Aug 08 2020

The Last Emperox by John Scalzi

How does a human civilization react to news of its possible impending collapse, with the only option for survival a major upheaval touching every person in it and changing its power structure entirely? That’s the overriding question of John Scalzi’s Interdependency series. The Last Emperox is the third and concluding part of the story, following The Collapsing Empire and The Consuming Fire. The third of three books in a series about the collapse of an interstellar civilization is seriously not a good place to start, even if there is a prologue that sums most things up in a list, in the guise of the thoughts of a privileged minor character wondering “How did all of this happen to me?”

The Last Emperox

One of the surprises from The Consuming Fire was the contact with other humans from outside the Interdependency. The Flow links to Earth and other settled world had been broken at the Interdependency’s inception centuries ago, and the accepted wisdom was that links could not come back. The expedition to Dalasýsla turned up a starship home to a former interstellar ruler of another realm, preserved in the ship’s computers much as previous Emperoxs were preserved in the Memory Room. Chenevert is not quite Mycroft from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress taking Grayland’s side in the current intrigues, but he is definitely an asset with unexpected abilities. The same can be said for the Memory Room.

Because intrigues and reversals are what The Last Emperox is all about. The clock is ticking on Grayland; or rather, many different clocks are ticking. She has limited support within her own house. A major rival has come close to assassinating her on more than one occasion. That rival’s house is lining up support from the nobles and the guilds against this young, strange Emperox who wants to turn everything upside down. And of course civilization really is going to collapse. In fact, it will collapse sooner rather than later because the Interdependency is built on specialization and monopolies. It works as a network in which different areas can provide for others, while in turn receiving what they themselves do not produce. Trade rather than autarky has propelled the prosperity of the present arrangement, but when nodes start to drop out of the network problems will cascade beyond the ability of individual settlements or of fragments of the Interdependency to solve them.

Scalzi paints all of this in broad strokes. The Last Emperox is not a book about logistics or carrying capacities of habitats, it’s a book about personal scheming and score-settling at the most elite levels of the star-spanning polity. Only a few people really matter in this story, the vast numbers in inhabited space — even the merely wealthy and influential within a particular system — are resolutely off stage, an abstraction that Grayland and her partisans care about and her opponents largely do not. (Contrast this with, for example, Luna by Ian McDonald, another series that concentrates on the machinations of several ruling families, but also goes out of its way to show what life is like down at the bottom of the social ladder, and that even rulers are affected by what happens among the population as a whole.)

In this last book of the series, none of the characters has plot armor; though Scalzi is not writing a tragedy on a large scale, there are no guarantees that any of the characters that I came to care about as a reader will make it to the end. Except for Kiva Lagos, I think. Scalzi was clearly having too much fun writing her to let her get killed carelessly.

The Last Emperox ends well. The bad guys get their comeuppance, the good guys get a chance for everything to turn out reasonably well. Which, given that civilization really is coming to an end, is a big win. Also, almost none of them are guys; Emperox, rivals, heads of house, chief counsel — all of the key decisions in the book are taken by women. Some of the guys provide key information or support, but Scalzi has cast them into secondary roles. Scalzi does not take readers all the way to the end of the Interdependency, nor even to the beginning of the end, but to the end of the end’s beginning. For this series, that’s enough to find resolution.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/08/the-last-emperox-by-john-scalzi/

Aug 07 2020

The Cabin At The End Of The World by Paul Tremblay

In contemporary popular literature which takes as its default Christianity as the dominant belief system, there are two main kinds of believer: the kind who want prayers answered and the kind who want to complain bitterly about how God could possibly let such-and-such happen. The two main protagonists of The Cabin At The End Of The World represent this dichotomy, despite both being shades of fairly tepid faith. Eric is the community Catholic dad who feels a bit guilty at not initiating his adopted daughter in the traditions that gave so much meaning to his life growing up, whereas his husband Andrew is firmly agnostic. The two have decided to take said 7 year-old daughter Wen on a summer vacation in the wilds of New Hampshire, in a remote cabin without cellphone service (which is already horror story enough for me.) As the book begins, Wen is out on the lawn collecting grasshoppers when she’s approached by a large man who introduces himself as Leonard, who turns out to be the harbinger of the world’s weirdest home invasion.

Leonard and the other three members of his cohort tell Wen’s parents that they had a vision of the end of the world that can only be averted if Wen’s family willingly sacrifices one of their own. Of course, neither Andrew nor Eric are convinced by this, and over the course of the next few increasingly bloody days, they must battle not only the home invaders but their own doubts and fears in order to survive… or, perhaps, in order to choose not to.

It’s an interesting idea with a bunch of symbolism that will delight cryptophiles like myself. Ultimately, tho, I had more fun investigating the “liner” notes than I had from reading the story, which just didn’t hang together as a novel for me. I wonder if this is due to my Muslim faith, that scoffs at the idea of prophetic revelation asking really big sacrifices of randos via randos. In most of the mainstream Abrahamic teachings, God sends the biggest tests to those of greatest faith (e.g. Abraham, Job) because the point is to see how strongly they believe. Demanding sacrifices of those who don’t strongly believe means nothing: how can you ask people who aren’t thoroughly invested in your message to choose to do or endure terrible things to prove their faith, when faith is already a thing of little reward to them?

Theology aside, Leonard and co are so bad at presenting their case that I can’t blame our heroes for doubting their message. I did not at any point believe that they actually heralded the end of the world, and put this squarely on the shoulders of Paul Tremblay for narrative choices that elided persuasive conversation in favor of hysterical confrontation (also, the bizarre two-person viewpoint chapters made me want to tear my hair out at the laxity of their entirely scattershot construction.) There was no convincing existential threat here beyond the crazy people with weapons, and no guarantee, barely even a promise, that the sacrifice of one of their family would save humanity. I thought that Andrew, neurotic and annoying as he was, and poor concussed Eric ultimately made the right choice, because faith isn’t just about fear and believing people who threaten brimstone and hellfire.

Despite the interesting premise, this was ultimately a wholly unconvincing execution that had me scratching my head at the high praise that led me to pick up this book in the first place. I was thinking of reading another book by Mr Tremblay in order to give this acclaimed author a fair shake, with the evocatively named A Head Full Of Ghosts looking the likeliest candidate, till a tart comment on that novel by a friend (hi, Cynthia!) made me discard the entire idea of reading more. Maybe it’s like my reaction to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: some people love that shit, but I’d rather read something original, or at the very least, entertaining. Perhaps Mr Tremblay will write something that appeals in future. For now tho, there are so many amazing unread books out there that it seems like I’d be doing myself a disservice wasting time on books I’m already fairly confident I won’t enjoy.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/07/the-cabin-at-the-end-of-the-world-by-paul-tremblay/

Aug 06 2020

Alpha Omega by Nicholas Bowling

At about the 70% mark, I realized that Alpha Omega could slot very easily into the universe of The Matrix, serving as an entirely convincing origin story, so to speak, of that cyberpunk dystopia. The comparisons drawn between this book and Ernest Clines’ Ready Player One are poor: Mr Clines’ novel is a Spielbergian adventure with a young hero triumphant, and AO is very much not that. But it’s deeper and more rewarding in the end, in my opinion, tho there is a fair amount of chaff to get through before then.

AO is ostensibly the story of Gabriel Backer, a 15 year-old school shooter in the making who was kicked out of the expensive, prestigious Nutristart Skills Academy for irrepressibly hacking their computer systems. Since his expulsion, he’s spent most of his time “In World”, as being online in the vast virtual game world of Alpha Omega is known, to the chagrin of his sight-impaired mother, Stephanie. When he’s approached by someone claiming to be a game dev offering to pay him for playtesting new areas, he’s all in.

The majority of the actual story revolves around Tom Rosen, an English and Media teacher at the NSA who’s become increasingly disaffected by the school’s model-corporate-citizen policies. His breaking point comes when one of his students becomes violently ill, is hustled out by school authorities to a waiting car, then promptly falls off the face of the planet. Another student, Alex “Peepsy” Pepys, is convinced that the weird illnesses befalling the NSA students is a result of his stealing the undoubtedly cursed human remains newly excavated by builders looking to erect an impenetrable security wall around the campus. He, Tom and Gabriel become unwitting partners in figuring out what is happening at the NSA and exposing it to the world.

It’s not exactly a spoiler to say that corporate greed is at the bottom of all the shenanigans. It was, however, a shock even to my jaded system to see how Nicholas Bowling so brutally yet elegantly extrapolates from current trends to paint a vision of a corporation-run hellscape dotted with several flavors of misogyny, where people flee to the virtual reality of Alpha Omega for not only entertainment but an almost necessary comfort. It’s a bleak, unsettling portrait of a near-ish future, featuring strokes of mad hilarity and the occasional veering into uncomfortable edgelord territory, that also happens to be an ambitious and ultimately successful send-up of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

In all honesty, I wish there had been about one third less of the beginning and one third more added to the end of this novel. While AO ends in a liminal state both haunting and wry that hints at a better future, I really do want to know what happens to our characters next, especially brave, resourceful Maggie. This is a subversively smart novel that starts slowly, builds almost neurotically, then ends in a grand explosion that leaves the reader wanting more in the best way possible.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/06/alpha-omega-by-nicholas-bowling/

Aug 04 2020

Lailah’s Lunchbox: A Ramadan Story by Reem Faruqi & Lea Lyon

A slightly belated Selamat Hari Raya Aidiladha! What better way to kick off the season than by, er, reviewing a book about Aidilfitri. Well, technically Ramadan, but since I’d put off ordering this picture book for my kids till I had several novels I wanted to buy in hard copy from my local indie bookstore, the book’s arrival seemed serendipitous enough for review now.

I originally ordered this thinking it would be a good primer for my 6 year-old twins, being a picture book, but discovered it’s actually aimed at a slightly older age group, which is totally fine. My eldest and I read through it together and it was perfect for him, tho I would have liked it if Reem Faruqi had stated how old Lailah was when she began to fast for Ramadan in the book itself. It would definitely have been helpful for my 9 year-old, whom we’re trying to encourage to fast for full days at school, to know that Lailah was 10, and that he’s thus on track with his peers (tho I began fasting full days at 8 myself, a benefit of going to school in a Muslim country with a built-in support system for that kind of thing.)

Anyhoo, this picture book tells the story of Lailah, a recent immigrant from Abu Dhabi to Atlanta, who is excited to finally be old enough to fast at school. Her mom writes her a note to be given to her teacher, explaining about skipping lunch, but Lailah has second thoughts about handing it over, leading to misunderstandings that are eventually cleared up with the help of a thoughtful librarian. My poor kid had to put up with me snarkily commenting on Lailah’s disobeying her mother and thus making her own life unnecessarily difficult, tho I do very much understand Lailah’s reluctance to draw attention to her differences or, worse, have to explain her belief system. Fortunately, the book made it clear that most people are respectful and understanding if not downright accommodating when given the chance to be, which is definitely a good message for the target demographic. My 9 year-old told me that his main takeaway from the book is “to be brave” tho “there’s no school right now.”

The pictures are also lovely, with Lea Lyon’s watercolors practically glowing from each page. Their quasi-photorealistic quality do a really good job of illustrating Lailah’s family and school lives. Overall, Jms and I enjoyed this quick, thoughtful read that helps to demystify fasting in a non-Muslim country for both Muslims and non-Muslims alike, as well as encourage a two-way street of communication to facilitate understanding and acceptance.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/04/lailahs-lunchbox-a-ramadan-story-by-reem-faruqi-lea-lyon/

Aug 02 2020

By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar

What if Arthur, like Uther, was an ambitious thug and the knights of the Round Table were a collection of weirdos and ruffians who say “fuck” a lot? That’s more or less the premise of Lavie Tidhar’s By Force Alone, and although I finished the book relatively quickly during my recent vacation in the Eifel, at the end I was struck by two things. First, Monty Python and the Holy Grail came to mind entirely too much, which I suppose shows the effectiveness of the troupe’s sendup of Arthuriana more than 40 years after its release. On the other hand, Tidhar may have at least partially been playing to that himself; he notes in his afterword “The attentive reader will no doubt find a great many and various references scattered throughout this novel.” (p. 505) Certainly his Lancelot resembles the Pythons’ in deadliness, although Tidhar adds a knowledge of kung-fu (noting also in the afterword that none of the sources give Lancelot this set of skills) and rather more self-control in getting started with the slaughter.

By Force Alone

Second, by the end of the book I was still not sure why. The Once and Future King mashed Arthur up with a modern, or at least mid-twentieth-century, sensibility, and made the early years quite funny. It’s been a decade and more since I read The Mists of Avalon, but I still remember the audaciousness of telling the legends of Arthur with the men mainly nuisances, practically all of the fighting off-page, and the Grail quest a pointless aggravation. Marion Zimmer Bradley had a clear purpose in recasting Arthur.

And Tidhar? He’s gone back to original sources, as he explains in his afterword. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history of Britain “is a wildly inventive fantasy text.” (p. 501) He explains how stories accreted to Arthur: “It is thanks to the otherwise-obscure Norman poet, Wace, for instance, that we get Excalibur and the Round Table. An unknown English poet in the fourteenth century gives us Gawain and the Green Knight.” (p. 501) Tidhar emphasizes the European roots of Arthurian legends. “Indeed, it is one of the greatest ironies of the material that the stories of Britain were mostly made up by those on the continent.” (p. 501) He notes that Chrétien de Troyes introduces Lancelot and the grail, that Wolfram von Eschenbach introduced the quest for the grail, and that Robert de Boron brings in both Joseph of Arimathea and the Lady of the Lake. Tidhar attributes motives to the various historians and poets — Geoffrey had political purposes, de Boron religious, and Malory “provided mass entertainment while serving an essentially political purpose: giving the people of Britain a shared (if entirely made up) past, made of glory.” (p. 503)

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/02/by-force-alone-by-lavie-tidhar/

Jul 28 2020

The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark

I need P Djeli Clark to write me some meaty 300+ page books! He’s definitely doing great things with shorter works: 2019’s The Haunting Of Tram Car 015 felt fully realized despite its brevity, and I can only imagine that this year’s Ring Shout will only showcase his increasing command of the novella form. Unfortunately, while The Black God’s Drums — like A Dead Djinn In Cairo, its predecessor in Mr Clarks’ novella oeuvre — felt rich in world-building and tone, it fell quite flat, for me, in plot.

The Black God's DrumsCreeper is a street kid living in Free New Orleans after a slave uprising liberated the city from the Confederacy during the American Civil War. In this alternate universe, the islands of the Caribbean are also self-ruled by the formerly enslaved, and technology is very much steampunk, with gods and goddesses an essential part of the rich tapestry of everyday life. In fact, the goddess Oya, orisha of winds and storms, has a deep connection with Creeper, aiding our urchin time and time again as she picks pockets and evades all attempts to send her off to school.

When Creeper accidentally overhears a plot to pay off a Haitian scientist in exchange for deadly technology, she knows she has to bring this important information to the right people. Her informants tell her that the best person to trust is Captain Ann-Marie of the airship Midnight Robber, so off she goes to try to barter this information for the thing she craves most. Little does she realize that embarking on this adventure will put her in the crosshairs of a man even Oya shrinks from. But what price is too high to pay to keep the secret of the Black God’s Drums?

There’s so much wonderful world-building here in these scant 100-odd pages, with a diverse cast and a bounty of action and adventure, that you can almost forgive the plot itself for being bog standard. I’ve recently discovered that perhaps most sff readers don’t read as many mystery novels as I do, but even so, the only surprises in this narrative were in the ornamental details and not in the actual turns of the story. That said, I loved those ornamental details, even if I wish there had been much more meat to the story itself.

Doug found this far more enchanting than I did. You can check out his review here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/07/28/the-black-gods-drums-by-p-djeli-clark-2/

Jul 22 2020

Middlegame (Middlegame #1) by Seanan McGuire

Finished reading this last Hugo nominee for Best Novel right before the buzzer, and wow is my brain tired! So many interesting concepts and some really great, fun writing throughout the many books and stories I’ve covered for/off this slate. My right eye is still twitching even as I type these words, tho some of that may have to do with the stress of having five books to read and review over the next ten days when all I want to do is maybe take a break from reading for a week. No rest for the wicked awesome, tho (plus one of those books is HARROW THE NINTH *fangirl squealing*.)

But to Middlegame, which had the virtue of Seanan McGuire’s readable, engaging prose to carry me through its 400-odd pages as I careened towards the voting deadline. Roger and Dodger are twins who were separated at birth in a grand alchemical experiment to embody the Doctrine of Ethos, with one twin representing language and the other mathematics. While still children, they manage to start communicating with one another despite being on opposite American coasts, but a series of catastrophes causes them to keep falling apart. As they get older, they discover what they really are and who made them, a discovery that could risk both their lives and that of countless others.

It’s an interesting concept based on at least one cool literary conceit, but I was exhausted after reading it, mostly from Ms McGuire’s almost unceasingly portentious tone. Too much portentiousness too often threatens to slip over into pretentiousness: the book takes itself as seriously throughout as the villain takes himself and that, my friends, is exhausting. I recognize that this solemnity is a trademark of Ms McGuire’s writing, but it’s far easier to stomach in the novellas of the Wayward Children series than in a much lengthier novel. Notably, the treatment of parents in Middlegame was much more fair-minded than in said series, with a lot of stress on the good of adoption.

Aside from tone, I was also put off by the extended scene with Erin in Smita’s lab, which felt infinitely gratuitous. In truth, it read like something spliced off from a different project, as if written separately and in more detail, in homage to slasher movies: fine of itself, but obviously grafted on to the rest of the text. I was also disappointed by where the twins ended up while searching for the Impossible City and fighting off Leigh: I’d expected something less prosaic, tbh. I understand the beauty of what they did in the ruins, but it still felt like a let-down after the build up as to how metaphysical it and the Improbable Road were meant to be. The lab was pretty well-realized tho, and I imagine the questions raised regarding Asphodel and James will be solved in the next novel in the series. Do I care to pick it up when it comes out tho? I’d say there’s a 33.3% probability.

Anyway, I need to plunge back into reading, and since all five of the books I have scheduled next are for CriminalElement.com, it will be a little while till you see me here again! But I’ll hopefully be back with reviews of Paul Tremblay, P Djeli Clark and Pierce Brown (totally coincidental that all their names start with P,) if my brains haven’t trickled out my ears before then. Oh, and perhaps coverage of how the Hugo results inevitably diverge from my carefully considered ballot! See you soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/07/22/middlegame-middlegame-1-by-seanan-mcguire/

Jul 21 2020

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

A searing, devastating indictment of both unquestioning loyalty and the corporate interests that use up workers in order to profit shareholders, extrapolated to their grimmest reality, Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade is both gripping and timely in this endless year of 2020. Our narrator, Dietz, grew up in the slums of Sao Paulo, eking a living with her family till her parents could earn residency with the ruling corporation of Teni-Silva. Resident living was slightly better, but the real perks were held by citizens, so once she’s eligible, Dietz signs up for the military, one of the few pathways open to citizenship. Granted, it still takes a long time that way and isn’t without its dangers, but she’s also motivated by the chance to strike back at the Martians who killed millions of people in attacks on both the moon and earth. She sees herself as a paladin, using force to protect the righteous, a belief that sustains her through brutal military training and then through the bizarre things that happen to her after Drops.

Drops are the name for the process that transports soldiers thousands of miles through space by busting them down to light and reconstituting them at the other end. It isn’t foolproof — people do wind up with limbs improperly reattached or in the middle of solid structures — but it’s fast and relatively cheap. Trouble is, Dietz doesn’t seem to move just through space but also through time, and what she sees isn’t pretty. Is she going mad or is she part of a Light Brigade that could very well save the world from itself?

I don’t know if, when the book came out in 2019, it seemed less prophetic than it does in 2020 but wow, does Ms Hurley know how to write meaningful social commentary in the form of military sci-fi! Which shouldn’t come as a surprise given her training as a historian specializing in the future of war and resistance movements, but it’s always weird actually watching a prophecy unspool in real time. The Light Brigade tackles so many important sociopolitical issues that it’s hard to pinpoint just one as being particularly relevant, but I must say that if you have any interest in seeing how a world ruled by unfettered corporate greed shakes out, you should absolutely read this novel. Unnecessary spoiler for anyone with half a brain: a future where corporations are given control of humanity is not a good future.

The sci-fi throughout was also pretty great, but I’m fairly easy to please when it comes to that sort of thing. I didn’t super love the ending but I didn’t hate it either. Writing-wise, I was very impressed by how Dietz’s gender was largely irrelevant and unknown throughout the book, tho I assumed she was female even before being told otherwise. Plus, the audiobook is narrated by Cara Gee (insert heart eyes emoji here,) which is the number one reason I would ever get an audiobook.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/07/21/the-light-brigade-by-kameron-hurley/

Jul 20 2020

Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb #1) by Tamsyn Muir

Several of my reactions upon completing this book, in no particular order:

“Do I really need to read the other Hugo finalists when this may be the best book I’ve ever read ever?”

“Oh gosh, I’d love to play in an RPG of this. I wonder what dice and stats system this would run best on…”

“You know, this would be really perfect for a TV series. Gory but perfect. Don’t let those GoT hacks anywhere near it tho.”

Reader, this may not be the perfect book for you, but it was the perfect book for me. I mean, what’s not to like about the standard description of Gideon The Ninth, calling it a tale of lesbian necromancers in outer space? Reading the first few chapters, where we’re introduced to Gideon and her fraught relationships with the other inhabitants of the Ninth House, was already divertingly unique, but then Gideon and her frenemy Harrow answer the Emperor’s call for necromancers and their cavaliers to attempt to become Lyctors, His hallowed right hands, and the book becomes a manor house murder mystery, my God, Tamsyn Muir, are you writing for me?! This novel is And There There Were None meets Warhammer 40k meets splatterpunk with a heroine who loves her puns and That’s What She Said jokes as much as I do, and a really clever indistinguishable-from-magic system, and this book is so smart and so laugh-out-loud funny and so heartbreakingly sad that I had several crying jags while reading it. Yes, there are parts where it’s obvious an editor* leaned over and reminded Ms Muir that readers don’t live inside her head and probably need a bit more explaining on the page than she’d set down already, but they only made me want to live in Ms Muir’s head which is both really creepy and really fucking apropos — read the book to find out why! I am worn out after reading this and am using far, far too many italics when reviewing it, but it is so much the best book I’ve ever read ever, thoroughly engaging my heart and my head and my funny bone. I’m probably going to pre-order the sequel, Harrow The Ninth, which is something I’ve only ever done for two other books before in my entire lifetime. Ooh, should I get a hard copy?

Tl;dr Absolutely mind-blowing amalgam of the best of different genres with a refreshingly contemporary heroine. I love.

*Carl Engle-Laird, whose work I will be following hard from now on!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/07/20/gideon-the-ninth-the-locked-tomb-1-by-tamsyn-muir/

Jul 16 2020

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

I’ve read a bunch of Charlie Jane Anders’ short fiction and never understood why it was so popular. I figured reading something long form would help clarify this situation and it did, but not in the way I wanted. Here’s my problem with the writing of hers I’ve read so far: there are few interiors. She very rarely tells you how a character feels, in a lived-in way. There’s a scene where Sophie, one of the heroines, collapses from emotion, and it’s described in a weirdly clinical manner, all physical movement and acknowledgment of facts, but without any visceral reaction. It’s the reading equivalent of watching a puppet show instead of human or even animated actors: there are broad strokes meant to simulate feeling but everything feels dead behind the eyes. I don’t know if this is a deliberate choice not to describe how people feel via interior voice  — there are definitely bullshit writing advice websites out there promoting dispassionate storytelling with the claim that it somehow makes people feel character emotions more vividly — but it serves to make me feel at a complete arm’s length from anything going on in the narrative.

As to the narrative, woof. Okay, so there are some really great concepts here. A Mothership filled with humans fleeing a dying Earth landed on a tidally locked planet they called January. They built a series of cities in the twilight, temperate zone but as generations pass, the cities close off from one another and begin to decay, as entropy wins against adaptability. In Xiosphant, the biggest(?) city of a million people or so, citizens are ruled by a way of life called Circadianism, which strictly allocates when people are allowed to work, sleep or otherwise exist. Our first viewpoint character Sophie escaped the constraining expectations of her middle-class Xiosphanti lifestyle by winning a scholarship to the Gymnasium, an elite school for the best and brightest. She falls madly in love with her roommate Bianca, who is beautiful and rebellious in the way only privileged people can afford to be. When she takes the fall for a crime Bianca committed, Sophie is exiled to the night side, but is saved via an unexpected encounter with a member of the other sentient species on the planet, a species humanity refuses to see as anything but animals.

Our other viewpoint character is Mouth, the only survivor of a nomadic people who now works with a group of adventurers who are part courier but mostly smuggler. Her fighting skills are unparalleled, and when she hears that a copy of the last remaining book of her people is tucked away in the Xiosphant palace, she falls in with a group of student rebels planning to besiege it. One of these rebels is Bianca, who was radicalized by Sophie’s arrest and exile, and is now determined to liberate her fellow citizens from their dystopian government. Of course, little goes to plan, and Mouth, Bianca and Sophie eventually find themselves agents of planetary change.

There’s so much potential here but so little makes sense. The systems of Xiosphant sound interesting until you take into account how the place is geographically impossible given the distances Sophie allegedly covers on foot, even before her last return to the city. Argelo hangs together better as an anarchic city ruled by nine different gang families, until you ask how Sophie and Bianca manage to pay for their party hearty lifestyles before Dash takes an interest in Bianca. As with the lack of interior emotion, there are weird gaps in the logic of things that shouldn’t even be a concern. Like, I understand why the Gelet thought Sophie would make a terrific ambassador because they obviously don’t know enough about humans to know what a terrible idea that is — that makes sense. But just everyday questions of space and time and, again, human emotion are ignored in such a way as to make the mistakes feel glaringly obvious.

Possibly the worst of these is in Sophie’s obsession with Bianca. At 93% of the book, Mouth describes Sophie as an idiot, and it seems that the line was thrown in as an afterthought, Ms Anders acknowledging to the reader that yes, our heroine is hard to root for but hey, she realizes it too! To which: so maybe stop making her be an idiot?! Our knowing that you know she sucks doesn’t make her suck any less! But okay, fiction lives for people doing incredibly stupid things for love, even when the object of affection also objectively sucks.

What’s less forgivable is the way Ms Anders treats Mouth. Mouth is blamed for the failure of the Xiosphanti student rebels when it was likely Bianca’s fault they were discovered at all. Yes, she encouraged Bianca’s revolutionary interests but so did everyone else involved in their little plot, and instead of anyone acknowledging that they were as much to blame as she was, she’s cast as the villain for some bizarre reason.

I was also deeply uneasy with the way Mouth’s relationship to her dead peoples was treated. Sure, they turned out to be a cult but the ease with which the proudly Jewish Alyssa dismissed Mouth’s desire to protect her heritage before finding any of that out felt really wrong to me. I absolutely agree that the idea of heritage should be something that needs to be studied and considered critically, and that there are lots of things people shouldn’t throw away their lives over, but being the sole survivor of an extinct people seems like a perfectly good impetus for Mouth to want to recover anything that can teach her more about them. It was really bizarre to see Mouth vilified for any number of perfectly understandable motivations, considering that she was surrounded by people who sucked way harder.

Anyway, I’ve heard that All The Birds In The Sky is better so maaaaaybe I’ll give that a chance once I’ve dug myself out from under all the reading on my current slate, whenever that is.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/07/16/the-city-in-the-middle-of-the-night-by-charlie-jane-anders/