Too Like the Lightning, Ada Palmer

Well, what a ride! I expected to love this one, from the company it’s been keeping, and it’s certainly a complex book with a lot of moving parts, some of which I really appreciated… and others which felt weird or even viscerally discomforting to me. I feel like this is one where I almost don’t want to judge it at all until I’ve read the sequels, because the sequels are so necessary to evaluate the plot and get all the revelations that make things fall into place… but I’m also not sure I want to invest the time into them in case the potential doesn’t realise itself and I’m left feeling just as ambivalent.

Let’s start with what the book is even about: Too Like the Lightning takes the form of a document prepared by a man called Mycroft Canner, with the help of some of the other people involved in the events it discusses. It’s set in an attempt at a utopian society of hyper-individual people, where laws are imposed by agreements and a flying car system connects the world with such speed that geography is no longer a divider. There are all kinds of new-to-us social groupings: with the most important being the bash’, a sort of intentional family of like-minded people which may or may not raise children, and the Hive. Hives include Humanists, Cousins, etc, each Hive having different aims and priorities.

There’s all kinds of philosophy underlying this world, and I felt very at sea with that. I have studied some philosophy, but only for a year, and none of the philosophers mentioned here; sometimes I’ve read their literature (Voltaire), and that helped a little. I did wonder if I’d feel more at home in Palmer’s world if I had done the prerequisite reading on philosophy.

There is also not a little theological debate, because on top of all the SF elements, there is a boy who can literally make toys come to life with a touch. A major element of the story also revolves around the work of sensayers, who help people discuss ethics and theology in private (any kind of public proselytising is illegal). And then (no, I’m not done describing the basics of this world), the societies are all basically genderless and use ‘they’ pronouns… but the narrator has definite opinions on this and assigns pronouns to people based on gender stereotyping (a nurturing type is obviously a “she” to him).

That latter is part of what skeeves me out with this book. I’m not sure to what degree it is meant to be about Mycroft himself, though the central importance of other characters who enjoy presenting in a gendered way despite the non-gendered society kind of gets to me as well. The way they do at times verges on sexual assault, to my mind: aggressively in your face gendered sexuality, enforcing traditional gender roles whether the person you’re speaking to is willing or not — perhaps this bothers me so much because I would adore the ungendered world Palmer presents and then has these characters transgress against. Do what you like for yourself, but “aggressively flirting” is not actually your gender identity and your right to do that stops where my body and my comfort begin.

All the politics and all the theology plots are not in the slightest resolved by the end of the book, though, and leaving all of that hanging leaves me unable to form my opinion on whether the gender politics aspect is just gross or integral to the story. Likewise all kinds of other things.

In terms of characters, Mycroft is awful, and the same applies: I’d need to know the motivation behind his past crimes and what he is doing in shaping his narrative in order to judge whether I’m okay with having read all this, and… I don’t know if I want to read on. It’s a bit of a conundrum. There is a lot of fascinating social commentary here, and many elements I really want to learn the answers to. But at the same time… ewwww.

[I wrote this review a month ago and set it aside to stew over a bit longer. I don’t disagree with anything I said before, but I’ve lowered my rating by a star. I don’t think this series is for me.]

Rating: 2/5

In the Night Wood, Dale Bailey

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: literature professor is married with a kid and decides to have an affair anyway. Something terrible happens as a result, and the poor thing must live with the consequences.

Myeah, my sympathies with this book were low from the outset: infidelity is one thing I can’t really abide in most situations, and Generic Literature Professor is a wishy-washy example. He doesn’t have much strength of character to mark him out from the crowd, and he’s so forgettable I can’t remember his name and I finished this book less than an hour ago. (The back copy reminds me that the name is Charles.)

So anyway, with that set-up, Charles and Erin get a letter from England informing them that Erin is the last of a long family line, and do they want to take possession of the family house? So they go. Erin’s mental health is dreadful, and she travels with most of the contents of a pharmacy (how does she replenish her stocks when a UK doctor would not provide those meds or in that quantity? Unclear, she never sees a doctor for them) and self-medicates with wine. Charles starts to investigate the mysteries of the creepy house and surrounding wood, fails to share things with Erin, and is tempted multiple times to start affairs with every woman he meets. He’s always very aware of the scent and warmth of their skin, etc.

There are lots of rather generic ancient-fantasy-encroaching-on-reality descriptions, like this:

The present seemed to lie lightly on the land here, as though the narrow span of gray road, where the solicitor’s car hove momentarily into view at the crest of each new ridge, might simply melt away like a light dusting of snow, unveiling the bones of an older, sterner world.

This is supposed to be near Harrogate. I can assure you that Harrogate is as modern as anywhere else in Britain, and you will not melt away into a fairytale driving anywhere just outside Harrogate, especially not having just come off a busy roundabout.

Naturally, something creepy involving child sacrifice is going on, etc, etc, you’ve heard this story before.

I didn’t know how little I cared for it until I started trying to describe it. It’s not that it isn’t well written, though it ventures a tad towards the purple for something that’s describing fucking Harrogate. It’s a quick enough read, but. I… am profoundly unimpressed.

Rating: 2/5

The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí Clark

In this novella, well, there’s a tram car, and it’s haunted! Sort of. Agents Onsi and Hamed are called in to a mysterious case of a haunted tram. So far, so routine (for them, if not for the reader). Onsi and Hamed have to figure out what exactly is “haunting” the tram car, and how to get rid of it, against a backdrop of a steampunky aesthetic in an alternate reality Cairo. I’m not sure if I’m even mentally dating the setting right; these things run straight out of my head if it’s mentioned at all, and it’s made more difficult by the magic and supernatural beings that are served up against the backdrop of women getting the vote in Cairo. So very likely I am missing some clevernesses in the setting.

As a whole, this didn’t work as well for me as The Black God’s Drums, but it’s enjoyable and the setting is great. I feel like I’d have liked it more with a more substantial plot, or rather that there seemed to be more plot in there trying to get out, which went unresolved; it wrapped up rather suddenly, and I have such questions about stuff that was barely featured! What’s up with Abla? She seems so significant, and yet she just sort of conveniently keeps setting the male protagonists on the right path and then drawing back from the story. I didn’t fall for the male leads in the way I remember falling for just about everything in The Black God’s Drums, which is also part of it.

Very enjoyable, though — I’d love to read more in the same world.

Rating: 3/5

Strange Practice, Vivian Shaw

Yep, I reread it again.

Strange Practice is a delight of a book which grows (it seems to me, anyway) from a question: “What do monsters do when they get sick?” And then, “What kind of ailments would they have, anyway?” Greta Helsing (yes, a descendent of that Helsing) is a doctor who specialises in the diseases of the monstrous. Mummies with decaying bones, ghouls with depression, banshees with sore throats — and vampires with concerning stab wounds they somehow aren’t recovering from. Which is where the story starts, really, and from where Greta plunges into a fight to protect the monstrous of London.

The reason I find it so delightful is because it has so much heart. I know “hopepunk” is typically considered to be more on the scientific end of spec-fic, but this book fits the bill for me. It shouldn’t be radical when Greta says that it is her duty to help and heal the monstrous, regardless of what they have done. But it is — her caring is radical, and a message I think is deeply necessary when Britain is splintering in the way it is. Has probably always been necessary, because humans are far too prone to drawing sharp lines.

I also enjoy that Greta is a deeply capable doctor, and that she relies on the people around her to do things that aren’t medical. However much she wants to be a hero (or at least doesn’t want to be the one left behind wondering how the heroes are doing), her first priority is the importance she has in the community. She knows that if they lose her, they lose something they need, and so she accepts the need for her companions to go and face the Big Bad without her.

Speaking of her companions… it is also delightful to follow Sir Edmund Ruthven and Varney the Vampyre around modern London. I adore the way the book deals with their long lives — Varney with much melancholy and hibernation, Ruthven by learning new skills constantly. Including, for example, latte art. Also, he drove an ambulance during the Blitz. There are so many delightful details in the way Shaw brings these characters to life.

This was the third time I read this book, because I was feeling down and glum and needed to whole-heartedly enjoy something which wasn’t grim, or cynical, or angry. This was an excellent choice, once more, and I heartily recommend it.

Rating: 5/5