Book Review: The Library Book, Susan Orlean

Book Review: The Library Book, Susan Orlean

The Library Book

Nonfiction: The Library Book, Susan Orlean

I read The Library Book without knowing a lot about it. For instance, I had no idea that author Susan Orlean was such a wonderful observer of humanity. She describes a patron in “one of the carrels in history, a man in a pin-striped suit who had books on his desk but wasn’t reading held a bag of Doritos under the lip of the table. He pretended to muffle a cough each time he ate a chip.”

 

I did not realize how passionate she was for libraries in general. She describes them as “a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality, in the library, we can live forever.”

 

The Library Book focuses on a singular event in the life of one library. The 1986 fire in the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library destroyed literally millions of books, microfiche, photographs, magazines, and other documents and records. Much of the damage was irreplaceable. The event itself did not get the national publicity warranted for a simple reason: it occurred on the same day as the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Still, it was the largest library fire in US history.

 

Orlean spends a lot of time looking at the possible cause of the fire, the effects, the aftermath, and the person ultimately blamed for starting the fire (he was never formally charged due to a lack of evidence). But she also looks at the history of the library and of libraries in general, and brings the story to the present and the future of libraries.

 

I cannot tell you how much I love this book. I am a sucker for libraries, and the library branch she mentions early in the book, Studio City, is very few miles from the North Hollywood branch we patronized during our brief sojourn in Los Angeles. Even though we lived in LA while they were rebuilding the main branch after the fire, I do not recall being fully aware of the devastation of the fire, so this book taught me a lot about a library in a town I lived in during the time frame when I lived there.

 

More than libraries, though, I am a sucker for a great book. This is a wonderful, amazing book. Susan Orlean’s choice of characters, her spot-on descriptions, and her engaging storytelling style makes this read more like a novel than a nonfiction narrative. I could read this book again and again, and probably get more out of it each time I started.

 

Some of the characters are the leaders of the LA Public Library. One of the leaders literally walked to Los Angeles from Ohio! After becoming the head of the library, he became known for his passionate advocacy for the library, his zeal in expanding the library’s collection and services…and his messy affairs which led to his divorce. In the early 1900s, this made news headlines, even in LA. A future librarian was so keen on reading that she advised people to fib their way out of social engagements so they could instead stay home and read a novel in a single gulp “like a boa constrictor.”

 

Apparently in Senegal the polite way to refer to someone’s passing is to say, “his or her library has burned.” Their stories have ended, their chapters are closed. What a beautiful and appropriate metaphor! The Library Book is full of bon mots like that. Not many nonfiction books can make you laugh and cry and sigh and feel better about life after reading them. Susan Orlean has accomplished all of that and more.

 

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We of www.scintilla.info LOVE libraries, especially our local library, www.schlowlibrary.org. Almost every book we’ve reviewed has been borrowed from Schlow and is part of their collection. Like every library we’ve ever visited, they have helpful friendly people, they know almost everything, and they can put their hands on any book you would ever need or want.

 

Celebrate National Library Week with us (April 7-13, 2019) by checking out our other reviews of books featuring libraries:

 

The Invisible Library Series

The Mortal Word (Book 5 of The Invisible Library Series)

Booklist of Children’s Books about Libraries

The Library Book

 

Also, feel free to share these library memes we’ve created.

http://scintilla.info/2018/04/13/quote-walter-cronkite-libraries/

http://scintilla.info/2018/04/11/quote-without-libraries-bradbury/

The Library Book

Book Review: The Library Book, Susan Orlean

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Book Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire

Book Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire

Book 2 in the Wayward Children series

Down Among the Sticks and Bones cover

Fiction: Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire

Book 2 in the Wayward Children series

 

Normally I avoid reading a series out of sequence, although I seem to be doing that with frustrating regularity in recent months. Regardless, I have done it here once again, but because Seanan McGuire is a merciful author who takes pity on the fans who adore her, she has written Down Among the Sticks and Bones in her Wayward Children series as a book that stands well on its own and does not require having read the first book for it to make sense.

 

Twins Jacqueline and Jillian were raised to be the ideal daughters of a truly vapid couple. Jacqueline was her mother’s ideal little girl. She wore dresses, she never got dirty, and she always behaved herself. Jillian was the son her father did not have. She wore jeans, played soccer, and presented herself as a tomboy. The fact that neither of their daughters actually felt at home in her role never occurred to their parents. They wanted two perfect children, and that is what they demanded.

 

This disconnect between who they had to be and who they actually were made them quite unhappy, and this unhappiness opened a doorway into a different world. One stormy day the girls decide to wander into their grandmother’s room. Their grandmother had lived with them when they were preschoolers, but since she did not correspond to their parents’ ideal version of a grandmother/nanny, she had been banished from the home. The girls entered the room as twelve-year-olds planning a day of dress up and play. What they found was a doorway to another place, one with monsters and myths at every turn, and there they spent the next several years.

 

How they grew up there, how their decisions as to who they were shaped who they became, and how they eventually returned home, I will leave to the reader to discover. McGuire does a masterful job of revealing how each girl’s choices affect her, and her sister, and others in this new world. Not many authors can walk the line between humor and horror the way McGuire does. Even in the opening chapters when we meet the parents, page after page causes alternate wincing and chuckling. The title of the opening chapter promises this very reaction: “The Dangerous Allure of Other People’s Children.” Those of us who are parents recognize this fact. The ideas we had about parenting were shaped by our exposure to other people’s children, be they our own siblings or cousins or friends when we were children, or the children of our family members and friends when we grew up. The arrival of our own children very quickly teaches most of us an astounding fact: we knew nothing!

 

McGuire captures that reality–completely unknown to most non-parents who feel quite competent giving advice to parents on childrearing–beautifully in her opening chapter:

 

“This, you see, is the true danger of children: they are ambushes, each and every one of them. A person may look at someone else’s child and see only the surface, the shiny shoes or the perfect curls. They do not see the tears and the tantrums, the late nights, the sleepless hours, the worry. They do not even see the love, not really….

It can be easy, in the end, to forget that children are people, and that people will do what people will do, the consequences be damned.”

 

Jacqueline and Jillian–Jack and Jill as they are known in the other world–start life being molded into their parents’ ideal children. Breaking into a new world lets them break out of that mold. Since they had no model for a different life, though, the choices they make have unintended consequences that they are not prepared to face. And when they return to the world that gave them birth, they are not recognizably the same girls.

 

Down Among the Sticks and Bones is the second book of the series. Ideally, start with Every Heart a Doorway. Beneath the Sugar Sky came out in January, 2018, and In An Absent Dream will arrive in January, 2019. If the other books are as good as this one…well, what am I saying. This is Seanan McGuire, winner of Hugo and Locus and multiple other awards, writer of October Daye and Incryptid series and Spider-Gwen comics and (under the pen name of Mira Grant) the Newsflesh series. She is amazing; she rewards all of her readers with humor and insight and fun and fear all rolled together. The other books will be good. Read them, read this one, and cringe-laugh-cry your way through some amazing stories.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones cover

Book Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire

Book 2 in the Wayward Children series

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Book Review: Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird, Katie Fallon

Book Review: Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird, Katie Fallon

Nonfiction Natural Sciences: Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird, Katie Fallon

 

“A turkey vulture is a perfect creature.” The opening line of the main text captures the entire premise of the book. The subtitle to Vulture is a bit misleading: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird. Katie Fallon herself belies it. She loves vultures. Turkey vultures, black vultures, old world, new world, condors and gryphons and buzzards and any other name you care to give them.

 

That is not to say they are the easiest birds to love. Although their colors can be beautiful, their habit of eating by plunging their heads into open carcasses can be off-putting. And although there are no documented cases of vultures harming humans and very few credible stories of vultures going after live prey at all, birds which attack aggressors by hissing and projectile vomiting at them are less highly regarded than those which simply tweet assertively.

 

None of these things dissuades Fallon, though, who has a vulture friend named “Lew,” and who buys vulture onesies for her daughters, and who has traveled extensively studying vultures around the US and beyond. Fallon unabashedly loves vultures, and after reading this book, maybe I do, too.

 

Vulture was chosen for the Centre County (PA) Reads program, an effort to have as many people as possible in our county read the same book. I will admit, I was not entirely sure why the book was chosen before reading it. Now, I can see the choice was inspired. Katie Fallon has local roots. A Pennsylvania resident for much of her life (now living in next-door West Virginia), Fallon is a Penn State University graduate. Apart from the local connections, the book itself is beautifully written and deeply thoughtful. Each chapter starts with a short essay written from the perspective of a vulture. These are done without anthropomorphizing the animals. She does not attempt to interpret their emotions. Rather, she writes about more basic feelings: hunger, cold, wind. After these short essays come chapters that go into depth on the vultures themselves, on her life as a birder, on her work with her husband in caring and rehabilitating injured birds, and on her family’s fascination with these creatures. She includes carefully worded essays that are very pro-hunting but anti-lead-ammunition, explorations of the dangers posed by chemicals in mammals to the birds which eat their carcasses, and celebrations of the work being done by scientists who are studying the migratory patterns and other behaviors of these birds.

 

Although turkey vultures are doing very well right now, other vulture species around the world are threatened and endangered. Most notably, the California condor population had fallen to 27 individuals before unprecedented species recovery efforts began. The population is now up to several hundred, but that is still an extremely small number of birds and there are no guarantees it is a sustainably stable population. Without human help, the condor population would quickly die. Of course, without humans they would not have almost gone extinct to begin with, so there is an argument to be made that we bear responsibility to fix what we’ve broken.

 

Fallon includes a number of personal and family anecdotes in the book, some of which are quite funny. Her efforts to see a vulture named “Jennie” take her to an elementary school and to the edge of an Air Force bombing range, where she ultimately decides that jumping the fence and dodging rattlesnakes and unexploded ordnance might not be the best course of action. Part of this decision was the potential for the headline, “Mother arrested…,” which fortunately remains unwritten outside of her book (and now this review). She does not actually cross the fence.

 

Fallon concludes her book with a number of steps that individuals can take to help preserve and protect vultures. Most importantly is a decision by hunters to eschew lead ammunition. Katie Fallon is pro-hunting and pro-gun. However, lead bullet fragments are poisonous to vultures. “Gut piles” are a valuable and vital source of food for wild vultures, but when they are contaminated by lead, they become deadly, especially to their chicks. Although I am not a hunter, this seems like a reasonable and doable request, and I would hope that hunters would take this concern seriously.

 

Vulture is a very good book for any independent readers who love animal stories, though the youngest readers might find some of the scientific vocabulary challenging. Anyone who enjoys animals and natural history stories will appreciate the personal and scientific approach Katie Fallon uses to tell the story of a bird that may be underappreciated, but thanks to her cannot truly be called unloved.

Book Review: Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird, Katie Fallon

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One Year!

One Year!

No Fooling! April of 2018 was the first post of Scintilla.Info. Here is a link to that blast from our past…

 

http://scintilla.info/2018/04/01/books-to-laugh-out-loud-with-your-children/

 

In the last year we have reviewed almost 200 books, posted some fun recipes and tea time suggestions, tweeted 1300 times, and had an absolute blast!

 

We visited the Central PA Book Festival, the National Book Festival, joined the Nittany Valley Writers Network, bought a cute pair of bookish shoes, and (most importantly for us) drew closer as a couple.

 

We are hoping to do more this year: more books, more conventions and festivals, more writing, more posts, more tweets, more memes, more recipes, and maybe some cool book shoes for Dave as well!  😉

 

We are also hoping to improve the site, fix some of the statistical measuring and backend issues that have fought with us this year, and keep having fun.

 

Thank you for joining us on this journey. We hope you have enjoyed Scintilla.Info almost as much as we have enjoyed making it!

 

Love to all,

 

Maria and David Marvin

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Book Review: Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire

Book Review: Every Heart a Doorway, Book One in the Wayward Children series, Seanan McGuire

Fantasy: Every Heart a Doorway, Book One in the Wayward Children series, Seanan McGuire

Winner: 2017 Hugo Award

Winner: 2017 Alex Award

Winner: 2017 Locus Award

Winner: 2016 Nebula Award

Nominated: 2017 World Fantasy Award

 

Nancy is new to Eleanor West’s school. Her parents heard this was the perfect place, maybe the only place, that could help her. Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children took children like Nancy, helped children like Nancy, children who had disappeared from this world then reappeared with strange, unbelievable stories of other worlds, of places they went to where they felt at home and were understood and belonged. Ms. West listened to the concerns of these parents and grandparents and loved ones and assured them. We’ve had great success with such children, she said. We know you want your happy and well-adjusted child back to normal, she told them. We can help, she said.

 

It was all a lie. But parents and grandparents and loved ones needed to hear the lie, believe the lie, believe that their child who returned in the flesh would one day return to her or his “right” mind. So they dropped off their Kades or their Jills or their Christophers or their Nancys and drove home, looking forward to the day when their child would forget all that nonsense and truly come home.

 

Ms. West, though, knew the truth. The children she kept were not delusional. They had traveled to other worlds. They had found home, their true home, and then somehow were wrenched from that true home for their hearts and returned to a world where they did not, could not, never would fit in. The only help she could give them was to help them come to terms with their situation. Perhaps they could go back to those other worlds someday. Most couldn’t. Until they could, or until they were ready to deal with this world, they had a home with Ms. West. Their parents could not, would not, understand or accept the truth. Few ever would, or could. But Ms. West could and did. For she had also traveled, she also knew there was a world that fit her perfectly, and until she could return to that world permanently she would do everything she could to provide at least one safe, true place for other travelers to stay.

 

Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway has won an amazing number of awards, probably because it recognizes the longing in so many hearts for a place to belong. The old Christian song, “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through,” expresses an ache felt by many hearts in and out of churches. There has got to be more, there has got to be a place. Somewhere, someone understands ME, knows exactly who I am, sees me, the real me. In a world full of differences, full of people who march to their own tunes, we still live lives of “quiet desperation,” alone and aware that we are alone. We meet and mingle and mate and still fail to truly connect with others. And we hope, though hope dims a bit each year, that somewhere we will stumble through a door into a world where we actually fit in.

 

Soon after Nancy arrives, her roommate is found dead, hands removed at the wrist. More murders ensue, each grisly and each with very specific body parts removed. Some of the removals were done post mortem, but others were done while the victim was still alive, adding to the horror of the act. And as the bodies mount, so do the questions. Who? Why? Who would be next? And not incidentally, how could this place of haven survive becoming a serial killer’s hunting ground?

 

Every Heart a Doorway is not a long book, but it is deep. For anyone who sometimes (or usually) feels lost in this world, this is a book that says, “You are not alone.” That may be the most powerful gift any book can give.

Book Review: Every Heart a Doorway, Book One in the Wayward Children series, Seanan McGuire

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Book Review: The Point of Poetry, Joe Nutt

Book Review: The Point of Poetry, Joe Nutt

The Point of Poetry by [Nutt, Joe]

Poetry Resource: The Point of Poetry, Joe Nutt

The subtitle of this book is telling: “How Poetry Can Teach Us about the Things in Life which Really Matter.” Joe Nutt’s book The Point of Poetry is not necessarily meant to be a textbook, but if it were, it is the textbook we all wish we had back when poetry was being taught–or so often assaulted or inflicted–back in high school or college.

 

Joe Nutt has taught poetry, and I hope he makes a second career teaching teachers how to teach poetry. He is not afraid to poke fun at poets and poetry. He says about William Blake’s “The Tyger,” “To a child just about coping with the difference between advice and advise or even have and of, spelling Tyger with a ‘y’ is just confirmation that any poet’s main mission is to sow confusion and doubt.” I wish more of my poetry classes, books, and teachers had expressed that kind of self awareness.

 

Poetry should always be taken seriously–seriously enough that we should be able to laugh at it and with it. Nutt does just that. He can laugh at the thought of “tyger” being spelled with a “y,” and in the same chapter express the wonder captured by the author of the poem. Nutt may not share Blake’s faith or mysticism, but he does share Blake’s awe of the power of the large striped cat and his wonder at the forces–natural or divine–that brought both that creature and its prey into being. No matter how one spells the beastie’s name.

 

Ultimately it is that power behind the poems that Nutt loves, and he shares his love for this power in chapter after chapter of analysis of famous and not-so-famous poems. Nutt never takes himself too seriously. He never takes poets too seriously either. If “the Bard” cannot survive a few well-aimed barbs, he is not who we think he is. But Nutt takes poetry very seriously. The power of the words is in the power of the ideas they express: love, eternity, faith, endurance, the very ordinariness of life. When a poem succeeds in taking these grand themes of life and compressing them into a few words that encapsulate those ideas, it is a magical and sensual thing worth celebrating and sharing.

 

The book does what it seeks to do very well. It is fair to point out what it does not do. It is not intended to introduce a lot of modern or new poets. Most (not all) of the writers are fairly described as dead white English guys. There are a few dead white English gals as well. Rita Dove is a notable exception, and there are others, but it is predominately English poets, and a lot of the familiar names from the canon. No book can do everything, but I would love to see a follow-up book that addresses newer poetry from poets who are more representative of other races and cultures. If you are looking for a  book that addresses the subject of poetry and provides insight into the poems featured, though, this book does that extraordinarily well.

 

April in America is National Poetry Month, and I cannot think of a better way to introduce that month than with this book. If you don’t “get” the point of poetry, read this book. If you do get the point of poetry, you will also thoroughly enjoy this book.

 

The format of the book lends itself to taking it a chapter at a time. If you wanted to skip around to see what he says about a favorite (or least favorite) poem, this is a good book for that. Reading the entire book will likely introduce you to poems and poets you’ve never known before, but even if they are all familiar Nutt’s insights will help you read them with fresh eyes. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves poetry–and to anyone who hates poetry! Read a couple of chapters at random, and I dare anyone who has not seen the beauty of poetry before to tell me they still hate it. I am sure some still would, but anyone with a brain and a heart will see the power and beauty and humor that Nutt finds in The Point of Poetry.

Joe Nutt, Author
Joe Nutt, Author

I do want to thank Joe Nutt, his publisher, and Anne Cater for an advanced copy of The Point of Poetry. I am privileged to be part of the blog tour for the launch of the book, and the only request I was given for receiving the ARC was an honest review. Since I honestly loved the book, this was a treat and a pleasure for me.

2019 Blog Tour Poetry Poster
Check out our fellow bloggers on this tour.

 

The Point of Poetry by [Nutt, Joe]

Book Review: The Point of Poetry, Joe Nutt

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Book Review: Circe, Madeline Miller

Book Review: Circe, Madeline Miller

Book Review: Circe, Madeline Miller

Circe is an old story, but this new (2018) book repackages the tale for a modern audience in a creative and vivid way. Madeline Miller has worked magic with this story of an ancient witch. No longer a sidebar to the story of Odysseus, Circe here is a fully realized character who, despite living much of her life at the whim and mercy of greater gods, refuses to be the victim of anyone else’s machinations or to be the forgotten tangent to anyone else’s odyssey.

 

Circe is the daughter of a titan and a nymph. In this version, she is lightly regarded. Not pretty enough to be a true nymph, not powerful enough to be a true goddess, she lives on the fringes of her father’s palace until she discovers she has a talent for transformation. She is able to use plants to transform things–a mortal into a god, a nymph into a monster. Thrilled with her power but unwise in the ways of gods and titans, she demands her power be recognized. It is. Zeus himself takes notice of it, and orders her banished to an island where she must remain forever.

 

She works hard there to master her abilities, and despite her exile she encounters many of the more well-known figures of Greek mythology. Hermes becomes her lover. She meets the Minotaur. Daedelus and Icarus. Jason and Medea. And, of course, Odysseus.

 

Odysseus is charming, wily, mercurial, and sometimes cruel in this book. Circe falls in love with him, so much so that she allows herself to become pregnant with his child, but does not lose her head. She remains in control of herself and her island. This Odysseus physically returns from the Trojan War, but mentally and emotionally he never recovers from the brutalities of war or the voyage home. He survives every challenge, but most of those challenges were avoidable if he were a wiser or humbler man. Circe recognizes his faults, and lets him go on his way.

 

Madeline Miller has taught Greek and Latin for many years and her love for the source material is clear throughout Circe. That love, though, does not keep her from giving this goddess a fresh voice and strong personality. I love the awareness of the character. She is a witch. She is a goddess. She has lived thousands of years. A sailor with PTSD is not going to trick her or seduce her into doing anything she does not want to do!

 

Circe was named among the “Best Books of 2018” by many reviewers and media outlets. It is an ageless story about an immortal goddess, yet it is fresh and new and exciting. I loved it.

Book Review: Circe, Madeline Miller

 

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Book Review: How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, Ryan North

Book Review: How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, Ryan North

Nonfiction: How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, Ryan North

According to the foreword of this book, Ryan North did not write it. He found it, encased in preCambrian rock. He merely transcribed it. It looks to be a companion journal to the FC3000™ Time Machine, in the unlikely (and certainly not legally liable) circumstance of its failure, stranding the renter sometime in the deep past. Unfortunately, How to Invent Everything does not actually tell you how to invent the time machine itself–presumably for patent reasons. It does, however, provide a tongue-in-cheek guide to creating civilization from scratch whenever you find yourself. (It does help, though, to have other humans available when trying to create a society.)

 

North’s tone is breezy and conversational. How to Invent Everything is heavily footnoted and endnoted. The footnotes are often quite humorous, and are worth reading. The endnotes provide actual research and additional resources (which are not really useful if you are stuck in a time period before they were written, but they are provided just in case). Don’t let the tone of the book fool you: this is a well-documented and well-researched book that breaks down the pieces of civilization and modernity and gives at least a basic framework for replacing them.

 

The longest chapter by far, essentially a book within the book, is chapter 10: Common Human Complaints that Can Be Solved by Technology. (Reviewer’s interpretation: humans complain a lot which is why the chapter is so long.) In this chapter North gives basic details on inventing a number of technologies that would be extremely useful: water purification, plows, prophylactics, batteries, airplanes, and many, many more. Other chapters give insights into useful plants and animals, farming, basic nutrition, developing language, first aid, music, and art. The chapter on music even contains some public domain music that you can “invent” yourself and take credit for, including that timeless classic that plays during Tetris.

 

The appendices include a number of things that would be very handy for any civilization just starting out–though as he points out, many of these things actually did not develop until hundreds or thousands of years after they could have been discovered or developed. These include the periodic table, useful chemicals and how to make them, trigonometric tables, helpful numbers (e.g. pi), and the pitches of musical notes. The technology tree is fascinating–I never would have suspected that the invention of paper led directly to the stethoscope (he covers this in the book as well).

 

All in all, this is an amusing and quirky look at how the modern world came to be. He constantly pokes fun at the vagaries of invention: buttons, for example, were around for hundreds of years as decorative items before anyone thought of using them as fasteners. Some things were invented or discovered, then lost, then reinvented or rediscovered centuries later. Forceps, used to help reposition babies for birth, were kept secret for 150 years by a family of doctors who wanted to corner the market on them!

 

Somehow, despite everything, we’ve managed to get to this point in technology and communication–and apparently at some future point we will have access to a time machine and arguably could do the whole thing over again and hopefully better. If so, Ryan North’s “find” will be of immeasurable value. Until then, it is a fun and fascinating look at the building blocks of civilization.

 

If, all of a sudden, book reviews on Scintilla end and your milk is “marvinized” instead of “pasteurized,” you’ll know that I brought this book along with me using the FC3000™ Time Machine, and I used it. I hope you also enjoy “Marvin’s” Eine Kleine Nachtmusic. It should be a classic!

Book Review: How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, Ryan North

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Book Review: Remember Tomorrow, Amanda Saint

Book Review: Remember Tomorrow, Amanda Saint

Fiction: Remember Tomorrow, Amanda Saint

Britain in 2073 looks much different than it does today. Climate change and its effects, including massive earthquakes and storms, have devastated the land and returned large areas of the country to subsistence agriculture, surviving without contacts in the larger world and relying solely on themselves.

 

Evie is a herbalist, using plants to treat illnesses among the members of her village. Her grandson, Jonah, has taken leadership of the community through his charismatic preaching and fearmongering. Among the ancient fears he warns against: witchcraft. Now, Evie must flee in fear of her life, pursued by her own grandson and his adherents to an older version of Christianity, one where witches can only prove themselves by floating on the ocean.

 

Remember Tomorrow starts with Evie’s present situation, her deteriorating position within the community and flight from Jonah. It then shifts to look at her past, her activism as a teenager, her pregnancy and flight away from the city, and her life in the village before Jonah’s frightening transformation into a cult leader. Author Amanda Saint paints a bleak picture of Britain in this time, showing a country enthralled by materialism and blind to its effects on the environment, on social inequality, and on their own character as a people.

 

Climate fiction is a subgenre of SFF that has been generating more and more titles in recent years. Margaret Atwood may be the most prominent among the authors writing in this genre (we reviewed her MaddAddam trilogy last year), but there are a multitude of titles coming out which warn of the devastating effects climate change may have on our way of life and on the planet itself.

 

I liked Remembering Tomorrow. Evie is an interesting and sympathetic main character who is not without her faults. She can be naive and get herself into unfortunate situations. She sometimes neglects her family when she becomes fixated upon a cause. But she has a good heart and strives to do the right thing, both for the planet and for her family. Evie is not the greatest mother, but probably does not deserve the anger her daughter gives her and certainly does not deserve the persecution from her grandson.

 

Britain is almost unrecognizable in this book. Electricity, transportation, machinery, computers, and almost every other modern convenience are gone. People live off what they grow and gather and hunt. Small villages govern themselves, sometimes wisely and prudently, and sometimes by fanaticism and demagoguery. News from the outside world is unobtainable. This is possibly an extreme view of the devastation possible from climate change, but hardly unique. The timeline is quite abrupt, being set roughly 54 years in the future, but saying this is unrealistic is more a statement of hope than of certainty.

 

My only critique is that sometimes in climate fiction the story falls victim to the message. I fear that happens in some of the chapters in this book. It is a good book and a good story, but there are a few chapters that are somewhat strident in their tone. I understand the temptation–I myself am terrified of the future that seems to be unfolding with no one in power willing to take action. But it can be a challenge to “show” the effects in the story when it is easier to “tell” the effects through speaking or dialog. This is not the worst thing that a story could do, though, and Evie is a compelling enough character that these minor flaws do not prevent her story from unfolding.

 

Remembering Tomorrow is a good book from a passionate author. Amanda Saint is a good storyteller, and Evie is a character with a good story to tell. I am glad I had the chance to read it.

Amanda Saint
Amanda Saint

Remember Tomorrow Blog Tour Sites

I want to thank both Amanda Saint, the author and Anne Cater, Blogger and Tour coordinator, for inviting us to participate in a “blog tour” for the launch of Remembering Tomorrow on March 21, 2019. I had the pleasure of receiving an ARC in exchange for an honest review, and I appreciate the opportunity. Use the poster to check out the other stops on this blog tour!

Book Review: Remember Tomorrow, Amanda Saint

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Book Review: The Kingdom of Copper, S.A. Chakraborty

Book Review: The Kingdom of Copper, The Daevebad Trilogy Book 2, S.A. Chakraborty

Fantasy: The Kingdom of Copper, The Daevebad Trilogy, Book 2, S.A. Chakraborty

 

S.A. Chakraborty’s debut novel, The City of Brass, was one of the most highly honored fantasy novels of 2017. Her 2019 sequel, The Kingdom of Copper, continues the epic story of the healer Nahri, the djinn Dara, and the prince Ali.

 

Set five years after the events of the first novel, Nahri is enduring her forced marriage to Ali’s brother and continuing to learn the healing arts. Her magical abilities are growing, allowing her to heal more complex problems, but her political acumen still is lacking when it comes to dealing with challenges in the court. Still, she is the Banu Nahida, a title which not only reflects her healing ability but also carries religious and political leadership within her tribe. This makes her both a potential ally and a potential threat to the king.

 

Ali escaped assassination and is living quietly in an oasis in the desert with the people who rescued him. He has recovered from his physical injuries but is coming to terms with new powers he did not have before: the ability to find water and the ability to breathe underwater. This connection to water is extremely helpful to the desert tribe that saved him, but would be very challenging to the city where his father rules. He has reconciled himself to never returning home. Others, though, have made different plans for him.

 

And Dara. Dara was killed by Ali during their final battle in the first book. But djinn can be hard to kill permanently–after all, Dara had killed Ali first during that battle and Ali refused to stay dead. Dara is brought back to life to serve the Banu Nahida…but not Nahri. There is another Banu Nahida with a claim in Daevebad, and this one is no potential ally to the king.

 

Chakraborty’s novels are rich and deep and sweeping. She creates a beautifully layered Arabian world, one where the human world and the world of the djinn occasionally intersect but are typically separated, almost like an overlay on a map. Her characters are schemers and dreamers and scholars and warriors. Religion is both crucial and ignored, with some characters motivated by zealotry while others acknowledge divinity only for public show.

 

Although the books are set in the Islamic world of about 120 years ago, they are set in the djinn version of it with little (in this book virtually no) contact between the two. Only descendants of the magical tribes can enter this world. Some of these are partially human, but no fully human person can see or enter the world. This gives the author great freedom to imagine a world that is more like the world of Aladdin than the world of European colonialism. She uses that imaginative license fully, giving us extraordinary palaces built on the abject poverty and misery of slums. Poor and oppressed people living in squalor often face harsh punishments for the decisions of the rich, even decisions that are meant to help those poor and oppressed people. Powerful people enjoy the status quo and are committed to maintaining it at any cost.

 

Chakraborty is giving fantasy readers a rich and epic series. Although it is described as a trilogy, I would be sorry to see it end with the next book. I am developing one of those strange relationships with this series: I am excited for the next book to come out, but I am dreading it because it is supposed to be the last one of the series. Still, I am a richer person for having walked through the streets of Daevebad for however long the series lasts.

Book Review: The Kingdom of Copper, The Daevebad Trilogy, Book 2, S.A. Chakraborty

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