tachyondecay's reviews
2032 reviews

Every so often I read a story that reminds me why I love stories and why I love reading in particular. Film and television are great—I watch a lot of both—yet there’s something about the collaboration of imagination between writer and reader that makes a book absolutely magical for its ability to transport the reader elsewhere. I read the eARC of The River Has Roots curled up on my couch on a Sunday afternoon, curled up on my couch under a blanket. It’s not a long novella. Yet I was present for every moment of it, and when it was finished, I immediately emailed my local bookshop to preorder a hardcover edition—I hear it has fancy illustrations! Amal El-Mohtar has written something exquisitely beautiful here, and I won’t stop singing its praises.

At its heart, The River Has Roots is a faerie tale, a cautionary tale. It’s a feminist one, for it is not only a cautionary tale about the vicious avarice of men but also about how sisterhood and solidarity can stand up against patriarchal pressures to conform. It’s a story steeped in story, succumbing to sadness only to lift us up back into grace and, ultimately, hope.

I’m not usually one for extensive exposition at the beginning, yet I didn’t even mind it here. The narrator’s introductions to Esther and Ysabel, to Thistleford and the Professors, to the very concept of Faerie and the eponymous river that wends its way through title and book alike … as I said above, El-Mohtar’s descriptions captivated me and transported me to this place. I love how the actual setting is incredibly ambiguous: it’s vaguely English, of course, but not in any identifiable way, and in this way it remains true to the powerful ambiguity of faerie tales.

What’s unambiguous is the love between Esther and Ysabel, which is the driving force of the entire novella. The way Esther transcends what she experiences purely because of her love for her sister is beautiful. El-Mohtar reminds us that sometimes bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it—and sometimes we bear costs we ourselves did not incur. Yet at the end of the day, we always have choices. Ours is not to control completely our fates but rather to make the most of what we are given, and Esther displays that admirably here. She takes her turn of tragedy and instead of turning inwards or despairing instead resolves only to go on as she did before: by loving Ysabel and staying true to her promise.

The anxiety between the sisters really hit me. I could see myself in both Esther and Ysabel. I have been the one who clings on to a friend, demanding we’ll be together forever, even though they can’t possibly promise me that. I have been the one who finds myself discovering new levels to my life, never quite outgrowing or abandoning those around me yet certainly … changing the way I relate to them. In traditional faerie tales, the characters are archetypes, and it is their static nature that makes them suitable vessels. Despite this story’s short length, El-Mohtar allows the Hawthorn sisters to change and learn, and it ultimately deepens the bond between them.

In contrast, the romance between Esther and Rin feels like a perfunctory item at best, but as an aromantic person that’s how all romance feels for me. I’m actually grateful that romance takes a secondary role to sisterhood and friendship in this story. Indeed, Esther and Rin’s entire attraction is so unconventional and removed from the physical and the material, and I appreciate that so much. Whether or not El-Mohtar had these considerations in mind when writing, what she’s done here is tell a love story that doesn’t make me, as an aroace person, feel erased or unimportant. I might not express my affection for someone in the same way Rin does for Esther; however, I can identify with the intense significance they place on Esther’s existence. I can project my own feelings of love on Rin and Esther’s love in a way seldom available to me in more conventional stories, and this was an unexpected and beautiful bonus.

Likewise, I was surprised by my visceral reaction to Samuel’s sudden and explosive violence against a woman who dares defy him. I don’t know if it’s the setting or whatnot but it reminded me of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. We are so desensitized to violence against women that even though I saw his actions coming, I was still shocked by the cold and calculating brutality of it. And of course as the river changes course and takes Esther on to her next chapter, as Rin searches for her madly and finds her only to realize they have to let her make an impossible choice … I found myself crying. Crying for Esther, but more broadly, for what men so often do to women, and the choices they force us into making.

As the title implies, connection to the land is also an incredibly important theme herein. It’s the land and water that save Esther. The magic of the land, singing to the land, is what sustains the Professors and blesses Thistleford. Samuel is a villain not just for his misogyny but for his settler-colonial attitude towards the land, viewing it only as something to be tamed and parcelled up and bought and sold and divided again for profit. He is everything the traditional European folktales championed, and El-Mohtar subverts that here cleverly and creatively.

It’s all these threads that make The River Has Roots so beautiful. The way El-Mohtar embraces the aesthetics of European folklore while breaking out of its tropes in favour of a cornucopia of postcolonial and feminist ideas from across different cultures. The playfulness of the prose. The promises built into each page, finally delivered at the climax and into the conclusion. The openness and fluidity of this narrative, its characters, its ideas.

I really hesitate to throw around words like “perfect” in my reviews. It feels hyperbolic and suggests a kind of absolute kind of reception that no story can hope to achieve. All literature has flaws or readers it won’t reach, and that is OK.

But … damn. The River Has Roots is as close to perfect a story as I think I have read in a long while. It’s easily in the running for one of the best stories I’ll read in 2025, and we aren’t even a quarter into the year! If anything I have said in this review resonates remotely with you, then do yourself a favour and run—don’t walk—to a copy of this in your library or local bookshop. It is sublime and beautiful, and it might destroy you, but it will restore you as well.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Writing style was not to my taste. The characters felt flat, and the narrator kept announcing what she was doing (both in her narration and in dialogue to others). In general, the storytelling didn’t feel natural, and I had no interest in the main character’s growth or the overall plot.

I picked this up on a whim at my local indie bookshop. It’s a trim and cute little volume, definitely pocket-sized (and yes, many of my dresses have pockets). Beyond the Gender Binary is an essay about exactly that: what does it mean to be nonbinary? Furthermore, how can our society itself move beyond the idea of binary gender? Alok Vaid-Menon relates some anecdotes from their own life while passionately breaking down the myths, stereotypes, and common nonstarter arguments against a more expansive and inclusive approach to gender.

Many people labour under the misconception that moving our society in a less binary direction means everyone needs to ditch gender and become nonbinary. I say this because I thought that way once, long long ago. I had to take a dreary sociology course in first-year university, and the professor had us read The Left Hand of Darkness and discuss (in an online forum) whether gender was necessary in our society. I passionately argued, as far as I can recall, that eliminating gender was not as desirable as eliminating gender roles and stereotypes. Maybe eighteen-year-old Kara deep down sensed that strong internal gender identity that even then was yearning to tell her she was actually a woman, I don’t know. I just remember bristling at the thought of a blanket agender society.

This is not, of course, what Vaid-Menon or any gender activist is arguing! They address this in Beyond the Gender Binary, as does pretty much every nonbinary, agender, or genderqueer person who has a conversation with ignorant schlubs like myself. Rather, Vaid-Menon points out how dismantling the gender binary involves challenging our assumptions about what gender means and how we have baked it into everything from conversation to cooking to clothes.

At sixty-five A5-size pages, this essay is not a long or difficult read. It’s not really meant for trans people or even cis people who are relatively aware of the current state of this discourse. The target audience is likely cis people who are curious but who have also heard a lot of misinformation, or who want to arm themselves with a little more knowledge. Vaid-Menon doesn’t go into detail while debunking any of these myths, however, so if you are looking for facts, statistics, or a more thorough explanation, you’ll want to read further.

Ultimately, this is the kind of essay that probably works better as a digital artifact to be shared in inboxes and on feeds. Nevertheless, the print edition is still cute, and the words are still full of conviction and power.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Ursula K. Le Guin is the GOAT. I think the only one who rivals her in my esteem of science fiction and fantasy authors is Octavia Butler. I say this not to claim to be an expert on either author or even that I like their work beyond any other SFF author … but those two gals just … have something. So naturally, when I heard that The Language of the Night had been revised and reissued with a new introduction, etc., I jumped on it.

This is a collection of essays by Le Guin from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Some first appeared in print form; others are transcripts, edited by Le Guin or another, of talks she has given at various events. A couple even have annotations or updates presented as footnotes or even side-by-side! Professor Susan Wood has organized the essays thematically and provided a brief introduction to each theme: “Le Guin Introduces Le Guin” (cute), “On Fantasy and Science Fiction,” “The Book Is What Is Real,” “Telling the Truth,” and “Pushing at the Limits.” It is a book packed with introductions. This new edition has an introduction by Ken Liu, followed by a preface written by Le Guin in 1989 for the ten-year-anniversary edition, followed by the original introduction by Wood. Then you have Wood’s mini intros before each theme. Plus, several of the essays are themselves introductions Le Guin wrote to some of her novels! As a result, The Language of the Night takes on a fun, nesting-doll-esque atmosphere.

I love the title to this collection, and I think it’s very appropriate. One thing that shines above all else? Le Guin’s love for, passion about, the SFF genres. Like, this should come as no surprise to anyone remotely familiar with her—but it is one thing to read her books versus hearing her talk about the art and craft of writing SFF. She travels through the genre with such purpose and poise, acknowledging the tension between commercial and artistic endeavours. SFF has historically been a genre of pulp, and writing it a craft rather than an art. Le Guin has no time for this, however; indeed, it is notable how deliberately she avoids engaging with literary fiction as an appreciable genre. To her, SFF is art, should be seen as art, and indeed, SFF authors have a responsibility to take their genre seriously as art. There’s a trace of restrained anger in some of her essays, the tone of a woman very much aware she is one of the few in her field, so used to having to talk to (and be talked at in return) men, yet schooling all of us all the same with her elegant and erudite arguments.

This is why Le Guin is the GOAT. She doesn’t let anyone off the hook. Not the readers, not the writers, not the publishers. Certainly not herself. Her constant allusions to Soviet Russia and its science-fiction authors feel almost prescient reading this now in the censorship-heightened atmosphere of 2024/2025. Living through the Cold War, Le Guin understands the stakes for creative freedom and self-expression and the unique way SFF is positioned to deal with these issues. She is happy to critique Tolkien and his contemporaries for their sexism, racism, jingoism, etc., while at the same time hold them up as truly fascinating storytellers.

In short, The Language of the Night demonstrates the dexterity I think is typical of Le Guin’s writing. She knows language, and she knows story, and I think it’s the mastery of these two skills in harmony that makes someone stand out as a writer. You might have one or the other and be good, but you need both to be great. And you need a third thing—a kind of ruthless intuition, a sensitivity to the politics of personhood, that Le Guin and Butler both embody in their works in a way that makes them GOATs.

I took my time reading this collection, starting it at the end of August 2024 and picking it up and putting it down all throughout the last half year. I have lingered on Le Guin’s language and deliberated on her declarations. I’m not sure I agree with everything she has to say, but I loved hearing her say it. I loved her discussion of how she might have approached gender in The Left Hand of Darkness differently had she written it ten years later—I think when we put certain books from previous eras on a pedestal, we freeze their author in amber and have trouble acknowledging that the author’s views might have changed or their language might have evolved in the years since the book became a classic, and this novel is a fantastic example. To see this cross-section of Le Guin’s thoughts through three decades, hear her acknowledge where her views have changed or which ones have stayed the same, is truly fascinating.

Though billed as “essays on writing, science fiction, and fantasy,” one might also call it “essays on writing science fiction and fantasy.” But to be clear, this is not a book that teaches you writing. Nor is it a definitive examination of SFF as a genre or even a particularly opinionated tour of how to write good SFF. (Though, as always, I will forever stan Le Guin for criticizing the more masculine or macho strains of SFF without forever pigeonholing the genre and cynically distancing herself from it like, say, Margaret Atwood, boo.) So if you are coming here hoping for Le Guin’s secrets, I don’t think you’ll find any. Lots of discussion of Frodo and Mrs. Dalloway and Tolkien and Woolf and Solzhenitsyn though!

The Language of the Night is the perfect kind of book for a millennial like me. I was born in the year Le Guin wrote her introduction to the ten-year edition. I grew up on flashy nineties science fiction on TV and reading everything from pulpy classics to the more cerebral parts of the genre. I have followed SFF through its modern ups and downs, the trends towards literary fiction and the swing of the pendulum back to doorstopper fantasy now reified into big-budget TV shows by Amazon and the like. What a time to be alive. And a time that never would have come to pass, were it not for Le Guin and her contemporaries. This window is a valuable portal into an era of which I was not a part, and one that I think modern readers would do well to learn about and understand.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

When I found Gareth L. Powell a few years ago, I was excited. More space opera, just as I was starting to bend back towards the subgenre! Yet the two books I read by him, while they have become fonder memories in my mind, didn’t stay with me the way I thought they might. Future’s Edge seems doomed to repeat this fate, for it has all the makings of an excellent space opera without any of the heat or edge that would make it truly great. Thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for the eARC.

Ursula Morrow is an archaeologist. However, a mishap with a dormant device from an alien species ships her back to Earth. Altered at a genetic level, Ursula endures prodding and poking before finally being released on her own recognizance—only for mysterious, implacable aliens to destroy Earth that very day. Bad luck! Now living on a backwater refugee planet, Ursula tends bar and ponders what the future might hold. Then a man from her past arrives in town claiming she holds the key to humanity’s—nay, sentient life in this arm of the galaxy’s—salvation.

Future’s Edge feels like it’s riffing, intentionally or otherwise, on so many other science-fiction stories. Titan A.E.: Earth being destroyed, humanity scattered, ragtag band of misfits looking for a weapon that can turn the tide against a mysterious alien enemy. Revelation Space: the Cutters are basically the Inhibitors. Andromeda, Wayfarers, or any number of ship AI-embodied-as-gynoids stories: Crissy. And yes, fundamentally, most science fiction is a remix of old tropes because nothing is original … yet Future’s Edge feels like that, even more so. Powell even has Ursula hang a lampshade on being the namesake of Ursula K. Le Guin!

 Whether this annoys or delights you (or, frustratingly, both in my case) is up to your sensibilities. I found this book charming, if somewhat predictable and unsatisfying in the neat and tidy way everything gets wrapped up. There was precisely one moment of devastating emotional attachment me for me (if you read the book, I think it’ll be obvious what I am referring to, but basically it involves one character sacrificing themself for another)—yet I honestly don’t enjoy how the final act alters that sacrifice.

If I had to pinpoint a particular highlight of the story, it’s a sequence where Ursula gets to hang out with Crissy’s avatar and they bond. She’s Jack’s ex; Crissy is Jack’s wife, and Powell plays everything exactly the way you would expect—delightful, yet also part of the book’s problem.

Put simply, this book is too safe. Powell doesn’t take any risks here with his storytelling. From the Cutters to the mysterious alien weapon at the heart of the book’s climax (the Crucible from Mass Effect anyone?) to Ursula’s own ambivalence about her alien alterations, this is a story steeped in science-fictional tropes yet unmoored from any particularly compelling logic of its own design. It’s paint by numbers.

Now, paint by numbers can be satisfying! I really don’t want to damn this book with faint praise, because I think it’s good and well worth your attention if you like space opera with a hint of melodrama. At the same time, I struggle to string together any superlatives about this book. It’s fine, good even. But it’s safe, unassuming, and doesn’t ask you to think too hard about anything. Comfort food? I guess. A tasty snack, yet one that has me looking around for a more substantial meal.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

If you have been reading my reviews for a while, you’ll know I keep calling for more books with trans characters where the main focus is not on them coming out—or even on them being trans. So of course, I was very much interested in Meet Cute Diary, by Emery Lee. With multiple trans and queer characters, this book plays with some common romance tropes—like fake dating—while acknowledging the challenges these tropes, and romance in general, pose for trans people. Though at times uneven and flawed, this is an enjoyable young adult novel with good heart to it.

Noah is a teenager just starting his transition. His parents are in the process of uprooting him from everything he knew in Miami, Florida, to move to California for work. So he’s spending the summer in Denver, Colorado, where his brother attends university. Noah runs the Meet Cute Diary blog, where he posts stories ostensibly of meet cutes featuring trans youth. His dark secret? The diary is fake. None of the stories is real, and Noah himself has never been in a relationship! When an anonymous enemy starts exposing the diary’s duplicity, Noah determines the best course of action is to fake-date a cute boy he met in a bookstore. You know, like you do.

A lot of the reviews I’ve read pan Meet Cute Diary because Noah is a whiny or unlikeable protagonist. And, hey, I get it. He’s self-centred and is prone to making bad decisions. But he’s also still just a kid! Part of me wonders if we would be this hard on him if he were cis—that is, I think our hunger for more trans representation means we sometimes want all that representation to be “good” not just in terms of quality but in character. I, for one, love that Noah is messy and flawed. Even though I have never been attracted to someone or tried to date, I still see echoes of my youth in Noah’s behaviour. I know what it’s like, for example, to anxiously wonder if my best friend is mad at me because she hasn’t called or texted in days. (Maybe I am just telling on myself as being a bad person? I don’t know!) No, Noah isn’t likeable. Would I have liked a more likeable protagonist? Sure. But I think Lee has given us a realistic teenager (who happens to be trans), and I respect that.

Meet Cute Diary walks a fine line when it comes to being a book about being transgender. On the one hand, Noah’s transition is still fresh and sharp. He’s sensitive to it. The diary itself is obviously dedicated to trans people. On the other hand, Lee has done eir best to normalize Noah’s status. No one in this book makes a huge deal out of Noah being trans. Brian and Noah’s relationship is incredible, from Brian’s unwavering dedication to his younger brother to the way he is still willing to give Noah shit when Noah deserves it! Similarly, Devin’s questioning, the way e changes personal pronouns a couple of times, is slick and beautiful. There is some great praxis at work here.

Honestly, where the book lets me down is simply the fact that I’m not a romance girlie and things like the fake-dating trope just fall flat for me. To Lee’s credit, e tries to avert this trope (no spoilers though). Yet I feel like that complexity is undermined by the trite coincidences that crop up concerning Devin’s identity as well as the resolution and Devin’s destination. I respect the desire to provide, if not an HEA, then the possibility of one—but from the moment the penny dropped on who Devin is, I confess to allowing myself a single eye-roll before turning the page.

Meet Cute Diary is equal parts quirky and charming. It can be frustrating—the eponymous diary fades into the background for much of the story despite being built up as a big deal, though I admit I liked the resolution of its subplot. It can also be sweet—as seen with Noah and Brian, or even just with the way Noah navigates his feelings for Devin. Speaking as someone who continues to hold most romance at arm’s length, I respect how Lee tries eir best to use genre tropes while also deconstructing some of their more harmful manifestations. In this way, combined with the trans rep, this novel feels very fresh.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

This was a birthday gift for a friend who is a fierce feminist. She lent me Men Explain Things to Me so many years ago, and when I was pondering what book to buy her for her birthday, Rebecca Solnit came to mind. I was delighted to discover Solnit had penned a memoir. My friend is in between my age and Solnit’s, and so I am curious to hear her thoughts on Solnit’s reflections of coming of age in the late seventies and how that compares to her youth a couple decades later. As someone who came of age in the 2000s, I was struck, as I often am by memoirs of Solnit’s generation, by the bohemian sense of wanderlust present in these pages.

Recollections of My Nonexistence is a memoir only in the loosest sense of the word. If you are looking for something more autobiographical, you’ll be disappointed: Solnit provides only the barest glimpses into the overall chronology of her life here, with little mention of her childhood, teens, or her career at all. She focuses instead on place and space, on relationalities. This is valid, by the way, and not a criticism on my part (we will get to those!), yet something I wanted to point out up front. Much like the book’s title, its chapters are themselves more notable for how much time Solnit spends not talking about herself.

Or rather, Solnit meditates on the intersections of art, politics, writing, and feminism—and how her entire life has been spent trying to find voice amid violence:

 

This passage from an early chapter speaks to me for so many reasons. First and most trivially … as an editor I really want to just reach into that sentence and deconstruct it because, wow, Solnit’s stream-of-consciousness style is a bit painful for me to read. I think that’s a large part why I struggled to embrace this book more despite so appreciating its thesis.

 Second, this passage speaks to why I personally believe feminism is so important. Despite the gains women have made, despite the freedoms some of us experience (albeit perhaps in limited, uneven ways) … fundamentally, we still live under patriarchy and under the threat of male violence. Our individual social capital has increased, yet our society has not actually fundamentally changed—if anything, the successes wrought by the capitalist arm of late-second- and third-wave feminism mean that we more often blame women (i.e., through slut shaming or victim blaming) when men silence them. So, Solnit’s words resonate deeply within me, despite being a trans woman thirty years her junior: women’s self-expression remains curtailed, limited, and always at threat.

 Solnit connects this idea in an interesting way to her embodiment as a woman, the way she moves through the world. She alludes to her book on walking (which I haven’t read), essentially comparing her challenges with walking solo as a woman to being a woman writer—in both pursuits, her autonomy is curtailed not by law or even culture but by the omnipresent spectre of violence against women, whether it’s physical violence or misogyny disguised as critique.

 The final chapter of the book, written prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, connects dots that were apparent even back then. Reading it in 2025, it’s tempting to call Solnit prescient when it comes to the rise of authoritarianism in the US—but I think it’s more the case that she’s simply reading the writing on the wall. She has seen this play out before, with Reagan and AIDS, with Bush and Iraq, and she’s less sounding an alarm as saying, “Here we go again.” There is a fatigue in her words, and while she is not defeated nor discouraged, she is frustrated that so little actual progress seems to have been made.

 I’m frustrated too!

 I’d give this book a higher rating but for some things that made it less enjoyable. As I mentioned earlier, Solnit’s prose is lyrical and extemporaneous in a way that doesn’t work for me. Additionally, as much as I agree with what she says here, I also don’t feel like I learned all that much. The insights I sought didn’t materialize. Solnit is an incredibly powerful writer, quite skilled at getting her message across—but it didn’t feel like a message I hadn’t heard before.

 Recollections of My Nonexistence has its interesting moments. In particular, I think most women will be recognize in Solnit’s experiences some of their own confrontations with our society’s misogyny and hostility towards women. At the same time, it doesn’t deliver the kind of wisdom I was hoping for. Maybe that’s on me and my expectations though.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

One of the unwritten fantasy novels in rattling around in my brain involves a society where people without magic face discrimination and fear. It’s not an original idea, definitely been done before, and it will be done again. So to see Annabel Campbell use this trope in The Outcast Mage is both reassuring and enjoyable! Part bildungsroman, part political thriller, Campbell’s debut isn’t pitch perfect—but it’s got some good moves. Thanks to publisher Orbit and NetGalley for the eARC.

Naila is a mage in training—except she might not be. A mage, that is. She might be a “hollow,” a pejorative term for someone who isn’t a mage. In Amoria, the city of her birth, mages and non-mages live in tenuous detente—one that a hawkish mage is threatening to upset. Naila is almost expelled from wizard school, but Haelius—a hollow-born wizard, and Amoria’s most powerful mage in generations—intervenes and undertakes to teach her personally. As Naila struggles to learn even the most basic magic, sinister events conspire to discredit Haelius, cast Naila out of Amoria, and destabilize not just the city’s political structure but its physical structure as well. This city of glass just might shatter.

The world of The Outcast Mage is exciting and lush. I love the dynamics Campbell has created, with mages versus non-mages, and of course within the ranks of the mages we have the mage-born and the hollow-born. Beyond Amoria are hints of a vaster world full of kingdoms and empires on the up or down. Campbell expertly finds that balance between essential exposition and avoiding too much infodumping. As a result, I was pretty hooked on the magic system, the lore—all that worldbuilding.

Alas, I was less invested in the characters. Naila is … fine. Haelius is … fine. Larinne is … fine? The conflicts are pretty good—I enjoy the gradual teacher–student trust building between Haelius and Naila, as well as Larinne’s conflict with her sister. Ultimately, however, I just had a hard time getting excited by any of these characters’ journeys. Even Naila, who arguably has the most growth in the story and eventually sets off on a very epic quest of sorts, never fully embodies the kind of protagonist I need. It isn’t about action per se—all these characters have a decent amount of agency and the ability to make grievous mistakes. But it is about impact. None of the characters ever does something that makes me go, “Whoa!” and notice their growth.

Aspects of the plot of The Outcast Mage feel super timely for 2025. This is a story about rising fascism, complete with secret police and brownshirt thugs and politicians like Larinne who have to wrestle with the temptation to comply in advance. Sound familiar? I couldn’t help but project a lot of my anxieties onto this book and feel vaguely uplifted by the motifs of resistance Campbell infuses into each page. This is a book that champions mutual aid, resistance in many forms, and the need for intersectional and intergeneration allies.

Yet the story just takes forever to get going. Not only was I impatient for the penny to finally drop on Naila’s magic sitch (which is totally on me), but I needed the political situation to develop more rapidly than it did. The minutiae, the endless scenes going back and forth between different settings as we learn about how much people hate Naila or Haelius or whatever … I don’t know. There’s a rock-and-roll arrangement of this story that punches up the pacing while keeping the essential melody, and I would love to hear it.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have a hefty respect for The Outcast Mage. This is a great debut novel: Campbell is clearly both a creative storyteller and an ambitious one. Yet I’m not waiting on the edge of my seat for the sequel the way I’d like to be. Hey, that was how I felt with Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne and here we are three years later with me proclaiming its trilogy conclusion as one of the best fantasy novels I read in 2024. So maybe The Outcast Mage is on a similar trajectory? Only time will tell. For now, this is a novel with both flaws and flair, and I’ll leave it up to you to decide which facets are which.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Ambiguous antiheroes and antivillains are always my jam. Give me a book from the point of view of the bad guy. Give me a repentant antagonist—hell, give me an unrepentant one. Memoir of a Mad Scientist is exactly what it says on the tin, albeit with a tongue-in-cheek, slightly absurdist twist. Erin Z. Anderson has crafted a tale that gets you thinking about where to draw lines. How far is it OK to go in the name of science when lives are on the line? How do you reconcile a life of privilege with the growing awareness of its cost for others? Although it didn’t electrify me in the telling, this book nevertheless got me thinking and feeling in all the right ways. I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

Dr. Jarian Voss is a mad scientist. Well, not quite, but the next closest thing. Raised on a farm, he’s worked his entire life for the Coalition. They saved the planet. Now he does science for them. But the research institute where he’s sheltered from the inequities of everyday Coalition existence starts to feel like a less-than-gilded cage as security steps up, his bosses keep getting replaced, and now he’s been assigned to a high-pressure cybernetic experiment with a subject who … maybe consented. Wait, is Voss the baddie?

This is the essential question at the heart of Memoir of a Mad Scientist. Or rather, one might say the question is: once you know you’re a baddie, what do you do about it? Voss is arguably a hero with an F in good; he has the best of intentions but his morality shades towards amoral—or at the very least, he keeps his head down and thinks his science can be apolitical. As the story unfolds, it quickly becomes evident that this is not the case, and he has to take sides and make hard choices.

I read this at the very start of the year, after Donald Trump had been reelected president of the nation to the south of mine but before his inauguration. Now, writing this review the weekend he kicked off a trade war with my country, I am thinking a lot about resistance versus collaboration. This novel hits, for that is exactly the choice Voss has to make, again and again and again. Anderson demonstrates with chilling accuracy just how easy it is to sell your soul by saying you’ll give in just this one time because then next time you’ll be in a better position to resist. (You won’t.)

Voss is an interesting protagonist because I definitely don’t like him—he’s so cringe—but I still sympathize with him and at the very least appreciate his growth. Probably the part that’s hardest for me to swallow is his naivety, yet I suppose that is part of his privilege, the cosseted way he’s been raised and coddled as a member of the intelligentsia. I admire Anderson’s choice to write a main character who isn’t a squeaky-clean hero but rather someone with a laundry list of flaws, for like it or not, all of us are probably somewhat closer to Voss than we are to any of the Nazi-punching heroes in our comics. In a book full of cyborgs and space lasers, Jarian Voss grounds us as the most realistic element.

Indeed, Memoir of a Mad Scientist is a book that walks the line between surrealism and realism with grace. The title alone should say enough, but if you need to look further, consider Voss’s relationship with his boss, who is stressed out and overworked. He could be a caricature, but Anderson humanizes him, has him level just so slightly with Voss, and then of course later in the novel Voss gets a little more … perspective, shall we say? Similarly, Voss’s ambivalent relationship with the rebels showcases how often the novel veers into surrealist set pieces: cloak-and-dagger dead drops and pseudonyms, allies who could also be enemies and vice versa.

Anderson’s writing style didn’t always work for me, and there were times I was frustrated with how simplistically the characters and their relationships seemed to be developed and telegraphed. Some of that I’ll chalk up to the surreal atmosphere, as described above—some of these characters are more archetype than actual person. Reading this book felt, at times, a bit like watching a stage play with actors who are overeager, or a movie that knows it’s a little over the top—it’s not a bad experience, but it’s one I have to be in mood to seek out.

Finally, the resolution was a bit rushed—after feeling like it took forever to get to the climax—and morally uncomplicated. While I can appreciate the scenario Anderson constructs and the message it sends, I wanted to see more from Voss and his allies. I wanted some reckoning, wanted to see some deeper moral calculus at work.

All in all, I was neither blown away nor disappointed by this one. It’s a solid story sadly resonant with the mood of our current times, with a protagonist in whom you will hate seeing the less heroic parts of yourself. Memoir of a Mad Scientist reminds us that the baddies don’t always twirl moustaches and laugh maniacally—sometimes they’re us, going along with it, so as not to rock the boat or bite the hand that feeds. This is what science fiction is for.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.

Tanya Huff is an author who deserves, in my opinion, far more hype than she seems to receive. First, she’s Canadian (represent!), she’s queer (represent!), and she writes fantasy novels that are unapologetically queer and even sometimes unapologetically Canadian (re-pruh-sent!). I often describe her as an author I like but don’t love in the sense that I’ve seldom given her books a glowing review—Sing the Four Quarters is the first time I’ve rated one of her books more than three stars. Nevertheless, I respect her writing and her game.

Sing the Four Quarters takes place in the Kingdom of Shkoder, an unassuming place that just wants to mind its business, if it weren’t for those mean, nasty Cemandians breathing their expansionist breaths down their mountain pass. Annice is a bard, kind of a singing wizard, if you will. She was also a princess, but when her dad died and she joined up with the bards, her brother—now king—made her forswear her title, you know, like you do. Now she walks around the country, carrying tales, observing, and reporting back. But when she accidentally gets pregnant (another no-no, according to her brother the king) and the father ends up accused of treason, Annice needs to act fast.

Based on past experiences with Huff—I’ve liked her contemporary fantasy more than her secondary-world fantasy—I was nervous about reading Sing the Four Quarters. I picked it up from my used bookstore as an omnibus edition collected with the sequel, and it has sat on my shelf for a year or so. I was avoiding it. This book is from the nineties, just following The Fire’s Stone, which I had completely forgotten I had read! Nevertheless, my disappointment with what I viewed as clichés (though I suppose they weren’t yet, back when Huff wrote it) must have sunk deep into my bones, and the apprehension I felt twisting in my gut when I looked at this old-school cover stems from that.

Let me tell you: I could not have been more wrong. Sing the Four Quarters fucking rocks. I laughed, I cried, I cheered … this is what fantasy should be.

Right off in the first chapter, the first twenty pages, two things. First, the main character and a random, male side character she meets along the way both sit down to just … knit. Perfunctory like. Love it. Second, so many people are queer. Annice is bi or pan and living with another woman, and it’s just … there, on the page. Polyamorous too, I guess, given that Annice’s partner reacts not with anger when she learns Annice is pregnant but rather a rueful chuckle of, “This is what you get for sleeping with men!” and that sent me. I, of course, as an ace girlie, don’t see the appeal of sleeping with any gender, but as a sapphic-aligned girlie I am on Stasya’s side for sure. (The two of them and Pjerin form an excellent throuple, though!)

Seriously, after recent political events, it’s just such a breath of fresh air to be reading a fantasy novel from the 1995 that’s blatantly queernormative. I know this wasn’t Huff’s first time doing that, nor is she alone among her contemporaries. There’s something about seeing it during a time of backlash against queer people that is incredibly heartening. It isn’t “woke” or “diversity” to put queer people into genre fiction in 2025 because people were doing it thirty years ago. This, alone, would have endeared me to Huff forever.

Unlike, The Fire’s Stone, however, which apparently didn’t impress me, this story is actually … good?

I love the magic system. I thought I wouldn’t—ugh, singing wizards? How trite! How uninteresing! Again, I was just wrong. The bards are cool. The kigh are cool. In particular, I appreciate how Huff doesn’t bother with much exposition. Bards are basically elemental mages, they invoke spirits called kigh that are always mischievous, often mysterious, and so on. It’s an important dimension to the book but not the dimension; at its forefront, Sing the Four Quarters is a book about family, damn it, and Annice is Dominic Toretto.

I don’t want to go into spoilers. However, let me say that Huff makes a really significant plot choice early in the book that made me sit up and take notice. Annice basically has to go on the run—she’s committing treason by having this baby, and the baby daddy is also accused of treason for an unrelated thing (what bad luck). Let’s just say that it looks like Huff is setting up the pieces such that some characters will be her enemy. Almost immediately after she does that, however, she goes, “Haha, just kidding,” and those characters figure out it’s all a setup and start trying to help Annice as best they can from a distance. I love this. I hate plots based on shallow misunderstandings and miscommunication, and Huff neatly sidestepping this trope is a joy to see.

Annice’s ferocity is also a wonderful trait in a protagonist. I just love how she butts heads with Pjerin when they’re together. How fiercely she loves Stasya. How recalcitrant she is with Theron. She is such a firebrand of a woman, and I want to be her (minus the having-a-kid part). One of my number one complaints in fantasy novels featuring princesses as protagonists, even with female authors, is that the princess gets so little to do, has so little agency. That’s definitely not the case here.

The supporting cast is also delightful. Really, the only stinker was Otik, who begins as a semi-credible threat but quickly turns into a cartoonish oaf to be quickly dispatched. I don’t know if this is just a misfire on the part of Huff’s humour (which otherwise is resplendent yet unassuming in this story) or if I’m just reading him as campier than he should be. Either way, it’s not worth thinking that much about.

In the backdrop to this family squabble, of course, there is a far wider political plot that threatens the sovereignty of Shkoder. I don’t really care, to be honest. However, Huff does a good job of demonstrating how a single person can manipulate ignorant people into believing basically whatever—does this sound familiar?—and it was satisfying to see the villains of this piece dealt with.

At the climax of this story—because Annice is pregnant, and when a main character is pregnant, you know they never go into labour during a lull in the action—I found myself crying genuine tears of concern and joy at the same time. I was actively talking back to the book, cheering on Annice and her allies while also afraid for their survival. Somehow, Huff manages to dial up the tension and the stakes so gradually that I was like a lobster in a pot of water slow to come to a boil. I didn’t notice it was happening until saltwater was trickling down my cheeks even as I laughed at the same time.

Fiction should make you feel things. If that is the standard by which I measure books, then Sing the Four Quarters is an excellent book. I love when I’m proved wrong, when a book surprises me as thoroughly and expertly as this one did. Rather than feeling apprehensive about reading the next book, I am now excited. Hell yeah, Tanya Huff. You did good.

Originally posted at Kara.Reviews.