We Are the Crisis by Cadwell Turnbull

This is the sequel to No Gods, No Monsters and the second book in Cadwell Turnbull’s Convergence Saga. My book club read the first two years ago and decided to read the sequel in October.

The story picks up about a year after the climactic events of the first novel. Monsters continue to seek recognition and equal rights from their human neighbors. Naturally, a group rises to oppose this, othering monsters as inherently dangerous. The story climaxes in a similar devastating event as the first novel.

This just felt like more of the same without adding much. The writing is engaging and the subject matter is a telling metaphor for LGBTQ+ rights. But the storytelling is still disjointed. It jumps around and left me feeling confused and a bit disoriented. Worst of all for me was that the author did little to nothing to help catch up those who read the first book in the series. Often authors will seamlessly add little reminders of what happened previously. There was little to none of that here. I recommend reading this one immediately after the first. And if you plan to read the whole series, wait until the last one comes out so you can read them one after the other. Despite all these shortcomings, I still enjoyed the novel.

My rating: 3/5

Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee

I had never heard of this book when I read Cory Doctorow’s review of it on his blog. Having gone through a period of deep indebtedness, the experience of the main character felt familiar from the review. I added it to my list of books to read and finished it recently.

The titular character is a twenty-something young man who never completed college but still has the debt from it that cannot be dismissed in bankruptcy. He lives in a one-room basement apartment of his divorcee landlord. He is invited to apply for a job that he can literally do in his sleep. But as with all things that seem too good to be true, things don’t go as he envisions.

My main characterization of this novel is that it delivers how desperate and unsolvable being in debt is. It feels like a death trap. No one tells you how expensive it is to be poor. You get fined for not having enough money in your bank account. You can’t afford quality goods and spend more on having to buy junk over and over. The story never goes in to those details yet somehow delivers the desperation that poverty delivers. The story is just the right amount of weird and the main character is flawed but sympathetic. It is not the most comfortable or uplifting read, but it sure delivers a gut punch about what many young people today are going through.

My rating: 4/5

Termush by Sven Holm, Translated by Sylvia Clayton

I learned about this short book from a review in the September issue of Locus magazine. The story was originally written in Danish and published in 1967. I was interested because of its premise, both the background of the story and the human dilemma it addresses.

The book takes place in a future where a nuclear holocaust has occurred. It centers on a hotel populated by residents who saw it coming and spent a lot of money to prepare this hotel to shelter them in the aftermath. Soon, refugees looking for food and in need of medial assistance begin to arrive. The residents have to decide whether they should allow these folks in or keep them out.

I am a big fan of these kinds of thought experiments in fiction. It is handled fairly well here. Both perspectives are presented and the issue is explored. However, no definitive answer is given. I also really appreciate it when authors acknowledge the complexity of issues in this way. The text is a little stilted at time, perhaps due to the translation or the source material. I still felt the impact of this deeply human story.

My rating: 4/5

Spill by Cory Doctorow

As I am sure I have said before, I am a big Cory Doctorow fan. I read his blog. I also have alerts that notify me when he publishes anything new. This book came up on one of those alerts, so I grabbed it right away and read it soon after.

The story takes place in the world of his previous series of novels that start with Little Brother. This one centers around a group of indigenous protesters trying to prevent an oil pipeline from being built through sacred land, potentially fouling the people’s water supply. This intersects with a cyber attack on a large company. Two main characters from the Little Brother universe working on these separate issue learn how they are related.

This novella is a quick and interesting read. Like all of Doctorow’s work, it includes simple descriptions of complex technical issues. Then he spins a story that shows you how that technology affects characters that could be anybody. This book is both entertaining and educational. Highly recommended.

My rating: 4.5/5

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

My book club’s latest genre was classics. As usual, we had a vote between three choices. As the voting deadline approached, all of our members (four) had voted but me. They had each voted for one of the three books, leaving me to break the tie. I selected this book. It is considered a classic and many of the sources I have for finding new books rated it highly as did both Good Reads and The Story Graph. I’m not sure I made the best decision.

The story is very unusual. The devil arrives in Moscow talking to an editor and a poet. They discuss whether Jesus Christ ever lived and if the devil is real. The devil then goes on to tell the tale of Pontius Pilate differently than is found in the Bible. After the editor dies in a way that the devil predicted, things get even crazier across Moscow as the devil and his retinue perform all sorts of supernatural trickery. About a third of the way through the book we meet the Master and Margarita at which point the story also becomes a love story between these two.

I am not sure why this book is so beloved and considered a classic. It’s okay, but for me it was all over the place. It didn’t seem to have much of a point, at least not one that was clear to me. Maybe this was because it was written in Soviet Russia and the writer needed to be careful to avoid being censored or rounded up and killed. In any case, I found myself forcing my way through it. If it weren’t a book club read, I likely would have not finished it.

My rating: 3/5

Blindsight by Peter Watts

This is a book that I have heard about from time to time over the years. It is described as a superb hard science fiction novel that explores philosophy and what it means to be human. That tends to be my favorite kind of science fiction. And with all the high praise for this book, I was excited to read it. Perhaps the reviews were a little overdone for me.

The story is one of first contact with a limited cast of characters. It takes place hundreds of years in our future where all of those on the mission are enhanced in some way, physically. The ship is also a character being a sentient AI. They are sent to encounter a large object nearly the size of Saturn. When they arrive, they find some sort of ship in orbit around the object. The bulk of the novel is their attempts to communicate with and figure out what exactly it is.

The writing is a bit too much hard science. I read this on an ereader and was glad for it. I had to look up the meaning of many words to understand them. The context did little to help with that. The story is also told in a manner that made it feel almost a little confusing to me. I got the main thread but couldn’t help but feel like I missed a lot. That said, it really delivered on the philosophy and the human condition. Overall, I enjoyed it.

My rating: 3.5/5

The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut

I subscribe to Austin Kleon’s free Friday newsletter. In a recent edition, he mentioned that a “book about A.I., The MANIAC, is one of the best things I read this year.” With all the hype about artificial intelligence these days, this really got my attention.

This book is a semi-biographical novel about John von Neumann, widely considered to be one of the founding father’s of digital computing. Each chapter is in the first person from the point of view of someone who knew von Neumann well. It is an intriguing picture of an important historical figure. But what really grabbed me was the epilogue. There the author tells the true tale of how the computer program AlphaGo beat a top professional Go player. I play Go and followed that series of matches as it happened. Like most other Go players at the time, I didn’t think there was a chance that the computer would win. Spoiler alert, it did.

This novel is a great introduction to the human side of von Neumann and artificial intelligence. The excellent writing varies from voice to voice, showing Von Neumann to be a flawed and struggling human like the rest of us. When you finish this wonderful novel, I highly recommend reading the biography of the computer by Walter Isaacson called The Innovators.

My rating: 4.5/5

Why Are People Into That? by Tina Horn

I receive a number of bookish newsletters. One of those is by Neil Pasricha. In his latest newsletter, he made an unusual recommendation. As the third book he recommended this title. When he picked it up at a bookstore in Ottawa and browsed the table of contents he “could feel internal aversions and curiosities, and knew I should probably pick it up to learn more.” That piqued my curiosity, so I borrowed it from my library.

Each chapter covers a different fetish, such as “Feet”, “Spanking”, and “Orgies”. They open with a frank discussion of what they are and a compassionate look as to why people enjoy them. I appreciated this approach, especially for the chapters I was less comfortable with like “Consensual Nonconsent”.

I highly recommend this book for those whose only exposure to kinks is mainstream movies or porn. Both show fetishists as out of touch weirdos. From this book, I learned that there is much more to what turns people on than the surface understanding that comes from such sources. It is a real exercise in understanding the motivations of others. And that is a valuable experience regardless of the subject matter.

My rating: 4/5

Wrong Place Wrong Time by William Morrow

I heard about this book on the podcast What Should I Read Next?. It intrigued me because of its unique time travel element as well as the emotional aspect of a mother trying to save her son from doing something terrible that would change his life in ways he could never undo.

As the book opens, a mother is waiting for her teenage son to return home. He is running late and she is nervously looking out the window looking for him. Soon, she sees him walking toward the house. He is joined by another person. They seem to talk briefly. Then her son takes out a knife and stabs the man. The rest of the night involves the police and her son going to jail. In the wee hours of the morning she finally gets home to get some sleep, intending to get him a lawyer and start sorting all this out the next day. But when she awakes, it is the day before the murder. And every time she wakes up, it is a day or more before the day she just relived.

I couldn’t put this book down. The mother is at the center of the story as she attempts to unravel what happened, why her son would stab someone, and how she can prevent it from ever happening in the first place. Through some help from other characters, she uncovers more and more that she didn’t know about her own life. The story is filled with surprising revelations artfully spun. The mother’s emotions are an underlying thread as she finds out things about her son and husband that she never knew. And the writing pulls at the heartstrings in a way that fits perfectly with the story without pulling you out of it. A well-written and evocative mystery that effectively uses time travel and makes it feel almost normal.

My rating: 4.5/5

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

The genre for the month of August in my book club was mystery/thriller. This is the book that we ended up reading. It is not one that I was familiar with or had heard of before. I found the story deeply interesting and engrossing while the writing left a bit to be desired.

The story begins in 1975 and revolves around a one-eyed preteen young man everyone calls Patch. Young girls about his age are disappearing. When he happens upon this happening in the woods and stops it, he is taken instead. This turns his world upside down. His best friend Saint never stops looking for him even after all of the rest of the town has given up on her friend.

This is a story about many things: love across the years, overcoming tragedy, and deep friendship. The plot has many twists and turns. The writing was a little off for me. For one thing, the author is British telling a story in the US, so some of the writing just feels out of place. Like when he mentions that something “came by post”. And the language at times tries to be so flowery and poetic that the meaning and storytelling become obscured. But overall, this is a beautiful, nuanced story of tragedy and how it can affect a young person for the rest of their life. Though it tries too hard in some places and fails to communicate, when it does communicate, it gets under you skin and hits you in the feels.

My rating: 4/5