The Last One Review

This week's novel is The Last One by Alexandra Oliva.  I heard about this one because it was nominated as a Goodreads choice award nominee for 2017 in science fiction.  I have problems with the science fiction label, but that's not anywhere near the point.

Twelve contestants go on a wilderness survival reality show, where part of the way through an epidemic hits the country.  Or does it?  Maybe it's part of the show.  The production company is infamous for their last reality show where they used props and special effects to create a volcano, and this show has a $100 million budget.  The only way off the show is to ask to leave by using a safe word, and he show is said to be about finding the contestants' breaking points, and the host makes it clear the contestants don't know everything that's happening.  But then again...the dead body special effects are very good.

This book is upsetting.  You may know how much I like books about reality shows, and I liked this book.  But it was upsetting.  I came to the end, and even though it had been clear for a couple chapters how it would end, I got to the last line and started crying.  In retrospect, I think it's because the tension was finally released.

The structure of this book makes it work.  There are alternating chapters between an omniscient point of view that mostly follows the episodes that air, and chapters from the first person perspective of "Zoo" (which is what the producers have nickname one of the contestants, who is a zoologist).  With the first person chapters, we see what Zoo knows and follow how she makes sense of what she's seeing, starting a few days into a solo challenge while she walks mile after mile through abandoned towns.  With the omniscient chapters we see how the producers are cutting the events together and warping the narrative, and we get to meet the other contestants.  Knowing that the producers arranged tricks and props and actors to mess with the contestants adds weight to the theory that it's all part of the show.  (It's also fun to see all the work the production assistants and the editor and camera operators do.). While the first person chapters show us how Zoo is rationalizing everything and why she keeps going.  It personalizes the journey.

And there were several times when I had to stop and say, "Wait.  Is this real?"  I wasn't sure for a long time.  I was hoping it was all part of the game for the sake of Zoo and for the sake of humanity, and also because that would have made my horrible, popcorn popping self cackle at the evilness this production company put Zoo through for my entertainment.  Zoo thinks of episodes of misadventures as Challenges.  The Rabid Coyote Challenge.  The Marauders Challenge.  And she thinks of her good luck as rewards for doing well on those challenges.  The Abandoned Camping Gear Store Reward.  She gives everything a cause and effect.  She believes things are planned and people are watching her and if things get too bad a production assistant will appear with a med team.  And she believes she has an out: if she says the code word, she'll be done and it'll all stop and she can go home.  But at the same time, she doesn't say it, because she can take it.  Or maybe she's not saying it because she thinks it's not part of the show and doesn't want that coping mechanism taken from her.  She wants to stay in denial.

But my favorite part of the book was how deftly the omniscient point of view was used.  It was great.  It tells us that a contestant was thinking something harsh, but because they were trying to go for Fan Favorite, they said something more reasonable, to which a different contestant responded and  third contestant said something snarky, which was later removed by the editor.  It shows what the host is doing just before contestants make it to the finish line and how the contestants react on finding out they're last, and how the producers cheer that those contestants' coming in last will set up drama that the viewers will eat up, and then what the viewers think about the challenge and what they write online about it in the comments section.  It moves organically and gives an image of what's happening that feels complete.

But this also gets into my least favorite part of the book, which is that these omnicisent sections are male gaze-y and weirdly racist.  These sections refer to the contestants only by their nicknames, which include "Asian Chick" and "Black Doctor."  (There are no other doctors.)  These sections linger on the women bending over or drinking water, because the show lingers on these moments.  They are almost in the producer's voice, but not from his point of view.  So it's a statement about the people making this show, but, again, it's not explicitly from anyone's point of view.  And I don't have to enjoy something that's problematic even if it's an accurate reflection of a point of view.

***
Next week: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

Illuminae Review

This week's novel is Illuminae, YA sci-fi by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff.  You may recall that I really liked These Broken Stars by Kaufman and Meagan Spooner, so I've had this one on my Kindle for a while and held back because the file makes it look really long.  Turns out this is an illusion arising from the file format, and I read the whole thing in about a day and a half.

This is in the form of a dossier, and the story is presented as a series of e-mails, After Action Reports, Wiki pages, chat logs, audio transcripts, and descriptions of surveillance videos.  Through these, we see the tragedy of [PLACE], an illegal mining colony on the outer rim of the universe.  They are attacked by a rival corporation, massacring thousands of men, women, and children.  They are rescued by a military cruiser that happens to be in the area, but instead of retreating when the military shows up, the rival corporation ships decide to fire on the military. The now damaged and overpopulated military ship rescues about 5000 refugees, and without faster than light drive, they have to travel six months to the nearest jump gate with the (also damaged) last rival corporation warship chasing them to eliminate all witnesses. 

I'm always impressed when epistolary stories manage to convey tension, and boy howdy, this one was intense.  The hits just keep coming and as soon as one problem gets a band aid on it, another problem crops up, usually within the same section.  The AI is broken and starts making questionable decisions, then there's a virus that breaks out, and then another thing and another.  The hits just kept coming, making it difficult to put down.  There's always a conflict and always a countdown clock. 

Another reason I think this works is that every section has a strong voice from whoever's writing the e-mail or writing the descriptions of surveillance videos.  Sometimes it's almost too strong.  But there's rarely a point where information is given without an obvious human filter, and that emotional connection makes a difference during tense evacuation procedures.

It's also surprisingly formatted.  E-mails from different ships have different headers and type faces.  There are illustrations and schematics.  During the space battles, when I suspect it would be the hardest to tell what's happening while also maintaining tension, it just doesn't try and instead turns it into a cool artsy moment, where you get the mood of the battle without the authors having to do a blow by blow.  It's really great, so I don't want to get too into it so you can be impressed if you want to read it.  It technically breaks the found-document format, but I was invested and it had a cool factor, so I didn't care.

Of course, this meant there were times that it was hard to read on my ancient Kindle.  I read the whole thing rotated 90 degrees so the text would be bigger, and there are times when the AI is talking that the gray scale doesn't work, so this might be a good one to read from a hard copy.

But A+.  Will read the sequels.

***

Next week: ???

Dreamer's Pool Review

This week’s novel is Dreamer’s Pool by Juliet Marillier.  My mom, the prolific fantasy reader, recommended this one to me.

Blackthorn and Grim are imprisoned in a corrupt chieftain’s prison when a fey offers Blackthorn a chance to escape provided she goes North to a specific village, takes a position as their wise woman (which is like a healer), and never denies anyone when they ask for help.  The two escape and head north and find a mystery: the overly romantic Prince Oran has been corresponding with the girl his parents have arrange for him to marry and he’s completely smitten.  But when she arrives, she doesn’t act like she did in the letters, and there’s the strong whiff of something magical and sinister about the whole situation.

This book alternates point of view between Blackthorn, Grim, and Oran, and I have to say I was way more invested in Oran’s story than anyone else’s.  His situation with his betrothed was creep-tastic, with a bunch of little, weird clues that something was amiss that it just rubbed the wrong way and made me suspicious and invested.  I wanted to know what was happening so much I almost looked it up.  I almost texted my mom to ask, making use of multiple interabangs.  Is she a changeling?!  Did she body swap with the dog?!  Is she a water monster?!  Is Oran just a big dummy?!  What’s her goal here?! 

I’m a little disappointed that Oran didn’t put Blackthorn on the case until 2/3rds of the way through, but that was more surprising when I noticed it than a sense that the pacing was off.

I also appreciated that Blackthorn was so bristly and hated everybody and had to actively try to be polite.  Being sociable is hard, and her pain—although extreme—was relatable.  And even though she’s clever, she lets her prejudices affect her better judgement.  She’s a great, flawed character.

(In comparison, I pictured Oran as the prince from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The one who keeps trying to burst into song.  So that’s also fun.)

***

Next Week: Illuminae, epistolary YA Sci-Fi by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Bunnicula Review

This week’s novel is Bunnicula: A Rabbit Tale of Mystery, middle grade “horror” by James and Deborah Howe.  I heard about this one on the Overdue Podcast.  I’ve been reading a lot of heavy, depressing books lately, which haven’t made it onto the blog because I’ve been not finishing them or just taking a really long time with them, so I felt that something short and goofy was in order.

The story is told by Harold, the family dog.  One night, the family comes back from the movies with a bunny that they found at the theater and promptly adopted.  Since they found the bunny at a showing of Dracula and since the rabbit has odd markings that make it look like it’s wearing a cape, they name it Bunnicula.  But little do the humans know how apt the name is.  Bunnicula sleeps during the day, then magically slips out of its cage at night, opens the refrigerator, and (dun dun dun!) sucks the juices out of vegetables.  Chester, the family cat, suspects the rabbit is up to no good, and sets out to solve the mystery and stop Bunnicula.

This is written in the style of a Sherlock Holmes book in a lot of ways.  Chester is the smart one, who figures out that Bunnicula is a vampire, and he has to explain everything to Harold, our narrator who idolizes Chester and is mostly documenting Chester’s logical leaps.  It’s very much the relationship of Holmes and Watson.  The language and sentence structure also remind me of Doyle (which I admittedly haven’t read in a while).  There’s something formal in the prose and the descriptions.  It’s neat that it works in a children’s book and it adds to the atmosphere, to the mystery and suspense.

Most importantly, I appreciate how the stakes are incredibly low, yet the prose creates suspense.  This is a trope that I really like, because you get swept up in how Harold and Chester are taking the situation so seriously and they are so invested that the reader buys into that investment, but the (adult) reader can easily pull out of the narrative and chuckle that everyone is taking treating it like life or death when it Definitely. Does. Not. Matter.  Usually, I wouldn’t like being thrown out of the narrative, but this is an exception for me.  It’s built in such a way that some meta narrative is intended. 

I’m not sure how this is accomplished.  There aren’t moments of the book winking at the reader, no nudging and going “Get it?  Get it?  This is silly.”  Maybe the short chapters give adults moments for reflection?  Maybe the drama is so over the top as to frighten children, but make adults laugh?  How does that work?  I HAVE QUESTIONS.

***

Next week: Dreamer’s Pool, fantasy and mystery by Juliet Marillier.

One of Us is Lying Review

This week’s novel is One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus.  I heard about this because it was one of the Goodreads Choice Awards nominees for 2017.

Five high school kids end up in detention for crimes they did not commit.  During that detention, one of the kids, Simon, goes into anaphylactic shock and dies.  Now the four remaining students are under suspicion of murdering him, and they all have motive since Simon ran a school gossip app that was about to post devastating information about each of them.

This was a good mystery in that I had suspicions, but I was never 100% sure until the truth came out at the end.  The point of view revolves through the four main characters as they try to solve the murder and deal with the fallout of the police investigating them, the school turning against them, and their misdeeds coming out.  I kept expecting some underhanded compartmentalization nonsense, and I appreciated it when it didn’t happen.  Maybe that’s a spoiler, but I would have liked to know that.

I also liked the weird challenges that the kids had to wrestle with.  When they all lawyer up, their lawyers all recommend that they keep their distance from each other, but at the same time the murder club (as they start calling themselves) can’t explain how hard their situation is to anyone else.  I liked the moral ambiguity in Simon’s app.  His gossip mongering is awful, but at the same time cheating is awful too.  I liked how everyone hated Simon, but after he died few people would talk about how bad he was, and the main characters especially can’t for fear of implicating themselves.

I also liked the characters.  They start off as clichés, but as the book goes on, they fill out and contain multitudes, and it ends up that they had molded themselves into clichés because it was easier for them.

***

Next week: Bunnicula, silly horror for kids by James and Deborah Howe.

Reincarnation Blues Review

This week's novel is Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore.  I heard about this, because it was on NPR's list of best books of 2017.

Milo has lived 9,995 lives and is having a fairly good time spending his alive time as a wise man and spending the time between lives shacking up with his eternal girlfriend, Death, who prefers to go by Suzie.  However, the powers that be explain to Milo that he only gets 10,000 chances to reach perfection in life and become one with the cosmic everything.  If he doesn't manage it in the next five lives, he'll be pushed into an abyss and turned to nothing.

This is an interesting book, because the over-arching conflict is whether or not Milo will get his act together and do something ambiguously perfect instead of being so lazy.  It's funny and light-hearted, and you can assume (from the spacing of the chapter breaks at the bottom of the Kindle screen) that he'll get it (or something equivalent.  I was expecting his act of perfection to take place in the afterlife) done on his last chance.  However, the five lives we watch him live have no promises of a happy ending, and they get bleak real fast.  There's torture, mutilation, rape, slavery, and then the added tension that if he wants to achieve perfection, a deus ex machina to come rescue him from the future prison planet is only going to momentarily relieve my anxiety. 

So that made for an interesting reading experience, because I was rooting for him to get out of terrible situations and then feeling a little bad that a quick fix wouldn't save his immortal soul and also frustrated that there were so many soul crushing systems in place that he would have to fight against to make any changes that would matter enough to the powers that be.

I also have a lot of questions about predetermination that the book never touches on.  When he's reincarnated, he could go anywhere in time.  The ancient past, the near present, the far future.  (It's a good craft technique, because then Poore can keep the humor moderns and consistent throughout.) But then I have questions.  If he goes back to the sixties and shoots JFK, is that how it always happened?  Does he get to choose to do that?  Does that affect things in the future?  How do the powers that be not know how each of his lives are going to turn out?  I HAVE A LOT OF QUESTIONS.


***

Next week: One of Us is Lying, a YA mystery thriller by Karen M. McManus.

Sourdough Review

This week's novel was Sourdough by Robin Sloan.  It's magical realism (kind of) about bread.  This was a Goodreads Choice Nominee and NPR's Best Books of 2017, so that's how I heard about it.

Lois is a software engineer at a Type-A robot arm company, if companies can be described as Type-A.  She has a favorite take out place, run by two brothers who are ambiguously foreign.  The takeout place is delivery only and has basically one item on their menu, the double spicy, which is a spicy soup and a sandwich on sourdough bread.  When Lois starts eating the double spicy every night, she starts feeling better about her life, as if the bread has magical properties that can lift her spirits.  When the takeout guys are forced to leave the country, they leave her with their sourdough starter and a CD of the music of their people.  Lois figures out how to bake bread, and discovers that the starter glows at night, sings the music of their people, and makes bread with a crust that looks ominously like a human face.

I loved this book, you guys.

Sourdough starters are naturally weird, and pushing them into the realm of magical is not too much of a stretch.  But the book makes it seem like maybe there's a rational explanation for the starter's behavior.  There are experts in microbe colonies sprinkled throughout the book who have scientific explanations for why it acts that way, but it's always ambiguous as to if they just don't understand how whacky the starter is or if the ominous nature of the starter is all in Lois's head. 

In fact, I really like how science and magic work together in this book.  I went in expecting Lois to turn away from her soul crushing programming job to move to the country and bake bread in a brick oven she built herself.  That never happens, because Lois' love for technology, and how good she is at her job are a part of her.  Just like how baking comes to be a part of her.  I really appreciate how the two can live together instead of them working against each other, instead of the book ultimately coming out as a condemnation of technology.

I also really liked the ambiguously foreign brothers.  Turns out they were deported to Edinburgh.  They are Mazg, which is a group of people who relocate frequently and don't have restaurants with signs and tables and don't mix their own music to dubstep beats, because they're "second floor people" who remain mostly anonymous.  The two brothers have some tension about this, because they want to share the music and food of their yeast based culture with the world.  They share stories of the Mazg, which are familiar and yet yeast based.

There really isn't that much of a plot to this.  There's no bad guy trying to steal the starter or use the sourdough for nefarious purposes.  No one is pushing Lois to give up technology and be a baker, or to quit baking and get back to work.  The big conflict at about 2/3 of the way through is how Lois is going to feed the starter enough to make enough bread to meet demand.  But it's so enjoyable in its simplicity as Lois learns to work with the bread and works with her robot arm and meets other food experts and learns about the Mazg over e-mail with the brothers.  There are great descriptions of food.  It's a good time.