Liberty's Daughter, by Naomi Kritzer

 Hope you all had a marvellous summer! When I wasn't backpacking or hiking or at music camp, I was rereading the Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold, following along with this delightful blog. Lois herself is going to appear on the last episode, airing sometime this month!

Naomi Kritzer is becoming an auto-buy author for me. I first encountered her with the short story "Little Free Library," on Tor.com—a delightful, sweet, but also deep and moving story. Then I happened to read Catfishing on CatNet (my review at the link) and its sequel Chaos on CatNet, without realizing it was the same author. Kritzer has this way of seeing our current society with ruthless clarity that she translates into fun, entertaining spec fic with a hidden punch.

Liberty's Daughter is another plausible near-future scenario: what if a bunch of libertarians decided to hook some sea-platforms and old cruise ships together to create a sea-stead in international waters? (It's plausible because people have already tried to do it. Great story!) I love that Kritzer is able to envision all the nitty-gritty logistics of how such a living arrangement would work. Limited availability of just about everything, for example, leading to our MC's part-time job: finding very specific items for people and negotiating trades. Really great world-building here.

Kritzer is also cognizant of all the unpleasant maintenance jobs that someone is going to have to do, and her story hinges on the debt-slavery that is a sadly plausible solution. Beck Garrison is a privileged teenager because of her father's position, and until she's asked to help find someone's missing sister, she is naive about her narrow little world. But when she discovers nefarious dealings, she plows ahead determinedly to investigate the literal and figurative underbelly of the sea-stead. 

Everything about this book is just so interesting. The fast-paced plot pinballs through all sections of the unique setting and society, exploring a raft (get it?) of physical, political and social implications. Kritzer's critique is funny, nuanced and ultimately hopeful. Yes, people can be greedy and selfish and cruel, but they can also pull together and care for each other and stand up for each other. And human ingenuity can solve as many problems as it creates!

Beck might be a bit too confident and capable to be believable, but it sure is fun watching her bulldoze her way through greed, corruption and incompetence. She has some genuine dilemmas; her character growth isn't huge but it's satisfying. The bad guys aren't flatly evil, either. 

Thoroughly enjoyable, and I look forward to seeing what aspect of society Krizter will choose to poke at next! 

You might enjoy her discussion of the genesis of the book on John Scalzi's blog, but be warned, it's fairly spoilery.

These Violent Delights, by Chloe Gong

What an ambitious book! Let's retell Romeo and Juliet, set in 1920s Shanghai, during the rise of the Communist Party. Let's make Juliette the heir to the Cai criminal empire, and Roma the Montagov heir, representing Chinese and Russian gangs fighting for control of the city. Add in the European political and mercantile factions, choosing sides, and the Communist Party threatening all power structures, local or foreign, legitimate or gang. Oh, and let's also add in a disgusting monster spreading a terrible madness everywhere it goes. 

The setting of These Violent Delights is awesome, and the way Gong works it into her plot is brilliant. Some of the Romeo and Juliet work-ins felt contrived to me, but she does cool things with the story, twisting it in interesting ways. Roma and Juliette are compelling characters—not immediately likeable. Juliette is a hard, violent person, and Gong doesn't glorify the violence. I appreciated that even when she's being particularly kick-ass against people whose asses definitely need kicking, we don't avoid the uncomfortable questions about Juliette's methods. There are some great side characters that kept me invested even when I wasn't so sure about our mains!

The monster is creepy, gory and terrifying, and makes a great metaphor for the forces tearing Shanghai apart. The mystery of where it comes from and how to stop it drives most of the plot, which I thought wandered somewhat in the middle. I didn't think it needed to be quite that convoluted. But the character relationships kept me reading, and the climax is tense and satisfying. 

There will be a sequel, which I'm not sure I'll read, because that monster is haunting my nightmares!

Two Graphic Novels: New Kid and Banned Book Club

These are two very different graphic novels: a middle-grade story about a Black kid trying to fit in at a new, mostly white, school, and a memoir about a Korean university student joining protests against a repressive government. But they both deliver a similar hopeful message about friends standing together standing up for something.

New Kid, by Jerry Craft, is funny and charming and affirming—and ever-so-gently and incisively excoriates the ignorance and bias of the white-privileged world that Jordan has to adapt himself to. When his well-meaning parents (and I love Jordan's parents!) send him to a posh private school, Jordan has to leave behind his neighbourhood where everyone looks sort of like him, talks like him, dresses like him, has around the same amount of money as his family; and figure out how to navigate a society of very wealthy, very white kids (and teachers). He doesn't encounter violent, ugly racism and bullying; rather, this book illustratively defines "microagression" (without ever using the term): the thousand tiny cuts every day that tell him he is different in a bad way. Less. Abnormal. And it's up to Jordan to adapt himself to fit in. Because that's what it means to be brown in North America.

I loved that every character was well-rounded and had real personality—there are no cardboard cut-out bad guys. There are no "bad guys": even the teacher who cannot get the names of her black students right for the whole year isn't malicious, just blindly, stupidly negligent, so wrapped up in her own version of reality that she can't recognize what she's doing. And that's what this book is all about: recognition.

As an inhabitant myself of a white bubble of privilege, I loved how this book slid the knife in so painlessly: do you see yourself there? Is that a bias you didn't know you had? Is that a phrase/action/attitude you've indulged in? 

But of course, the more important recognition is every kid who has ever had Jordan's experience seeing themselves represented. Jordan's journey is so real, his frustrations so palpable, his little successes so convincing—and the story is full of optimism and empowerment. Most people have good will. Making overtures of friendship mostly results in friends. It's possible to bridge gaps of understanding with a bit of patience and humour. 

New Kid was a delight to read; the art was appealing (I can't really speak to the art, but I liked it!); the characters linger in my mind. There is a sequel, Class Act, that I will get my hands on ASAP, because I really care about Jordan and his friends (and I want to find out if he eventually makes it to art school!). And I just now found out that New Kid won the Newberry last year! Guess that's why I'd heard of it!

I wasn't planning on spending so much time on New Kid, but I still want to talk about Banned Book Club, by Kim Hyun Sook, Ko Hyung-Ju and Ryan Estrada. Different as it is, it's also an important book that opened my eyes and should be read by everyone. It's definitely an adult book, or older YA: quite a bit of violence, including torture.

I had no idea that as recently as the 1980's South Korea was ruled by a military dictatorship (shows how lacking my "world history" study is!). Banned Book Club is set in 1983, and chronicles the author's first year at university, when she is awakened to the true nature of her government and gets pulled into student protests. As a naive, relatively sheltered young woman, Hyun Sook makes the ideal protagonist to bring the reader with her as she discovers what the students are doing and what happens to them when they get caught. The cute guy who invites her to "book club," an opportunity to talk about banned books and the political ideas they represent, is regularly arrested and tortured—and he takes it all in stride with a sort of "taking one for the team" attitude. The "cocktails" the girls are asked to prepare for an event turn out to be Molotov cocktails. Hyun Sook is appalled at first, and afraid, and then she gets angry. She participates in the protests for the cute guy's sake at first, but then because she agrees they need to protest. There's a quite frightening government agent that she eventually stands up to, in a believable and funny-while-also-scary way.

It's a very readable story with a lot of humour to offset the terrible things happening. And it highlights the fact that these are ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives: they aren't "radicals" obsessed with a political agenda; they just want a few basic freedoms and human rights, and sometimes you need to fight for that. There is a happy ending of sorts: the epilogue shows all the characters thirty-three years later, after a democratically elected government has been in power for a while. But the fight continues, because freedom isn't something anyone, or any country can take for granted. (Interesting that in 2017 South Korea's president was impeached for corruption—and she was the daughter of the first military dictator.)(This book sent me on a bit of a history research tour, and what I learned illuminated many things that had puzzled me in Korean dramas! But that's a whole nother post!)

These books remind me why I like graphic novels so much. I think I will make a point of reading more of them this year.

The Hands of the Emperor, by Victoria Goddard

I’ve just read another book that has me babbling incoherently. I have no idea how to organize my thoughts about this book so I think I will just blither at you. 

The Hands of the Emperor is the perfect, the ideal book to read in these troubling times. If you want to read a book in which nothing terribly bad happens, if you want to read a book about nice people being nice to each other, about good people doing good things, this is that book. This is also a book about the aftermath of a global catastrophe, and about the rebuilding required, and it is an infinitely hopeful book in that regard. (To the point of being hopelessly idealistic, perhaps, but the world could use more idealism at the moment!) Someone described this book as competence porn: if you love watching competent people do their jobs competently, this is the book for you.

I was drawn in by the blurb, which reveals the central twist at the heart of the book: which I can't seem to put into coherent words. Power, and relationships, and the difference between how people are seen and how they are. (Those words don't elucidate it at all, sorry!) But I can say that if that blurb intrigues you, you will not be disappointed.

This is not a plot-based book by any means. The entire first quarter consists of a group of nice people who like each other going on vacation in a beautiful, friendly place. I enjoyed it so much! It isn't remotely boring for a number of important reasons: complex power dynamics are being tested and redefined in simple actions such as deciding to go swimming; a fascinating, vibrant world is being gradually revealed; the tentative friendship developing between the Emperor and his secretary Cliopher is delightful to watch; and there is the piquancy of dramatic irony in almost every scene, because no one knows that this is the Emperor. (I've always been particularly tickled by the conceit that here's an important/significant/powerful person and everyone else bustles around officiously having no idea who they are. Like that scene in Sabriel when she first crosses the border.)

That conceit is actually the organizing conceit of the novel, because no one actually knows who Cliopher is, even though everyone thinks they do.

The Hands of the Emperor is a character study: a long, deep, complex, extended character study of a really interesting person. Cliopher is a bureaucrat—and if you think would never want to read the story of a bureaucrat, this book will change your mind. He loves his job; he is exceedingly good at his job; he is transforming the world through his job. He also has an amazing backstory, which gets gradually revealed, and the way his story is told—by whom, to whom, under what circumstances—is crucial to the plot, the character development—it's really interestingly done.

This book is a true successor to The Goblin Emperor. If you loved that book you will also love this one. Cliopher is heart kin to Maia. They would like one another, they would recognize in each other similar challenges, desires and goals. The way politics and world events are used as backdrops to define and highlight character is very similar in both books.

You know who else would like Cliopher: Miles Vorkosigan. He is almost as opposite a character as can be, and yet they share the same passion, incorruptibility, desire for justice, joy in service. (They need to meet later in Miles's career, though. Cliopher would probably have a hard time with younger Miles!)

Goddard's writing has the same combination of wisdom and humour that I enjoy in Lois McMaster Bujold's work. Her prose is delightful.

This is a book about friendship, about family, about how our identities are tied up with our families and our friends. It is also a treatise on culture: what culture means, why culture is essential and necessary and intrinsically woven with our identity. And it brilliantly, viscerally, gorgeously elucidates what it means to be from different cultures, what it takes to understand a different culture. (If you liked what Rachel Neumeier did in Tuyo, know that The Hands of the Emperor does that in spades. And bulldozers.)

The world building in this book, oh my! It reminds me most of Sherwood Smith and her novels set in Sartorias-Delas. So broad and deep and full of detail. Its a multi-world empire with strange magic and stranger history, and you won't understand all of it, but the parts you need to understand will end up written in your hearts.

I'm getting ridiculous so it's time to stop. I can't recommend this book highly enough to people who like the same kind of books I do. It hits all of my buttons. I immediately bought the sequel, which is shorter and in an entirely different style (and focuses on a different main character) but which I liked just as much (and she's promised a sequel with Cliopher, so yay!)

I will mention two caveats: The Hands of the Emperor is self-published, and there are rather more typos than I'm used to encountering. There is also a structural flaw (I think that's the best way to describe it) that would probably have been corrected by more editing. Rachel Neumeier explains it in her review (it's very slightly spoilery, so you can decide if you want to know). Like her, I was bothered by it, but it didn't diminish my enjoyment of the book as a whole—I still say this is going to be one of my all-time favourite novels, one I will re-read over and over again. It's that good.

Cybils winner: Fireborne, by Rosaria Munda

We had a fantastic slate of books to choose from this year, but it turned out to be an easy choice, because every judge loved Fireborne. Tense, gripping and thoughtful, with a fascinating premise and heart-grabbing characters, this debut novel blew us all away with its excellent writing and important themes.

I'm so happy this book won, because it hasn't gotten a lot of notice, and it's really, really good.

I don't know about the books they're comparing it to: doesn't seem remotely like Game of Thrones to me (thank goodness!). Seraphina I can maybe see a little. I think the best description of it is Plato's Republic meets the French Revolution, but with dragons. It's very political, but what I loved is that all the political issues are brought to life with characters and their personal dilemmas, and there's no simplistic good-guy/bad-guy dichotomy.

The revolution succeeded—we defeated the unjust, power-hungry aristocracy—but at what cost? And is the new meritocracy we created better enough to justify what we did to achieve it? Questioning the reality behind the rhetoric is a desperately important skill these days, and I love the way this book deals with truth, lies, propaganda—fake news. Then there's blind devotion to a cause, versus finding out your heroes aren't what you thought they were. Really meaty stuff!

I'm all about characters, always, and I loved Lee/Leo and Annie. He's the son of an aristocrat who watched his family get brutally executed. She's a peasant whose family was burned to death by an aristocrat's dragonfire. The story of their friendship is compelling. Their unacknowledged feelings for each other combined with the truths of their past make the tension of their competition to become lead dragonrider riveting!

Loyalty is one of my favourite themes, and I loved watching all the characters navigate through the conflicting pulls of family, friends, mentors, duty, morality. YA books live for impossible choices: what I loved about Fireborne is that none of the agonizing dilemmas felt contrived in any way. I completely believed in, and ached for, all the choices Lee and Annie and their friends had to make.

If I had to say anything negative about this book, it would be that I wished there was more about the dragons and their connections to their riders. But really, there was hardly time, with all the plot twists and action!

The writing was assured and quite lovely. I particularly enjoyed her use of epic poetry (adapted from The Aeneid, apparently) to give heft to emotional beats.

The second book in what looks like a trilogy won't be out until 2021, alas. There was a nice conclusion to this novel but the story continues, and I will be there for it!

Roasted winter vegetables with herbs and lemon (I can't get enough of roasted vegetables lately: the sweetness, the heartiness) and a rotisserie chicken. So satisfying!