Right. I want to say something sensible about this book, but I have been reading it since January, and I would be damned if I remembered what happened in the first half of it in any detail.
This is a ramble/review for "Forges of Mars." the full trilogy. by Graham McNeill
Taking so long to read it was not the books fault. Indeed, that was me running into burnout and being preoccupied with university stuff. But being somewhat less than fully emerged in this book probably didn't help the book at all.
There are so many characters, holy shit. And some of their names are so similar! Hawke and Hawkins come to mind. Additionally, characters will be named by their first name, last name, or nicknames and keeping apart who is who is no joke. The dramatis personae provided is somewhat useful, but annoying when you have to refer to it too often. this does come with the caviat that I do, as a rule, not really remember names (I think it's the autism) making this all the more difficult to me. Where characters are diverse enough in their thinking and acting i will be able to tell them apart by that, but for side and background characters that really doesnt work.
With this, there are also multiple storylines, and my issue with that in many books is that there is always some I prefer over the others and then I get annoyed when they switch to the ones I do not care for as much. Also because I often didn't immediately know where we were jumping to. it really grated my gears that when a POV switch happened it wasn't always immediately clear whose POV the book had switched to, causing moments of confusion. Perhaps if i remembered which names belonged to what people it would be easier, but sadly it was not. for fairness, I was reading the ebook. Maybe this is clearer in the paper version.
In this trilogy, I found myself intrigued by the characterisation of the mechanicus characters whom I wanted to stick with, only to be forced to read about these other groups as well... if I wanted to read space marines, I'd have picked up one of their books, you know? Regardless, the arcs of kotov, linya, and tychon were all very interesting to me, and eventually, around the second book, I started to appreciate locke as well. The way the warhounds were written actively annoyed me, but I am someone who has read a lot of books involving (were)wolves, and my expectations from that may have influenced how I looked upon these chapters. the many POVs in this book felt somewhat unnessecary, too, like, I am unsure what the marines or the warhound POVs truly added to the storytelling. I get why there was both mechanicus and bondsman perspective though, that was a very interesting and clever choice in worldbuilding that allowed the reader to see the two ends of the coin when it comes to the runnings of a mechanicus expedition. the eldar perspective was not one I cared for much, but I do not fault the book for including it because it did definitely add a completely different angle to everything going on in this book.
The last book in the series is significantly more intense and action-packed than the other two, which I had not expected. It solidifies the feeling of a finale, I suppose, especially since the other two books lacked proper ending points. I thus believe that this was written as one very long book that was chopped into threes for marketability. That's not a negative, just an observation. the final confrontation is a-tier. very good, very satisfying. Galatea deserved worse.
All in all, this was a decent enough experience and I can see why some people go wild for the characters in this book, they're very good. I left this review sitting in my drafts for so long I forgot where I was going with it.
anyways.
3.5 stars. do recommend, but is very long and requires brain.
Someone said, “heist movie but it’s a fantasy setting,” and I’ve been on the lookout for this book ever since. I finally found it in the clearance section of Half Price Books, and then—couldn’t read it. I got through the first chapter, I started the second, I put it down, and I didn’t pick it up again. Not sure why, but frankly this has less to do with the book than with me. I’ve been erratic about reading for, oh, years now – either I can’t focus for more than a few pages at a time, or I spend every waking moment with my nose in the book. There’s no middle ground. There’s no telling which way the cards will fall.
All of this to say, it’s not the book’s fault that it took me so long. But then the show came out, I watched it gleefully with my mom, and somehow having seen the characters onscreen made it easier to slip into their heads on the page. Two days later, I’ve inhaled the entire book as fast as I could get away with, and I’m in love.
This isn’t a regular book review – I’m terrible at ranking things, and the five-star system gives me anxiety. It’s mostly just some Thoughts™ neatly sorted for clarity, and hopefully reading over them will help you decide if you should pick this book up and fall in love with it like I did.
Mind the cut!
Characters
I am in love with them.
It probably helps that I’ve been looking forward to this book for ages, I’ve seen lots of gifsets and the occasional meta post, and of course I did watch three out of six crows swan about being fantastic for an entire season of a show that’s not even about them. But it’s not just that. There are a lot of technical literary ways you can analyze characters – arcs, themes, etc – but quite apart from all of that there’s just…are they compelling? They don’t have to be, for a book to be good, but it sure does help. And these six characters are so compelling.
(Also really likeable, which is even less necessary for a good story but which I do personally value. And I like these kids, I really do. Even Kaz “I commit atrocities without shame or remorse” Brekker. Wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, or even a well-lit avenue! But I care about him and want him to succeed.)
It’s hard to devote equal time to six character arcs while also running a fantasy heist. Bardugo doesn’t try, but even the crows who get less screen time have complexity and depth. They’re all well fleshed-out, with full and distinct personalities and all that – on a technical level, these are really well-crafted characters. Top notch. Plus everyone struggles with different traumas and goals, and handles them in different ways, which gives us wonderfully varied arcs as they each move toward a deeper understanding of themselves, for better or for worse.
It also gives us really varied dynamics – some of them hate each other, some of them love each other, some manage to do both at once, some are just along for the ride. It’s as they pull at each other’s ragged edges that the story forms, in their different desperate needs and in what they can and cannot be for each other.
The show smoothed over a lot of the sharp edges and grey morality, most notably in Kaz. Kaz Brekker is a bad person. He does bad things for selfish reasons. His arc isn’t Learning To Be Good, it’s an ongoing question of whether he might, for the sake of the first person he has (quite accidentally) let himself love, consider maybe perhaps being slightly less of an amoral monster. I’ve seen this book described as “fantasy Leverage episode” but it’s really more Ocean’s Eleven, if Danny Ocean was a vicious bastard and everyone was seventeen.
And that’s great. I love that so much! Especially because the other crows run the gamut from shining idealism to casual self-interest (with a fun detour into “shining idealism but the ideal is violent bigotry”), so we really do get a morally complex story, without any easy black-and-white answers. One of the most kind-hearted people in the whole story has committed multiple murders and dreams of becoming a pirate. Kaz Brekker may do bad things for selfish reasons, but a lot of those selfish reasons boil down to “survive.” It’s complicated! It’s compelling!
Plot
It’s a fantasy heist, what more do you need?
Plots and counter-plots, double-crosses and last-minute improvisations. Magic, though it’s used as just another tool, as impressive and as prosaic as the gunslinger’s pistols. Dramatic climbs, elaborate disguises, cunning grifts, and some good old-fashioned sleight-of-hand. Six wildly competent teenagers, one impossible job, and four million fantasy dollars waiting for them if they can pull it off.
Well, okay, that’s just half of the story – maybe two thirds. The rest is flashbacks, showing us how these characters met and how they came to be the people they are; and stolen moments in between the action beats, where we see how they’re changing each other. It’s woven in really deftly. Our knowledge of the characters expands in time with the forward momentum of the plot, so that both parts of the story – the sorrows of the past and the edge-of-your-seat excitement of the present – get their hooks in you in tandem.
Worldbuilding
There are two settings in this book: Ketterdam, where we begin, and the Ice Court, where the bulk of the action takes place. The wider world outside these two cities is sketched in, alluded to in offhand comments and minor details of backstory. In theory, reading the Grisha trilogy would fill in those sketches, but I suspect it doesn’t matter. This is a heist story, after all: one entrance, one exit, and all the traps laid firmly between the two.
You know that thing authors do sometimes where they use the aesthetic of a real time and place, in the names and the architecture and so on, as a sort of worldbuilding shorthand? I’m a big fan of that. Ketterdam is clearly based on post-medieval Holland, perhaps in the late 17th century or so – a city of canals and commerce, with a ruling merchant class and a thriving criminal underworld, and a stock exchange at the heart of the wealthier district. The similarities feel like they’re just skin-deep – I don’t know that much about post-medieval Holland, but I’m pretty sure Bardugo has her own plans for the political situation in the wider world, which I assume is relevant in the Grisha trilogy. Here it’s not, and we have just enough detail to get a quick feel for the city, with extra importance granted to the politics of the various criminal gangs Kaz needs to worry about.
If I’m honest, I would have enjoyed a bit more detail in the worldbuilding. Ketterdam is vibrant and crowded, but it feels shallow; the only information we get is what relates directly to the characters’ actions. We’re told that it’s a big and complex city, but I don’t really have any idea what goes on there beyond, vaguely, “trade, gambling, and tourism.” But that’s probably just me. I’m unreasonably invested in worldbuilding. And anyway, we do get everything we need to understand the actual story.
The same is true in the Ice Court, the frozen capital of the Fjerdans. It’s a beautiful place, white and gleaming, and the parts that we see are incredibly vivid. We get scant glimpses of history and religion, the faintest suggestion of politics, and exactly enough of the city layout to understand the heist. We do, however, get a much deeper understanding of Fjerdan culture than we did of Ketterdam’s, because one of the crows defines himself utterly by the Fjerdan worldview, and his arc is largely about the difficulty of losing his place in that world and not knowing if or how he can ever get it back.
So yeah, we really do get everything we need to appreciate the story and the characters. I would have liked more, because I like worldbuilding, but what we do get is varied and satisfying.
Themes
I can’t really go in depth here without spoilers, so this’ll be a pretty vague section. I haven’t gone full lit-major on this book and I don’t especially plan to, but at a glance, the central theme is the tension between, in short, love and vengeance.
In long, several of the crows have the choice to embrace love as a force for healing and joy, or instead hold onto the (often violent) goals that have driven and defined them for so long. If they embrace love, it’ll mean letting go of the driving purpose that has kept them alive, and risking their whole identity (and possibly their lives) on a new purpose. It’s scary! It might ruin them! And it’s really not as easy as “love conquers all.”
(Big advantage of an ensemble cast: you can explore the same theme in different ways, with different outcomes, without having to settle for a single “answer” to the question posed by the theme. I really love it when that happens, honestly.)
It’s also not just romantic love! I mean it mostly is, but one of the crows has an arc that’s really about self-love, about learning to trust and prioritize not just your survival, but your happiness, your goals, and your ideals. About putting yourself first, not in a selfish way, but in a healthy, loving way. It’s really lovely, and although it has no bearing on the plot (it’s an internal moment of revelation), it’s one of my favorite things about the whole story.
this is a review, or more of a rant, about the Kid-Friendly ADHD & Autism Cookbook: The Ultimate Guide to the Gluten-Free, Casein-Free Diet by Pamela Compart and Dana Laake. I was not going to post about this book, expecially not as the first post on my shiny new blog. but I need to talk about this. God. I am disgusted to my core and I need to talk about it. Screenshots from the books I read will not be a common occurance on this blog but I will use some here to get across what I have stumbled into.
Book TWs: Ableism (anti-autism sentiment), calorie counting
I may have been naive when I judged this book by it's cover, i'm going to be honest with you. I saw this and though "oh! a book with recipes that cover for people with a variety of different needs! how nice!".You can imagine, then, that I was quite thrown off by the contents of the book. The first impression shook that believe a little. Recipes don't start until chapter 10. I skipped the preamble, because honestly I was just here for the food, and it seemed to be about raising autistic children and I am an autistic adult without any children so I figured I didn't need that. I just wanted to know what kind of delicious, sensory friendly foodstuffs the author has in store for us! this excitement was soon crushed as I got to the first recipe, and I am just goint to show you the whole page so you can get a sense of what i stumbled into.
So, some good things: page layout is great, the little icons that indicate dietary needs are lovely! in later recipes they also tell you how much the recipe makes and the estimated nutritional information which is great if you have to monitor that for one reason or another. but let's get to the rant. to begin, I am autistic and have adhd. I have many autistic friends. none of us enjoy drinking straight water. That is not to say no autistic people like drinking water, but it does make me put questionmarks on a supposedly autism-friendly cookbook to lead with it. Second of all: I don't need a fucking recipe to figure out how to put a glass under the tap right? am I the only one who thinks this is a weird thing to add as a recipe? I suppose it's probably done tongue in cheek but, really... is this the tone we're going for here? I felt somewhat belittled by this book reading this. anyway, i pressed on. a lot of recipes were just standard and seemingly random recipes none of which really stood out to me as particularly kid or neurodivergent friendly. A lot of recipes required a lot of different ingredients and different steps and kitchen appliances to use which definitely rules them out for my flavour of neurodivergence (the adhd task avoidance would never let me go through that many steps to make a meal, eat it, and then also do the dishes) but fine, I suppose, different people can handle different things, expecially if you're a parent cooking for a child this might not be an issue at all, and I also understand that to eat gluten free more work is sometimes, sadly, needed. Anyway, my various questionmarks about the recipes compiled with the inclusion of not one, but two recipes for communion wafers. what? no shade on anyone that needs gluten free communion wafers and decides to make them themselves, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. What confuses me is why they are here, in this book. It seems unrelated to anything? At this point, in between the water and the communion wafers and the whole first chunk of the book being about bringing up children, I was starting to realise this was a book written by a stereotypical "autism mom"
I proceeded with caution, because I hadn't given up on finding nice recipes in here, though at this point I had told myself that I was definitely not reading the first 10 chapters.
I should have stopped reading. because on page 215 I wa greeted with this sentence
recovered from fucking autism??? if I had any hope left that this book was trying to promote acceptance and inclusivity, it shattered right there. i went back to the first 10 chapters and scanned them. there's bits in there about how to make your child eat things they might be averse to, how to force them to comply. I then, finally, read a summary. appearently some people think that you can cure autism with a low gluten diet? I'm just so tired of this stuff, man.
0 stars. technically DNF. I feel gross after having read this.
Do you know those books that are like "the Japanese art of X" that some lifestyle and self help enthusiasts go absolutely bananas for? Well, when I found a book like that that has the subtitle "the Dutch art of Doing Nothing" in a bookstore in the UK, I found myself intrigued. It's been on my shelves for a bit now, being a bit of a conversation starter. But today I actually decided to read it.
Here is a Dutch perspective on "Niksen, The Dutch art of Doing Nothing" by Annette Lavrijsen
Let's start here, before I even opened the book. first: that cover is amazing, no notes. second: As a Dutch person I know what niksen is, it's a verb that is used with some regularity. It means to do nothing or to me idle. My mum used it in my general direction to indicate that I was wasting time when I was younger and still had the calmth to just idly lie on the couch. It's also a good answer to "what have you done today" if the answer is "jack all": "oh, ik heb lekker zitten niksen", like "oh, I had a nice time doing nothing". Regardless, i've never once considered it an "art", or indeed something particularly desirable.
I get the idea of this book, I really do, to slow down and be idle for a moment is a good way to promote mental wellbeing. To market this as this amazing thing the Dutch have all figured out feels a bit weird but I will give it that, whem this was being written "the X art of X" formula was everywhere, after all, and from the name I assume the author is Dutch herself and she might have decided to lean into the trend from her own background. There is nothing wrong with that.
This book might be helpful for some, it is appealing with its cute art and soft colourful pages. The text is approachable, cut up in short easily digestible chunks. However, it brings very few new things to the table. This book goes over all the well established mental health things, like exercise and rest and being kind to yourself, and that's great for people that are looking for a book that explains those kinds of things in such an approachable manner. It is, however, a bit disappointing for people like myself who have already read quite a few self help books and are looking for new insights and things to try. There is some of that, with the "niksen" part of the book, but not quite enough to warrant an entire book I think.
In conclusion, decent book but it does not bring much news to the table. I am unlikely to recommend it.
3 stars, not a bad book, just mediocre.
many observations about this one, some might be wrong - a ramble
I recently finished De Anti-materie Tovenaars by Theo Barkel and Johan Klein Haneveld. This book is in Dutch, but my observations will be in English.
here are a lot of thoughts in no particular order, and with maybe not particular order. chaotic ramble ahead.
Let's start with a note on sff books written in Dutch, from the perspective from someone that has studied both literary studies and translation studies, but is not an expert at either. There is not a lot of sci-fi and fantasy being written in Dutch as it's first language and dear lord it shows. I am reading this book written by a duo of Dutch authors that has been well received by the Dutch fantasy community but I can still see that there is no proper Dutch lexicon for these genres. Like...the words exist but they somehow feel clunky in the hands of the author, almost unnatural? I don't quite have the words to describe it. It's really interesting to see, though, because works translated from english don't usually have this issue (though works translated from german do). I wonder how that works, perhaps it is simply that sci-fi fantasy in english is well established established as a genre. Though I can't vouch for German. What I do know is what when I was younger almost all fantasy and sci-fi was translated from either English or German, it being written in Dutch was very rare. It's great to see the genre being established I support
Gonna be honest, these past couple of months I’ve been fairly distracted and bogged down by various competing projects and interests, so I’m not really in the mood to do three individual extensive write-ups of all the books I’ve finished this summer. However, that doesn’t change the fact each one of them has been a fantastic five-star and I highly recommend all of them, so please don’t mistake my brevity and laziness for a lack of appreciation of all these works.
The Book of Records – Madeleine Thien
Thien is a new author for me, but she is quite recognized in the Canadian lit scene. From my quick research, she writes extensively about Asian immigrant and refugee experiences, specifically those from China and Cambodia, and she incorporates a lot of those cultural influences in her work. However, The Book of Records is a surreal work of literary speculative fiction that is far broader in scope. Although much of it does touch heavily upon Chinese sociopolitical issues and history, there is a vast intersection of other cultures and time periods as well. Time, and its impact on both individual and collective memory, is a massive theme in this novel. Through all the different stories told, we see the layering and converging of human experiences – unfolding breath-taking parallels that, frankly, moved me to tears at times.
The main framing of the story takes place in a liminal zone called The Sea, which is a temporal gathering spot for people across all manner of time and place. Lin and her terminally ill father are two such individuals, who have arrived at The Sea after their former home in Foshan, China was forcefully evacuated. Through their time in The Sea, Lin becomes acquainted with three of their neighbors, who are revealed to be: Du Fu, a famous Chinese poet from the Tang dynasty era, Baruch Spinoza, a Portuguese-Jewish philosopher from the 17th century, and Hannah Arendt, an influential German Jewish political theorist from the mid-20th century. Through their stories, there is a gradual layering and breadcrumbing of themes that builds toward revelations about Lin and her own family’s painful, complicated past.
My main regret is that I didn’t know much about the aforementioned historical individuals prior to reading except some minimal biographical information, so I can’t comment on their representations in this work, but I am still impressed by the depth in which Thien delves into these individuals’ lives and the empathy she imparts on the reader. I was very impressed not only by the research that likely went into creating this novel, but the narrative complexity and the way multiple threads of metaphor are tightly woven together. While philosophically dense and not quite plot driven, I didn’t find it to be dry reading. Parts of this book made me feel gutted, and caused me to confront some uncomfortable truths about myself. It’s one of those books that deserves a second read to further appreciate the craft that went into constructing it, but maybe that’s best after a time when I’m not as emotionally raw from the experience.
East of Eden – John Steinbeck
I have not read Steinbeck since middle school when we were assigned Of Mice and Men, which, at the time, was impactful for me and a lot of other people in my class. East of Eden is dubbed Steinbeck’s “magnum opus,” and honestly, it feels almost insulting to try to condense this write-up in only a few paragraphs. The book took me about three and half months to read due to me taking multiple breaks to read other novels, but as I’ve said on my other social media pages, it was well worth the journey.
Like The Book of Records, Eden is a philosophically complex and dense work that is more character driven than plot driven. The name itself is an overt Biblical reference to a prominent story in Genesis, where Adam’s son, Cain is exiled from the land of Eden after murdering his brother Abel. For those familiar with the Biblical story, however, expect to have many of your predictions and expectations subverted – this is by no means a 1:1 allegory, and the parallels to the Bible are more spiritual and metaphorical than purely literal.
At first, I was hesitant to begin the novel when I heard Steinbeck had written this work about his own family, and I assumed it was going to be a straight work of autofiction from his perspective, but Steinbeck the character actually makes no major appearance except as a brief reference. Instead of Steinbeck’s direct family, the novel focuses on his grandfather, Samuel Hamilton, and an individual he befriends named Adam Trask. Adam Trask moves to the Salinas Valley area of California with his new wife, Cathy, who gives birth to twins – Aaron and Caleb. Promptly after delivering the twins, Cathy shoots Adam in the shoulder and abandons the family, changes her identity, and later becomes the owner of a notorious brothel.
In the novel, we are introduced to the early origins of both the Trask and Hamilton families, Cathy/Kate, and the complicated trajectories that cause all their paths to become intertwined. After the birth of the twins, we see how their lives and personalities are each affected by their father’s emotional distance in the wake of his beloved wife’s departure, the absence of their mother, and how each twin responds to learning the full truth about their mother and her profession.
The most obvious theme of this novel was the duality of man – the capacity everyone has for good and evil – especially the feelings of shame and self-betrayal when someone goes against their own perceived goodness, or when an individual who we have built up as having a certain quality or character ends up betraying our expectations. However, what resonated the most with me was how this novel confronts a very human tendency to narrativize ourselves and put our essence into a box, and how we subconsciously assign ourselves and others limitations and expectations. Due to a variety of circumstances – trauma, isolation, tragedy, bias, or privilege, we come to think of people as “bad,” “good,” “smart,” “unloveable,” “evil,” etc. and that dictates how we envision our futures and interact with the rest of the world. The novel challenges the notion of humans fitting into categories that they are powerless to overcome. It also explores the idea that, while generational scars, upbringing, and our past experiences can shape aspects of who we become, individuals are not tied to an irrevocable thread of destiny.
And that’s only a fraction of what can be unpacked from all this; covering everything in the detail it deserves would probably require its own novel.
Mad Sisters of Esi – Tashan Mehta
I feel like it’s been ages since I’ve read a true fantasy novel, especially from a world that is outside the confines of Western European fantasy staples. I also don’t exaggerate when I say this is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve read ever. Again, a few paragraphs of me blabbing on Tumblr won’t do this justice.
Mad Sisters begins with the story of two sisters, Myung and Laleh, born in the belly of a gigantic cosmic space whale that possesses infinite doors and infinite worlds. When Myung decides to leave Laleh and the whale to uncover the mystery of her origins, we learn about the sisters’ ties to the legend of Magali and Wisa, another set of sisters from the island of Esi, who were also separated from one another under tragic circumstances.
The universe that unfolds is colorful and mind-bending. We visit strange islands that change their topography and appear almost sentient, children gifted with the ability to see their relatives as they appear across time and space, intricate museums that contain artifacts of our collective memories, girls who can communicate directly with animals and trees, nightmarish festivals that turn people “mad,” and hear rumors of a mysterious group of individuals known simply as “worldbuilders.”
It's been a while since a writer has allowed me to get totally lost in the story to where I became closed off to my surroundings, and Mehta’s writing has a fluid, hypnotic quality that allowed me to do just that. I also loved that this story is one that defies other typical fantasy storytelling conventions, with the concept of linear time itself being challenged. Time in Mad Sisters is like fabric, flowing in ways both cyclical and parallel. The novel also utilizes a vivid, collective perspective. We see how characters are impacted and changed by key events and revelations with an intimacy that goes beyond a mere rotating of perspectives with each chapter, like you would expect from a typical “multi POV” novel.
The theme that resonated with me the most on an emotional level was that of the reliability of memory, and the ways in which we build up and mythologize those we love - how expectations can mislead us and narratives are created that become generational. In a way, I found it to have some parallels to the one theme of East of Eden that I mentioned earlier. The novel ends with the heavy implication that time and events are cyclical and there is not necessarily a decisive “end” to our stories, just as there is not necessarily a “beginning,” and trying to compartmentalize events into these rigid timelines for the sake of closure can be a futile endeavor.
As a final note, I hope everyone has been doing what they can to find meaning, even in the seemingly small and insignificant, and I hope you can find some sort of light that keeps you going and fighting. I would say something like “I hope you’ve had a good summer, and look forward to a good fall!” but a platitude like that feels so hollow with all that we are witnessing in the world today. Life isn’t “good” and for many people, “good” is out of reach. My art and books and my friends have been my main lifeline lately. I hope that others find their lifeline, but it’s okay if it’s a struggle or doesn’t look pretty. Give yourself space to be pissed, doomer out, cry, be lazy - whatever it is you need to get it out of your system. I don’t have the words to really comfort anyone or make any promises, I’m just some guy on the internet, but I wanted to get that off my chest and recognize that, because I know this shit just being seen and acknowledged is sometimes the main thing people need now.
One of the books I finished in the month of July was Sue Dawes’ debut novel, The Mune. The concept of a gender-bent Lord of the Flies-esque island survival tale blended with eerie sci-fi features immediately intrigued me, even though I understood the “society with no men” trope is definitely not something new to the realm of speculative fiction. Set in the Victorian era, the novel is a multi-perspective tale of a group of young British mothers that are shipwrecked with their newborn babies on a strange uninhabited island.
The mothers are all classified as “Surplus Women,” which a quick Wikipedia search reveals is a term used in that era to refer to the excess of unmarried women resulting from the effects of various population demographic shifts and the Industrial Revolution. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the British government addressed this “crisis” by sending groups of these women to be settled elsewhere in the empire. This historical context is also exemplified in the narration, which uses a variety of English working-class accents and slang terms (which I had fun Googling on the side).
Immediately upon arriving, the survivors notice the island is not a typical tropical paradise – with sinking black sands, bizarre, deadly fauna, a sky that never rains, the abandoned remains of a village, and a day-night cycle that shifts rapidly without warning. While most of the women quickly adapt to their new circumstances and begin to construct their own society (referred to by the novel’s namesake), one girl, Betty, is determined to hold out for a rescue team to deliver them all back to England.
While in the throes of a mental health spiral (ultimately triggered by her unsuccessful attempt to murder one of the children, Clay), Betty plunges into the Mune’s “sacred well” and finds herself emerging in another alternate space occupied by mysterious time-traveling scientists. The scientists help transport Betty back to Victorian-era England, but due to the difference in how time has passed between her world and the island, she quickly discovers that she cannot simply return to the life she once had.
The commentary on gender in this book is the most front-and-center aspect, and the aspect I found most intriguing. At first, I admittedly anticipated that more of the characters would share Betty’s viewpoint, and that the contrasting desires would be a source of conflict for the stability of the Mune. Betty’s perspective (of wanting to return to England) being a minority viewpoint subverted my expectations. And it made sense: the primary cast of characters – Molly, Newt, Tattio, Sarah, Rose, and others -are all deeply affected by issues of class oppression, racial oppression, institutional violence from medical facilities, and/or sexual assault. These experiences inform their motivation to embrace an alternative cooperative existence, free from the violence of the past. Even despite the treacherous nature of the island, it is far safer and more conducive to a better life for their children than Britain ever was.
Parenting of the children is communal, and aside from the hierarchy of elders vs. children, there are no racial or class stratification among the women. No individual or group of women exists to serve another – everyone has a role and a responsibility, and these responsibilities are fluid based on need, desire, and ability. When referring to individual children, gender neutral pronouns are used. As the children reach adolescence, their sexuality is not shamed or controlled, with implications of sexual and gender fluidity among them. The concept of what it means to “be a man” or “be a woman” is baffling and confusing to them. The Mune also adopts a somewhat animistic spiritual belief system centered around harmony with the flora and fauna of the island, even including the amphibious beasts that roam the beach.
However, there is a flipside to this seemingly peaceful existence, and that is that the lack of modern medicine means certain sicknesses are difficult to treat. While certain herbal concoctions found from island plants can remedy a limited number of conditions, death from unspecified illnesses and childbirth are still a harsh reality. There is also one child, Star, who is dissatisfied with life on the island, and is highly curious about their ancestry and the origins of the Mune’s elders. It is this restless curiosity that motivates Star, the child of Molly, to discover the portal/sacred well for themself and meet the inhabitants of the so-called “No Place.”
Because the children are portrayed as having far different perceptions of language, much less having a grasp of futuristic technology, the new revelations about the scientists are presented rather ambiguous and vague. However, one thing is made crystal clear – a calamity await the inhabitants of the island, and they need to evacuate.
While all the characters are written thoughtfully, Betty stood out as my favorite portrayal. While she undoubtably falls into the “unlikeable” category due to her homicidal tendencies, her bigoted internal monologues, and her unrelenting infatuation with a “Master” who is described to have sexually assaulted her, resulting in the very pregnancy that led to her predicament.
However, it is clear from the outset that Betty is struggling with layers of unhealed trauma. The novel opens with a scene of her experiencing stillbirth, and I felt like a lot of her behaviors were ripples of her depression building and building until she considered doing the unthinkable. Her outlook is also reflective of Victorian era views on sexuality, religion, gender roles. She serves as an excellent literary foil to the Mune and its emerging structure and values, and while her character shift at the end isn’t a complete 180, she does eventually learn to see that the man she idolizes is not the protector and hero she had once constructed in her mind. Overall, I appreciate the complex and nuanced way she is presented.
I also had a deep soft spot for the character Molly. Even despite Betty’s unpleasant behavior and their contrasting worldviews, Molly is the only character who seems to offer true empathy towards her, recalling her own dehumanizing experience with mental illness and stillbirth.
This was another novel where there was a heavy, tense atmosphere and constant sense of foreboding, with plenty of space for imagination and anticipation. In addition to the glimpses of this “No Place” that provides a portal between worlds, and the limited exposition we get about the scientists, the only other clues about what the island is, what the time differences mean, and why the women were able to reach it are only hinted at in a series of bizarre short “scientific stories” placed between the main chapters. Each new day on the island made me wonder what new possible sinister dangers could be awaiting the Mune, and I was scavenging every descriptive paragraph for more clues and glimpses of foreshadowing.
If I had to change one thing about the ending, it would be to see a bit of the reactions of the second Island generation (with the exception of Star, who ultimately decided to join the inhabitants of the “No Place”) after they had returned to the Victorian era following the evacuation. For now, I will have to imagine how they must have adapted and coped with their new life on the other side, having been thrust into a radically unfamiliar culture and climate. Considering the closeknit community they had formed, I am comforted by the thought that they would have a family to lean on and guide them.
There are a lot of themes in this book I could continue to rave and ramble about, but it would probably exceed an acceptable length for a little blog post.
