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Reading Wednesday
Just finished: real ones, Katherena Vermette. This one ruled. I don't have a lot to add to what I said last week except that I really enjoyed it. If you want a good pairing (or you're not super familiar with the context of the Canadian arts scene), Jesse Wente's Unreconciled provides a great non-fiction one. But yeah, I loved the characters, I loved the poetic, Impressionist writing style, it was emotionally affecting without high stakes or pacing, which is something that genre writers could learn a lot from (more on that later). Vermette seems to be putting out great books with impressive frequency but this is the one I've enjoyed most so far.
The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. This one was imperfect and ambitious, but I'll take that over boring any day. It's a master class in how to do some interesting worldbuilding; there's a lot going on in the background, and you get it only as a sketch. Oh yeah, there are lizard guns. Why are the guns lizards? Eh, don't worry about it, keep up. It's pretty New Weird in the tradition of Miéville and Tchaikovsky (positive) so I liked that quite a bit.
I have two big critiques, one big and one small. First, the small. This is critically acclaimed, nominated for a bunch of awards, and put out by a real press. And yet. And yet. Alefret, the main character, has one leg. This is clearly established in the opening line. His leg is slowly growing back thanks to an experimental serum that's delivered via wasp sting (again, cool) but it's slow and he's on crutches for the entire book, something that is done very well and really gives a good sense of the character's physicality. And then there is a scene where he is having dinner with two elderly sisters who have a cat. Under the table, the cat brushes up against his ankles and he holds his legs very still. WTF? Which editor let that through?
My bigger complaint is that I don't think she quite lands the ending. As I've said, it's ambitious, a story about whether pacifism can survive a horrific war.
Spoiler: It does. And it turns out that the one empire's plan to defeat the other basically works and there is peace, with both sides mostly intact to fight another day, with both of their leaders alive and still in place. Maybe I'm tired but I did not quite see how, as there's one big floating city that's encroaching on the other empire's territory but it's said that this is only the biggest of many, so taking it down but sparing the ruling family doesn't seem like it would actually end the war. Also, it means that the one empire that tortured the main character was basically correct, as their plan worked. There's at least a suggestion that Alefret's work is not done and that he and the surviving resistance members will now be organizing against their various governments, but I dunno, it seems like none of the problems that led to the war are really solved. And more critically, that Alefret's pacifism is never really challenged beyond, very justifiably, wanting to kill the psychotic manchild sent to watch him.
Cottagers and Indians by Drew Hayden Taylor. This is a one-act play based on the true story of Anishinaabe people trying to re-seed lakes with wild rice, over the objection of white cottagers. And it's amazing, obviously. Everything he writes is great and this is particularly affecting. It's a dance between two difficult, complicated characters, and while the white cottager character could easily be a hideous caricature, Hayden Taylor is too much of a humanist to take the easy road out. There's also a great afterword by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, because of course there is.
Currently reading: Dakwäkãda Warriors by Cole Pauls. This is a bilingual (!!!) Indigenous futurist comic about two defenders of the earth, beautifully illustrated in a Formline style. If you want to learn Tahltan, I can't think of a cuter way. There's a lot of pew pew pew and it's very fun.
The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. This one was imperfect and ambitious, but I'll take that over boring any day. It's a master class in how to do some interesting worldbuilding; there's a lot going on in the background, and you get it only as a sketch. Oh yeah, there are lizard guns. Why are the guns lizards? Eh, don't worry about it, keep up. It's pretty New Weird in the tradition of Miéville and Tchaikovsky (positive) so I liked that quite a bit.
I have two big critiques, one big and one small. First, the small. This is critically acclaimed, nominated for a bunch of awards, and put out by a real press. And yet. And yet. Alefret, the main character, has one leg. This is clearly established in the opening line. His leg is slowly growing back thanks to an experimental serum that's delivered via wasp sting (again, cool) but it's slow and he's on crutches for the entire book, something that is done very well and really gives a good sense of the character's physicality. And then there is a scene where he is having dinner with two elderly sisters who have a cat. Under the table, the cat brushes up against his ankles and he holds his legs very still. WTF? Which editor let that through?
My bigger complaint is that I don't think she quite lands the ending. As I've said, it's ambitious, a story about whether pacifism can survive a horrific war.
Spoiler: It does. And it turns out that the one empire's plan to defeat the other basically works and there is peace, with both sides mostly intact to fight another day, with both of their leaders alive and still in place. Maybe I'm tired but I did not quite see how, as there's one big floating city that's encroaching on the other empire's territory but it's said that this is only the biggest of many, so taking it down but sparing the ruling family doesn't seem like it would actually end the war. Also, it means that the one empire that tortured the main character was basically correct, as their plan worked. There's at least a suggestion that Alefret's work is not done and that he and the surviving resistance members will now be organizing against their various governments, but I dunno, it seems like none of the problems that led to the war are really solved. And more critically, that Alefret's pacifism is never really challenged beyond, very justifiably, wanting to kill the psychotic manchild sent to watch him.
Cottagers and Indians by Drew Hayden Taylor. This is a one-act play based on the true story of Anishinaabe people trying to re-seed lakes with wild rice, over the objection of white cottagers. And it's amazing, obviously. Everything he writes is great and this is particularly affecting. It's a dance between two difficult, complicated characters, and while the white cottager character could easily be a hideous caricature, Hayden Taylor is too much of a humanist to take the easy road out. There's also a great afterword by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, because of course there is.
Currently reading: Dakwäkãda Warriors by Cole Pauls. This is a bilingual (!!!) Indigenous futurist comic about two defenders of the earth, beautifully illustrated in a Formline style. If you want to learn Tahltan, I can't think of a cuter way. There's a lot of pew pew pew and it's very fun.
Withered by A.G.A. Wilmot. JFC not another cozy horror, fuck me. This one starts out very promising, with a teenage girl, haunted by the ghost of her recently dead brother, trying to burn down the family house before it kills the rest of her family. 25 years later, Robyn, who grew up in the tiny town of Black Stone, has fallen on financial hard times after the death of her husband, so she moves herself and her teenage child, Ellis, back home into the very same house. Ellis meets a number of residents, mostly young people, who insist that the house is haunted, and that there's a strange power that it exerts by displacing death into the surrounding towns, while keeping the people in Black Stone alive for a very long time. This is a good set up for horror. I'm here for it.
However, it turns out that the haunted house is nice, actually??? and everyone in the town is very nice??? Ellis is recovering from a life-threatening eating disorder that they in part attribute to "anti-queer cultural norms" and yet they do not encounter anyone who doesn't want to be their friend and/or date them, they immediately get a job at the cool coffee shop without a resume, and everyone in their life is accepting and friendly. Once again, a queernormative setting wants to have its anti-oppression cake and eat it too. I guess maybe the house is somehow making everyone in this small town cool and rad and multicultural, but I dunno, I lived in a pretty small town and it wasn't great.
Also all the kids are goth or alternative in some way and listen to the kind of music that I like. I can buy that there are tons of teenage Black girls in the year of our lord 2025 who listen to Bjork and Sigur Ros. What I cannot buy is that in a tiny town, one of them would just happen to meet and fall for a kid who listens to Frightened Rabbit and the Mountain Goats.
Anyway, I am suspecting that the girl who spent 25 years in a mental institution (what) is going to end up being the villain of the piece, because this is what reading cozy things has led me to suspect. But let's see.
However, it turns out that the haunted house is nice, actually??? and everyone in the town is very nice??? Ellis is recovering from a life-threatening eating disorder that they in part attribute to "anti-queer cultural norms" and yet they do not encounter anyone who doesn't want to be their friend and/or date them, they immediately get a job at the cool coffee shop without a resume, and everyone in their life is accepting and friendly. Once again, a queernormative setting wants to have its anti-oppression cake and eat it too. I guess maybe the house is somehow making everyone in this small town cool and rad and multicultural, but I dunno, I lived in a pretty small town and it wasn't great.
Also all the kids are goth or alternative in some way and listen to the kind of music that I like. I can buy that there are tons of teenage Black girls in the year of our lord 2025 who listen to Bjork and Sigur Ros. What I cannot buy is that in a tiny town, one of them would just happen to meet and fall for a kid who listens to Frightened Rabbit and the Mountain Goats.
Anyway, I am suspecting that the girl who spent 25 years in a mental institution (what) is going to end up being the villain of the piece, because this is what reading cozy things has led me to suspect. But let's see.