Do I know what happened? No! But this book was a hoot so Iâm okay with that. Carmilla meets Jane Eyre meets 28 Days Later. Trust me, it almost works.
Agnes, being treated for some mysterious malady under the watchful eye of her brother Arthur and a Physician, meets Mary in her garden. Mary is maybe an ageless countess, or a ghost, or a demon, or just a very lonely girl like Agnes. As the events leap forward in time, with an eerie portrait of a dead countess always looming over our âheroes,â more details are revealed about Mary, her past, and her connections to the large rotating cast. Footnote commentary injects humor and a wispy thread of logic alongside more meta, auto-fiction elements. Reading the digital version made it hard for me to jump back and forth between pages to follow where the footnotes pointed, but on a reread, Iâd definitely make a family tree or a string map of all the twisted relationships (with Mary at the center, of course).
The nature of this novel is, I think, intentionally hard for the reader to follow. The time jumps paired with referring to most women exclusively by their name and the men exclusively by their title felt like someone had read a gothic novel in high school and is now trying to relate the story to me, but theyâve forgotten a lot of the details and have to skip around and circle back over and over. I was confused, but the characters were even more confused than I was. Throughout, though, the men work against each other and the women work together. I think by the end, Agnes and Mary have it all figured out and damn the men.
The format of this book brought me the most joy. This type of interwoven narrative, between the main text and the footnotes, is something I want to write some day. Iâd recommend this novel for the format more than anything else.
Even though the title gives Arsenic and Old Lace, read this if you want more of a Dracula and âThe Yellow Wallpaperâ vibe.
Agnes, We're Not Murderers is out 6/16 from CLASH books.
CARRY ON: UNPACKING YOUR INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIC AND QUEERPHOBIC BAGGAGE by NILLIN LORE
This book is incredibly aware of its target audience, and as a result I find it to be a great first step in the process of self-actualization, self-acceptance, and self-exploration.
Itâs gentle and affirming, conversational and funny, which is the perfect tone to strike for a reader who a) thinks they are probably queer, and b) knows they have a lot of work to do within themself before they know any more than that. Nillin Lore certainly knows their stuff, both from personal lived experiences and from more traditional academic learning, and their presentation of information isnât ever overwhelming or frightening. I think a keynote presentation or workshop series led by them would be amazing.
As I read, however, I realized that while this book is a great first step, itâs not really an introduction. It assumes a certain level of knowledge and openness on the part of the reader (although it does include a comprehensive glossary of terms) and, since it knows the target audience so well, knows that the reader is probably a queer 20- or 30-something white person in North America. Lore is aware of this framing and acknowledges where they have gaps in their knowledge or experience as a white Canadian, and they cite many other voices to balance out their one perspective. But even with the glossary, and even though I am the target audience, sentences like âWith bisexuality being a natural orientation observed in other species, whatâs the damn problem?... the problem is the constrictive social structures that weâve created as a society in the gender binary and the monosexual imperativeâ assume a lot about where the reader is at. Maybe donât send this book to your Gen X mom who is curious about doing work on herself; it would (unintentionally) leave her in the dust.
But I donât think that makes this a bad book, by any means. I think this book and the conversations and journal entries it will prompt are vitally necessary. Itâs important for people to ask themselves questions about themselves, why they do or believe certain things, and whether those things serve any real purpose. Itâs important for young queer people to be told that there is nothing wrong with them, that they can take their time, and that there are support systems they will find beyond their nuclear family and in configurations they could never imagine. Itâs also important to laugh at ourselves and the meandering journeys we took to get to where we are now â âmaybe, just maybe, my penchant for cross-dressing and sucking cock meant that I was, in fact, probably queer myselfâ made me laugh out loud.
Is this a perfect guidebook? No, but it isnât trying to be. Itâs just trying to be a first step for you to take, whenever youâre ready.
This book (and its likely sequels) has the potential to break out from the romantasy vein into the pool of readers who want to reread Harry Potter but are now adults and find JRK abhorrent. It has weak moments, but I still enjoyed myself (even though Iâm not a romantasy girlie).
Vic and her brother Henry have been on their own for the past eight years since their mother died due to unknown circumstances. That whole time, they have tried to maintain a low profile and remain hidden from the secretive Acheron Order, an association of witches that their mother belonged to and may mean them harm. When the Order finally finds them and says it wants to train Henry, Vic decides to stick by her brotherâs side and join him at Avalon Castle, even though she doesnât possess any magic. Every member of the Order has secrets, from how they came into their own powers, to their connection to Vicâs mother Meredith, and Vicâs frustration at the lack of answers only builds when she realizes that she and Henry are being used as pawns in a greater conflict between the Order and a rival magical faction, the Brotherhood of Mann.
Itâs got a castle with shifting hallways. Itâs got classes where students try to explode rocks with their minds. Itâs got complicated mentor figures with mysterious connections to our protagonistâs parents and past. Iâm always hoping that we can let Harry Potter die, but the only way that will happen is if those who grew up on it have a replacement that scratches the same itch. Anderson is approaching that formula, and if this series continues she could be part of a wave of magic campus novels that finally wrest control away from JRK while sprinkling in some fun commentary on the originals. (Vic realizes how self-absorbed and self-important these witches are early on; the Elders of the Acheron Order reek with eugenicist beliefs about magic, and Vic is having none of it.)
As excited as I am about this seriesâ potential, I still had some hangups. The romantic lead, Xan, is more a romantasy archetype than a real character. Heâs tall, brooding, muscly, and itâs his description that made me realize oh, this is way more of a modern romantasy novel that I expected. Nothing wrong with a muscly main man, but weâve seen carbon copies of him a dozen times already; he and Vic have a fun dynamic, but it isnât an interesting dynamic.
Speaking of uninteresting: I didnât care about Henryâs story until literally the final chapter. Vic, as our protagonist, is so much more interesting and engaging on her own than whenever she is with her younger brother, which is a shame because so much of her narrative motivation comes from wanting to protect him. Once Henry disappeared from the story, I enjoyed it way more. Other side characters emerge and supplant Henryâs role as Vicâs friend and confidant (hugely indicative of how socially isolated Vic was up to this point, since she became Henryâs sole caretaker at the age of 16). The reveal at the end, which sets up book two in a really exciting way, almost makes Henryâs presence throughout the rest of the book worth it, but I wish he was more involved with Vicâs story more consistently so that I would be even more gutted by the twist at the end.
Iâm optimistic about book two, but even if itâs better than book one, itâs not quite my bag.
THE IMMORTAL CHOIR HOLDS EVERY VOICE by MARGARET KILLJOY
Guys, I love Margaret Killjoy so much. I shouldnât pit transfeminine fiction writers against each other, but of those who are writing collections of short fiction, Killjoy is doing it better than Torrey Peters. Where Petersâ Stag Dance felt like pieces thrown together in order to publish a second book, The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice presents a cohesive continuation of the series, good development of existing characters, and incredibly well-done writing that interweaves the magic and the mundane.
In this third book of the Danielle Cain series, Danielle and her four compatriots (Brynn, Vulture, Doomsday, and Thursday) are camping in the woods of Idaho, waiting for a month-long ritual to be complete. On Halloween, they sit around the fire and tell their friendsâ stories. Each story was originally told to our main cast by a dead friend who we as readers have heard of, but all died before we could meet them. Weâre in the same position as Danielle for the first two stories: we never met Anchor or Rebecca, but their legacy is evident in how other characters remember them.
Killjoy shows how good of a handle she has on each of her characters and her craft through the framing of Immortal Choir. Not only is each story unique in vibe, tone, and content, but the narration is also unique. The characterâs voice comes through in the narration and presents the story through their individual lens, different from the storyâs now-dead originator and different from one anotherâs styles. Anchorâs story as told by Thursday sounds far different than Rebeccaâs story as told by Vulture, and if these characters swapped stories weâd get different versions, too.
The magical and the mundane are intertwined â âfancy magicâ of spells and rituals is just as powerful as ânormal magicâ of collective action and protest songs â just as eldritch horror and authoritarian horror are given the same weight. Faerie murder cults are terrifying, sure, but so are cops in riot gear who torture the people you love. When theyâre side by side, itâs hard to tell which one is scarier.
But also â just because the world is collapsing around us, whether itâs because of a faerie murder cult or a demonic deer or the rising tide of fascism, that doesnât mean we stop doing laundry, or cooking for our friends, or playing bad acoustic covers, or loving and living our lives as best we can. I hope we see more of Danielle Cain and all the magic she finds in the world.
âThis book only exists because, somehow, the notebook pages did not burn up.â Craig Rodgers had a house fire, but among the many things that were lost, the manuscript for Detective Novel â a stack of pages in a notebook â somehow survived. Weâre losing access to media on purpose every single day. Take a look at one that was almost lost by accident, but managed to live.
Linus is maybe a journalist, maybe a drifter, maybe a criminal, but definitely curious. When he learns of the disappearance of Calvin Lond, Linus starts peeling back layers. He doesnât work for a newspaper, although he likes to pretend he does. Heâs not even a private eye snooping around in less-than-legal ways. Heâs literally Just Asking Questions, so sometimes you gotta suspend your disbelief because every question he asks prompts a whole new leg of a narrative that goes far deeper than one missing man.
Detective Novel isnât a mystery in the way that the books that my parents read are mysteries. Yet it has a noir sheen that we donât often see in modern mysteries: Linus writing his notes in the dark in an abandoned building, watching illegal fights, being swept along in vintage cars, mainlining coffee and bad diner breakfasts.
Somehow Linus finds his answers (even if we as the reader donât quite get there). Maybe he writes a book, maybe he revives local journalism. Maybe weâre actually more doomed than we thought if the only person in your community who cares if you disappeared is a guy who doesnât know you but is just a little too curious. Linus seeks out answers more rigorously than anyone else, but it isnât unrealistic. Weâre all so closed off from one another these days; of course our modern detective is a man with no friends, no community, and no connection to the case, but a lot of time on his hands.
Kick off your 2026 weird. Knock out a book in an afternoon. Follow where your questions lead.
Detective Novel is a Death of Print title from @malarkeybooks
I think bankers, lobbyists, and politicans should get drug tested, and when they fail, their flesh gets flayed from their bodies and fed to the poorest in their respective districts
This book had the potential to be an interesting commentary on race, or gender, or patriarchy in 1860. Instead, I almost didnât finish it.
Iâll be honest and upfront: Iâm only halfway through the original Moby Dick, but even so, I found Call Me Ishmaelle to be weak as an adaptation. Iâve been more frustrated with adaptations in general lately; too often theyâre beat-for-beat, uninteresting rehashes of a text that donât add much to the original. It seems the authors are so concerned about fidelity to the original text that they donât go their own way.
Conceptually, Ishmael being a woman at the captain of the ship being a Black man is fascinating. We only get a narrow slice of 19th Century whaling life from Herman Melvilleâs/Ishmaelâs perspective as a white man, so I was really looking forward to a completely different perspective of a whaling journey, and this simply wasnât it. Numerous scenes were verbatim dialog from the original, yet felt less impactful; I donât need an exact rehash of the harpooneerâs introduction. If we are here for a new take on Moby Dick, there should be something new that each character brings to the table.
Where I saw real potential was in Ahabâs parallel, Captain Seneca. A Black captain, oppressed by his world from every angle, is trying to hold onto what little control he has. If this was a book about race relations in the US in 1860, with the white whale as an analog for the devil that is the White Man, a man like Captain Seneca could spend his entire life fighting and still end up bereft and dead. Even the Quakers who have helped you in the past would not or cannot dismantle the evil that is white supremacy in this world. But thatâs not what this book is about.
Ishmaelle herself needed to be dialed in further â make her a witch, make her trans, make her kill a man. She isnât listless, but she has very few of her own impulses (which could be said of the original Ishmael, to be fair). And (spoilers, content warning) her repeated rape by one of the other sailors does not change the trajectory of the plot or her character at all; we all wouldâve been better off without it.
On the prose: the historical exposition felt like the script from a fifth-grade play about the Civil War at times, and Ishmaelleâs comparisons of her own plight to that of enslaved people didnât dissuade me from thinking the text needed another round of edits.
Loads of potential, but a disappointing update of the original.
Mass market paperbacks are dying, imminently. ReaderLink, the main distributor of this pedestrian format, will stop distributing them at the end of the year. (Imminently.)
Sure, sales were declining in favor of trade paperbacks and ebooks. Sure, they were expensive and often wasteful to produce, especially in comparison to ebooks (or probably even audiobooks). Sure, non-bookstore-retailers largely stopped selling them on those lil swivel racks, if they didnât also stop selling books altogether. It makes sense that this format is going the way of the dodo, and the codex, and the folio.
But Iâm still upset about it. I want to be able to buy a book for less than $10. I want to be able to fit a decent book in my pocket, because when I travel I want my hands free even if the pockets of my denim jacket are bulging ridiculously as a result. I want compact font and fun cover art and a form in the back that I couldâve filled out in the spring of 1997 to get the next installment of the series in the mail. All due respect to the trade paperback (a format that I also adore), but the mass market hits different.
What does it say that the cheapest format is the one thatâs seen the steepest drop in sales? Iâm sure people are still reading, if only because of BookTok trends and romantasy. No shade at all to either BookTok or romantasy â all reading is good reading, in my opinion, and mass market paperbacks helped to ensure that everyone could be reading. Also, letâs be real, most of the highest selling mass market authors were authoring what more close-minded readers and reviewers would today call âslop.â Lurid fantasy and romance and sci-fi with those uncanny oil painting covers that everyone pretends are so much different from the all-caps block-text mysteries and swoopy-lettered cutesy-cartoon romances. Instead of being able to pick it up at a local drug store for $7, someone now has to get their romantasy fix for $18 (for only a paperback) or through Amazon.
Obviously this doesnât matter that much and Iâm mostly writing to complain about the lost art of book covers. But I sincerely hope that the numbers donât mean that fewer people are reading. I hope everyone who isnât buying a mass market is still reading some other way.
The Last Days of Paperback Books
After years of steady sales declines, the format will largely disappear next year.
LOVE REBELS: HOW I LEARNED TO BURN IT DOWN WITHOUT BURNING OUT by KITTY STRYKER
As someone who only stepped back from a devolving activist group when they absolutely had to, I want Kitty Stryker to hand me a mug of tea, cradle my face in her hands, and tell me that all is not lost. This book is a good enough substitute for that.
In this assessment of leftist activism, communication, and burnout, Stryker offers half how-to handbook, half hand-holding-coffee-shop vent session. So many things clicked into place for me while reading this, and it made me reinvigorated and hopeful about taking up shared struggles once again.
For Stryker, love isnât an all-or-nothing tide that sweeps you away and ignores all else. Love is central to who we are, what we do, and why we do it, but it also necessitates understanding, boundaries, and differences, even in the closest of relationships. âBeing a love rebel is about loving fiercely, but also loving sustainably,â and when we ground our relationships and work in love, we want them to last for the long haul.
I appreciated the accessible language throughout, interspersed with definitions that were informative but not patronizing. Many of the terms were familiar to me, but the inclusion of definitions makes this book easy to pick up for anyone who is curious about activism but doesnât know what Food Not Bombs is. Another plus is Strykerâs willingness to admit when she made mistakes, how she learned from them, and how her own personal experiences shape her biases, frameworks, and understandings of the state of the Left. More often, she tells you what not to do rather than prescribes what you must do, knowing that there are many useful tactics for any given situation.
While this is very much a book of the moment, with time- and organization-specific references, I donât see that as a drawback. If anything, I could see Stryker releasing periodic issues of this text with updated language from new experiences and events while the core thesis remains evergreen.
Stryker knows thereâs a lot of work left to do, but we all still should be around to enjoy the world and each other when the work is done. This book is a great first step in ensuring we all make it to the other side together.
In 1848 Massachusetts, sisters Avery, Morrigan, and Daisy practice spiritualism in their town, offering healing services and consultations with newfound spiritual powers and visions of the past, present, and future. Itâs not not woo-y, but the magic is very much real and has very real consequences. After a mis-handled new moon ritual, a malevolent spirit latches onto Daisy and starts wreaking havoc on people in town, spurring the sisters to find the cause and return the demon to its own plane. On top of all that, their cousin Henry has two friends in town: Jasper, a stoic medical student who doesnât believe in the sistersâ powers, and Nate, a charming young man who immediately ingratiates himself with the sisters, especially in comparison to Jasperâs prickliness.
My favorite moments were whenever the authors leaned into how magic works in this world, how ever-present and unknowable it is even to the sisters and their mentor who practice it daily. Itâs woven through the whole of their world but isnât an exact counter to science, as we see when Daisy and Jasper can finally speak to one another without sniping. (The Jasper-Darcy and Nate-Wickham dynamic, while predictable for anyone who has read Pride and Prejudice, is delightfully fun.) The sistersâ explanation of tarot, from the description of each card flip to the role a reading plays in oneâs life to how wildly wrong an interpretation can steer someone, is excellently integrated and great for readers (like me) who know nothing about tarot.
The plot, taking place over the course of a month, is well-paced overall, even though some scenes have some unnecessary descriptions of action (entering a house or walking through a gate) that could have been cut. As we move through each day and each card of the Major Arcana, the plot shifts between young romance, mystical powers, family drama, and the very real danger that women outside the norm face in any era â all woven together by unseen forces. Daisyâs fiery perspective makes this story gallop along. Some loose threads remain, but this is planned as the first book of a trilogy and Iâll gladly read whatever comes next.
Mull some cider, light a candle, and dig into this book this fall.
Well, itâs exactly what it says on the tin. It is, if nothing else, a Tempest adaptation.
An old man with powers raises his daughter on an island alongside the islandâs âless-civilizedâ (the charactersâ words, not mine) sole inhabitant: Kalivas. A ship bearing the old manâs former enemies wrecks on the island, throwing what had been a near-utopic stasis into flux. Thereâs a wedding at the end.
Usually I love a Shakespeare adaptation. But usually, there are enough different things happening with the narrative to make it engaging, even when I know how the story will end. I hated Macbeth by Jo NesbĂž, but it was interesting to see how he would incorporate the witches, the hallucinations, and the walking wood into a gritty, cop drama setting. Kalivas retains so much of the original that, even with sci-fi flourishes, I was sorta bored. I kept waiting for Kalivas to break script and do something to regain his agency or for Miranda to do something unexpected against her father. The final chapter does deliver something entirely different (and itâs the best part), but the fallout from it is only loosely alluded to in the four-act play that serves as a quasi-epilogue.
What I would have loved was a hard lean into the sci-fi elements, with maybe some commentary on the original textâs colonizing overtones, rather than such a closely hewn adaptation. What sci-fi we do see â the mainlandersâ body modifications, Kalivasâ motherâs inventions, the nanobots and drones â is really exciting. Instead we have a 36-year-old main character lusting after the only woman heâs ever met (chronologically probably 13) and stock characters whom I donât have reason to root for.
Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest is released 9/23/2025. If you really really like The Tempest and also like The Lighthouse, maybe check it out from your library.
Love to be able to start describing something by saying, âthis is a ghost story, this is a love story,â and this book does it differently than any other story Iâve described that way.
Ellen is a ghost writer. Her current assignment is to write the memoirs of Miss Catherine Carey. Given Catherineâs advanced age, Ellen must interview her in person at the Carey family estate, Elver House. Superstitious villagers, a disordered house, and an expired pantry all set Ellen on edge, as does Catherineâs seemingly declining mental state. What this horror story doesnât provide in jumpscares it makes up for in the slow tightening of tension with each shuffling step and shadowy figure in a corner.
In the future, I think readers will return to The Homecoming the same way that they return to Jekyll & Hyde: we know exactly how itâs going to end, we know what the reveal is, but we still want to see how our protagonist gets to that point. About halfway through, itâs pretty clear where this story is going, but I still enjoyed the clues that led us (and Ellen) there drip by drip. Of course, we all know how Jekyll & Hyde ends because itâs been part of cultural knowledge for so long; The Homecoming is brand new, yet still that predictable.
The narrative tested my suspension of disbelief at times. Obviously, Ellen doesnât know that sheâs in a horror novel, so I canât try to apply logic to all her actions. But even so, there were several moments where I wondered why she didnât just leave Elver House. Her loyalty to Catherine doesnât seem to derive from anything specific, so we get rapidly shifting impulses to flee the house and then to stay by Catherineâs side to protect her and see the assignment through to the end. Thereâs nothing that prevents Ellen from leaving, no trope-y dead phone or dead car battery, and her reasons for staying feel vague for someone who likes her job but not that much.
What saves this story for me and makes it something Iâll keep thinking about is the B-plot. Ellen narrates this story from well after the fact (another complimentary parallel to other gothic literature), relating it to her unnamed best friend. Their relationship is my favorite part. Itâs a love thatâs reminiscent of Jo and Meg March: Ellen wanted to be able to live with her best friend forever, but when the friend had a daughter their relationship grew distant. Theyâre now both grappling with a loneliness they think they shouldnât be feeling since they have so many other wonderful people and things in their lives, but they donât have each other. Ellen constantly thinks about memories with her friend because thatâs all she has left of the two of them; âI didnât miss that time, but I missed youâ (176) hits hard for anyone who misses their college best friends but never wants to be 19 again.
This is a story about yearning for the past, not because you love the past but because you arenât satisfied with the present, because you think your strongest relationships are the ones you made in childhood. Itâs a story about loneliness that we have to work really really hard to overcome, but we can overcome it. Iâm gonna call my best friend and rewatch Frances Ha now.
Iâll admit, I didnât like Detransition, Baby (Petersâ first novel from 2021) all that much, but it was well-written and the premise was unique and interesting. What I didnât like was that I couldnât side with any of the characters (more on this later). They were realistic in their flaws, but that also made it hard to root for them. Stag Dance isnât as well-written as Detransition, Baby, and the pattern of unlikable main characters (intentionally or otherwise) continues.
Stag Dance is a collection of fiction that Peters wrote over the course of 10 years: three stories and one novella. I love a collection of short stories; this isnât that. Three stories and one not-quite-novel as a pitch feels like the author had these stories kicking around and threw them together to have a second book come out, rather than a full collection of work. Each piece has a compelling premise and characters who, once again, are realistic in their flaws and quirks and interpersonal dynamics. And each piece was unique: a dystopian plague story, an angst-and-hormone driven campus story, a historical novella, and contemporary literary fiction.
I like what I think Peters was trying to construct and convey through this collection. There are a myriad of ways that people can do gender, and people have been doing gender in infinite different patterns in every era. Trans people have existed in every society and every culture, and will continue to exist into the future. Their existence is not a new phenomena, and trying to erase them from our histories only does a disservice to ourselves. Peter Boagâs Redressing Americaâs Frontier Past served as inspiration for the titular âStag Danceâ and both texts show that trans history is interwoven with all history of all eras, even eras whose popular conception is straight, white, cis, and het. (Peters talks about that inspiration in this interview, and yes, I read Boagâs book before reading Stag Dance. Iâm nothing if not a completionist.)
I also agree with Petersâ sentiment that trans literature â[doesnât] need to invent some othering form to explain a trans life. You can explain a trans life in a teen romance.â Any stories that exist about cis people can exist about trans people. I can appreciate that what sheâs doing is telling trans stories where we donât have to root for them in order to justify their existence on the page. I eagerly await the day where, much like in all of Petersâ fiction so far, fiction at large has a plurality of trans characters. I donât want Torrey Peters to be the only major trans fiction writer (meaning both writer of trans fiction and trans writer of fiction). There are so many literary fiction novels with intentionally unlikeable cis protagonists in the tradition of Fleabag and far worse. We should be so lucky to one day have really unlikeable trans main characters because weâll have a plethora of trans main characters who are really compelling and whom we love.
That being said, I would also love to have characters that I like. In her effort to tell stories with realistic interpersonal dynamics, Peters instead seems to be fighting against the spectre of Angel from RENT so hard that instead everyone is an asshole. As my best friend said (when I rambled this review to him immediately after finishing the book), âI have enough problematic trans people in my own life. Can someone be likable? Can we have a trans voice of reason?â
I thank Torrey Peters for showing painfully, uncomfortably real portrayals of young queer and trans adults who are still trying to figure everything out with themselves and one another. I know that real life is this messy, if not messier. Is there maybe a glimmer of hope, though? A beacon of stability that we can strive towards? Iâm still probably going to read anything she publishes in the future, but Iâm looking forward more to reading One of the Boys by Victoria Zeller.
(Iâm going to end-cap this by saying I myself am not trans; my best friend quoted above is transmasc. Iâm genuinely curious what other people thought of this book, and of Detransition, Baby, because I know many people, cis and trans alike, hold that up as a cornerstone of trans literature.)
The premise of this novel reminded me of Tragedy: a tragedy by Will Eno. Something normal and innocuous â the days are getting shorter â is taken as an aberration and something that we Must Do Something About. In a slightly distant future, travel around the world has become infinitely easier due to circuit vessels that constantly orbit the earth. Because of that perpetual orbiting motion, however, Earth itself is speeding up and days are getting shorter. As a concept and as a commentary on the current state of the world, neoliberalism, and ineffective activism, this novel works really well. As a story, less-so. I liked it the more of it I read and the more I think about it after having finished it, but it was less compelling than it could be and needed more of its characters to lean in harder.
Our two main characters, Tanner and Winnie, are nominally connected to two sides of the conflict. Tanner works as a PA for the promotional face of CWC, the largest circuit vessel company. Winnie and her friends hand out pamphlets about the dangers of âday contractionâ and troll CWC executives while hanging out after school. One of my issues with this book is that Tanner and Winnie both are pulled along by everyone around them, rather than active participants in their own lives. Theyâre guided more by those around them (all characters with unique voices and compelling drives) than they are by their own desires. Much of their personal narratives are by happenstance within larger plots instead of driving the main plot.
That being said, I like that as a narrative choice more and more as I sit with this story. In thinking about Amazon and the sheer power this individual company holds over the lives of literally everyone on Earth, it feels futile to try to remove it from the equation. Itâs much easier, and more realistic, to accept that itâs never going away; we may as well make it part of the adaptive solution to the problem it caused, rather than try to remove it from the social, cultural, and economic ecosystem of our planet. CWC is the Amazon of this fictional world: everyone is so reliant on its service that it will never go away. Instead of destroying CWC and restoring the 24-hour cycle, it becomes the biggest funder of the artificial fixes to shorter solar days. When the behemoth canât be moved an inch, let alone removed from the system, of course weâre just going to keep going to work and learning to live alongside unimaginable horrors that werenât even on the radar 20 years ago. Tanner keeps going to work at CWC until heâs fired, and Winnie keeps struggling along in a drowning San Francisco, and neither of them stop using CWCâs services, because what else are they going to do? Stop participating in the world?
Circular Motion is honestly one of the most realistic portrayals of how I think a good amount of people are feeling right now about the state of the world, particularly in the US. People have to just keep trucking because they have no other options; we canât become heroic protagonists because we have to go to work, because we have to pay rent and keep our shitty health insurance (if weâre lucky). Itâs a fascinating take on sci-fi as a genre: a sci-fi novel thatâs less concerned with the futuristic elements than with the corporate structure that got us to this point. Everything keeps sliding (eventually, literally) to worse and worse ends and no one does anything to measurably stop the slide. Ten years ago, both Winnie and Tanner would have been more in the vein of Katniss Everdeen: revolutionary protagonists who take down the monopoly and restore the 24-hour day. Today, thatâs too hard. Today, we have characters who passively help the destruction along. They know CWC is terrible, but honestly, what are they supposed to do? (We can compare Winnie and Tanner to the main character in Tender is the Flesh, even though theyâre less directly complicit in the system than he is.)
It's disappointing to read characters who are just like us and, as a result, are terrible as main characters. They donât know what they want! They arenât driving this story! In response to tragedies, they clam up and stagnate. Again, theyâre just like us, but we arenât in a novel. If Foster leaned harder into the satire, though, this would be golden and timely. There are glimmers of it: vaping executives, useless cops on hoverboard-equivalents, Winnie attending Lockheed Martin and Disney career fairs, âIâm working seventy-hour weeks, and the weeks keep getting shorterâ (p. 133). The interlude chapter on Nat, one of Winnieâs best friends, is the closest to full satire that we get (her family isnât that complicit â theyâre only centimillionaires, not billionaires). Crank that up throughout the novel and you get a dark comedy that is a neat parallel to the world today instead of an at-times-aimless corporate-climate novel.
I compliment Foster on his world building. Heâs built a world in which not even a protagonist can make waves against an international, climate-destroying company. Thatâs as realistic as it gets.
Circular Motion is out as of yesterday (5/13/25). Go check it out from your library, then do more to fight Amazon than Tanner and Winnie ever would.
I think this is the fastest turnaround Iâve done for book releaseâtoâbook finished. Start working at a library, kids. (Also, visit your local library and thank a librarian during this National Library Week.)
For a book with this title, I was expecting it to be longer and drier, so a sub-200 page count was surprising, but not unwelcome. Frankly, I would have enjoyed this book less if it was a comprehensive history of tuberculosis across all of human history. (I already tried and regretted that with Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit, which I canât in good conscience recommend. For some reason I expected a history of walking to be more exciting?) Instead, itâs an accessible history woven together with the narrative of Henry Reider, a young man from Sierra Leone undergoing treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.
Like our pal John, I had assumed that tuberculosis was largely a disease of the past, like polio, or measles. (Oh, waitâ) If you get nothing else from this book, youâll learn that there is a massive disparity in how healthcare is funded, distributed, and prioritized across the globe to favor wealthier, whiter, colonial countries. As a result, millions of people die preventable deaths simply because of what country they were born in.
Itâs important that this book is short and accessible because I think Greenâs intent with writing it was not just to get everyone excited about his latest hyperfixation. Itâs to get people thinking about healthcare inequality, to get them questioning why our national and global healthcare systems are built on an engine of profit rather than to save lives. He does this in part by laying out, step by step, the sheer ridiculousness that is death by tuberculosis, from historical examples of noble, waiflike poets who died too young and were praised for it, to the shock-inducing statistics of current infection and death rates, to the cost for a single treatment regimen that is literally the only way to save someoneâs life.
The other way he gets us invested is with Henryâs story. As Green explains, itâs so much easier for us to conceive of and relate to the story of an individual, rather than the 1,250,000 people who die of tuberculosis annually. Henryâs narrative shows all the ways in which our health system has failed and, ultimately, that we can fix it if we reshape our priorities.
We get through the crisis by caring about one another as humans, not as numbers. We get through the crisis by putting people ahead of profits, or by not thinking about profits at all and just doing what is right. We get through the crisis by imagining a better world and then fucking doing something to make that better world the real world. Rinse and repeat.
The whole crew has come down with a space madness (kind of like in The Naked Time) that makes them focus only on their truest desires to the detriment of everything else. McCoy is lobbying to dismantle the Enterprise and go start a farm on the planet. Mr. Kyle has abandoned his transporter post to set up a sculpting studio. Scotty is taking apart various necessary machinery on the Enterprise, like the food replicator, for parts to make an ultimate modification to the warp engine.
izzy806
titsay
dailybridgerton
discoholicmusic
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
