A whole bunch of book reviews
Jul. 17th, 2022 01:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silverflight8Some short reviews of books I read. Also I would like to point out that a lot of these I did read for book club - if it's really low rated I probably read it for book club. Life is too short, I usually ditch stuff I don't like.
City of Bones - Martha Wells
I really liked this book - one of Martha Wells from early on in her career, but I don't think I've read a Martha Wells I've disliked. It's set in a post-apocalypse desert, and the city the protagonist Khat lives in is split into layers based on wealth, but it's better than living in the inhospitable waste. He and his partner sell relics for a living. But he gets entangled into the politics of the wardens, who have magic and want relics to help improve their power.
The whole setting is engagingly absorbing and Khat straddles a very fine line - mostly tolerated in the city, but of a different human than those in the cities, far better adapted to the desert, and treated in different ways depending on what the other person wants from him. I think Wells is good at and writes a lot of protagonists who are very different from those around them, usually obviously and visibly, not just culturally (Moon and Murderbot both). The relics trade and the discover of the weird Ancients' technology in the desert is also interesting, although now that I think about it, is also a common theme in Wells' writing. The motif that there was once a civilization that had all this knowledge and tech, but that a catastrophe wiped it out and the survivors are just picking out and salvaging what they can, is also a pretty common one in fantasy, but I like Wells' take on it. The relics get sold in a complex black/grey market and Khat has to take precautions because of his status and to avoid being noticeable.
A College of Magics - Caroline Stevermer
This never cohered into a satisfying novel for me, and midway through when I was wondering if anyone else felt this way I read a review on GR from Zen Cho and her words kept going round my head too. It starts with Faris Nalleen arriving at Greenlaw College, attended by guards, trying to force her way in and not be accepted. She's the heir to Galazon and her she thinks her uncle Brinker is going to try to steal her inheritance.
The first half of the book is set at the college, which she unsurprisingly does enter. It's not very satisfying because apparently, magic cannot be taught. Therefore, we get no content about the classes, and not much college life either, although we get told that she joins this circle of students who study together. Instead, the Dean just tells a student that tonight they will hold a vigil and then afterwards, they either have magic or they don't. Faris is loudly skeptical of this but the effects of the vigil are marked and when she undergoes it, she has a revelation of sorts and does have magic. When she stumbles back down in the morning, she comes across her enemy trying to destroy her protector - who she has turned into a cat - and the ensuing magical fight gets both of them more or less expelled. The second half takes place back home, and Faris tries to convince the king (their liege lord) that she is the heir to Galazon, while she is assigned as Galazon's ambassador.
Both halves of the book are rather unsatisfactory. In a university-set story the joy is the student life and the classes and the MAGIC. I like fantasy! I like magic! I read fantasy for a reason - I want to hear about the fantastic element and setting it in a university is a perfect excuse! The characterization is weirdly thin, except for Faris, who is pretty determined (always a plus for me) but everyone else is just so strangely flat. It feels like there are six characters or so, even though it's a fairly substantial novel length-wise. Just not much to really get into, and the big fight at the end hinges on magic, which again we didn't get any information about, so it's just a lot of various descriptive language and no emotional impact.
The prose was also very unoriginal. I have no idea what people are talking about regarding sparkling wit. It feels more uneven than anything else. It's a Ruritanian romance - in a cold climate, Faris really misses snow (this at least I feel sympathy with) - but not much grounding in Europe, even though it's set there. So it feels adrift instead. I think you can ground a book by nailing emotional beats, or setting, or character, but it missed the mark for me on all of them.
I read several books about the southwestern deserts - A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and the North American Deserts by Edmund C Jaeger. Actually I guess I mostly just browsed the second, but the first was a whole collection of essays on all aspects of the Sonoran desert: the geology, weather, physics, and biological life, flora and fauna (reptiles, insects, fish, mammals, birds). Of course, I read the bird section with greatest interest, but a lot of the essays were very interesting and informative. I read it after I came back from Arizona, in true myself fashion, but that helped make the facts stick better and it was nice to re-visit some of the birds I saw.
Light from Uncommon Stars - Ryda Aoki
This book has a bunch of storylines - one follows Katrina Nguyen, a teenaged trans kid running away with her violin. The second follows Shizuka Satomi, acclaimed violin teacher, once a prodigy herself, but who made a deal with the demon and who has to deliver seven perfect violinist souls to the devil; she is searching for the seventh. There's also Lan Tran, who is a starship captain fleeing a blight from her home universe, and who is running a donut shop; there's also Lucy, descended from a family of violin repairers who don't believe women are capable of the work.
First I think I should warn you that there are a lot of slurs in this book. I say this because I personally would have appreciated a heads up - there's an incredible diversity of slurs represented and I didn't really enjoy reading that, or all the hate spewed by some of the other characters. To be clear, Aoki is entitled to include them; I just felt each was a really unpleasant surprise.
This book tries to do way too much at once, and tries to tackle a ton of very heavy topics as well, which always has the effect on me of making them feel like they're dealt with trivially. Just look at all those storylines. Each one is sufficient to fill out a novel and more, and they all happen at the same time, and the perspective jumps constantly, so immersion is also pretty shot. Katrina runs away from home because her family doesn't accept her gender identity, and after leaving some friend's couch, she plays some violin in a park and Satomi runs across her there. Satomi takes Katrina in immediately, and starts to teach her violin. Meanwhile Satomi goes to this donut shop and starts a romance with Lan the extra-terrestrial captain, who has a bunch of children - one of which is an AI. Satomi is being pressured by the demon to serve Katrina up already, so Katrina's journey to become an excellent violinist forms the arc of the plot.
The most unsatisfying part of this book is that it wants to treat everything super seriously, but also wants to cram in a thousand concepts and be comforting and uplifting and zany. There is a lot of really unpleasant stuff in this book, and even one or two of them - like Katrina being forced to cam for money, getting groped, her parents and others hurting her physically, etc, would be sufficient to anchor the story emotionally. But because there is so much to do, the narrative just states it and goes right on. Katrina never really reacts, trusts quite easily, and is emotionally extremely even-keeled. I don't demand realism from novels that are playing Rule of Cool, Rule of Look How Competent and Hot This Person Is, Rule of Whimsy, Dragons Are Just The Best, and so on. But I do demand it when you want to show me how horrible the world is, how cruel it can be. Don't print the sewage of the internet hate machine on the page and then give me insubstantial hand-waved niceness! Satomi and her house-servant (utterly devoted to Satomi) just accept Katrina, immediately. Lan and Satomi's relationship is also pretty worn-smooth, even though their personalities would suggest that they would probably clash a little, at least. Lan is a starship captain, has family, and is accustomed to being obeyed; Satomi has been alive for a much longer time than other humans, is struggling under a very upsetting burden she can't speak about, and also has cultivated a very biting and aloof persona. And the fun of reading romance is seeing the sparks and conflict and then the resolution, for which there is very little. The issue of Lan's child's personhood (an AI that Lan created) comes up quickly as an issue and then is resolved by Simply Accepting. I can think of several great books that deal with personhood in SF that were excellent explorations of this - but the difference is there are coherent stories and much more room to explore this in ways that were fun, not practically scripts for how to tell your child you accept them.
All this made the ending feel rather trite too. I guess you can't really call it deus ex machina, since Lan's technology is just insanely beyond ours and has been clear from the beginning, but no one had to make a hard decision. Everyone wins! Yay. Sure. That totally felt earned.
In idiosyncrasies which may just apply to me - I don't really like most media about musicians, because they tend to be insufferably twee about the making of music. Also there is sure a lot about super rare and old violins, and the relative quality and prestige of one's violin, which makes me want to roll my eyes so hard. This is partly because I'm a pianist and a vocalist and well, one doesn't expect to drag one's piano around, nor can one swap out a set of vocal cords, so while people definitely regard some pianos as better, it's not like having such and such piano means you rank higher or are subject to envy. You'll play whatever piano is at the hall. It's not really about the instrument!!! Having the fanciest Strad doesn't make you a better violinist!! Also the hype around them is just scarcity and good workmanship (for sure!) being used again to create a hierarchy - and also, practically as investment vehicles, the way fine art pieces are. In double-blind tests, people can't reliably tell them apart, but there are those who say that there is no way to replicate the sound of a Strad, and of course the pricing and acquisition one is therefore insane. There's also so much snobbishness about the competition circuit and, how do I put it? Yes, it's practically life and death from the inside, but it's the kind of life-and-death you feel when you're fourteen and failing this test is going to mean you're going to be ruined forever, it is the most important thing, there is no way to come back, the consequences are indefinable but unspeakably bad. I can't speak to the big name prestigious festivals, having never competed in them (or been close) but it just feels like they're so hyped up as so important when most people in the world don't even know about them and don't care. Also there are a lot of festivals - flip over any programme book at the musician biographies. Kind of like all the novels about librarians being saviours of the world. The audience is one that loves libraries, the author unsurprisingly loves libraries, but most people feel pretty unmoved by them. Being a bookworm is not like being a fan of football (either kind) - one is niche, the other one is so wildly popular it's assumed everyone cares, except a few cranks. The classical music world believes it is extremely important and I'm part of it, but it's really not that earth-shattering, and the circle is very small.
Also while I'm on the subject, more classical attitudes that irritate me (because I imbibed them as a child): yes, classical training sharpens your skills in ways that not training doesn't - trying to perform one of those pieces written to show off virtuosity will show your weaknesses immediately and embarrassingly. But it is heinously, laughably arrogant to regard it as the pinnacle of music. Human beings have been singing and creating music for thousands of years. Are we going to denigrate literally every other musician? What an insanely limited and myopic view of the world. Music is so much more than technical ability. So I find the whole scrabbling and scratching out the eyes of the competition so ridiculous. Yes, I do realize that doing well at festivals is the way to launch your career, etc. But I just can't find it compelling.
Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie
I enjoyed this one - it's a Poirot mystery. Miss Lemon, his secretary, brings a mystery to him via her sister, who runs a student dorm for many international students. People's possessions keep going missing or getting destroyed, and the list is a very strange one, full of completely unconnected objects.
Christie is very reliable for me, I really enjoy her stuff generally, although caveat as usual that she wrote in the early 20th century and there are also some very outdated and sometimes offensive views. However, I always enjoy Poirot's very kind and measured process, and the characterization notes are enjoyable. The way that Nigel goes about stealing four different kinds of poison is clever and the double replacement of the morphine is revealed in a genuinely funny way. And the letter from Nigel's father is very good.
The ultimate reason behind all the destruction is that there's a drug smuggling ring running - the students go abroad and come back and drugs are smuggled without their knowledge in their rucksacks, because they buy them from this particular seller. I'm happy to accept this explanation as part of the artificial environment most mysteries operate in, and it reminds me rather of the unreality of drug smuggling ring antics in Murder Must Advertise. It holds together, but as a businessman, would I really want to take this tack? The strength of this very complicated scheme is the mules don't know they're carrying the drugs, but it just seems like that advantage doesn't outweigh the serious concern that priceless drugs and jewels will be lost forever accidentally - slashed or destroyed from careless handling, forgetting, swapping, etc etc. Sensible drug cartels operate well without this!! Again this isn't exactly a criticism - if you start critiquing a murder mystery this way you will never enjoy one again, it's part of the form! - but just a thought I had after. I don't think a serious drug smuggler would try this. It's just too prone to losing you kajillions of dollars.
Hench - Natalie Zina Walschots
This is a book about superheros and follows Anna, who works as a hench for supervillans. One day she gets injured in a confrontation between a superhero and a villain and, being a contract freelancer, has almost zero recourse and is left to try to recover alone. She's mostly forgotten about, too. With nothing to do except to hole up in her friend's apartment and brood and recover, she starts a blog about the toll of superheroes, and comes to the attention of a mega supervillan, Leviathan, and is pulled into working for him. Leviathan treats her more like an employee, circa the era employers who housed their employees, provided the meals, etc - aka far more enmeshed in their lives, and to me a much creepier extent. Leviathan employs her to make life terrible for superheroes, a role Anna creates for herself, but then has a massive confrontation with a superhero and is taken away presumably dead.
This was written really engagingly - this was funny and at times really poignant. It pulls on some clear modern parallels. Anna, a contract/gig worker, just gets paid by the hour for her work, she has no benefits, so when she's injured (barely a footnote in the fight) when a fight unexpectedly breaks out, she's just got no health insurance and no one to back her up. Her friend takes her in and the interactions between her and her friend are honestly the most truest things in the book. June is extremely kind and lets Anna stay practically indefinitely in her apartment, but it's not big enough to accommodate them, Anna has no money, and June is understandably fed up and also worried about Anna blogging obsessively about the effects of superhero damage.
The book's a commentary on superheroes, and the collateral damage they create. Raising the stakes in a superhero story makes it more exciting, but of course, smashing out a whole skyscraper means millions in damages and human suffering, too. Anna's blog tries to quantify the damage done by superheroes in terms of lost years, and finds that the toll is staggering. Anna's relationships all suffer tremendously from her work with supervillains. But what weakens this is that the novel both critiques the damage that superheroes do, and then Anna wants to get back by being horrible to the superheroes, and causing her own subordinates harm by putting them in positions where they can get used as punching bags for superheroes. The last part of the novel also plays the superhero genre straight: it just makes Leviathan the hero that needs to be saved, because Anna cares for him. So what's left of Leviathan's staff go into hiding with Anna holding them together, and she enlists the superhero's girlfriend as an ally, because she's been doing the bulk of the lifting with the superhero getting the credit. The commentary on this is pretty biting - despite superhuman strength, the facade is brittle and much of the power is coming from his girlfriend, silently, and she's fed up and ripe for Anna to exploit.
I have mixed feelings. It was pretty enjoyable to read, although I didn't really buy Leviathan and Anna's romance, and it wanted to have its cake and eat it too.
OK I didn't get through as many as I wanted, more to come.
City of Bones - Martha Wells
I really liked this book - one of Martha Wells from early on in her career, but I don't think I've read a Martha Wells I've disliked. It's set in a post-apocalypse desert, and the city the protagonist Khat lives in is split into layers based on wealth, but it's better than living in the inhospitable waste. He and his partner sell relics for a living. But he gets entangled into the politics of the wardens, who have magic and want relics to help improve their power.
The whole setting is engagingly absorbing and Khat straddles a very fine line - mostly tolerated in the city, but of a different human than those in the cities, far better adapted to the desert, and treated in different ways depending on what the other person wants from him. I think Wells is good at and writes a lot of protagonists who are very different from those around them, usually obviously and visibly, not just culturally (Moon and Murderbot both). The relics trade and the discover of the weird Ancients' technology in the desert is also interesting, although now that I think about it, is also a common theme in Wells' writing. The motif that there was once a civilization that had all this knowledge and tech, but that a catastrophe wiped it out and the survivors are just picking out and salvaging what they can, is also a pretty common one in fantasy, but I like Wells' take on it. The relics get sold in a complex black/grey market and Khat has to take precautions because of his status and to avoid being noticeable.
A College of Magics - Caroline Stevermer
This never cohered into a satisfying novel for me, and midway through when I was wondering if anyone else felt this way I read a review on GR from Zen Cho and her words kept going round my head too. It starts with Faris Nalleen arriving at Greenlaw College, attended by guards, trying to force her way in and not be accepted. She's the heir to Galazon and her she thinks her uncle Brinker is going to try to steal her inheritance.
The first half of the book is set at the college, which she unsurprisingly does enter. It's not very satisfying because apparently, magic cannot be taught. Therefore, we get no content about the classes, and not much college life either, although we get told that she joins this circle of students who study together. Instead, the Dean just tells a student that tonight they will hold a vigil and then afterwards, they either have magic or they don't. Faris is loudly skeptical of this but the effects of the vigil are marked and when she undergoes it, she has a revelation of sorts and does have magic. When she stumbles back down in the morning, she comes across her enemy trying to destroy her protector - who she has turned into a cat - and the ensuing magical fight gets both of them more or less expelled. The second half takes place back home, and Faris tries to convince the king (their liege lord) that she is the heir to Galazon, while she is assigned as Galazon's ambassador.
Both halves of the book are rather unsatisfactory. In a university-set story the joy is the student life and the classes and the MAGIC. I like fantasy! I like magic! I read fantasy for a reason - I want to hear about the fantastic element and setting it in a university is a perfect excuse! The characterization is weirdly thin, except for Faris, who is pretty determined (always a plus for me) but everyone else is just so strangely flat. It feels like there are six characters or so, even though it's a fairly substantial novel length-wise. Just not much to really get into, and the big fight at the end hinges on magic, which again we didn't get any information about, so it's just a lot of various descriptive language and no emotional impact.
The prose was also very unoriginal. I have no idea what people are talking about regarding sparkling wit. It feels more uneven than anything else. It's a Ruritanian romance - in a cold climate, Faris really misses snow (this at least I feel sympathy with) - but not much grounding in Europe, even though it's set there. So it feels adrift instead. I think you can ground a book by nailing emotional beats, or setting, or character, but it missed the mark for me on all of them.
I read several books about the southwestern deserts - A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and the North American Deserts by Edmund C Jaeger. Actually I guess I mostly just browsed the second, but the first was a whole collection of essays on all aspects of the Sonoran desert: the geology, weather, physics, and biological life, flora and fauna (reptiles, insects, fish, mammals, birds). Of course, I read the bird section with greatest interest, but a lot of the essays were very interesting and informative. I read it after I came back from Arizona, in true myself fashion, but that helped make the facts stick better and it was nice to re-visit some of the birds I saw.
Light from Uncommon Stars - Ryda Aoki
This book has a bunch of storylines - one follows Katrina Nguyen, a teenaged trans kid running away with her violin. The second follows Shizuka Satomi, acclaimed violin teacher, once a prodigy herself, but who made a deal with the demon and who has to deliver seven perfect violinist souls to the devil; she is searching for the seventh. There's also Lan Tran, who is a starship captain fleeing a blight from her home universe, and who is running a donut shop; there's also Lucy, descended from a family of violin repairers who don't believe women are capable of the work.
First I think I should warn you that there are a lot of slurs in this book. I say this because I personally would have appreciated a heads up - there's an incredible diversity of slurs represented and I didn't really enjoy reading that, or all the hate spewed by some of the other characters. To be clear, Aoki is entitled to include them; I just felt each was a really unpleasant surprise.
This book tries to do way too much at once, and tries to tackle a ton of very heavy topics as well, which always has the effect on me of making them feel like they're dealt with trivially. Just look at all those storylines. Each one is sufficient to fill out a novel and more, and they all happen at the same time, and the perspective jumps constantly, so immersion is also pretty shot. Katrina runs away from home because her family doesn't accept her gender identity, and after leaving some friend's couch, she plays some violin in a park and Satomi runs across her there. Satomi takes Katrina in immediately, and starts to teach her violin. Meanwhile Satomi goes to this donut shop and starts a romance with Lan the extra-terrestrial captain, who has a bunch of children - one of which is an AI. Satomi is being pressured by the demon to serve Katrina up already, so Katrina's journey to become an excellent violinist forms the arc of the plot.
The most unsatisfying part of this book is that it wants to treat everything super seriously, but also wants to cram in a thousand concepts and be comforting and uplifting and zany. There is a lot of really unpleasant stuff in this book, and even one or two of them - like Katrina being forced to cam for money, getting groped, her parents and others hurting her physically, etc, would be sufficient to anchor the story emotionally. But because there is so much to do, the narrative just states it and goes right on. Katrina never really reacts, trusts quite easily, and is emotionally extremely even-keeled. I don't demand realism from novels that are playing Rule of Cool, Rule of Look How Competent and Hot This Person Is, Rule of Whimsy, Dragons Are Just The Best, and so on. But I do demand it when you want to show me how horrible the world is, how cruel it can be. Don't print the sewage of the internet hate machine on the page and then give me insubstantial hand-waved niceness! Satomi and her house-servant (utterly devoted to Satomi) just accept Katrina, immediately. Lan and Satomi's relationship is also pretty worn-smooth, even though their personalities would suggest that they would probably clash a little, at least. Lan is a starship captain, has family, and is accustomed to being obeyed; Satomi has been alive for a much longer time than other humans, is struggling under a very upsetting burden she can't speak about, and also has cultivated a very biting and aloof persona. And the fun of reading romance is seeing the sparks and conflict and then the resolution, for which there is very little. The issue of Lan's child's personhood (an AI that Lan created) comes up quickly as an issue and then is resolved by Simply Accepting. I can think of several great books that deal with personhood in SF that were excellent explorations of this - but the difference is there are coherent stories and much more room to explore this in ways that were fun, not practically scripts for how to tell your child you accept them.
All this made the ending feel rather trite too. I guess you can't really call it deus ex machina, since Lan's technology is just insanely beyond ours and has been clear from the beginning, but no one had to make a hard decision. Everyone wins! Yay. Sure. That totally felt earned.
In idiosyncrasies which may just apply to me - I don't really like most media about musicians, because they tend to be insufferably twee about the making of music. Also there is sure a lot about super rare and old violins, and the relative quality and prestige of one's violin, which makes me want to roll my eyes so hard. This is partly because I'm a pianist and a vocalist and well, one doesn't expect to drag one's piano around, nor can one swap out a set of vocal cords, so while people definitely regard some pianos as better, it's not like having such and such piano means you rank higher or are subject to envy. You'll play whatever piano is at the hall. It's not really about the instrument!!! Having the fanciest Strad doesn't make you a better violinist!! Also the hype around them is just scarcity and good workmanship (for sure!) being used again to create a hierarchy - and also, practically as investment vehicles, the way fine art pieces are. In double-blind tests, people can't reliably tell them apart, but there are those who say that there is no way to replicate the sound of a Strad, and of course the pricing and acquisition one is therefore insane. There's also so much snobbishness about the competition circuit and, how do I put it? Yes, it's practically life and death from the inside, but it's the kind of life-and-death you feel when you're fourteen and failing this test is going to mean you're going to be ruined forever, it is the most important thing, there is no way to come back, the consequences are indefinable but unspeakably bad. I can't speak to the big name prestigious festivals, having never competed in them (or been close) but it just feels like they're so hyped up as so important when most people in the world don't even know about them and don't care. Also there are a lot of festivals - flip over any programme book at the musician biographies. Kind of like all the novels about librarians being saviours of the world. The audience is one that loves libraries, the author unsurprisingly loves libraries, but most people feel pretty unmoved by them. Being a bookworm is not like being a fan of football (either kind) - one is niche, the other one is so wildly popular it's assumed everyone cares, except a few cranks. The classical music world believes it is extremely important and I'm part of it, but it's really not that earth-shattering, and the circle is very small.
Also while I'm on the subject, more classical attitudes that irritate me (because I imbibed them as a child): yes, classical training sharpens your skills in ways that not training doesn't - trying to perform one of those pieces written to show off virtuosity will show your weaknesses immediately and embarrassingly. But it is heinously, laughably arrogant to regard it as the pinnacle of music. Human beings have been singing and creating music for thousands of years. Are we going to denigrate literally every other musician? What an insanely limited and myopic view of the world. Music is so much more than technical ability. So I find the whole scrabbling and scratching out the eyes of the competition so ridiculous. Yes, I do realize that doing well at festivals is the way to launch your career, etc. But I just can't find it compelling.
Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie
I enjoyed this one - it's a Poirot mystery. Miss Lemon, his secretary, brings a mystery to him via her sister, who runs a student dorm for many international students. People's possessions keep going missing or getting destroyed, and the list is a very strange one, full of completely unconnected objects.
Christie is very reliable for me, I really enjoy her stuff generally, although caveat as usual that she wrote in the early 20th century and there are also some very outdated and sometimes offensive views. However, I always enjoy Poirot's very kind and measured process, and the characterization notes are enjoyable. The way that Nigel goes about stealing four different kinds of poison is clever and the double replacement of the morphine is revealed in a genuinely funny way. And the letter from Nigel's father is very good.
The ultimate reason behind all the destruction is that there's a drug smuggling ring running - the students go abroad and come back and drugs are smuggled without their knowledge in their rucksacks, because they buy them from this particular seller. I'm happy to accept this explanation as part of the artificial environment most mysteries operate in, and it reminds me rather of the unreality of drug smuggling ring antics in Murder Must Advertise. It holds together, but as a businessman, would I really want to take this tack? The strength of this very complicated scheme is the mules don't know they're carrying the drugs, but it just seems like that advantage doesn't outweigh the serious concern that priceless drugs and jewels will be lost forever accidentally - slashed or destroyed from careless handling, forgetting, swapping, etc etc. Sensible drug cartels operate well without this!! Again this isn't exactly a criticism - if you start critiquing a murder mystery this way you will never enjoy one again, it's part of the form! - but just a thought I had after. I don't think a serious drug smuggler would try this. It's just too prone to losing you kajillions of dollars.
Hench - Natalie Zina Walschots
This is a book about superheros and follows Anna, who works as a hench for supervillans. One day she gets injured in a confrontation between a superhero and a villain and, being a contract freelancer, has almost zero recourse and is left to try to recover alone. She's mostly forgotten about, too. With nothing to do except to hole up in her friend's apartment and brood and recover, she starts a blog about the toll of superheroes, and comes to the attention of a mega supervillan, Leviathan, and is pulled into working for him. Leviathan treats her more like an employee, circa the era employers who housed their employees, provided the meals, etc - aka far more enmeshed in their lives, and to me a much creepier extent. Leviathan employs her to make life terrible for superheroes, a role Anna creates for herself, but then has a massive confrontation with a superhero and is taken away presumably dead.
This was written really engagingly - this was funny and at times really poignant. It pulls on some clear modern parallels. Anna, a contract/gig worker, just gets paid by the hour for her work, she has no benefits, so when she's injured (barely a footnote in the fight) when a fight unexpectedly breaks out, she's just got no health insurance and no one to back her up. Her friend takes her in and the interactions between her and her friend are honestly the most truest things in the book. June is extremely kind and lets Anna stay practically indefinitely in her apartment, but it's not big enough to accommodate them, Anna has no money, and June is understandably fed up and also worried about Anna blogging obsessively about the effects of superhero damage.
The book's a commentary on superheroes, and the collateral damage they create. Raising the stakes in a superhero story makes it more exciting, but of course, smashing out a whole skyscraper means millions in damages and human suffering, too. Anna's blog tries to quantify the damage done by superheroes in terms of lost years, and finds that the toll is staggering. Anna's relationships all suffer tremendously from her work with supervillains. But what weakens this is that the novel both critiques the damage that superheroes do, and then Anna wants to get back by being horrible to the superheroes, and causing her own subordinates harm by putting them in positions where they can get used as punching bags for superheroes. The last part of the novel also plays the superhero genre straight: it just makes Leviathan the hero that needs to be saved, because Anna cares for him. So what's left of Leviathan's staff go into hiding with Anna holding them together, and she enlists the superhero's girlfriend as an ally, because she's been doing the bulk of the lifting with the superhero getting the credit. The commentary on this is pretty biting - despite superhuman strength, the facade is brittle and much of the power is coming from his girlfriend, silently, and she's fed up and ripe for Anna to exploit.
I have mixed feelings. It was pretty enjoyable to read, although I didn't really buy Leviathan and Anna's romance, and it wanted to have its cake and eat it too.
OK I didn't get through as many as I wanted, more to come.
