Review - Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite

 A mystery. With body swapping. In some kind of steampunk Bridgerton setting. I noped out on page one.

There's science fiction, which has robots and aliens and thought experiments, and extrapolates based on plausible scenarios. 

And then there's this other genre, full of bodyswapping and psionics, that hits me more like religious tracts for some nutty new age multilevel marketing scheme right out of the '70s, or some utopian human potential cult that's mostly about dominance and submission. You are not your body! You create reality with your words! You must be vigilant about people spying on your inner monologue and even taking it over! It's not based on science, so it's not really science fiction per se, but it slides in through the "people used to think this was science" loophole. 

The history of these various belief systems is a fascinating subject for study. Yoga is awesome. Folklore is nifty. 

I can't say the same for art from true believers, earnestly doing their best to convince me that thinking of bodies as disposable vehicles for our marvelous minds is a desirable worldview. No it's not. Your authentic self IS your DNA. You may not invade other peoples' bodies, and they're not going to possess yours. You were not packaged with a series of disposable personality cartridges. 

I suppose you could consider this to be horror fiction for people who believe strongly in bodily autonomy; kind of along the lines of Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby. You can't have an autonomous body if different consciousnesses may invade it at will. Willy nilly, in some works of fiction. 

It hits me the same way as all the other simplistic religious propaganda in the world though; something decorating the fliers that grimy hippie is trying to hand people on the sidewalk. Or some fanatical asshole with a microphone screaming at people to accept Jesus. Believe what I believe! Then we'll all be safe! 

That aversion has put me off acclaimed works like Cloud Atlas, so I'm not interested in seeing what I've grown to think of as a boring cliched rape/control trope reinterpreted yet again. I think the fetish for considering other people to be puppets and their bodies to be discardable outfits is gross, and it reminds me of the narcissistic princess in Return to Oz, and when I see it, I'm passing unless there's some massive art incentivizing me otherwise. I'll blame it on reading way too much Jack L. Chalker in the '70s.

I Must Say I'm Really Enjoying the Asian Presence Among the Hugo Nominees

 I figured out in 2020 that South Korea had gone far beyond us in both cinema and pop music, and that was before the Korean Fried Chicken popup. It sounded like the future, so I swiftly developed an interest.

And I noticed there were even American, and Australian, and Canadian pop stars who had moved to Korea to start their careers, because western media tends to exclude actual Asians along with people of Asian descent. 

I've always lived around a lot of Asians so I tend to notice when they're not around, and for the longest time, American nerds have had a rep for craving Asian-from-Asia entertainment while not being nearly as receptive to entertainment from diaspora Asians and Polynesians and the list goes on. 

That's changed. I'm seeing lots of Asian presence in this year's nominees, and three of their stories have made it onto my final ballot so far. 

I'm not sure if you can attribute it to K-Pop Demon Hunters (oops, three stories and one movie) or the wave of excellent entertainment pouring out of South Korea -- BTS, Taemin, Parasite, Squid Games, Attorney Woo, the list goes on. But suddenly Asian folks are trendy, and this haole is there for it. Grab hold of that star. Ride that lightning. Please kick all these stale re-booters and re-treaders out of Hollywood and give us something fresh and Golden. 

Reviews - Oathbound by Tracy Deonn; Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee; and Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen

Everyone provided e-pubs except for Oathbound by Tracy Deonn – that one was a Word document. With a link (Windows Defender: are you sure want to click this shady link?) that takes you to a book site, which is absolutely free … as long as you answer a few questions. I F-4’d out of there a few questions into the interrogation. It not only wanted 50 characters about why I wanted to read this story, it wanted the login for my LinkedIn. When I tried giving it my TikTok (joke’s on you, I haven’t logged into it in forever), it said I was not authorized to TikTok. 

So I Googled the title on Goodreads to see if it seemed like something I’d want to spend money on. It did not. So it’s not even getting onto my ballot because the e-reader set up was ultra sketchy. Fail.

Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen – another high fantasy, and this one is number three in the series. I started with number one. Ultra serious high fantasy. Did not grab me.

And finally

Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee – two finalist stories about a Vietnamese-American kid battling the supernatural while getting some sapphic romance, what are the odds? This one is a gregarious social butterfly magicking her way through a complicated scenario with a large cast of characters. I just wasn’t feeling inclined toward that much immersion, but I liked the heroine’s saucy voice. 

As of right now I’m inclined to go with They Bloom at Night, with Coffeeshop beneath it just because I liked the cut of the heroine’s jib. Collins has already won lots of awards, and has written better books too. Am I prejudiced against high fantasy that takes itself Very Seriously? Umm, I might be. I do know that I am doing quite well with my self-imposed reward scheme, and am only a few more novelitos from finishing my chores so I can go read Dungeon Crawler Carl 8 again. 

Review – They Bloom At Night by Trang Thanh Tran

Nhung, aka Noon, is a Vietnamese-American kid from a Louisiana shrimp boat family, dealing with a red bloom, which coats her section of coast in bizarre red algae, and monsters. I won’t say more about the monsters because there’s a very clever monster twist towards the end. 

Which I skipped forward to read. This book had a good strong beginning, as Nhung befriends bad grrrl Covey (hey, there was a Covey in the Collins book too), who is so spicy she reads all the time and uses a knife as a bookmark. She’s also the daughter of this story’s racist bully bastard, who gnashes his teeth and stomps around earning his satisfying comeuppance. 

And there’s this Scooby Gang of kids, featuring a fashionable bisexual lad named after Laura Ingalls Wilder. My train of thought derailed somewhere after they showed up for some earnest discussion about feelings, and orientations, and romance, and cooking, when there’s a monster sitting right outside just waiting for a skirmish. Kissing happens. Monster fights happen. Nhung loses so many pairs of glasses I kinda wanted to throw her a gofundme so she can get Lasix. Ending satisfies. 

This is a decent body horror tale that sticks to reasonable violence parameters and I enjoyed the setting and the protagonist’s voice. So far it’s ahead of the Collins book in my opinion, but I’m just getting started.

Review – Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

When I pulled this one up on my Kindle app because I read books on my phone or ipad or pc, it was already at 99%, indicating I already read it. So I looked up the summary in Wikipedia – oh yeah, the one with Haymitch, where they quote The Raven a lot. It’s a tragedy, as one might guess from the way Haymitch turned into the cynical drunk who mentored Katniss in Hunger Games. 

I’m not going to re-read it, and I’ll note that I got all the way through it at least once. The summary refreshed my memory a little – it’s a Hunger Games story, about a crawler who goes into the dungeon to kill kill kill – oops, wait, that’s from Dungeon Crawler Carl, the latest and freshest in the Deadly Games genre. 

A genre I tend to enjoy. The Long Walk. Squid Games. Jumanji. A good gamer story is nearly as good as playing an actual game, and at this phase of my life, it’s a toss-up as to whether I’ve spent more time reading books or playing games. 

I think Carl is currently doing a bangup job with the “gamers united against the game masters” theme, which is kind of a weak subtext in the Hunger Games series, where people are too demoralized and brutalized to get organized and throw a revolution. 

I might have mentioned it before, but these days I have a special dislike for “this is how you beat fascism” stories. Bad plan. Didn’t work. Try something else.

 Sunrise has an even worse premise: this is how fascism happens despite your best efforts – maybe it’s because you’re just a tragic guy destined to lead a fucked-up life with an unhappy ending. Born to lose. Hero of a story about “what horrible things could have happened to this man to turn him into a total lush?” The answer unfolds, detailing all his stressors. Then there’s an especially unhappy moment. Then the hero wanders off to get blackout drunk and our participation in his story mercifully ends. Leaving us staring bleakly at Ms. Collins’ latest depressive episode. 

This one’s kind of the standard by which I’ll judge the others, since I already read and forgot it once. Not great, not terrible, compelling enough to finish but sad enough to ask yourself why. 

Reviews: The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

A lot like the last one I didn’t finish. They’re both fantasy mysteries, with knights and horses and stuff. Raven has a boyish girl, Everlasting has a girlish boy. This one has a solemn Tolkein-ish tone that I found offputting, possibly for the same reason I have trouble getting into actual Tolkein but have enjoyed several knockoffs and wannabes. No accounting for taste, right? 

I have now finished the Best Novel category as far as I’m concerned, and have earned myself another concert ticket. Hopefully someone I like will announce a tour soon. 

Next up: the rest of the YAs.

Review – The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

First there’s an exposition-y beginning involving a teacher from a Harry-Potter-with-the-serial-numbers filed off kind of world, and a promising student who accidentally killed her whole family with a “demonic incursion” and some law and order adults who want to get to the bottom of it. Yep, it’s another mystery. But I’m determined to hold off on judgment, a little, so I kept going for a while. Ultimately it lost me over the scoldy teacher voice of the narrator, but if you like mysteries, and have a hankering for some Potter-ish fanfic from Professor McGonagall’s perspective, this is the book for you.