, Levana’s stepdaughter who is slowly going insane because she refuses to use her Lunar gift.

Levana has a cure for the disease but she won’t give it to Earth unless Kai agrees to marry her and make her his Empress. Doing so will save millions of lives but also will all but ensure that Levana will kill Kai and use her power as Empress to take over Earth. She could do so through her Gift. Kai agrees to marry Levana to get the antidote, even though it’s the last thing he wants to do. Cinder, meanwhile, gets arrested for crashing Kai and Levana’s engagement ball, then breaks out and makes new friends while she is trying to help track down people who might know about the Lunar princess, Selene. 

For those folks who are unaware, the four novels in this series are retellings of the classic fairy tales – you guessed it – Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White. Meyer centers them all in a sci-fi setting, which is fucking awesome. It is set in some indeterminate point in the future. The years refer to the time since the 4th World War and the signing of a global peace treaty, so we don’t really know exactly how far ahead it is. The political climate is complex and nicely explained within the context of the overarching plot. I like that it doesn’t beat you over the head with billions of minute info-dump details but also doesn’t just gloss over politics altogether. Readers get a fully developed political system that is delivered as relevant bits of info throughout the series. 

Similarly, each character is a complete, complex, imperfect, and conflicted individual. They each have their own distinctive voice and ideas. Their personalities are clear – I don’t think anyone would ever be confused as to whether they were reading Cinder or Cress, Thorn or Kai. I really loved that they are all imperfect. None of them are perfectly good or always certain of the right thing to do. They all are trying to do what they think is the right thing, but what that is doesn’t always mesh with what the others think. They are all good people – well, Cinder’s group is. Levana and her Lunars are garbage and you love to hate them – but they also all do “bad” things sometimes. Then they are conflicted about the things they did and the reasons they did them. No one is 100% certain and I think that’s great. It’s so much more realistic that way. 

I also really loved the way the various characters and stories got all woven together. It was satisfying in a way the original fairy tales are not since they are self-contained stories of their own. It is more interesting when they all mingle and know each other. Kind of like the idea that the hunter who killed Bambi’s mom was Gaston from the film version of Beauty and the Beast, or that the sunken ship Ariel swims around in is the one that went down carrying Anna and Elsa’s parents. It’s all the same universe, folks. Similarly, Meyer weaves the various threads of these four fairy tales very nicely together into one satisfying Gordian knot of a bow.

The one thing I think was not at all well developed was the diversity. As in, I don’t think there was any anywhere in the entire series. Based on location and naming convention, it’s assumed that Cinder, Kai, Cinder’s stepmother and stepsisters, and Kai’s court are Asian. But there are no hints or outright descriptions of Asian culture otherwise. The same is true for all the other groups of beings as well. Nothing about them stands out as American or European or Commonwealth other than, in a couple cases, an accent. Even Cinder and Kai do not have any kind of accent that could be identified as coming from an Asian region. Winter is described as having dark skin and curly hair, and on the audiobook cover she is depicted as a young Black woman. Other than Winter, I am not entirely sure there were really any people of color in the series at all. 

The same is true for LGBTQ+ and disabled characters. There wasn’t a single one of either community in the entire series unless you want to count Winter since she’s slowly going insane. But that is an identifiable disease within the Lunar Chronicles universe and by the end of the series she’s being treated for it so she can be “normal.” Maybe she meant for Thorn to be disabled because he lost his vision? But again, that lasted for about a month and then he went back to his old sighted self. You could really, really stretch and say Cress has social anxiety disorder, but again, she’s gotten over it by the end of the series and her shyness a) isn’t a disability and b) was a direct result of being locked away and never interacting with anyone besides the thaumaturge in charge of her for like a decade. Anyone would be a little socially awkward after that. So yeah. Meyer seriously needs to do better in terms of any kind of representation. 

The lack of diversity makes me rate the series as a whole at 4 stars. I think Cinder, Cress, and Winter each rate  4 stars on their own as well. Scarlet was my least favorite of the series and I give it 3 stars. 

I read these four books via audiobook. The narrator, Rebecca Soler, did a good job. Maybe a tad over emotional in some places where it wasn’t really warranted. But overall she was a decent narrator though I don’t think she will ever be one of my favorites. 

I definitely recommend the series to all who love fairy tales and a good sci-fi space opera. It hits all those spots.

The Magnificent Nine

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Book cover with a woman in silhouette holding a shotgun upright, a man in the foreground with a yellow hat with earflaps

The Magnificent Nine by James Lovegrove

Genre: sci-fi

I read it as a(n): hardback

Length: 331 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Temperance McCloud, an old flame of Jayne Cobb, lives a quiet life with her daughter on Thetis, a far off settler’s planet. Until Elias Vandal and his gang of Scourers come to her town of Coogan’s Bluff, that is. Vandal sets himself up as the ruler of Thetis and he’s going to enforce that position by taking control of all the water on the desert-like planet. Temperance convinces Jayne and the crew of Serenity to come to their aid. But not everything is what it seems, including Temperance’s daughter…Jane.

This novel was so fun, just life an episode of Firefly in print. There really wasn’t anything too special about the plot; if you paid attention, there really weren’t any surprises and you know of course that the crew are all going to survive. But it doesn’t matter because it is just fun to read and it’s a bit of nostalgia to reunite with a beloved cast from a greatly missed show. 

I know there are other books in the series and I’m going to read them all. But I hope there will be more as well. There are books for Mal, Jayne, Inara, Zoe, and River. But what about Wash, Kaylee, Simon, and Book? A couple of the others seem to be ensemble books featuring the whole crew equally but it would be awesome if the rest of the crew could each get their own story to finish out the novels. Probably it won’t happen, but as the saying goes, if wishes were horses, we’d all be eating steak.

Favorite lines:

  • “Just tell me this: when did a shipload of criminals, desperadoes, and fugitives become such a bunch of do-gooders?”

Inara had the answer. “When their captain showed them how” (42).

  • They’ll pick up a half-dozen, maybe a dozen recruits each time. Folks who fancy being on the winning team. Folks who were perhaps never that popular in their hometown. The dregs, the losers. They see something they like in the Scourers and they latch onto it (66). [Just like a certain political group I can think of.]
  • “That was a good dodge, that one,” Jayne said. “We printed up Miles Davis labels and stuck ’em on Kenny G vinyl” (86). 
  • Seriously, keep this up and I’ll rip your arm out of its socket and beat you to death with the wet end (93).
  • I fought at Serenity Valley. It ain’t about optimism. It’s about doin’ what’s right even when everything’s stacked against you (143).

2022 Reound-Up

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book with white and yellow flowers sticking outNot entirely sure how it’s already 2023. I still think it ought to be 2020 and we get a do-over for it!

Here is a quick review of my year in books and a couple things I’m looking forward to in 2023. I hope you all had a lovely holiday of your choice!

2022 Stats:

  • 62 books read
    • 10 books DNFed
  • 15,851 pages total read
  • 280 hours 18 min listened
  • 44 physical print books
  • 2 digital books
  • 27 audiobooks
  • 33 male authors
  • 42 female authors

Black and white drawing of a woman in Victorian clothes reading an open book

Favorite books:

  • Leviathan Falls (The Expanse #9) by James S.A. Corey. Somehow, I managed not to write a blog post about this one. My bad! But this was a perfect end to the series. It totally stuck the landing. 
  • Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
  • Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson
  • Matrix by Lauren Groff
  • Hyperion by Dan Simmons
  • Revenant (Deep Space 9) by Alex White
  • Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher
  • Ejaculate Responsibly by Gabrielle Blair
  • These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
  • A Rover’s Story by Jasmine Warga
  • Our Violent Ends by Chloe Gong
  • Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. Haven’t written about this one either. But y’all, stop eating octopuses! They are problem-solving smart. I can almost guarantee they are smarter than at least some of the people you know. 

Favorite audiobooks:

Favorite experiences:

  • Summer trip to Spokane
  • Going to Gammage to see Six the Musical

Looking forward to in 2023:

  • I would like to take a trip with my kid to someplace I’ve never been before, just the two of us. I’m thinking maybe Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
  • Getting my TBR Reading Challenge started. I want to see how many books I can clear from my TBR pile. There are hundreds. I have a plan for my TBR in general but and also using this specific TBR challenge from Running Along the Shelves and this general challenge from The Nerd Daily to help me as well.
  • Working on making my home as plastic-free as possible. By this time next year, I would like this to be a done deal.

fantasy scene of tall tunnel of bookcases filled with clouds, some birds, and the sun at the top of the tunnel

The Leavers

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Red book cover with a blurred man's face in the background. The text reads The Leavers A Novel by Lisa Ko

The Leavers by Lisa Ko

Genre: contemporary fiction/ literary 

I read it as a(n): hardback

Length: 335 pp

Her Grace’s rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Peilan “Polly” Guo arrives in NYC at the age of 19, pregnant and in debt up to her eyeballs to a loan shark. She left her small village in China to come to America for a better life as so many people have before her. She has her son, Deming, and works at various jobs to support him, living first in what is basically a flophouse with a dozen other women and then with her boyfriend, Leon; his sister, Vivian; and Vivian’s son, Michael. One day, Polly goes to work and doesn’t come home. Eventually, Deming is given into the foster system and adopted by the Wilkersons, a white couple living in rural upstate New York, who promptly rename him Daniel. Over the years, Deming/Daniel struggles to fit in anywhere and is haunted by the thought that his mother abandoned him.

There’s a lot we can say about this book. It is hard to organize my thoughts about it concisely so I probably won’t try too hard. But first, I thought it was just an ok novel. The book was technically well written, Ko did everything right in crafting the tale she had to tell. I just didn’t like it as well as I wanted to. It wasn’t a bad book at all, and I did like a lot about it. But I didn’t love it, and that was disappointing. 

It addresses the obvious themes of immigration and belonging, playing with the concept of home in some interesting ways. Deming, though American by birth, spent his first several years in China being cared for by Peilin’s father. He didn’t remember America before that so he felt at home in China. He felt somewhat at home in NYC with his mother once he got to know her again, but mostly that was because of their close bond. Home is where your mama is, after all. But he felt out of place in society at large, and far more so once the Wilkersons adopted him. Peilin, too, never quite fit in, partly because her English wasn’t very good and she had difficulty communicating, and partly because she didn’t fit the mold of the stereotypical Chinese woman. She’s loud and brash and fiery, and a lot of people don’t know what to do with all that. 

Peilin’s story was sad and, I suspect, mirrors the stories of thousands of immigrants. People talk about coming to America to make a better life for themselves. The American Dream, as it were. And yes, I would rather live here than in China or many other places. But I think emphasis needs to be placed upon dream in that phrase because the American Dream is really more of a pipedream than anything resembling reality. It isn’t real. Peilan wanted adventure and excitement in her life, not tedium and sameness. She went from a small village to a larger city, working in what sounded like a sweatshop and living in a dormitory of other women, on to NYC, where she also seemed to have worked in a sweatshop and piled in with a shitload of other women in a small apartment, all while owning tens of thousands of dollars to a loan shark who said he could get her legal immigration status. Really nothing changed for her, and I think I could argue that it in fact got worse for her in America. She was still working shit jobs day in and day out like she was in China. Only in America, she was also under a crushing debt while working insane hours for slave wages and hardly got to see her own child. And she was in a society that viewed her with suspicion or disdain and who didn’t speak her language. That sounds more like a nightmare to me, not a dream. 

Lisa Ko made Deming see music in color, which I thought was different. I think that condition is synesthesia, where you use one sense but process it through another. He hears music but sees colors in varying intensities, depending on what kind of music he’s listening to. It didn’t seem to be a huge component of the story, but I wonder if it was supposed to be part of the reason why Deming wasn’t a good student ever. Even before Peilan disappeared and he was happy, Deming was struggling in school and either the school lacked the resources to help him or lacked the desire to help him. Either way, I thought it was an interesting addition to the story.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I hated the Wilkersons. I thought they were just gross. I felt deeply that they adopted Deming so they could say they adopted a non-white, underprivileged person and saved him from whatever horrible life they imagined he had before they managed to save him. They acted like they were fucking White Saviors. If I met people like them in real life, I would expect that they would say things to goad others into congratulating them on how accepting they are, how good they are to have adopted a kid who was older and a person of color to boot. Living in a rural area as they did, it was like they were putting Deming on display like an object, and he was certain to be noticed since he was one of only two people of color in the area that I noticed (his friend Roland, who was half Hispanic, was the second POC in town). Anyway, the Wilkersons take Deming and shove him into a fancy school and, when he’s college age, expect him to study what they want and go into the career they think he ought to. There is a heavy overtone of “you owe us” in their actions, a sense of obligation like Deming is indebted to them for adopting him and giving him what they consider to be a better life. I don’t feel like they actually loved him, just that they wanted to raise him up, as it were, and then make him follow in their footsteps even though he doesn’t want to, simply because he owes them.

I primarily blame the Wilkersons for Deming’s terrible choices. He is a gambling addict, which I know is a disease. He can’t help it. But the gambling, the drinking, the crappy grades, and the general failure to launch, I place that largely on the Wilkersons. There is no indication that they got Deming into therapy (if he did, then I’ve already completely forgotten that part!). Seems to me that if you adopt an older child who was abandoned and who has very recent memories of his mother you would want to get him into therapy for that. Childhood abandonment will fuck you up. It might make you feel you are not worthy of love which might manifest in, I don’t know, poor school performance or addiction. But they just dragged him to church with them right off the bat, like that’s going to help anyone, and then bemoaned their lot in their academic life. That was another thing – the Wilkersons are both professors at the local university and their whole relationship seems based on research and publishing and being very stereotypical elitist shits deep in some weird academia wankfest. It’s no wonder so many people hate liberal elites. If they were all like the Wilkersons, I’d hate liberal elites, too.

Anyway, I did like the book in general. There were a lot of great parts and vivid scenes. I got a glimpse of some elements of Chinese culture and the immigration experience, which was horrifying. No one should have to go through all that. I think it is an important book and feel that a lot of people need to read it. I just didn’t love it, and actively hated several characters.

We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

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Book cover with a blue outer space background, asteroids, and two spaceships. The text reads We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

Genre: sci-fi

I read it as a(n): audiobook

Narrator: Ray Porter

Length: 07:57:00

Her Grace’s rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Bob Johansson signs papers that ensure he will be cryogenically frozen and then brought back to life after his death, once the technology allows such things. The day after he signs the papers, he gets creamed by a bus. When he wakes up about 150 years in the future, he is his old self only his mind has been incorporated into a ship. His mission is to go into space and look for habitable planets for humans to colonize, making copies of himself along the way for various projects. Along the way, Bob and his various copies (all with different names chosen because otherwise that would be madness) find planets, discover sentient life, entire new ecospheres, and generally try to recreate the United Federation of Planets. 

I thought this was an ok story. It was fun and in parts funny (though maybe that was more due to Porter’s narration than anything else), but overall I didn’t really see what all the hype was about. Sentient ships are nothing new, nor is colonizing planets, first contact, or just about anything else in this. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it and it was fun overall. Just not anything really to write home about. 

By far the best part about it, for me, was the continuance of Star Trek into the future. Bob, as a 21st century nerd, was reared on Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG, SG1, and a million other sci-fi shows and books. I loved the multitude of homages to all the sci-fi nerddom culture. 

Porter’s performance was, as always, superb. He has excellent comic timing and tone. 

I don’t know if it was a function of listening to this rather than eyeball reading it, but I had a really hard time keeping the Bobs separate. I know they’re all copies of the original Bob but they weren’t sufficiently different for me to tell them apart. I couldn’t keep track of who was at Delta Eridani with the Deltans or who was headed back to Sol to see what shape the Earth and humans were in – was it Riker!Bob or Bob!Bob or Milo!Bob or a different Bob? They were supposed to have different missions and thoughts but I felt that they were not actually different enough to tell them apart. Maybe it would have been easier if I had eyeball read it. 

Also, there were, like, two women in the entire book for just a couple pages each, and zero diversity. Apparently everyone in the future is white? It’s just a white gut cloning himself over and over, which I’m sure is a fantasy of many of them, especially boring rich dudes *coughelonmuskcough* but for the rest of us, it’s not something we really want to read about. Honestly, authors. At this point, you should know better. That changed my rating from a 3-star ehhh to a 2-star cringe.

As it is, while I liked this story all right, I didn’t like it enough to get the next two installations in the trilogy. I felt this one had sufficient closure at the end to forego the rest of them. If my public library had them, I would consider reading them and finishing out the series, but they don’t have ANY of Taylor’s books, so I’ll just consider this a one and done series.