magical realism Archives

Yzabel / September 1, 2019

Review: Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
My rating: ★★☆☆☆

Blurb:

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold…

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

This was a pleasant read overall, but I admit I found the writing style hard to get into, and that downplayed my enjoyment of it.

Perhaps it was the translation, in parts, but not only. For instance, I had trouble with more than one paragraph dealing with one idea, and then suddenly switching to an action that had been started in the previous paragraph—I felt like saying “either finish this action first, or put it in the next paragraph.” I don’t know if it’s just me, if I have a strange sense of how things go together? It was just jarring to me. The time travel rule quickly became redundant, too.

In general, I also felt that this would fare better as a movie. The four vignettes’ endings were all in all easy to foresee, the characters are fairly cookie-cutter and sometimes have exaggerated gestures, and when some of them have downplayed reactions (such as Nagare not really expressing his feelings), we don’t get privy to their internal life much either, so the writing medium didn’t really bring much in that regard either.

This said, as mentioned above, I still liked the story. It had a certain atmosphere, a ‘locked room’ feeling since the action only happened in the café, but not in an oppressive way—more like an intimate, slice-of-life moment, that had its own charm.

Yzabel / February 15, 2019

Review: The Binding

The Binding by Bridget Collins

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Imagine you could erase grief.
Imagine you could remove pain.
Imagine you could hide the darkest, most horrifying secret.
Forever.

Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a Bookbinder—a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice among their small community but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse.

For as long as he can recall, Emmett has been drawn to books, even though they are strictly forbidden. Bookbinding is a sacred calling, Seredith informs her new apprentice, and he is a binder born. Under the old woman’s watchful eye, Emmett learns to hand-craft the elegant leather-bound volumes. Within each one they will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there’s something you want to forget, a binder can help. If there’s something you need to erase, they can assist. Within the pages of the books they create, secrets are concealed and the past is locked away. In a vault under his mentor’s workshop, rows upon rows of books are meticulously stored.

But while Seredith is an artisan, there are others of their kind, avaricious and amoral tradesman who use their talents for dark ends—and just as Emmett begins to settle into his new circumstances, he makes an astonishing discovery. Soon, everything he thought he understood about his life will be dramatically rewritten.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

This was a little of a rollercoaster book for me, in that the blurb -is- pretty misleading when it comes to the expectations it raises—so there were quite a few chapters when my interest ebbed and flowed, as I poised between “this is not what I wanted to read” and “that’s pretty interesting” and “I expected something different in terms of world-building”, etc. Especially, there’s a romance element that is -not- in the blurb, and since I’m not a big fan of romance for the sake of romance in general, my first reaction was pretty much ‘ugh, no, not yet another romance plot, you should’ve warned me about this, since I don’t feel like reading romance these days’.

However, as everything settled, as the plot fully came together, as I got to know the characters more, this change of mood abated, and I found that I was actually liking this novel. I do regret that the art of binding wasn’t explored more in depths, with deeper explanations of how it worked, and this is something that disappointed me until the end. Still, I nevertheless felt myself rooting for several characters, getting angry at how other people treated them, didn’t accept them, at the rampant intolerance, too. It wasn’t ‘enjoyable’ (I so wanted to slap the parents), no. The main characters were often annoying in many ways, too. But it made for a good story.

I must say that I usually have several pet peeves when it comes to romance (yes, there’s some romance in it), one of the major ones being when the lovers lose sight of priorities (typical example: “who will she chose, the boy she loves, or saving the world?” –> everybody knows that 99% of the time, the world is doomed). Here, there is strong potential for turning these characters’ world(s) upside down, but I didn’t get that feeling of thwarted sense of priorities, because all in all, most characters had bleak prospects to start with, and what hinged on them was something that wouldn’t have made so many other people happy anyway: arranged marriages, bad job prospects, abuse, cannot go back to their old lives, etc.

Speaking of abuse, the world Emmett lives in is rather bleak in that regard as well. It reminded me a lot—and that was no doubt on purpose o nthe author’s part—of 19^th century novels, with a strong country/town dichotomy: the countryside as a ‘pure, natural, innocent’ world where people have a chance to be happy, vs. the town as polluted, home to crime and vice, and where the wealthy treat servants and poorer people in general as dirt, as toys that can be broken and then mended at will. While the abuse is not depicted in gory ways, and usually alluded to rather than directly witness, the allusions are not veiled either. It is very clear who rapes their servants, and who gets others murdered for the sake of their own interests. Those aren’t triggers for me, but they could still be depending on the reader. All in all, that also reminded me of other literary movements of that time: there’s no shortage of showing people being sick, reduced to their ‘bodily functions’, shown as the cowards they are, and so on. If you’ve read Zola, you’ll know what I mean. This novel doesn’t sing the praises of human beings in general, for sure, and shows most people as being weak at best, and hidden monsters at worst.

I am… bizarrely satisfied with the ending. It’s fairly open, and there are still many loose ends, but it also allows the book to close on a kind of resolution that I found fitting, balancing between “it could still turn so sour so quickly” and “well, there’s hope left and the future looks kinda good”.

Conclusion: 3.5 stars

Yzabel / January 20, 2018

Review: Undercover Princess

Undercover Princess by Connie Glynn

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

When fairy tale obsessed Lottie Pumpkin starts at the infamous Rosewood Hall, she is not expecting to share a room with the Crown Princess of Maradova, Ellie Wolf. Due to a series of lies and coincidences, 14-year-old Lottie finds herself pretending to be the princess so that Ellie can live a more normal teenage life.

Lottie is thrust into the real world of royalty – a world filled with secrets, intrigue and betrayal. She must do everything she can to help Ellie keep her secret, but with school, the looming Maradovian ball and the mysterious new boy Jamie, she’ll soon discover that reality doesn’t always have the happily ever after you’d expect…

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

There were good ideas in there, and I was fairly thrilled at first at the setting and prospects (a boarding school in England, hidden royals that looked like they’d be badass, etc.), but I must say that in the end, even though I read the novel in a rather short time and it didn’t fall from my hands, it was all sort of bland.

The writing itself was clunky, and while it did have good parts (the descriptions of the school, for instance, made the latter easy to picture), it was more telling, not showing most of the time. I’m usually not too regarding on that, I tend to judge first on plot and characters, and then only on style, but here I found it disruptive. For instance, the relationship between Ellie and Lottie has a few moments that border on the ‘what the hell’ quality: I could sense they were supposed to hint at possible romantic involvement (or at an evolution in that direction later), but the way they were described, it felt completely awkward (and not ‘teenage-girls-discovering-love’ cute/awkward).

The characters were mostly, well, bland. I feel it was partly tied to another problem I’ll mention later, namely that things occur too fast, so we had quite a few characters introduced, but not developed. Some of their actions didn’t make sense either, starting with Princess Eleanor Wolfson whose name undercover gets to be… Ellie Wolf? I’m surprised she wasn’t found out from day one, to be honest. Or the head of the house who catches the girls sneaking out at night and punishes them by offering them a cup of tea (there was no particular reason for her to be lenient towards them at the time, and if that was meant to hint at a further plot point, then we never reached that point in the novel).

(On that subject, I did however like the Ellie/Lottie friendship in general. It started in a rocky way, that at first made me wonder how come they went from antipathy to friendship in five minutes; however, considering the first-impression antipathy was mostly based on misunderstanding and a bit of a housework matter, it’s not like it made for great enmity reasons either, so friendship stemming from the misunderstanding didn’t seem so silly in hindsight. For some reason, too, the girls kind of made me think of ‘Utena’—probably because of the setting, and because Ellie is boyish and sometimes described as a prince rather than a princess.)

The story, in my opinion, suffers from both a case of ‘nothing happens’ and ‘too many things happen’. It played with several different plot directions: boarding school life; undercover princess trying to keep her secret while another girl tries to divert all attention on her as the official princess; prince (and potential romantic interest) showing up; mysterious boy (and potential romantic interest in a totally different way) showing up; the girls who may or may not be romantically involved in the future; trying to find out who’s leaving threatening messages; Binah’s little enigma, and the way it ties into the school’s history, and will that ever play a part or not; Anastacia and the others, and who among them leaked the rumour; going to Maradova; the summer ball; the villains and their motivations. *If* more time had been spent on these subplots, with more character development, I believe the whole result would’ve been more exciting. Yet at the same time all this gets crammed into the novel, there’s no real sense of urgency either, except in the last few chapters. That was a weird dichotomy to contend with.

Conclusion: 1.5 stars. I’m honestly not sure if I’ll be interested in reading the second book. I did like the vibes between Lottie and Ellie, though.

Yzabel / October 2, 2017

Review: A Man of Shadows

A Man of Shadows by Jeff Noon

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Below the neon skies of Dayzone – where the lights never go out, and night has been banished – lowly private eye John Nyquist takes on a teenage runaway case. His quest takes him from Dayzone into the permanent dark of Nocturna.

As the vicious, seemingly invisible serial killer known only as Quicksilver haunts the streets, Nyquist starts to suspect that the runaway girl holds within her the key to the city’s fate. In the end, there’s only one place left to search: the shadow-choked zone known as Dusk.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

Possibly more ‘SFF’ than truly ‘noir’, for the gritty/detective side was second to the mysterious/dusk/visions side; but I like both genres, so that was fine with me. It took me a while to get into the story, though, and I’m not really sure whether it’s because it didn’t fully grip me, or because I was also busy at the time with other books.

The story follows John Nyquist, jaded detective with quite a few dark shades in his past, after both his parents died; hired to find the runaway daughter of powerful businessman Patrick Bale, he stumbles upon more than what he’s signed for, including the daughter’s true heritage, a drug cartel, and the mysterious killer nicknamed ‘Quicksilver’, who offs their victims in the blink of an eye. As any good noir detective, Nyquist can’t leave enough alone, and feels compelled to help the daughter, who he feels has run away for a reason that’s more than just teenage angst.

The setting is definitely interesting, and would even lend itself to more developments, I’d say, considering the two sides (Nocturna vs. Dayside), the mysterious Dusk in-between, the microcosms in each part (like the bulb monkeys in Dayside, always running from one light bulb to the other in a desperate effort to keep the light going), the time-screwing aspect (how can anyone goo on different timelines that keep changing depending on where they go and what they do?), etc.

I felt that there was a lot going on here, especially with part of the plot revolving around characters and events with a foot in all those parts (as in, things like ‘works in Dayside, lives in Nocturna, has ties with Dusk’); but while some of it was shown, I expected more in that regard—and yet, at the same time, there were moments when the world superseded the narrative, making the latter muddled. I’m not sure if the intent was to show Nyquist’s descent into his own time-related problems, or to echo the ‘time drug’ concept, but it made the plot difficult to follow even though it’s not -that- complex.

In the end I couldn’t decide if this was a novel about these different cities or about the characters—I felt that one way or the other, there wasn’t enough to really keep my interest.

Yzabel / January 19, 2017

Review: When the Moon Was Ours

When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

When the Moon Was Ours follows two characters through a story that has multicultural elements and magical realism, but also has central LGBT themes—a transgender boy, the best friend he’s falling in love with, and both of them deciding how they want to define themselves.

To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseparable. Roses grow out of Miel’s wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees, and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town.

But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel’s skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they’re willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

Enchanting and full of diversity, although the flowery prose didn’t convince me.

The book opens on Miel and Sam, a skittish girl with roses growing out of her wrist, and a boy who doesn’t exactly know if he wants to be a boy or go back to being a girl. In itself, this was an interesting premise, as both characters were searching for their inner truth, all lthe while being surrounded by lies (or what they perceived at such): Miel’s memory—not exactly the most reliable; what Aracely, Miel’s adoptive guardian, knows and what she doesn’t say; Sam having to hide his body in everyday life; and the Bonner sisters, with their red hair and their mysterious ways, four girls acting as one, enchantresses ensnaring boys and wielding their own kind of power that always gets them what they want in the end.

There’s more magical realism than actual magic here, although Aracely’s ability to cure heartbreak, as well as her being a self-professed curandera, definitely hint at ‘witchcraft’. It’s more about the way things are shown and described, in the moons Sam paints and hangs outside people’s windows, in the roses growing out of Miel’s skin, in the rumoured stained glass coffin meant to make girls more beautiful, in how modern life and themes (immigrants in a small town, transgender teenagers, fear of rejection, or the practice of bacha posh, which I didn’t know about before reading this book…) intertwine with poetry and metaphor, with images of rebirth and growing up and accepting (or realising) who you’re meant to be. Not to mention racial diversity, instead of the usual ‘all main protagonists are whiter than white.’

To be honest, though, as much as the prose was beautiful at first, in the end it seemed like it was trying too much, and the story suffered from too many convoluted paragraphs and redundant descriptions & flashbacks. As it was, even though I liked this book in general, I found myself skimming in places that felt like déjà vu. Granted, it’s much more a character- than a plot-driven novel, but I’m convinced all the prose could’ve been toned down, and it would have remained beautiful without sometimes running in circles and drowning the plot now and then.

Conclusion: 2.5 stars.

Yzabel / October 31, 2016

Review: The Bear and the Nightingale

The Bear and The Nightingale by Katherine Arden

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, a stranger with piercing blue eyes presents a new father with a gift – a precious jewel on a delicate chain,intended for his young daughter. Uncertain of its meaning, the father hides the gift away and his daughter, Vasya, grows up a wild, willfull girl, to the chagrin of her family. But when mysterious forces threaten the happiness of their village, Vasya discovers that, armed only with the necklace, she may be the only one who can keep the darkness at bay.

Review:

[I received a copy of this novel through NetGalley.]

I was invited to read this book by the publisher, and gladly accepted, since it looked like something I would like.

And liked it I did, at least for most of its parts. It took me a little while to get used to the writing style, however once I did I found it worked fairly well, telling the story in the manner of a fairy tale. The descriptions made it easy to picture the house Vasya lives in, the horses, the nearby forest, and the deep cold in winter.

I liked Vasya in general, and how her “opponents” were not only out of tales and folklore, but also what society expects of her (either marrying or going to a convent). This was easy to see with the way she was described, often likened to a “filly” when the point of view was a man’s, like an animal just waiting to be tamed. I felt that at times, this description extended to other POVs, which weakened it, but in general, it worked (yes, it created a feeling of unease and frustration… which was exactly the point, I suppose!). Fortunately, Vasya had no intention of being “tamed”, and revealed herself as a brave soul who wanted nothing more than to protect her family, even knowing that people would call her a witch. And it didn’t matter to her: she still wanted to do the right thing, without wasting time on justifying her actions.

The magic here is more on the subtle side: no spells, but folklore, people leaving food for the spirits of their home, Vasya being able to talk with horses, horses teaching her how to ride them, and “witches” being generally characterised by their ability to see the spirits. The latter were on the side of nature rather than morality’s, which was a pleasant thing: contrary to the priest’s and Anna’s beliefs, this was never about “demons”, about Good vs. Bad, but about two different sides of nature, the cold/death/order pitched against the scorching heat and violence of an unbound summer. Even if the Bear was touted as the enemy, he was nevertheless part of the cycle: not to be destroyed, simply to be forced to rest in order not to burn too bright and destroy what he touched instead of warming it.

To be honest, I regret a little that the story didn’t truly turn to magic/tale before later. There was much of “Vasya growing up, politics in Moscow”, etc., which in a bona fide fairy tale would’ve been an introduction, soon to leave room to the actual tale. Granted, it did help in setting the mood and the family relationships, but I suppose I was expecting more of the magical/enchanted side, in larger doses? In spite of the presence of chyerty, some chapters felt a tad bit too down to earth, in a way. I think this also contributes to making it a slow story: I admit I wondered, towards the end, if there’d be room for the announced battle against the Bear, because I was reaching the 85% mark and I still wasn’t seeing it.

Conclusion: 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / October 16, 2016

Review: Curioddity

Curioddity by Paul Jenkins

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Will Morgan is a low-budget detective after quitting his job and hardly ever has any work. When one day a mysterious man named Mr. Dinsdale, curator of an even more mysterious Curioddity Museum (a museum that houses legendary relics of history), visits him and asks him to find a wooden box made of teak, with a mother of pearl inlay that contains the world’s largest sample of levity, Wil thinks it is all a joke. He accepts the task and before long finds a worthy substitute to meet Mr. Dinsdale’s specifications. What Wil soon learns, however, is that there is a whole other world out there, a world he can only see by learning to un-see things, and in this world there are people who want to close the Curioddity museum down. With the help of his new girlfriend Lucy, Wil will do everything he can to deliver on his promise to help Mr. Dinsdale keep the Curioddity Museum in business.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Hard one to rate… I found it full of good ideas, but the pacing threw me off, except after the 70% mark or so, when it really picked up.

The beginning was tricky: slow and “dull”, which was fitting as it perfectly reflected the daily drudgery that is Wil Morgan’s life. So in a way, it was perfectly adequate, even though it made it difficult to get into the story fast. Wil is, simply put, a man who used to dream when he was a child, encouraged by his mother who taught him to look at the world differently; yet after his mother’s death, banality caught up to him, this time with his father’s support, the latter wanting a secure and normal life for his son. Of course, when the mysterious Mr Dinsdale waltzes into Wil’s bleak existence, everything starts to change…

There is no blatant revelation here, or very complex world building with a whole underground, supernatural society and its many rules and denizens. As far as urban fantasy goes, it’s relatively light, with the magical/unexplained side of things more touched upon than delved into. In itself, it’s not bad at all: it has a quaint charm, that also makes it easy to discover all those strange occurrences at the same time the main character does. It’s all about little things, and perhaps they’re not even so extraordinary, just less mundane than we’re used to, and able to become fascinating if we decide to let them do. Crates that move only when you’re not looking at them. Perpetual Motion artefacts. Machines rumoured to have been created by Da Vinci himself. Weird contraptions and items that “do stuff” as long as you don’t worry too much about it. The Museum of Curioddities has a lot of such objects, and every addition contributes to making Wil’s life more and more unusual, little bit by little bit. (Also, the Evil Swiss Clock.)

And even though it seems like nonsense, all of this, this little world, has a logic of its own. Nonsense ends up making as much sense as mundane life—perhaps even more, at times. So what if the villain is pretty wacky, and the light romance kind of predictable in a world full of unpredictability? Well, it doesn’t really matter.

What prevented me from enjoying this book more were mostly:
– The pacing: even after Wil’s life takes a turn for the oddest, it still felt somewhat… dull in places. I guess I had expected more in that regard.
– Although the writing in general is good, I thought there were too many “witty lines” and bizarre metaphors. A couple thrown in from time to time is all right, and fun, but too many will ruin the fun, so to speak. It was enough to pull me out of my reading; it may just be me, though.

Conclusion: apart from those (jarring enough for me, perhaps not for another reader), it was good in terms of whimsical/somewhat nonsensical magical realism.

Yzabel / September 21, 2016

Review: A City Dreaming

A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

M is an ageless drifter with a sharp tongue, few scruples, and the ability to bend reality to his will, ever so slightly. He’s come back to New York City after a long absence, and though he’d much rather spend his days drinking artisanal beer in his favorite local bar, his old friends—and his enemies—have other plans for him. One night M might find himself squaring off against the pirates who cruise the Gowanus Canal; another night sees him at a fashionable uptown charity auction where the waitstaff are all zombies. A subway ride through the inner circles of hell? In M’s world, that’s practically a pleasant diversion.

Before too long, M realizes he’s landed in the middle of a power struggle between Celise, the elegant White Queen of Manhattan, and Abilene, Brooklyn’s hip, free-spirited Red Queen, a rivalry that threatens to make New York go the way of Atlantis. To stop it, M will have to call in every favor, waste every charm, and blow every spell he’s ever acquired—he might even have to get out of bed before noon.

Enter a world of Wall Street wolves, slumming scenesters, desperate artists, drug-induced divinities, pocket steampunk universes, and demonic coffee shops. M’s New York, the infinite nexus of the universe, really is a city that never sleeps—but is always dreaming.

Review:

[I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Quite a strange book, in that it didn’t exactly have a plot, more of a collection of “slice of life” moments. Well, moment in the life of a being able to bend reality to his will, or almost, surrounding himself, whether he wants it or not, with other exceptional beings.

After years, decades of wandering around, M is back in New York, where he gets reacquainted with old friends and enemies (not mutually exclusive), gets entangled in the local magic politics, finds himself facing strange worlds and creatures at times, all the while trying to remain “in good terms with the Management”—in other words, balancing feats of magic just right enough to live nicely, without getting much of backlash. And let’s be honest, M’s friends are often worse than his foes, considering the dire straits they take him into.

The New York M evolves in is definitely strange and enchanting in its own ways, mixing daily mundane places and events with happenings out of this world. Immortal mages trying to kill each others, the two Queens of New York trying to get the upper hand each int their own sly ways, revenge and curses, magical underground trains, apprentices coming out of nowhere, traders playing at human sacrifice… There are so, so many odd things in that city, in M’s world in general.

The major problem I see with this novel is the fact it’s a collection of mini-adventures, connected by a loose red thread much more than by any kind of solid plot. M meets some old friend who drags him on a crappy errand, or has to go and trick pirates to free another friend who got kidnapped, or finds himself in an alternate world whose rules may very well trample his own perception of reality… and so on. The blurb was misleading, in that its wording led me to believe there would be more of a plot (there’s no real war between the Queens, for instance, and some of the stories felt repetitive). Instead, the connectors are people and places rather than events leading to other events, and not in the way of a more traditional narrative. Which is an interesting thing or not, depending on how you perceive it.

While I wasn’t too convinced at first, in the end, this technique nevertheless offered glimpses into a magical world, and I found myself wanting to see which new adventure would unfold in every new chapter—not to mention that whenever connectors met, they still gave a sense of things tying together, but just a little, just enough, not as a series of convenient coincidences. (Because -that- can also be a problem, when a plot is too well packed and loose ends are too nicely tied.)

These stories also provide an interesting view on modern life: night scenes, drug addiction, poverty (so many people around you, who won’t see you as you’re being dragged down…), making and losing friends, art and pleasure, unpleasant acquaintances, wealthy lifestyle vs. a more subdued kind of existence, choices to make in the face of adversity, responsibilities, humanity… There’s a strong current of life to this New Work, carrying its people just as much as its people carry it, and the author pictures it funny, dark and loving tones all at once.

Conclusion: I can’t say I absolutely loved this book, however it contains a lot of imaginative elements, and the New York, the City with a capital C described in it, was such a vivid backdrop that it may just as well be called a character as well. 3.5 stars, going on 4.

Yzabel / May 20, 2016

Review: The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria

The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria by Carlos Hernandez

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

A quirky collection of short sci-fi stories for fans of Kij Johnson and Kelly Link

Assimilation is founded on surrender and being broken; this collection of short stories features people who have assimilated, but are actively trying to reclaim their lives. There is a concert pianist who defies death by uploading his soul into his piano. There is the person who draws his mother’s ghost out of the bullet hole in the wall near where she was executed. Another character has a horn growing out of the center of his forehead—punishment for an affair. But he is too weak to end it, too much in love to be moral. Another story recounts a panda breeder looking for tips. And then there’s a border patrol agent trying to figure out how to process undocumented visitors from another galaxy. Poignant by way of funny, and philosophical by way of grotesque, Hernandez’s stories are prayers for self-sovereignty.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Well, this was a pretty original collection of stories, mixing science fiction and fantasy elements against a backdrop of Cuban culture (sometimes with clashes of various, if only generational ones) and magical realism. In this book, you’ll get research centres on space stations, aliens visiting Earth and confronted to ubuesque situations, reality TV shows about hitmen, a piano haunted by the soul of his previous owner, artificial brain implants meant to help people recover from owful brain injuries, giant pandas prodded into mating through robotics, unicorns… Basically, quite a few different ideas here, but all looking, in the end, as perfectly logical and well-integrated. Suspension of disbelief? Totally. (Yes, even when Margaret Thatcher waltzes in.)

The writing style in general was pretty good, bordering on poetic at times, making it easy to picture items (the piano), situations and places. Owing to their cultural background, some characters sometimes spoke in Spanish, or what is close to it; I can’t say whether this is annoying or not, because my own experience with that language, albeit very rusty, was still solid enough to allow me to understand.

My favourite ones:

“Homeostasis”: a take on cybernetics/neural implants and what it may mean in terms of envisioning “the soul”. When half your brain has been taken over by an eneural to help reconstruct your persona and allow you to function again as a full human being, can you be sure the person inside is still the person, and not an artificial intelligence?

“The International Studbook of the Giant Panda”: bizarre, with a dash of humour, a little disturbing, too… but surprisingly enough, past the first “WTF” moment, I realised I was enjoying this story a lot.

“The Macrobe Conservation Project”: disturbing too, in different ways. On a space station, a scientist tries to help preserve a fragile ecosystem based on parasites/symbiants living on corpses. Meanwhile, his son’s only contact with his on-planet family is through robotic versions of his mother and brother.

“American Moat”: when aliens meet the local border patrol… hilarity ensues. And yet, there is something deeply worrying in this story, because it makes you wonder: is humanity really worth it, or are we just stupid bags of meat who’d better be left to rot?

“The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria”: the eponymous title and last story of the book. After his mother’s death, a little boy desperately wants his father to be happy again instead of lonely, and turns to (dark) magic to help him. Bonus for the magical dead cat. Again, there are funny elements in there… but also reallyl touching ones. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And with pigeons.

The other stories were good as well, and none struck me as abysmal—if I had to rate them, they were all 3 stars minimum for me.

As for the cultural backdrop, apart from a couple of heavy-handed pokes at racism, these stories had a natural flow that made the characters appear as well-integrated within their surroundings (whether contemporary Earth or space), even when those weren’t Cuba. I’m not sure how to express what I felt here, but I think it’d be something like: you don’t need to understand this different culture to enjoy these stories, and it doesn’t matter if some themes, character quirks, idioms and/or mannerisms aren’t easy to understand because they’re not yours—they’re part of each story in a natural, logical flow, and while this isn’t “my” culture, it both gave me nice insights into it, while also making me feel like there was no cultural divide. (Hopefully this makes sense.)

4 stars out of 5. I definitely recommend this book.

Yzabel / May 14, 2016

Review: Falling in Love with Hominids

Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring, The Salt Roads, Sister Mine) is an internationally-beloved storyteller. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as having “an imagination that most of us would kill for,” her Afro-Caribbean, Canadian, and American influences shine in truly unique stories that are filled with striking imagery, unlikely beauty, and delightful strangeness.

In this long-awaited collection, Hopkinson continues to expand the boundaries of culture and imagination. Whether she is retelling The Tempest as a new Caribbean myth, filling a shopping mall with unfulfilled ghosts, or herding chickens that occasionally breathe fire, Hopkinson continues to create bold fiction that transcends boundaries and borders.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

To be honest, I had no idea who Nalo Hopkinson was until I requested this book. But I was definitely interested to read stories by an author who seemed to have an approach stemming from a different culture than mine. I didn’t know what to expect; I wasn’t disappointed.

This collection features stories inspired from various sources, situations and ideas—the author mentiones some of those before each story. Ghosts haunting a mall keep reliving their deaths. Plants that find an unusual soil to grow. Retellings of “The Tempest” and “Bluebeard”. A story set in Bordertown. Another one in a world ravaged by a strange epidemic, forcing children to band together until they all fall sick as well.

Urban fantasy, fairy tales, science fiction, magical realism: Hopkinson weaves a lot of ideas in various settings, while never losing sight of human beings: their complexity, the depth of their feelings, all their doubts and ambiguities. A mother tries to make her teenage girl realise that “taming her hair” may amount to rejecting where she came from. Fairy beings, humans and “half-breeds” mingle in Bordertown, but do they all really accept each other? Beings preying at each other, feeding on each other, going through phases of desire and guilt, of doubt and acceptance. Beings with both monstrous and loving sides, displaying alien features yet also deeply human ones, like the girl turning into a dragon, but whose deep desire remains, all in all, to be accepted by others… her own self included.

Here are the stories I liked best in this anthology:

“The Easthound”: a children-oriented vision of a post-apocalyptic future, where everybody turns into a monster when they reach puberty. A band of kids doing their best to survive, knowing all too well, though, that sooner or later they’ll have to kill one of their own, lest it kills them first.

“Shift”: a retelling of “The Tempest”, with themes revolving around identity, underlying racism, unfulfillable desires, and relationships that may be doomed to fail as soon as they are born.

“Old Habits”: ghosts trapped in the mall where they died, forced to go through their own deaths again and again, pining at the smells they can’t perceive anymore.

“A Raggy Dog, a Shaggy Dog”: pretty creepy, in a fascinating way. A woman very well-versed in orchids has developed… interesting ways to find a partner.

“Blushing”: another retelling, this time of “Bluebeard”. We all know what the new bride is going to find in that room; how she will react, though, is always another matter.

“Ours Is The Prettiest”: I’ve never read any Bordertown stories, but I don’t think the lack of background here would prevent someone from enjoying this stories. On a backdrop of enchantments, celebrations and impending danger, a woman is trying to help those around her… but is she right in doing so, or only making things worse?

“Message in a Bottle” was good, too, though I felt it lacked something—probably that something is “being turned into a novel”.