Zombie (Ants)

The book opens with a lovely, precocious little girl named Melanie living in a military testing base straight out of Dark Angel or Universal Soldier.  She describes her sterile living environment, her slapdash education, her solitary existence.  Oh, and then she describes Sundays, when she eats her one meal a week.  Of live grubs.

Yep.  Welcome to Mike Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts.  Little Melanie is a zombie.

This book scared the bejeezus out of me.  Most zombie books have some sort of rabid rhesus monkey who bites activists, or alien goo that eats brains, or whatever.  This book’s science is real, and it’s freaking terrifying!  Have you read about zombie ants?  Do you ever want to sleep again, Gentle Readers?  Yeesh.

So in this book, humans have become susceptible to a mutation of the zombie ant fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis.  You know, an actual fungus that takes over ants’ brains and controls their actions and explodes their heads and…  Have I mentioned the yeesh?

The science is pretty spot-on, for a horror book.  And that only makes it creepier.  I prefer to be afraid of unlikely things, thank you very much.  Now I have a creepy aversion to ants.

So most people are walking fungus zombies with no brains, just a hunger to snack on them.  But there are exceptions.  Children, who look and act normal, but are infected with Ophiocordyceps. Melanie is the brightest of these.

Helen Justineau is Melanie’s favorite teacher, and has become emotionally attached to her charge, in spite of all the restrictions against it (Slate.com calls their relationship "Matilda...with zombies.")   When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, Melanie and Miss Justineau are joined by a few soldiers and the head of the zombie research program in a desperate run for safety.  

The research director, Dr. Caroline Caldwell, has a desperate need to examine Melanie’s brain.  Yep, the scientist in charge of saving humanity needs braaaaaaaaaains.  So many zombie metaphors, so little time.  She is cold, calculating, and fascinating, seeing the children's human tendencies as nothing more than a clever evolutionary tactic by the fungus.  She reminds a colleague “that the subject presents as a child but is actually a fungal colony animating a child’s body. There’s no place for sentiment here.”   Certainly the reader wants humanity to defeat the fungus, but it’s hard to like this unpleasant woman.

And therein lies the most interesting thing about this book.  We don’t know who to root for.  Melanie is our protagonist; she's also a zombie who has to fight not to eat Miss Justineau's face.  Dr. Caldwell is fighting to cure humanity, but she's pretty nasty.  You can't root for (or against, really) fungal spores...and it all leads to a very muddled sense of hero and villain, in a truly delightful way. 

The ending, too, will knock your socks off.  Not the climax, but the very end.  About two pages before the book closes, Carey yanks the rug.  And you'll like it.  Clever, intriguing, and completely unexpected.  If you'll excuse the pun, Gentle Readers, this is a zombie book with brains.  

BRAAAAAAINS!

Nigerian Apocalypse

I was really looking forward to Who Fears Death.  It’s billed as feminist post-apocalyptic African science fiction.  Do you see, Gentle Readers, why I wanted so badly to love it?  Unfortunately, it is pretty forgettable, in spite of all the accolades it has received: winner of the World Fantasy Award and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award (speculative fiction dealing with race/ethnicity), and nominated for the Nebula and the Locus Fantasy Awards.

I was so excited to read a book by a female Nigerian author with a magical female protagonist.  The idea of African science fiction is be fascinating!  Science plus magic is a great starting point for a story, especially with the varying African traditions of juju, vodoun, hoodoo, etc.  I even like the cover art.  

I began this book expecting to be a fan.  I am a firm believer in supporting diversity in the world of literature, especially in speculative fiction, which has so long been a bastion of DWM (Living White Males, too).  So bring on the women, the non-European traditions, the queer, the trans, the subversive...  And I went into my reading experience with a giddy literary crush on the author.  The New York Times Book Review says Nnedi Okorafor is the heir to Octavia Butler!  That's her above, hanging out with Wole Soyinka!

I really, really, REALLY wanted to love Who Fears Death.  

...It's fine.

For me, the book never found a focus.  At times, it was a clear magical bildungsroman.  Then an exercise in contemporary tribal politics and prejudices.  But then the book became a desert road trip focused on female friendships, and I got bored.  The quest—saving the world, averting genocide, defeating evil—becomes secondary to a juvenile squabble for power in personal relationships.  For a book that takes on such massive, serious topics as weaponized rape, female circumcision and ethnic cleansing, the big ideas are too easily pushed aside and made secondary.  There was so much to write about, and so little addressed.  I was disappointed.   

Although Who Fears Death is not a young adult novel, it reads that way.  Okorafor has four other books out, ranging from middle grades to YA, and this book just hasn’t seemed to make the leap from one to the other.  Now, Gentle Readers, you know that I adore my YA reading, and sometimes it is as effective, if not more so, than “grown up” books.  When I describe Okorafor’s book as being reminiscent of YA literature, however, it is not a compliment.  At first, I thought the problems I was having were merely stylistic, as if Okorafor were trying to write in the manner of a folk tale or an oral history, but that hypothesis just doesn’t ring true.  The characters are naive, and the conflicts are overwhelmingly simplistic.  While the subject matter is certainly adult, the book never feels complex.

The themes of Who Fears Death don’t shy away from the dark nature of adult post-apocalyptic literature (at least in the beginning).  Our protagonist is the child of rape, an Ewu child whose very mixed-race skin marks her violent origins and causes outsider status in her village.  Her mother, a dark-skinned woman of the peaceful Okeke race, was raped by a violent “sun-colored” Nuru man.  Onyesonwu, the resulting child, struggles to find her place in the world and to control her burgeoning magical talents.  I was impressed that this book addressed very real issues,  in that Onyesonwu was facing contemporary prejudices including being a mixed-race child, a female in a patriarchal society, and a child of a violent act.  In order to belong more fully to her village, Onyesonwu insists on receiving the traditional clitoridectomy of a maturing woman.  This book seemed to pull no punches!

Onyesonwu's romantic relationship has the opportunity to be a high point, as she and her lover Mwita jockey for control.  He is a traditional man who believes that he must protect her, but her magic is far stronger than his.  He tends to respond by withholding information, making her dependent on him.  It is a loving relationship, but one fraught with tension and one that should be far more nuanced than it is.  It has the opportunity to be a parable of the female within the traditionally male scifi community (for an explanation of this very real conflict, see here).  This book exhibits so much potential!

But then the magic appears.  While the mythology of the world has smatterings of “the time before,” there’s very little science in the fiction.  Although the characters do have water capture stations and palm-held computers, they rely mostly on magic and juju.  And unfortunately, Okorafor uses magic as a deus ex machina, a quick fix for every problem.  The voluntary clitoridectomy is causing discomfort and pain?  Onyesonwu magically reverses it!  In doing this, the trauma of the surgery is wiped out, and the subtextual discussion of why a young girl might choose such a mutilation is negated.  The choice has been reversed, and any emotional trauma resulting from the act (or of its reversal, and the rejection of the tradition) are ignored.

 

Other scenes of trauma are equally ineffective.  All suffering is given the same treatment in the book, so Onyesonwu’s physical pain during the clitoridectomy is equal to her emotional anguish watching a friend’s murder, but is also equal to having her feelings hurt by a misogynist sorcerer, or a stranger calling her names.  There is one emotional note for suffering, and it discredits the thought-provoking themes of the book by whitewashing them and making them too much alike.  

Even the climax of the book, a flurry of sacrifice, generation and war, is somehow unsatisfying. 

Onyesonwu wins the day, kills the evil sorcerer (who happens to be her rapist father), and prevents the genocide of her people.  She is, unfortunately, stoned to death for her trouble.  But here is where it gets disturbing.  She kills all the Nuru men of weapons-bearing age.  She seems to believe that it is the only way to prevent the slaughter of the Okeke, but still...she commits mass murder herself.  In order to atone somehow, for the death of all these young men, she spontaneously magicks all the women of child-bearing age.  Yep, all the women in town become magically pregnant.  

Now I know that this is not rape, and there is no physical trauma visited upon these women, but WOW.  That is still a helluva violation of personal choice, personal space, personal agency...  And somehow, the violation is greater, as it is practiced on women by a woman. 

All in all, as much as I wanted to love this book, I was disturbed by it.  I found it disappointing in plot, in politics, in tone, in follow-through.  I felt as if the book squandered its potential, and that I had squandered my attention.  

But if you try again, Ms. Okorafor, I will read another book.  I live in hope that you will find a way to harness all that dark, chewy, important "stuff" that needs to be said, and you will say it in an engaging, important book.  Let's both try again. 

"Words of Radiance," or 1088 Pages of Awesome

I have finished Words of Radiance.  Dear Readers, it is fabulous.  I have done a very, very general review of the first book, The Way of Kings, here.  The story is so multifaceted and complex that I hesitate to give too much away.  Most of the joy of these books is not in the plot’s destination, but the proverbial journey.  
 

I am happy to report that many of the issues I had with The Way of Kings were assuaged in the second book.  Sanderson’s world-building remains strong, and since I had my understanding of his universe from reading The Way of Kings, I could jump right into Words of Radiance without the confusion and difficulty I had with the first book.  I’m still not crazy about his character names (I find them far too similar, and still conflate one character with another for a while), but I really liked being back in this storyline.

This second book of the series follows the plot structure of The Way of Kings, in that there are multiple narrators and an abundance of flashbacks.  While Kings has three primary narrators, the bulk of the book belongs to Kaladin, a slave with a storied past.  A solid chunk of the novel is a series of flashbacks to Kaladin’s earlier life, explaining just how he went from promising surgeon to gifted soldier to shunned slave. 

Keeping with this same framework, Words of Radiance continues the story of our three narrators, but the flashbacks belong to Shallan, the scholar we met in the first book.  She is the custodian of some deadly secrets, and we come to understand her through flashbacks to her troubled childhood.  In The Way of Kings, she was a weaker character, but in Words of Radiance she becomes much more complex and interesting.  A secret badass, in fact.  I look forward to how she’ll develop as the series continues.

While the greater part of the book is Shallan’s, we see the continuation of Kaladin and Dalinar’s stories from book one.  Dalinar is beginning to get some of the respect he deserves, although his rival Sadeas is still actively working against him.  The Dalinar storyline is finally political and military, rather than the “is he going mad” plotline that went on for waaaay too long in The Way of Kings.  He’s learned to acknowledge his visions, and even the king is beginning to listen to his advice.  

After Kaladin’s heroics at the end of the first book, he has been tasked with training the royal guard.  He’s coming to terms with his prejudice against the light-eyed ruling class of Alekhar, but he’s still remarkably boneheaded about some things.  There are a few times when the active reader kind of wants to kick him in the ass to get him going.  But in this book he gets more fight scenes than in The Way of Kings, and when Kaladin fights, it’s always impressive.  

And wow, can Sanderson write fight scenes!  There are a lot of things going on in this book, and a lot of them are interior, but when there is a fight YE GODS is there a fight.  There is a four-on-one honor duel that is incredible.  We’re talking reading-so-fast-your-eyes-hurt, goose-bumping, heart-pounding, occasionally-making-weird-grunty-noises reading.  

We also meet some new narrators, including Eshonai, a Parshendi warrior.  Through all of The Way of Kings, the Parshendi have been The Big Bad, the mysterious truce-breakers who murdered a king without cause.  Now, while we still do not understand why the Parshendi broke their truce with the Alethi, we begin to see some of their culture and their struggle.  I look forward to seeing how the Parshendi plotline develops as the books continue, although I found Eshonai’s “surprise twist” to be less than surprising.

  

Actually, a number of the plot twists weren’t all that twisty.  I have found that with Sanderson, I can see where the storyline is going, but it doesn’t really matter, because getting to the payoff is worth the ride.  I found this out in Elantris and The Rithmatist, and it holds true for Words of Radiance.  About a third of the way through the book, I can see where Sanderson is pointing the characters.  By the end of the novel, the characters are where you expected, but how they got there is entirely unexpected!  So while the broad strokes of the novel may be somewhat predictable, I did find myself constantly surprised by how Sanderson got me to the end.  That being said, I thought the ultimate magical payoff of Words of Radiance was a re-telling of the end of Elantris, and that was disappointing.  

But, as is typical of Sanderson, Words of Radiance ends with a slam-bang finish of epic proportions.  This characteristic breakneck tying up of plot threads is a Sanderson “thing,” so much that his fans have coined the phrase "Sanderson Avalanche."  The plotting and scheming and foreshadowing all come to a conclusion in the last hundred pages or so, and rather than feeling like a quick and dirty deus ex machina (à la Stephen King), Sanderson’s endings are supremely satisfying.  

A quick note, Gentle Readers: This “Sanderson Avalanche” means two things 

1) Once you begin the end of a Sanderson novel, you cannot put it down.  Can’t be done.  So snuggle in with snacks and blankies, because you’re not going anywhere for a while.

2) Don't finish a Sanderson book right before bed.  Although you will be emotionally exhausted and will have an epic book hangover, you will be too pumped up to sleep.  You need a walk around the block, not a nap.  Move your feet while your brain processes the vast amount of information the author just dumped on you.  Trust me.  It’s also good to have a friend on speed-dial who has just read the book so you can geek out together.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to take a turn around the block.  Anyone want to come with?

Boo, Part II: Pure

After finishing VanderMeer's Annihilation from the last post, I moved on to a book I was super excited to read.  It was the culmination of a trilogy I've been tracking for a while, ever since Julianna Baggott's spectacular debut followed me home.

Because it hits certain marks, it is difficult not to discuss the Pure trilogy in terms of The Hunger Games.  Young adult science fiction, female protagonist, dystopian near future, scary government overlords, hidden agendas and a love triangle.  But this is not The Hunger Games, girls and boys!  The first book promises a world actually a little darker and more twisted, which I love...

Clare Clark's NYT review sums up the world better than I can: Sometime in the unspecified future, a series of detonations has all but destroyed the world. A handpicked few were given refuge in the Dome, a high-tech bubble designed to withstand environmental disaster. Those left outside were not so fortunate. The intensity of the explosions not only devastated the landscape but changed forever those who survived it, fusing people with animals, with objects, with the earth. The lucky ones can still function. One young man has a slavering dog instead of a leg and has “learned how to walk with a quick, uneven limp.” Another has several birds embedded in his back, their wings moving under his shirt. Some types are common enough to have been given names: the Groupies, drunk and vicious, have been bound into one massive body, while the feral Beasts are half man, half animal. The Dusts are barely human at all, monsters who have bonded to rocks and rubble, and who drag themselves out of the ground like living land mines to devour any creature that strays too close.

Pure's world is beautifully realized and inherently cinematic.  City dwellers scuttle between roofless buildings, hiding in cellars and scrounging for existence.  The suburbs are now known as the Meltlands, named after the liquified remains of plastic jungle gyms.  The Deadlands are full of hidden monsters, some human, some not, and covered in a scree of rock and blasted sand.  Looming over each landscape is the Dome, a sealed biosphere protected from the ravages of ecological devastation and full of "Pures" horrified by the idea of contamination.  It will come as no surprise that the film rights have already been snapped up.  If The Hunger Games and Divergent keep making young-adult dystopia movies vast amounts of money at the box office, Pure should be produced soon.  

Until that moment: onward we read!  On the day of the explosions, our protagonist Pressia was a little girl holding a baby doll.  That doll's head is now fused to her fist.  She also lost her parents in the detonation, and now lives in the city with her grandfather.  When she turns 16 in a few days, she will be collected by the evil OSR and trained and indoctrinated as a killer.  Thankfully, Pressia's doll's head won't get in the way of her shooting ability; otherwise the OSR would use her for target practice.  She and her neighbors struggle for food, for survival, and for hope while they await the day when the Pures emerge from the Dome to save them all.

Just as we begin to believe that the people in the Dome have it easy, we meet Partridge, son of the Pure leader Willux.  Mourning the deaths of his mother and older brother, Partridge is estranged from his father and unhappy in the sterile environment of the Dome.  When he discovers that his mother might in fact be alive and living outside, he escapes the Dome to search for her and joins forces with Pressia.  Of course, the world goes to hell and everyone is trying to hijack these young people to serve their own nefarious ends, etc, etc.  

Pressia is the contemporary epitome of the "Strong Female Character" in that she gets things done.  I don't find this trope particularly engaging, as the SFC usually spends so much time being strong that she's lacking in actual character.  For contrast, see Buffy Summers and Katniss Everdeen, "Strong People Who Happen to be Female:" flawed, sometimes unlikeable, but human.  One of the reasons that The Hunger Games is so successful with readers is that identifiying with Katniss is easy.  Pressia and her friends are all straightforward and goodhearted, a little too cookie-cutter to ring true.

For me, the most compelling characters are those engaged in the struggle to grow as a person.  In these books, that character is a young man calling himself El Capitan.  His younger brother Helmud was riding piggyback on the day the bombs fell, and now Helmud is fused to El Capitan's back.  Helmud communicates only in repeated snatches of conversation which nevertheless carry a menacing echo of feral intelligence.  The two of them--their mere appearance, their interdependence, El Capitan's growing understanding of Helmud's separateness--are fascinating. I also really like Partridge's girlfriend Lyda.  Her character arc is one of the most impressive, as she transforms from a pampered trophy-wife-in-training to a badass warrior who prefers the starkness of the world outside the Dome, because it feels more real to her.

Speaking of trophy wives, the wife of the OSR commander is an adherent of Feminine Feminism, which is merely a reversion to pre-feminist gender repression.  The Commander's Wife wears a white full-body stocking, covering her from face to the tips of her toes, under her perfectly pressed house-dress.  She is expected to find her fulfillment in baking, housekeeping, and child-rearing.  There is little explanation of how feminism reverted to repression, but the moniker of the movement is evocative and fascinating.  This character is one of the most interesting for me, and I was hoping to see more of the Feminine Feminist movement.  Unfortunately, Baggott seemed to feel that these few brief scenes with the Commander's Wife were sufficient.  

Pure is a wonderful introduction to a new world where life and death overlap in unexpected ways. I was disappointed in Fuse, but figured it was caught in the dreaded second-book trap of being a bridge from Awesome Book #1 to End of Trilogy #3.  It continues the story of Pressia and Partridge, and spends significant time on the secondary characters, but somehow it lacks the heft of Pure.  It does attempt to be more of a character- than plot-driven book, but just doesn't make them complex enough. I firmly believe that you can have character-driven complexity in young adult fiction, so I'm just not sure why this book couldn't give me the oomph I was craving.  Plot-wise, Pressia and Partridge have parted ways, fighting against the Dome on different fronts.  Partridge returns to the Dome in order to attack the power structure from within, but finds himself trapped in his father's narrative, saddled with a fake fiancée and missing most of his rebellious memories.  Pressia and her team of rebels find a way to decode secret messages from the Dome, and they discover they need to steal an airplane (!) and fly to Ireland (!!).  Yep. Jumping the shark much, anyone?

When we return in book three, Burn, Pressia and her team are grounded in Ireland.  She must find her way back in order to continue the rebellion.  Meanwhile, Partridge takes charge of the Dome, but things are significantly more complex than he realizes.  While he sees circumstances in a very pragmatic, black-and-white way, his attempts to force the Dome residents to face their actions have disastrous consequences.  He becomes trapped in ever-more labyrinthine plans, and his childlike view of good and evil is pushed to its limit. 

As I mentioned above, it is difficult to discuss the Pure trilogy without referencing The Hunger Games.   Pure doesn't concern itself with why the world has become so segregated.  There is no underlying logic behind the separation of Haves and Have-Nots, just a physical embodiment of the 1-percenters.  We never know why the bombs were dropped--only that some megalomaniacs decided that the world needed to be cleansed.  There is no seeming need for justification, no desire to complicate the issues.  And that is where the Pure trilogy falls down.

By the trilogy's end, there is none of The Hunger Games' uncertainty, or stuggling with reality.  Katniss's mistakes as a leader, even her unwillingness to be a leader, is nowhere to be found in the heroes of Pure.  Pointing out the flaws in society is always easier than fixing them, and The Hunger Games struggles with that knowledge.  Burn lets the one character that has learned that lesson retreat from the world and commit suicide.  By the end of the trilogy, we have no idea how the world will be changed, but it must be for the better, since these stalwart young people are in charge.  Baggot ultimately makes the easy, safe choice, and undercuts the darkness that make the trilogy so arresting in the beginning.  Pure is a book that revels in its impurities, and by the time I finished Burn, it felt more like a fizzle.

But things are looking up!  I just today began Words of Radiance, the second book in the Brandon Sanderson "Stormlight Archive."  You can see my rave review of the first book, Way of Kings, here (also stories of George, my camel).  I court extreme geekery when I attempt to explain how good it feels to be back in this world!  I'm a whole four chapters in, and I am happily wallowing in Sanderson's universe.  My friend The Serial Bookseller explained to me how The Stormlight Archive fits in with Sanderson's other worlds, and how there are characters that pop from one book's world to the others.  Apparently it's going to take over ten books to make the whole thing happen.  The Serial Bookseller is a hardcore Sanderson-lover (Sandersonian?  Sandersonite? Sandersonist?) and is totally psyched to find out how it all hooks together.  I'm frankly not sure that I am willing to spend that much time looking for Easter eggs in the books.  [NOTA BENE: An Easter egg is not delivered by bunnies, Gentle Readers.  It is an inside joke or a hidden message found within books or movies.  It's like Al Hirschfeld's "Nina" signatures.  You can live without seeing them, but they're fun to play with.]  

Now I am counting the hours til I can snuggle under the covers with my book.  See you when I come up for air!