Edgar's Book Round-Up, May-June
Look, I’ll level: this round-up is late because I knew I had read an absolutely unreasonable number of books this year, and certainly in the period covered by this round-up, surpassing my Goodreads goal for the year at the six-month mark, and show few signs of slowing. It’s long, but most of these are really good (with a few exceptions, noted below), and I feel bad to go over them so swiftly. Incidentally, if you’re interested in helping others read unmanageably, good ways to do that are here and here. And, as usual, book titles link to our Bookshop. So:
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Post-Capitalist Desire, the collected final lectures of Mark Fisher, leads off this round-up. It took me a while to get through, and was honestly kind of a downer — Fisher seems to have been an engaging and charismatic lecturer in addition to a phenomenal writer, and that loss compounds the already staggering one signified by the tantalizing turn in his final writings. The lectures collected here, and edited by Matt Colquhoun, explore that turn. Where Fisher’s earlier works tended to focus on describing the shape of the problem, the lectures here look to the future — what is to be done? — and explore them. Cameron wrote at some length about the book, and I generally cosign what he said in that piece. It’s very good. Requiescat in pace.
Next up, I finished The Fires of Vengeance by Evan Winter, the sequel to The Rage of Dragons, covered in my previous round-up. The sequel picks up where the first book (mentioned here) left off, and delves still-deeper into Winter’s extraordinary world, and complicates Tau’s simplistic, propagandized worldview (with plenty of truly gripping battles and swordplay, of course). I have scarcely stopped thinking of these books since, and I cannot wait for the subsequent books in the Burning series.
I followed it with Network Effect by Martha Wells, the first novel-length entry in the MurderBot Diaries. After an unusually slow start, Wells — through our beloved MurderBot, of course — takes us on an excellent adventure, exploring more of the more-or-less dystopian world she’s created, and the human cost of doing business in outer space.
The cover, which I simultaneously like and feel is inadequate to the material.
While it feels like a long time ago, for a hot minute there at the beginning of the year, it seemed like everyone was talking about Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby. In a bit of a funk of dismay — which I found echoed in the novel, when a character encounters a huge poster advertising Laura Jane Grace’s memoir — I avoided it, mostly because both words in the two-word title make my guts clench. It was only at a dear friend’s recommendation that I finally read it, and I can genuinely say, I’m glad that I did. Peters’ observations are by turns acerbic and thoughtful, tender and vicious, as are the movements of the novel. Two scenes in particular stood out to me: Amy’s realization that her lightly ogling a friend of hers, who is a trans man, as she helps him work on his motorcycle is a gender-affirming experience for both of them, and Reese’s narration of some kind of multi-level marketing party to which she is invited, which was a truly delightful examination of how deeply fucking weird such parties often are, especially in the ways that they reinforce cisgender womanhood. Certainly, it deserves its accolades.
I found myself in the mood for some kind of psychological thriller/crime writing, which drew me to Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient. I had hoped, when I began it, that it would be sort of like Patrick McGrath’s Asylum, which I love; when I realized that wasn’t quite fair, I thought I might enjoy it on its own merits. I did not. The main character is neither interesting nor well-observed enough to justify how much I fucking hated him, and the twist at the end felt sad and cheap more than anything. Michaelides’ reliance on more or less facile classical and artistic references jarred and grated like a bus hitting a pothole, and the few scenes and characters that were compelling were too soon gone. It debuted to solid acclaim and fairly staggering figures, and I can only say: let’s all agree to have better taste going forward, shall we?
Fortunately, I had more MurderBot after that, which brings me to the sixth and most recent installment in the series. On the short side for a novel but a hair long for a novella, Fugitive Telemetry finally takes the reader to Preservation, the functional utopian home of Dr. Indah, MurderBot’s occasional benefactor and legal champion. Preservation has been alluded to in prior books, and it was interesting to finally get to see how the world as established in prior books could be more like a post-scarcity paradise. But it’s a MuderBot book, so there’s a body to start with, and the novel unfolds, as has been noted, along the beats of a cozy mystery story (unified in time and setting, limited cast of characters) and frankly, it was delightful. And watching MurderBot form relationships with the humans and ‘bots of Preservation was compelling and fun. I love these books so much, and I am thrilled to learn that Wells recently signed the contract for three more.
The paperback cover, which I had not seen and which, I must say, I love.
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher scratched an itch I didn’t realize I still had (and still have, right now, this minute) for books about actual adults with adult problems getting to do cool, ill-advised magic adventures with their friends. The Hollow Places follows newly-divorced 30-something Kara as she moves back in with her uncle at the Museum of Wonder (in practice, mostly weird taxidermy) and shortly discovers a concrete hallway on the second floor where it can’t possibly be, which she explores with her friend Simon, the 40-year-old gay barista from the coffee shop next door. What they find draws inspiration from Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows,” but knowledge of the source material isn’t necessary to enjoy the novel. Perhaps I harp on the characters’ ages, but I cannot stress enough how much fucking fun it was to see people my own age, with problems I can actually understand (having been homeschooled, I do not understand about 50% of anything in novels explicitly about high school). Kara and Simon’s friendship is deep and well-observed; Kara’s occasional interactions with her ex and Simon’s references to adventures he had before moving back to the smallish North Carolina town in which the novel takes place are interesting and their banter, extremely entertaining. Cameron turned me on to this one, and I really can’t recommend it enough.
I also found a much more satisfying psychological thriller/crime fix in the form of Tana French’s The Witch Elm. While I’ve been sort of aware of French for some time (her debut novel made quite the splash when it came out), this is the first of hers that I’ve read, and I went for this one because, after several other stabs at the genre, I kept running into unwelcome copaganda. The novel follows Toby, a heretofore-happy-go-lucky guy, as his luck runs absolutely dry: badly injured when his house is broken in to, his attempts to recover at his beloved uncle’s house are compromised by the discovery of a human skull in the titular tree in the back garden — along with a trove of dark secrets about Toby’s youthful friend group and the cousins he grew up with. Toby’s voice, as well as his growing awareness of how much of his “luck” was in fact structural inequality that favored him, really pulled the novel along, and the steady dismantling of Toby’s narrative about his life, to the detriment of his life now, was extremely compelling, and I will probably seek out French’s work again in the future.
After this, I sped my way through Nnedi Okorafor’s latest, Remote Control. I really enjoyed Okorafor’s Akata Witch series, and I was excited for this one. I suspect I read it too quickly — it’s brief, with an audiobook runtime of like four hours, and I think I burned through it in a day. While I enjoyed it, and Sankofa was an engaging narrator, I really feel like I missed a lot of details. However, the ones I remember were beautiful and strange, and while the plot was somewhat disjointed, it was nonetheless fun to join Sankofa on her travels, as she seeks to find the truth of a strange seed that was given to her in her earliest youth.
The Pulmann edition of Pharsalia from 1592. Credit: By Book printed by the Officina Plantiniana (Plantin/Moretus), Antwerp. Scan by Aristeas - Own work, Public Domain, here.
My next print book was Lucan’s Pharsalia, as translated by Jane Wilson Joyce. While I have not had the pleasure of reading Lucan in Latin, Joyce’s translation was easy and clear: her use of a loose six-beat structure was a good analogy for the Latin hexameter, and while I would usually gripe that the lines were too long for my taste, Joyce uses the length to her advantage. She also does not shy from Lucan’s notoriously grisly descriptions of death, destruction, and, in the case of the terrifying witch Erichtho, corpse-fucking for fun and profit. The unfinished epic, of course, covers the lead-up to the (historical, not that the epic is too concerned with historical fact) battle of Pharsalus, which took place 90 years before the poet’s birth. I enjoyed it quite a bit, personally — enough that I hope to spend some time with the Latin myself — but I also really actually like Titus Andronicus (the play), and if you, dear reader, are not on board for a lot of truly gory deaths, it might be a bit of gruesome slog.
The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum, however, I would strongly recommend to everyone else who felt that the Tales from the Loop TV series was a fucking let-down after the TTRPG. The novel, told in brief, poetic chapters, details high-school-tough-with-a-heart-of-gold Ryann as she falls for fiercely-solitary new girl, Alexandria. Both, it transpires, have lost their mothers to the depths of space: Ryann’s mother, who worked at NASA, perished in an accident of some kind, while Alexandria’s mother was one of the volunteers for a private study about the effects of prolonged space flight and, as such, was utterly lost to this world. Ryann’s friends, family, and teachers people the background of the story, but the focus is squarely on Ryann and Alexandria, and they bear it well, both girls drawn with a kind of soft-focus tenderness. It could have tipped over into cloying or cliche or (like the TV show mentioned above) boring as hell at any time, but it never did. I’m certainly excited to read more of Ancrum’s work.
My local indie continues to enable my book-acquisition problem, but that’s okay; I’m still riding on my last order from them, which included The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. Long-time readers probably remember how much I enjoyed Upright Women Wanted and Magic for Liars, and The Echo Wife gives me no cause to reassess my affection. Working now in psychological sci-fi thriller mode, Gailey’s latest novel brings us Evelyn Caldwell, a brilliant scientist working in the private sector to create clones so lifelike they can be used as body doubles for presidents and celebrities — who then learns that her husband stole her research to create a clone of her, to be his docile bride. But now he’s dead, and Martine, the clone, killed him — and Evelyn can’t help but help her hide her crimes. And in Evelyn, Gailey has given us a tremendous gift: she’s driven, almost to the point of cruelty, emotionally stunted, very aware of her own brilliance, and still, I at least could not help but root for her. And even though it was telegraphed long in advance, the ending hits a particular blend of emotions that I can only compare to that final shot in Midsommar. Once again, Gailey hit it out of the fucking park, and I cannot wait to see what they’ll do next.
I can’t remember how I stumbled on The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, but I did and I’m glad of it. While I don’t always agree with an enthusiastic fan of the novel (we’re in a Facebook group together), this is one recommendation of his that I can take to heart. The novel follows Cazaril, a former soldier and survivor of forced hard-labor aboard an enemy ship, as he tries to settle into a quiet life as the tutor to a bright young noblewoman. But when she is summoned to court, Cazaril must face his old enemies and navigate both court intrigue and, possibly being the instrument of a god. The setting for this and other books in the World of Five Gods is loosely but clearly modeled on reconquista Spain and surrounding countries, and McMaster Bujold’s clear knowledge of the period, both in terms of its history and in terms of it material realities, helps to ground the novel. While the prose is a little on the mannered side, it was never enough to take me out of the story, and I enjoyed the occasional meditations on faith and its effects (good and bad).
Next up was My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, a brief but well-structured tale of a young woman’s attempts to conceal her sister’s misdeeds in relationships. Korede, the reserved narrator, seems to see through everything, until her (notably, much more beautiful) younger sister begins to pursue the doctor to whom Korede reports at the hospital where she works. With echoes, for me, of Natsuo Kirino’s Grotesque, the novel was compelling and focused, playing with its various leitmotives as — just, you know, for example, not to reference anything in the novel or anything — a beautiful woman might play with an heirloom knife.
The cover of Lost in the Never Woods, which, regardless of how I felt about the novel, I really quite liked.
I followed it with Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas, whose Cemetery Boys knocked my socks off. Lost in the Never Woods was a little less my speed, though I did appreciate Thomas’ choice to set it in the weird hinterland that is the time following high school graduation and the beginning of university. Wendy Darling’s brothers have been missing for years, and when other local children begin to go missing in similar ways, Wendy feels compelled to investigate, aided by the mysterious, beautiful Peter, who insists they’ve known each other in the past. Thomas’ eye for family dynamics is, once again, on display, both in Wendy’s family, shattered by grief, and the family of Wendy’s best friend, Jordan, into whose life we do not peer deeply, but what we see is tantalizing. Nonetheless, it was a satisfying retelling: sort of Twin Peaks meets Peter Pan, which is a take that might have sold me more on the novel if someone else had had it.
In my last book round-up, I mentioned that White Fragility by Robin diAngelo had been assigned reading for a DEI session at my job, and while White Fragility was fine, as far as it went, a number of reviews compared it — unfavorably — to Caste: the Origin of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. Another component of my last big order from my local indie, it was honestly a pleasant surprise. Because not only is Wilkerson a better handler of facts than diAngelo, she’s a better writer on a very fundamental level, bringing a supremely readable blend of poetic sensibility and journalistic clarity to her topic. And when dealing with a topic like the origins of racism in America, and the creation of what amounts to a caste system in the United States from the moment of its founding, it is certainly useful to be able to bring stylistic talents to bear. But Wilkerson is much more than a skilled stylist; she’s also a compelling scholar. I am glad that Caste got the attention it got on release, and I’m excited to seek out The Warmth of Other Suns.
I’d heard, of course, about Ann Leckie, whose Imperial Radch trilogy remains on my to-be-read list, but the one that was available through the library was The Raven Tower, her fantasy debut, so that’s the one I started with. And frankly? It was great. Narrated primarily in the second person, it follows Eolo, a young transmasculine person and assistant to the presumptive heir to the Raven’s Lease, a priestly position in which Prince Mawat would liaise with the Raven, a god who has protected the country from invaders for a very long time. But the Lease has been usurped, and while Mawat engages in theatrics, Eolo must unravel the true mystery. And the trick with the second person is, sometimes it’s someone talking to you, a revelation early in the novel that certainly engaged me even more fully than the skilled worldbuilding and, of course, my personal draw towards transmasculine characters already had. I’m now even more motivated to seek out Leckie’s other work.
This cover also is just gorgeous.
We conclude this quick-and-dirty round-up with a true delight: P. Djèlí Clark’s A Master of Djinn, which was — I say this without hyperbole, with a straight face but for my delight in being able to recommend it more highly — fucking fantastic. We follow Fatma, the first female inspector in the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, as she is brought into the scene of a mass murder. Several high-ranking English diplomats, as well as people close to others much more powerful than they appear, have been horribly murdered in an alternate 1910s Cairo, which has become an international cultural center since magic reentered the world and the British empire was effectively stymied. But while Clark’s alternate history is compelling enough, his magic systems and, above all, his characters and their interactions were just perfect at every turn (and there are many — it’s fundamentally a mystery novel, after all). Hinting at the wider world but keeping his focus on Cairo, which becomes almost a character in itself, Clark has conjured a truly engrossing world. I cannot wait to dig into the novellas in the same setting, just as soon as I can get my greasy little hands on them.
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I’d say that’s it, but it’s a lot already. If this isn’t enough, you can read my novella, if you want. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that these round-ups may go monthly, at least temporarily; watch this space. (It might do a trick.)