Acadie by Dave Hutchinson | Review

Acadie is part of the Summer of Space Opera hosted by Tor.com, the last of the five to be published, scheduled for the 5th of September. Dave Hutchinson, the author, was born in Sheffield in 1960, studied at the University of Nottingham and became a journalist. He’s the author of five collections of short stories, and four novels.

Acadie is set in the future following protagonist Duke who has been summoned by a group of leading researchers who have created “Kids” a long time ago for the purpose of colonizing other planets. After several generations Kids evolved to be more and more human-like, but their creator Isabel Potter is bent on finding all of them and killing them. We find that:

“the Kids were superbrights, tall fragile children with towering IQs, and a penchant for terrible jokes.”

Conversations between the Kids resemble equations as they are hardwired to see all problems in doing a specific activity.

This novella is short but filled with humour and great character interactions. While it resembles “hard sci-fi” it has many moments of reflection and character development. As readers we get an insight into Duke’s history, opinions, and frustrations. I found it particularly interesting when Duke tells readers that after travelling in space for long enough “it’s all just stars and emptiness…all space looks the same.” The writers and engineers who work for Isabel Potter, the original creator of the Kids, are like a giant fandom group from Comic-Con dressed as LOTR and Star Trek fans or as Duke calls it: early 20th century media references. The ‘Writers’ in this novella have higher powers. Their ‘creations’ shape more than expected and they have abilities like conducting complete memory-wipe on another, should they choose to.

The last few pages contained a surprising ending (which I will obviously not spoil) but it added a different dimension to the novella. It can be easily read in one sitting and it’s very exciting. I think this is one of the reads I would add to “get out of a reading slump” kind of book lists because it’s short, well-written, and highly atmospheric.

Also, the cover design by Stephen Youll is absolutely beautiful. I’ve linked his website so you can take a look at all his extraordinary artwork.

April Wrap-Up

This month has been very hectic. The first two weeks I was writing final essays, wrapping up my Masters degree. I did get some good reading in this month. I was pleasantly surprised by the poetry collections I got a hold of this month because they really nourished the soul. Overall it was a good reading month. Here’s what I read starting from the most recent:

The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy – Edited by John Brehm

This collection is an amalgamation of poems from various authors who are a source of wisdom in both the East and the West. The collection brings together a spiritual community that remains connected in that they wrote of essential human truths universally experienced. The collection includes poets like Frost, Whitman, Shakespeare, Kerouac from the West as well as poets from the East like Han Shan, Wei Ying-Wu, and Li Po. I wrote a full review here.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things – Patrick Rothfuss    

Earlier in the month I finished the first book and while I am saving the second volume for later on in the year, I thought I would give the novella a chance: The Slow Regard of Silent Things. I read a few reviews and people seem to be very angry at this novella for its lack of plot and character depth. I too expected a history of Auri. I hoped we would find out what happened to her, how she ended up in the Underthing, maybe some secrets she knows from overhearing conversations. I had to connect some dots from the first book. First I remembered that Elodin told Kvothe that he had known Auri for many years around the University and that she herself had been a student studying Alchemy. Also Elodin with Auri are both mentally unstable characters so it’s subtly hinted that Auri may have also been affected by the Naming of things. Reading this novella is almost like a play or a very concentrated experience of what it’s like to be Auri. We don’t get a history, we don’t get much plot, or even much character development, but you get ‘a day in the life’ of Auri in case you wondered as a reader what she does all day.

Illustration by Nate Taylor

In the novella she moves around the Underthing and has a lighted object or bio-luminescent creature that she has named Foxen. She observes objects and rooms. I think this concentrated experience is in a way appropriate for Auri because it still keeps her a mysterious figure but it captures the isolation and loneliness of the most hermetic character in the series. Her experience of life is certainly going to be different and perhaps less exciting than Kvothe’s—who experiences more things than anyone else in the entire first book.
This is my theory: she messed up something in Alchemy and out of that she got Foxen and became unstable, but Foxen keeps her alive somehow—which is why Elodin could have known her for years and she still looks young. Foxen is tied to her existence and daily habits/routine. That’s what I got out of this novella. I look forward to moving on to the second book The Wise Man’s Fear.
The novella is also accompanied by the beautiful illustrations of Nate Taylor.                     

The Hour Wasp by Jay Sheets

I received an ARC for early review from April Gloaming Publishing. The Hour Wasp is a poetry collection written by Jay Sheets and illustrated by Robyn Leigh Lear. This is a debut collection for Sheets and I read this on a lovely Sunday afternoon in the Month of April. If you’d like to know more about this collection you can read my full review. The book will be published on May 28.

This is What a Librarian Looks Like by Kyle Cassidy

I received a copy of this book as an ARC from Hachette, Black Dog & Leventhal for early review. The book will be officially published on May 16. This book is a combination of library history, author interviews on what the library means to them, and over 200 photographs of individual librarians across America with a little excerpt on them. Interviews include Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Nancy Pearl, Cory Doctorow, and George R. R. Martin, among others. The purpose of this book is to promote and celebrate libraries and the role of librarians in our society, particularly now when the funds of libraries are threatened by Trump’s proposed “skinny budget.”

Invisible Planets Translated by Ken Liu

This is a short story anthology of contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in translation. I wrote an individual Review for this collection. Invisible Planets is a 2016 TOR publication. The thirteen short stories had been previously featured in short story publications like Clarkesworld, Uncanny, and Tor.com. The short stories are written by Chen Qiufan, Xia Jia, Ma Boyong, Hao Jingfang, Tang Fei, Cheng Jingbo, and Liu Cixin. All the stories are translated by Ken Liu. Each author’s stories are preceded by a brief biographical note on the author.

Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

I then half-read, half-listened to (on Audible) Lois McMaster Bujold’s second book in the Vorkosigan Saga Shards of Honor because she suggested starting with Shards of Honor and follow it with Barrayar. I will say in advance that this is definitely what is called a hard sci-fi book. There is a lot of military speech and military tactics. The main character whose point of view we follow is Cordelia Naismith’s, she is the captain of a Betan Astronomical ship. I love the way Bujold characterised Cordelia because she is strong and has a backbone. The work begins with the Betan base camp being attacked and Cordelia remaining behind with only one other person from her camp and Captain Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar. A romance ensues between Cordelia and Vorkosigan but it’s very subtle in terms of ‘cheesiness,’ because as I mentioned this is a strong character and a hard sci-fi book. This may sound weird but Cordelia and

Rourke and Sinclair, Atlantis

Vorkosigan reminded me of Commander Rourke and Helga Sinclair from Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The relationship is complicated, there is a mutiny, and a lot going on that I can’t explain without spoiling it. I am willing to give the rest of series a try but not in a row. It’s an easy and pleasant listen/read and very exciting so it doesn’t require too much effort but it’s not a series I can binge.

Peter Darling by Austin Chant

This book is a retelling of Peter and Wendy only it reads more like a sequel or continuation. In this retelling Peter is trans and was born as Wendy. He returns to Neverland ten years after leaving and choosing to grow up as Wendy. I have written a full review on this book. There is a romance aspect between Peter and Hook, however most of this novel deals with issues of identity, losing and finding oneself, and fighting to reclaim one’s spaces.

The Whydah: A Pirate Ship Feared, Wrecked & Found by Martin W. Sandler

This is a book about the Pirate ship: Whydah. I received this book from Early Reviewers in exchange for an honest review: Full Review. In short, the first half of the book Sandler begins by following our main Captain pirate: Samuel Bellamy and the ship he hijacks: The Whydah. He explains the Articles of Agreement (among pirates), fun facts about the origins of The Jolly Roger, details of torture methods on board, punishments, as well as the good parts of pirate atmosphere on the ship, and facing the wrath of the sea as well as critical weather conditions. The second half of the book focuses on the wreck of The Whydah and the importance of each artifact which was retrieved in 1984. The details of each artifact, its history, and importance are absolutely fascinating and throughout Sandler debunks many pirate myths.

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

This book is written by Patrick Rothfuss and was published in March 2007 by DAW Books, Inc. That year he won the Quill Award.

The Name of the Wind is about Kvothe—a young, red-haired man who tells his life story to Chronicler (a scribe whose life he saves and who is ultimately writing the ‘true history’ of Kvothe) and Bast—a young man who is absolutely enchanted by his master Kvothe and is eagerly listening to his life story. There are few interruptions but overall, The Name of the Wind is a bildungsroman. We follow Kvothe from his childhood where he is raised by a guild of actors, follow him through several years on the Tarbean streets where he lives in absolute poverty, and eventually through his University education where he studies Sympathy (among other subjects). Finance and poverty drive Kvothe’s plot as he must always make another strategic move to earn a day’s living, or another semester’s tuition. By the end of this book you’ll feel like you understand their economic system and all about ‘jots’ and ‘talents.’ The characters he meets at University and in town are diverse and very interesting, though no character is as flushed out and dimensional as Kvothe himself. His main talent on top of his studies is being a skilled lute musician. What is particularly strange to me, is the “magic” system. It’s very difficult to explain because it exists, it’s ‘different,’ and somehow it’s not very present. At the university, students study Arcanist’s arts which include Sympathy, Sygaldry, Alchemy, and Naming and then there’s a sort of Fae-world kind of magic. Some professors study things that make them fall into madness like “learning the name of the wind.” The description of classes sound a lot like courses in our world (including tuition), and a little bit like alchemy. The use and presence of ‘magic’ is really subtle and sometimes I wonder if it’s even there. There are mysterious figures like Auri, the Chandrion, and the professor who is held up in what resembles the University’s ‘asylum.’ Things like ‘forbidden stories’ and the effects of ‘sympathy’ used outside of the University give off a ‘magic’ element, but when as the story is told I sometimes forget that this is a different realm at all. There is also a romance woven in, but it is not overpowering. This book is 722 pages, so being brief in describing what it’s about is complicated without giving too much away.

What I love most about this work is how it is told. The storytelling and world building makes me feel like I’m listening to one of Scheherazade’s stories. What really accomplishes that for me is the many ‘stories within stories.’ There is a man at a tavern telling stories, there are songs being sung resembling medieval songs and filled with mythology and …well…stories. There are tutors, actors, guilds, dealers, clans, a hierarchy of class systems, and languages. All these components added while discussing the growth of Kvothe as a character give the reader a full experience of this world. It’s all in the details, like on page 300 where Kvothe and Wilem discus Siaru idioms:

“it means ‘don’t let it make you crazy’ but it translated literally as: ‘don’t put a spoon in your eye over it.’”

My favourite of all though has to be THE ARCHIVES. Descriptions of books in this novel are phenomenal. The presence of codices, and archives are everywhere. The descriptions of books, the presence of them, the contents, the things they help characters achieve just make this book so perfect. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys fantasy, books, schools, and bildungsromans. Here are a few of my favourite lines:

“You’d be surprised at the sorts of things hidden away in children’s songs” (39)

“I hope they spent those last few hours well. I hope they didn’t waste them on mindless tasks: kindling the evening fire and cutting vegetables for dinner. I hope they sang together, as they so often did. I hope they retired to our wagon and spent time in each other’s arms. I hope they lay near each other afterward and spoke softly of small things. I hope they were together, busy with loving each other, until the end came.” (124)

“The door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying ‘time heals all wounds’ is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door…there are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.” (135)

“[Skarpi] – I only know one story. But oftentimes small pieces seem to be stories themselves…it’s growing all around us…sometimes the story is growing in squalid backstreet bars” (202).

Map

March Wrap-up

In the month of March I read all the books below (the first at the bottom and the latest at the top). I also read Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services by Carol Kuhlthau but I won’t count it because it was for class and filled with statistics and graphs. The month ended with me reading 456/722 pages (63%) of Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, and two short stories from Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation edited and translated by Ken Liu. Those last two will be incorporated in next month’s wrap-up because I have not finished them yet. Though Rothfuss did occupy 1/4 of my time this month so I should acknowledge that in this brief introduction. I foresee a 5 star rating and since I will definitely continue with the series I may do a spotlight on the Kingkiller Chronicles and novella in a separate post.

The Last Interview: Ray Bradbury; interviews by Sam Weller

This series of interviews captures the spirit of Bradbury. All the interviews took place between 2010-2012 and they are all conducted by Sam Weller. I didn’t really like the interviewer as much and sometimes I felt like his block quotes were larger than Bradbury’s. I was more interested in what Bradbury had to say. I wish there was a transcript in there of some of his lectures in his later years. I would also recommend watching a YouTube video of his lecture so you know his tone in his later years, otherwise he (Bradbury) comes across as very self-centered, but if you understand his tone it’s really sweet. I think if I read these before watching him I would have thought he was very full of himself, but having done it the other way around I just smiled and appreciated his words. He also speaks so highly of libraries which is easy to love:

“I graduated from the library when I was twenty-eight years old. So that’s why I’m here tonight–because I believe in libraries. They’re more important than universities. They’re more important than colleges. Libraries are the center of our lives” (42).

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Bradbury’s works and wants to know more about his personal life, and the ways in which he got inspired to write Fahrenheit 451, and Something Wicked this Way Comes, as those two works are the most discussed in these interviews. It’s a very quick read and pleasant.

DA: A Journal of the Printing Arts. Number 77. (Fall/Winter 2015)

I received this from one of my favourite grad-school professors who taught me about rare books, readerships, and bookbinding. To celebrate fifty years of being a Press a series of Canadian printers have written several articles within this codex encompassing the history of Coach House Press. This press is closely affiliated with the University of Toronto and has printed several library catalogues for the UofT library system throughout the years, as well as launching famous authors with beautiful editions of their books like the recent award winning Andre Alexis’s Fifteen Dogs. This book covers the Press’s history and its adoption of newer media and ways of printing as well as exploring prominent figures in its history like Alfred H. Howard and his contribution to the city of Toronto by means of his manuscript collection. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in small printing press histories, Toronto-specific history, or this history of printing arts

At the Speed of Light – NewCon Novella by Simon Morden

This novella was sent to me by EarlyReviewers from LibraryThing in exchange for an honest: review.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

It’s a good story about parallel universes and it’s exciting. I didn’t like the whole “I was on a path to fulfill my potential as a genius but then my wife got pregnant and everything went to hell.” How many times more will I have to encounter this story line? Also this book was very obviously written for the big screen. It reads like the DaVinci Code and the sentences are short and choppy which makes me very frustrated. It was exciting though, and I’d watch the movie, but as a book it was lacking.

The Martian by Andy Weir

Mark Watney is a botanist astronaut who has gone on an expedition to Mars with a team. Due to unforeseen events the ship had to leave as the team thought he was dead and he is ultimately left alone behind on Mars. The novel follows Watney’s struggle to survive on Mars and communicate with NASA and his team as well as all the various teams on Earth making great efforts to bring him home. I understand that since the film came out the plot is no surprise to anyone and I am perhaps a little late to the party. What I found endearing about this novel was that despite the science-heavy space exploration vocabulary it was a combination of Robinson Crusoe in Space, and the renewal of faith in humanity. Reading about so many people around the world working together to bring one person home was so satisfying and rewarding. In addition, reading about one person being so isolated for so long explores dark corners of the human condition. I wish Weir would have focused more on this. I would have appreciated a chapter from Watney’s perspective on what he was thinking on a daily basis, what the loneliness felt like, what he was experiencing. A break from all the action and science and business for a moment of reflection and spirituality would have added more depth to both Watney and the novel. It’s a little difficult to remember that Watney is away from Earth for 2.5 years, and completely alone on Mars for 565 days (or a year and a half) because the novel focuses only on the actions taken rather than the intense reflective moments that would break the human spirit in such a situation. From time to time I had a hard time believing Watney was hired by NASA for this expedition in the first place because of his attitude. Maybe it’s just me, but I think NASA would make exceptions for only Nobel-prize winning physicists with attitudes but not for botanists with attitude. Even Watney refers to himself as a ‘dorky botanist’ who is not that great compared to anyone else on the team. I believed that people would fight to get him back, I didn’t believe NASA would have sent him in space in the first place because of his attitude. Why would you send a person on a team in an enclosed space for years if he has a hard time getting along with people and following instructions? I definitely wanted to get to know Watney more. His character was not that well flushed out and I’m a little tired of the ‘genius with an attitude’ plotline. The one missing chapter adding depth to his character would have made this books so much better. For once in a long time I can say: the movie was better. Damon added more depth to Watney than Weir did. Sorry, but…it is what it is.

Spinster by Kate Bolick

Kate Bolick can write well and she is intelligent. There are many literary references, and an outline of five great women who have inspired her in her life including three of my favourite female authors: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edith Wharton, and two people I learned about for the first time: Neith Boyce and Maeve Brennan. What bothered me was how much of a memoir/autobiography it was. It read like a Carrie Bradshaw rant about herself. I kept thinking that maybe if I cared more about who this author was then this memoir and reading journey would have been more inspiring. I read this at the same time as John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley and the whole time I was hyper-aware that her content is by far more interesting and well-researched, but I didn’t care about her biographical parts as much as I did about Steinbeck. I also wanted this book to be what it promised: a book covering the history and cultural analysis of the spinster. I wanted to know about perception, barriers, how to break them…I wanted to feel inspired. There were several parts when she was discussing biographies of authors that I did feel somewhat inspired, but then it would slowly vanish in the background as Bolick started talking about her life again….the men she dates, the things she does on a daily basis. Lastly, and perhaps this is somewhat shallow but it REALLY bothered me, was that she writes many times about how ugly she was, and how “not like other girls” she was in terms of looks and how she was not desirable. Just google her…or flip the book over. She literally looks like a model for any beauty product. She’s white, tall, thin, beautiful hair……it honestly felt like she was mocking the reader and was fishing for compliments. So if you expect the book to be about what it means to be a spinster, or a social history of it, you will NOT find it here. This book is exclusively about Kate Bolick and 5 authors who were women and who inspired her, and then she tells you why in her life particularly these women were important.

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

Have you ever thought “I love Steinbeck! I wish I could hang out with him!” If you have, then: READ. THIS. BOOK. This journal/travelogue work is John Steinbeck’s account of his travels across the United States in the 1960s, with his dog Charley, in a trailer that he names ‘The Rocinante’ (after Don Quixote’s horse). He describes what he sees, records interactions with different people he meets on the way, and this book is filled with reflective notes on what he thought of certain situation and how they relate to other instances in life or giving his opinion on his immediate reaction. There are a few literary references, and instances of simple humour (i.e. getting stopped at the Canadian border for “dog reasons”). I kept thinking that if anyone other than Steinbeck wrote the same travelogue it wouldn’t be that interesting. It’s interesting BECAUSE it’s Steinbeck. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys travel literature, travelogues, journals/diaries, and those who love Steinbeck and his work because in the end it just feels like you’re hanging out with him and his dog.

At The Speed of Light – Simon Morden | Book Review

3.5 I’ve received an Early Reviewers copy of Simon Morden’s 2017 novella At the Speed of Light from LibraryThing. This is a NewCon Press novella that is about 115 pages and can be read in one sitting. The main character, Corbyn, is slipping through two levels of consciousness as he fully awakens realizing that he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his spaceship with the foot on the accelerator traveling for years at the speed of light. His state brings him on the outskirts of space, outside of the bounds of human knowledge or the universe and along he finds different kinds of consciousness/characters. I was hooked in the beginning stages pre-awakening as Morden explored certain anxieties of the human condition. The discussion of anxiety dreams, derealisation, and questioning reality altogether is a topic that highly fascinates me. The novella however takes a very ‘hard sci-fi’ turn halfway through which threw me off especially in terminology. I’ll give you examples: “cross-referenced hibernation,’ ‘pre-defined range of stimuli,’ ‘semi-crystalline matrix,’ and ‘astrogation data.’ Maybe I’m a little bit too early on in my science-fiction reading journey to judge this novella too harshly, but I would have really liked to understand what those things meant. The novella would have done much better (for me) if it had more reflections, tapped into what made humans human that is different/unique, and it could have worked wonderfully through Corbyn’s character having been more 3-Dimentional. I realized halfway through that I didn’t care that much about the protagonist because nothing humanizing about him was shared.

There are some nice lines like:

“not as close as his superstructure, not as far as infinity” or “are dreams that you don’t remember less real?”

Good question. It reminded me of Neil Gaiman’s “…tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure.” The first 30 pages and the last two pages tap into Corbyn’s philosophical side, particularly on what it is that makes the human consciousness and I think I preferred that to the engineering manual that was everything in between. I will re-read this in the future after I read more sci-fi and see if I feel the same way. I would recommend this to people who know they like sci-fi and technology, with a machine/mechanical orientation and not character-driven. I am also fascinated by Simon Morden; his background in Geophysics contributed greatly to his work and I look forward to reading his longer works particularly his Metrozone series that is set in post-apocalyptic London, for which he recently received the Philip K. Dick Award (2011).

The cover on this novella is fantastic. There are four NewCon Press novellas released and the artist worked on all of them. The name however was not released online.