Crossroads of Canopy
This book was sent to me by the author at no cost. She’s a friend: I have blown detergent bubbles with her Small One at Ditmar awards ceremonies and watched them burst on someone’s expensive suit. So it’s a very good thing that I really enjoyed this, because it would just have been awkward otherwise.
This is her debut novel, and it’s coming from Tor in January 2017 (the hardcover will be USD$25.99, which will be who knows how much in actual AUD by that stage).
So yes, I enjoyed it. I would absolutely have enjoyed it without any knowledge of the author, too, so I have no hesitation in recommending it. The characters are compelling, the world is fascinating, the narrative moves at a good clip while leaving breathing space for characterisation, important issues are touched on. I don’t know what else you might want… I mean, there’s no dragons or unicorns, but you can’t have everything… .
This is a forest world (… what we know of it…) where the trees must be many hundreds of metres high. Our protagonist, Unar, is born to Canopy – the most privileged section of the forest, being the closest to the sun. She is not born to the most privileged group there, but she gets herself into the service of a goddess and life improves. Plus, there’s slaves to reassure her that there are always people worse off than yourself. Of course, things do not go as swimmingly as Unar would hope, and she is forced to learn new things – do new things – and meet new people in order to survive. It’s a self-discovery narrative, in that the focus is the reader learning through Unar as she learns about herself and her society.
In Canopy, there are thirteen gods and goddesses, who are served in different niches and who die and then reincarnate and who enable magic in their acolytes. In Canopy, they fear those of the Understorey. In Canopy, there are very definitely still haves and have-nots.
There’s a lot of interesting things going on here, especially in the world-building. There are people living at different points on the trees, and basically location connects to class/privilege in a really physical way where you can see the in-world logic: closer to the sun makes you better than everyone else, naturally. Dyer, of course, sets this up to be questioned and undercut as Unar progresses through her story and learns more of life and her world. There’s little historical background about how this society became so (literally) stratified – just some teasers – so I’m looking forward to seeing that develop. But/And it’s not all as simple as it might appear…
Throughout, Dyer sets up delightfully complex relationships: parent and child, siblings, friends, acquaintances, enemies-who-work-together, lovers (straight and queer), slave and owner. Very few of them exist or progress in expected patterns, with betrayals likely, loyalty in unexpected places, and the odd bit of casual cruelty that makes the humanity ring just that bit more true. Sometimes people have a reason to be angry, and sometimes they Just Are – also adding to their humanity; sometimes people fall in love with completely unexpected people; sometimes bad things happen for no reason.
Something else that I loved and that really struck me in reading the description of the rainforest is the Australian nature of it. Non-Aussies will probably suspect that Dyer is just making up names of all the trees (some of them she has, I think). But blue quandongs are real, as are bloodwoods, as are ironbarks and tallowwood. Some of the nasty critters suggest that she’s taken a good long look at goannas and other monitors. I fully expect a demented cassowary to feature in some future book, and Dyer will barely have to change them at all to make them amongst the most terrifying creatures ever.
This is the start of a series, which is great because I look forward to seeing where Unar goes. But, happily, it also stands all by itself – so if publishing falls over in February (may that not be so) we won’t be stuck wondering about really serious issues. Of course, Dyer COULD pull a Carmody/Obernewtyn on us, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t do that to us. PRETTY sure.
I have two slight gripes: I don’t love the title – I don’t hate it, but I don’t feel it’s the most explanatory or gripping. There’s also a point towards the end that I felt was too rushed, where Unar very quickly grasped something that was not at all obvious to me, so it felt too hurried. But those are pretty minor quibbles.
Get this book when you can. You really want to.
Acts of Kitchen
I have a new blog! and a new podcast! Acts of Kitchen is kinda just that. The blog is about whatever I’m cooking or reading about food or watching about food. The podcast (same name) is mostly about me interviewing people to get their food and cooking stories. It’s fortnightly, and I aim for it to be about 15-20 minutes in length – pretty easy-listening length, right? You can subscribe at iTunes or listen to it at the blog!
Revenger
I received this book from the publisher, Hachette, at no cost. It’s out in September; RRP $32.99.
It’s hard to really talk about this book without massive spoilers that completely take away from the gripping revelations that come as the story unfolds. So I’ll do that below the cut. But firstly: I really like this cover! The flat picture doesn’t do it justice. The stark black with pinprick stars and a black silhouette of a spaceship in the middle – it’s lovely. The title font is a bit Alien, although without a narrative connection, and the silver does cool things in the light. I’m interested that the title is larger than Reynolds’ name, since on his last (solo) novel, Poseidon’s Wake, it wasn’t (nor on the novella Slow Bullets). Must be a deliberate decision but I couldn’t speak to why.
Anyway. It gets a lot darker than I was expecting, it’s fair to say – not in a bad way but in an intriguing way. Adrana and Fura are sisters from a sheltered little world and a sheltered little family who decide to run away to sea – well, to space. The crew they join is welcoming if a bit dubious, as you would be, but things generally go well… until they don’t. And then things go quite bad.
Fura is the narrator, and when the action opens she’s not yet reached her majority. It’s unclear how old that is on her world, but one of the early tensions is the question of whether Fura is capable of making decisions for herself, or if she’s just being pulled along by Adrana. Of course, as the story progresses she develops and grows and – no spoilers – shows that she can indeed be responsible. Ish. There are some really interesting relationships that develop, but they really take back seat to the development of Fura herself.
A note on language: Reynolds hasn’t gone all Andrew Macrae Trucksong and re-invented language to represent the immense span of time; neither is he insisting that this is English – it’s just some universal language. But it’s not just transliterated (as it were). The spaceship crew, like sailors of the 18th or 19th centuries, have their own patois: people are coves, there’s lots of abbreviation and slang. More generally there are some words that are different – lungstuff, for instance, for oxygen; my favourite is quoins, for money. It doesn’t always work – it doesn’t always feel completely natural – but I especially like that the different social groups are clearly differentiated by their language, which is very real.
I love the narrative but I am really, really intrigued by the universe that Reynolds has created here. It is – I am almost certain – our solar system, but it’s an unimaginable time in the future. There’s an enormous number of worlds called the Congregation, most of which are not worlds as we know them, but small and many clearly artificial. There have been many collapses and resurgences of humanity, with concomitant loss of memory and history and mysterious rubbish left behind. The ship Fura and Adrana head out on are, brutally, junk connoisseurs – what can they find in places that might have been picked over several times in the last few centuries? But there’s a trick there, since the places with good junk are protected and dangerous. And there are alien races, too. I would really, REALLY like to see more stories set in this world.
A couple spoilery thoughts below… but the long shot is, this is a great fun novel and I’m super excited to see yet what else comes out of Reynolds’ brain.
Great Scott: Beverley Hills Cop II
Tony: 1987
Every fortnight (ish)* my beloved and I are watching a film by either Ridley or Tony Scott. We’re watching in chronological order. There are, of course, spoilers.
*Haven’t sourced Bladerunner yet. We will get there, promise. And fortnightly it ain’t…
For the record, yes we did watch Axel Foley’s first outing in Beverley Hills Cop right before watching number II – it only seemed right.
A: thoughts on BHC 1: I would watch the heck out of a Taggart/Billy buddy cop movie; I would watch a film about Serge any day of the week; I love Eddie Murphy’s laugh. A black lead detective, a black boss policeman, and an interracial BFF seems very progressive for 1984. Also, THE MUSIC.
J: First notes of the music, is this Top Gun or Beverley Hills Cop II ?
A: Opens with an ice queen! I adore her style. Continue reading →
FarScape: s1, e13
Each week on a Sunday afternoon, join Alex (of Randomly Yours, Alex) and Katharine (of the unpronounceable Ventureadlaxre), as they re-watch the Australian-American sci-fi show Farscape, notable for the Jim Henson animatronic puppets, the excellent mish-mash of accents, and the best OTP ship of all time.
Season One, Episode Thirteen: The Flax
As always, when things go wrong they go wrong in multiple areas all at once. A simple flying lesson turns much more deadly when Aeryn and Crichton get stuck in The Flax, and all they have to rely on to help them in a ‘garbage connoisseur’.
K: Aeryn is trying to teach Crichton how to pilot one of the shuttles, to half-baked results, however he is happy enough – she reckons she’ll kill him if he pilots so poorly again.
A: this is hilarious and of course it’s basically a driving lesson, which is always dangerous.
K: Everyone’s getting a bit tetchy due to Moya’s pregnancy somehow. I’m not entirely sure what’s so bad – if they’ve managed to find an empty bit of space surely life ain’t so bad.
A: Or they’re just wandering along and happened across it?
K: Aeryn says that someday Crichton may be vaguely useful, which is almost a compliment, and then everything goes to shit. Probably literally.
A: An invisible THING pulling them in?? Oh no!
And the credits tell me RHYS MULDOON is going to be in this episode!! (HAWT) Continue reading →
Stealing Snow
I received this book from the publisher, Bloomsbury, at no cost as an uncorrected proof. It comes out in October; RRP $16.99.
I abandoned this book, after reading just over half. It’s a hard thing to do, but it really wasn’t working for me and there are SO many books I want to read that I just don’t have time for books that don’t work.
Firstly, the press release says it’s for children 12+. I’m not sure I’d be happy with a 12 year old reading this: the protagonist has spent eleven years in a mental institute – since she was six – and there are some bits that I think may be a little scary for less mature readers. Anyway, that’s not a reason for me abandoning it.
The protagonist is part of the reason. I did not at any point feel any empathy towards Snow. There’s a bit too much repetition about her immediate woes (not being able to see the boy she really likes, who’s also in the institution), and a serious lack of development about either her history (she walked into a mirror and that was enough to get her committed?) or her personality more generally.
This is symptomatic of the book as a whole, actually: there is so little development of anything. Characters and places and events all occur in a vague world, sometimes with connections spelled out and sometimes not. Things happen far too fast – strange dreams! strange boy appearing! lover boy disappears!! a Tree!!! – and I was left completely bewildered, and not in a shivery-anticipation kinda way; in a ‘what the heck just happened?’ kinda way. It’s a portal fantasy, eventually, but whereas Foz Meadows deals nicely with the sort of confusion this would produce, Danielle Paige has Snow being confused for about ten seconds and then basically comfortable, with no explanation for how this is possible (i.e. treating it as a fantasy or whatever).
Also, the writing does not help the reading process. It’s not actively bad, but I was aware of reading – rather than being sucked into a world and ignoring the process, which really awesome writing enables.
I’m sad that this didn’t work out. I think the Snow Queen story has a lot of potential for reworking. In fact the day I received this my mother was visiting, and she had just started Michael Cunningham’s retelling of the story (very different from this), and I’d seen Frozen only about a week before. So there definitely is potential. And this version had potential… it just wasn’t achieved.
The Silk Roads
This book was sent to me by the publisher, Bloomsbury, at no cost. It’s out in September; RRP $29.99.
This is one of the finest history books I have read in recent times. It’s also probably the first book I’ve read that calls itself ‘a history of the world’ that does not mention the Norman invasion of England. And that’s because in 1066, from the perspective Frankopan presents here, a wee island on the west coast of Europe was of absolutely no relevance to the movers and shakers of the world. (Henry VIII is barely mentioned either!) The real business of global activity was in what Frankopan calls the real heart of the world – the lands of the Silk Roads, from the Himalayas to the Mediterranean, which for the two thousand or so years covered here drove human history.
Now, that’s a big claim, but what’s a history book without a big claim behind it? and of course important things were happening in places like Britain in the 11th century – but things of regional importance, not things with world-changing impact. Frankopan’s thesis is that the areas connected by what came to be called the Silk Road had an impact on actions, thought, and policy across most of Europe and Asia and, eventually, the Americas and Africa as well. Sometimes this area is actively driving history (the beginnings of Christianity and Islam, anyone? – and Judaism too although it doesn’t start in the period covered) and sometimes it’s – not quite passive – but almost: that this area happens to be incredibly oil-rich isn’t anyone’s fault or decision, but the reactions to it are.
Each chapter of the book is centred around the theme of roads: the road of faiths, to a Christian East, of gold and silver and black gold and genocide. It’s blunt about the horrors perpetrated – so much slavery – and waxes lyrical about the beauties produced by various cultures. Islam and Christianity and Judaism are shown cooperating, although rarely all three together, as well as antagonistic – for religious and political reasons (throw Zoroastrianism in there too, and indeed Buddhism). There are countless invasions – sometimes repelled, sometimes welcomed, sometimes hugely resented; there are alliances and back-stabbings and intermarriages. Most of all, though, there is trade. Trade along the Silk Road – from China and indeed further east, all the way to that insignificant island on the west coast of Europe, and of course within the regions along it too. The impact of Chinese pottery on the Dutch. The impact of silk and gold and – of course – oil, as well as innumerable other goods, back and forth, is mapped out by Frankopan. Not quite half the book is basically from 1900 onwards (the chapter is called ‘The Road to War’), which I know makes sense in terms of the availability of sources; the medievalist in me was a bit sad, I’ll admit.
I am guilty of having a Euro-centric view of history. Partly this is my education and upbringing which have in turn led me to be most interested in European history, especially British and the ‘classical’ worlds. I have a bitser knowledge of events involving Persia across the ages and the regions of Central Asia – usually as they intersect with those areas I have studied (Alexander the Great, the Huns, the Mongols). More recently I am absolutely guilty of falling into the complacent trap of thinking of Central Asia, in particular, as being a war-torn area that is to be pitied (HELLO privilege). To see this area’s history presented chronologically and with a focus squarely on it, the actions taken by people in the area as well as those acting on it; and to see the actions involving Iran and Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Egypt, and Britain and the US in particular, over the last five decades or so – this was an absolute revelation. For those who are more interested in modern politics perhaps this won’t be quite so eye-opening, but I imagine that for most it will still be a revelation to have all of the pieces fitted together and the connections between them pointed out clearly and cogently.
Reading about the actions of the British Empire made me embarrassed to be Anglo, at times. The sheer arrogance on display was truly remarkable.
The aesthetics: if I could have a framed copy of the front cover, I probably would. It’s gorgeous. Inside there are two sets of eight pages of colour pictures – which isn’t as many as I might have expected from such an epic book, but they were a reasonable overview of the content. I have a copy of the trade paperback; it’s a hefty tome: I didn’t quite manage to not put creases in the spine, which is an indication of how hard it was to read without opening it fully! (Yes I am that person; crease my book’s spine and I will crease you.) It’s 520 pages long (with another 100 pages of footnotes) – so it’s not a fast read, but it’s definitely a worthwhile read.
This book is a must-read for anyone interested in world history, or in modern history. It should be read by any politician or policy-maker who thinks they can make decisions about any part of the world other than their own without consequences. It should also be read by anyone with a tendency to Eurocentrism. It’s a study in well-written history, too.
Galactic Suburbia 150!
In which we celebrate our 150th episode via cake and Hugo stats, the top two sources of podcaster fuel in the known world. You can get us from iTunes or at Galactic Suburbia.
Read the Hugo Stats along with us by downloading the pdf.
Or just check out the winners.
The Uncanny Magazine acceptance speech: Love wins!
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook, support us at Patreon and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
FarScape: s1, e12
Each week on a Sunday afternoon, join Alex (of Randomly Yours, Alex) and Katharine (of the unpronounceable Ventureadlaxre), as they re-watch the Australian-American sci-fi show Farscape, notable for the Jim Henson animatronic puppets, the excellent mish-mash of accents, and the best OTP ship of all time.
Season One, Episode Twelve: Rhapsody in Blue
Moya responds to a distress call that turns out to be from a colony of Delvians. Zhaan goes to assist her people, to slightly dire results.
K: Weird opening. John in bed with some blonde just about to propose and it becomes clear it’s something from his past – for a second I thought it was some weird crack-side episode where he’s flung into some awful space-soap opera.
A: NAWWWWW sad John. Meanwhile, do men really buy rings before they’ve proposed in real life? THat seems ridiculous to me. Also did he really get up and get champagne without her noticing and then came back to bed?
“Hail Prince of the Obvious” might be my favourite new term.
Strange Matings
Published by Aqueduct Press, this remarkable book is a tribute to Octavia Butler. It includes personal reminiscences; photos; a poem; a transcript of a conversation with Butler; and the bulk is made up of academic essays – most of which are also somewhat personal.
I’ve read Butler’s Xeongenesis/Lilith’s Brood trilogy, but a long time ago… and that’s about it. Maybe some short stories as well? It’s one of those cases of ‘I’ve always meant to read more…’. So it was a bit of a weird experience for me to be reading academic analyses of stories that I haven’t read. However, and all kudos to the authors, I was neither hampered by that lack of knowledge – they all explained their points exceptionally well – and nor was I put off reading those stories. I have in fact bought the Parables books and am exceedingly excited to read them, armed with the theoretical discussions from these essays. I’m honestly not sure whether I will read Kindred, and I know this is a privileged position as a white Australian. I will definitely read Fledgling at some point, for all Butler was apparently a bit embarrassed by her vampire fiction. What I loved about the essays presented here is that each author so clearly loved the work they were examining – not glossing over faults, but showing how rich and subversive and powerful and present-speaking and future-prescient they are. How remarkable the women are, and how different the relationships, and how challenging the suggestions of how society could be. It made me realise just how powerful an author Octavia Butler must have been.
This is all beautifully resonant with the personal reflections included throughout. Butler’s shyness and insecurity and amazing generosity all come through, emphasising the sheer humanity of the woman – which I know sounds ridiculous, but it sounds like she made her life so full, and extended that to people around her, despite problems. The transcript of Nisi Shawl’s conversation with Butler, at the Black to the Future Conference in 2004, made me jealous of the people who got to see it live; Nnedi Okorafor’s reflections on sending emails to Butler – even after she died – and Steven Barnes’ very heartfelt reflections on his friend and mentor feel like precious gifts we should be thankful to have in print, so that we can glimpse those connections.
Strange Matings is a magnificent tribute to Octavia Butler that clearly works for someone with very little knowledge of her work, and must also work for those who’ve read far more. It’s provocative and powerful and human. Just like Octavia Butler.
Randomly Yours, Alex 