Book Review: Circe by Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller is in the same league as Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze) and Kate Tempest (Brand New Ancients). Circe's perspective as a mother is the most compelling part of this book. The parts about her relationship with her parents and siblings, and about her sorcery, all feel like something I've heard before, but her relationship with her son feels urgent and vital. Maybe I've just had too many isolated underdog stories lately, but I'd prefer to know more about her positive relationships than her negative ones. Of the other characters, Odysseus is particularly well drawn: it's a long time before he's named, but it's clear he's a magnetic and brilliant (and cunning) personality. Telemachus is fascinating, too, and is very different from his father. Come to think of it, the brief role Icarus plays in the story is another standout moment, so parents and children are a strong theme here. The story itself avoids the problems of pacing that go with a story of exile, although the conclusion feels faded, just like the myths do at that point. I prefer Tempest's mix of today and yesterday, and I think myth isn't quite represented by Miller the way it really works, but as a novel set in a mythical context, this worked.

Book Review: One Day in December by Josie Silver

In my quest to read interesting books off other people's best-of lists regardless of genre, I recently listened to One Day in December. I don't know what section it would be in at Barnes and Noble, and that's probably for the best. It's a story about a woman who sees a man at a bus stop, falls in love, then a few months later her best friend brings him home as her new boyfriend. This could definitely go either way, and it definitely does. Some scenes verge on plot contrivance and romance-novel purple prose. However, those scenes are few and far between, and there's more originality and strong writing here than I expected. One of the strengths of the book is Silver writes (mostly) convincingly from the man's perspective too, and flips between the two perspectives expertly to hide things and create tension as well as to reveal. Most of the central plot points are driven by character and logical progressions rather than coincidence. I especially like how the conflicts between characters are set up with that inevitability that you see coming but hope won't happen nonetheless. It's hard to write a story in which a relationship is developed for more than a decade, revealing, advancing, putting up barriers, people changing, etc. That's something only a book can do convincingly, and I think this book does that. Silver is also aware of ALL the movies and tropes (Love Actually is referenced in the first few pages), and while I would prefer it challenges more of them, I think it at least captures the zeitgeist so that someone could analyze and challenge the tropes from the outside (don't get me started on the Girardian rivalry of the best friend duo). So, yes, I can see why this was on someone's best-of list. Though it's not in the center of my own Venn diagram, it had its moments and told its story well.

Book Review: The Stone Sky by NK Jemisin

No spoilers here, but it's nice to be blown away again. I found the second book in this trilogy underwhelming, but the third one is outstanding but in a different way from the first. If the first book plunges you into three converging stories about a post-apocalyptic world with an allusively thermodynamic kind of magic, then the third book finally shows you the pre-apocalyptic world with an allusively magical kind of science. (Note that you could actually shift the labels "magic" and "science" and get almost the same sentence I just wrote.)

This third book is apocalyptic in the real, deep sense of the world, that of pulling back the veil to show you that an apparently wonderful world is built on exploitation and cruelty. There's a real question of whether this world is even worth saving. The harrowing bloody foundations of the world cut deep and linger long after the story is done. In this dark context, the simple acts of love do stand out (though I wish there was more of it, but I wish that in real life too).

Halfway through, Jemisin writes "If you love someone you don’t get to choose how they love you back." If the book had reflected or expanded more on this astounding quote, if it had been set in a world in which that truth was baked into the bones of its universe, as I believe it is in OUR universe, this book might have climbed up to one of my all-time favorites. As it is, it follows the strands in its own sort of fallen, silent universe and adds everything up well.

Even now I ask, is this a sci-fi or fantasy novel? I continue to think of it as sci-fi, but in practice it ends up working like fantasy. And the stubborn insistence of my brain to call this sci-fi may account for my misgivings about the world. I'm frustrated by the ways in which this world is impossible, because it's so realistic in so many other ways, and its revolutionary message is diluted by the fact that it's ultimately a dualistic, even Gnostic world, and it is definitely not our world. Because I don't think creation really works that way deep down, I can't completely enter into the world or its characters. Because the way the world works is a fantasy, I think I must classify this as fantasy deep down. (Though there are some interesting parallels in the ways in which Jemisin and James S.A. Corey both embrace a sort of panpsychic universe when explaining consciousness. I don't think that works in the end but I absolutely allow that it's the second-best philosophical option over simple materialism.)

This gives enough detail and history that I think some day I'd like to sit down and compare this series, The Expanse (by Corey), and our actual universe, to show just how I think our universe is truly "very good" relative to the other options and philosophies ... but that will have to wait for another day. For today, I will affirm that this book is very much worth the hype, even if I don't know exactly which shelf to put it on.

Book Review: Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey

My spoiler-free review can be summed up in one image: I received this 531-page book on paper at a very busy time in life, and yet somehow still finished it in less than a week. It's a satisfying continuation of the story of The Expanse, and keeps the pace up after a previous book that was a little slow. It also sets up Book #9 very nicely. The science in the sci-fi reveals a few more things about the overall arc of the story, and I like how they do it. Even the aliens are super-weird but in a way that's consistent with quantum physics and what we know about the universe. The mystery of consciousness is one of the fundamental themes, and now that I see where they're going, I admire what they've done (though I disagree on philosophical and theological points). Not to mention one of My Favorite Things, convergent evolution, makes more appearances than it has since Book #4. This book is about the underdog vs. the (sort of) evil empire and there's two indelible scenes I will remember long after I've put down the last book: the empty space ring scene and the woman vs. machine scene both wowed me as much as anything in any of the books. More than anything, I found myself admiring the craft of how the authors dole out information: they out-splash the best final splash pages of comics in chapter after chapter. Even as they telegraph the future to the attentive reader, it doesn't feel predictable, it feels like you're in on the joke. This story has a fantastic shape so far, and even if they don't quite stick the landing in the upcoming ultimate volume, The Expanse is going to be one of my all-time favorite epics.

Book Review: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

I hate to break it to you, but this story isn't all that remarkable. It's more like an old story updated to the 21st century, the story of The Mysterious Artifact and the Puzzle Posed to All Humanity. What it gets better than I expected was the hall of mirrors that is mimickry and rivalry on social media, and how it can lead you into an addiction to likes, views, and clicks. The hollow nature of fame and the cost of constant self-branding, acting as Dr. Henry Higgins on yourself, that strikes home and even resonates with the writing of My Favorite Intellectual This Year (Rene Girard). It's truly insightful about modern communication, and if the author dared to be a little more critical of his own characters, and become a little more satirical, this could almost touch the hem of writing like Stendahl's. But the other parts of the story don't work so well. The Puzzle Posed to All Humanity is OK but feels far too much like Ready Player One. At least here it's decidedly not the main point. The fact that it feels so half-hearted is kind of charming, and some of the puzzles involve chemistry, so that will always get you extra credit with me. The real disappointment to me was how it deals with relationships. Nothing in the attraction or flirting even seems to approach actual selflessness or love, and none of the other characters seems real, even when one narrates a short section himself. I know that we're dealing with a flawed central character, but I find the whole scene and set of assumptions to be lifeless and discouraging, and the "everyone loves her" element that drives the plot annoys me rather than intrigues me. There's no evidence that she's earned admiration for anything but a pretty face, and you can't write about a pretty face and expect the reader to buy it. The real problem is deeper in the well. Characters have freedom to do anything they want and it destroys and deflates romantic tension rather than enhances it. Oh, and don't expect anything of the sci-fi to be explained satisfactorily. They really should retitle this book, and I should stop writing before I talk myself out of the three-star review for the Girardian themes alone.

Book Review: Christians at the Cross by NT Wright

This little book of sermons was fruitful for me, which is all the more striking because I found this by chance, needing some reading material in a pinch on Good Friday. It's a window into NT Wright's pastoral side: his messages to a neglected community during Holy Week. I'm familiar with the main points of his speaking, but seeing them adapted to a specific group of parishoners brings them alive in a new way. Also, most of these sermons pair a passage from the gospel of John with a passage from Isaiah, and they sent me back to read the Servant Songs of Isaiah more fully. In this context, they came alive for me in a new way as well. The Servant is a teacher, and we see his thoughts and doubts transparently, as well as his conviction that God is near and God will save. That spoke to me most of all, and isn't the point of Holy Week to hear God's word in a new way?

Book Review: The Fall of Gondolin by JRR Tolkien

With this book, Christopher Tolkien's repackaging of his father's legendarium should be complete. Although there have been versions of Beowulf, Sigurd, and even Lancelot from Tolkien's old cabinets, the books like this centered on Middle-Earth form a trilogy, and each has a purpose: The Children of Hurin shows Tolkien's tragic roots, Beren and Luthien shows his heart, and The Fall of Gondolin shows his trajectory.

The Fall of Gondolin doesn't have any of Beren and Luthien's crystalline, transcendent moments, nor does it have any of The Children of Hurin's depth of narrative or mythological resonance. What it does have is both early Tolkien and late Tolkien telling the same story, so you can contrast his growth as a writer. The last version of the story was written after Tolkien completed The Lord of the Rings and leaves off in 1951 at a low point for him, when he despaired that his grand story would never be told. But the last version has some turns of phrase and imaginative inventions that only Tolkien can really pull off.

The first half of the book only shines in contrast with the last half. The real surprise for me was in the retellings of the story of Earendel at the very end of the book, because those put Tolkien's theodicy and eschatology -- what's wrong with Middle-Earth and how it will all be fixed (basically the Purpose of Middle-Earth) -- more clearly than even the Silmarillion does, possibly because they're repeated and redrafted in quick succession. I KNEW why the Elves had to leave Middle-Earth, but I had forgotten, and now I'll never forget again. It's a revelation that I believe puts to rest all the misgivings people have about Tolkien's old-fashioned talk about bloodlines and light vs. dark. If Peter Jackson had this book (and paid attention to it), I'm convinced the Hobbit movies would actually have been good.

So this is a fitting conclusion to Tolkien, and this trilogy is far more approachable and digestible than the Silmarillion. It scratched my Tolkien itch, probably for the last time (with new material). Guess it's time to start reading it again, then.