Book Review: The Seep, by Chana Porter

The Seep is a book of vivid imagery, dreamy and chaotic, and like dreams leaves little of substance in the mind when it is over.

It's not a poorly written book, nor an interesting story, but as a personal journey it feels underdeveloped. The story follows a woman, Trina, and her struggle to move on with her life after an 'invasion' by an alien species called The Seep and the subsequent loss of her wife to it's effects.

The opening section of the book is quite engrossing. The Seep is not a ln enlightened super civilization nor a race of conquerers, but more of an all-permiating infection, a conscious miasma that induces a drug-like stupor on everyone who ingests it, breaking down the barries between their minds and bringing about an era without war, famin, want, or death. Except not exactly.

The Seep is often vaguely described, it's function vaguely explained, and the exact results and mechanism of it's unification with humanity are inconsistent and contradictory. Which is fine, as it is mostly used as a magical vessel that allows people to enact nearly anything they will; changing their bodies, giving sentience to animals, healing plant and animal life, or allowing them to die as they wish. But it also has will, enforces (through it's stupifying effects) an era of peace and good will between all living beings, yet at moments has the naivete of a child, and struggles to understand why Trina is experiencing grief as she is. What results is The Seep is simultaneously The Force, Big Brother, LSD, & Pinocchio; a combination that never quite resolves into anything coherent.

This incoherence leads to a plot that is full of conveniences, driven less by characters than by arbitrary circumstances. Outside of Trina, characters get limited development; her wife decides to move on--to be reborn again as a child--for reasons that are inconceivable to both Trina and the reader, and though overcoming this divide is the central tension of the work, it never stops feeling like a random act and a poor substitute for death, or suicide. The other significant character, Horizon, gets a similarity one-note story. He took the face of a dead lover when The Seep arrived, adm serves as something of an antagonist to Trina, or she at least makes him out to be one in her mind. That appropriation and facade is the only character development he gets, and the resolution to hai arc is to disintegrate into nothing, shedding all layers of himself. Other characters are secondary, giving very little time to show any depth.

Finally, there is Trina. Her journey is well done, her emotional turmoil clean, but situated in the world Chana has built these normal emotions feel strange. Trina seems to be uniquely immune to many of The Seeps effects, conveniently excepted from the major metamorphoses of the world. Abstaining from The Seep is an option, and people are shown to build up a tolerance to it's effects, but having Trina wade through this dreamlike world without being affected much like anyone else seems to be creates an odd disconnect. Trina is in this world, but feels not of the world.

I would compare this book to some of the writing in the End of Death SCP canon; there humanity experiences an irreconcilable paradigm shift, and those stories are about characters navigating and struggling against the new reality. The Seep introduces a paradigm shift, but does little to grapple with it's implications. It frames the story around The Seep but then makes it set dressing. Trina's wife might as well have 'just' committed suicide. Horizon might as well be any other religions charlatan or cult leader. Post-Seep American could have been any other post-scarcity dis/utopia. You could uproot these characters, put them in modern Detroit, and have a nearly identical story; ignore The Seep entirely. In EoD, Ω-K is inseparable from the characters in it's stories.

The world here has little history, no sense of continuity, it's events fleeting, arbitrary. The story too short to grow meat on the bones it lays out.

Overall, the result is fantastic prose, stunning imagery, but vague and inconsistent world building and thin characters. Engrossing to read, but with little sticking power.

QUICK REVIEW: The Best American Series

 I've written before, also briefly, about The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, a yearly publication with a collection of short stories selected from works published in the previous year. I recently read through the 2020 edition, and just now finished reading through a book in a sibling series: the 2019 publication of The Best American Science and Nature Writing. I'm writing this post to re-affirm my earlier endorsement, and expand it to The Best American collection(s) as a whole.

The 2020 edition of Science Fiction and Fantasy stood out to me even more than previous years because of the sheer volume of queer representation it contained. Many times I had to remind myself that I was not, in fact,  reading a collection like Meanwhile, Elsewhere, which set out to be by and about queer people, but a filtered, edited, and selected collection of the best of main-stream sci-fi and fantasy. In that sense it was an absolute relief and revelation to read; it's not the most subversive or most queer content I have encountered, but the sheer prevalence and normalization of queerness with the stories felt like a real paradigm shift. It was a reminder that, despite the setbacks and the ongoing assault on queer people and minority rights, there has been a cultural shift. Progress is not made or lost all at once in every sphere, and we are still very much in the fight for our existence and acknowledgement.

When I picked up the Science and Nature Writing edition, I was not sure what to expect, but I decided on it because, quite frankly, I am at a deficit when it comes to reading non-fiction. As the forward acknowledges, the line between science and nature writing is quite thin, especially in these days of climate catastrophe and global warming. Indeed, the power in this collection is not any individual piece of writing (though they are all great), but in how they paint a collective and stark picture of the state of our world; the state of nature, and the state of our science and human impact. So many of the stories are about either extinction, the ongoing impacts of climate change, or the socioeconomic systems that helped lead to these problems and how they continue to propagate their own.

The most chilling of these essay to read, I think, was the piece "When the Next Plague Hits," by Ed Young. It was published in 2018, but reading it now is not so much an exercise of hindsight but of prophesy. In these few pages, Ed highlights the 'potential' breaking points of the U.S.'s healthcare and global monitor systems, and points to past outbreaks as a warning of how close we were to disaster. And line by line, it is a prediction, blueprint, and explanation for exactly what led to the COVID-19 pandemic, and an infuriatingly naked picture of how visible the fault lines were. Anthony Fauci is even quoted in the story, previewing the disaster he would confront in the following years.

But I don't want to oversell one piece or simply recount what I liked from each of these volumes (which was a lot; they are all very good). I'm writing this short post to recommended the collections, any of their editions, and their sibling series, as I've seen enough to be confidant in their quality.

Reading takes time, and we don't have much of it, but if you want an excellent slice of what is being written here in the United States, the Best American series is worth picking up in whatever genre you are interested in. It is available wherever books are sold.

BOOK REVIEW: The City & The City, by China Miéville

I've read only one other of China Miéville's books, Railsea, but even from my small sampling Miéville's strengths are apparent. In both books, Miéville write about fictional cultures and people, and he crafts them with such care and skill that the fantastic elements of the setting melt together with the mundane. In the same way we take for granted all the details of our lives, so too do the characters in Miéville's work. They are fantastical only to us, the readers, the foreigners, but to his characters they are simply the facts of their lives.

In The City & The City, the reader is a tourist, plopped down on the shoulder of Inspector Taydor Borlú as he stumbles in the early morning into the most important case of his life. A woman has been found dead--clearly murder--and Borlú dutifully starts to piece together what soon becomes a mystery much larger than he could have imagined. The noir aspects are not what is compelling to us tourists, however. They keep the plot moving along, but it is the mundane details of Borlú's life that soon become much more interesting. As he move through his city--Besźel--strange details emerge; people and places he must 'unsee,' mentions of a 'border' with buildings that seem to be neighbors; the enigmatic 'Breach'; but few explanation are offered for our benefit. Borlú is a product of his culture, and sometimes an agent within it, and it is Miéville's deep understanding of how culture and people influence one another that gives life to Besźel and draws us through its streets and into its secrets along with Borlú.

There are two cities in The City & The City; one in which Borlú lives and another in which he does not. They are layered atop one another, yet separated by legal, social, and fantastical means, if not always physical. The cultures of both cities are complex, historied, and evolving, and the rich detail of characters and setting is what make's Miéville worth reading. 'Worldbuilding' feels like a cheap term to apply to what Miéville has done, but that's what makes the book work. His world is real, and lived in, and we are only visitors. It contains the essence of verisimilitude.

This is an excellent book; and compelling because of it's mystery. I don't have much more to say, partially because I am out of practice writing, partially because I am not giving myself much time to write this post, but I wholeheartedly recommend The City & The City. It is a good novel, a neat mystery, and a visionary fantasy.

The City & The City is available wherever books are sold.

Book Review: ARGENT

It's good!

Argent is the debut novel by Siwon Kim; and I am excited to talk about this one as I was friends with the author during college. Thankfully, I don't have to exaggerate any for them; this is a good book! There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it was an absolute joy to read and I am looking forward to what other stories this author chooses to tell in the future.

 

Argent is an urban fantasy story about Carol, a grey-skinned, sharp-toothed 'argent' living secretly amongst humans, and how her life changes as she goes off to college and meets a new friend named Lily. The story is fairly plot-light, but what draws the audience in is some fantastic character building and excellent pacing. The two central characters, Carol and Lily, have good chemistry and vibrant personalities. Their burgeoning friendship and the ways in which they navigate the world make them endearing, compelling, and just downright cute. The plot is a bare-bones mystery, but it could almost have been about nothing and I still would have found these characters delightful, so clearly are they realized in the writing.

The best comparison I can make is that the writing between Carol and Lily feels at the same level as that between characters in Deltarune or Undertale (though the Deltarune influences are strongest). It's all the small details of personality and friendship that Kim brings to life in both dialogue and narration. The exchanges between Carol and Lily feel genuine; sometimes awkward, sometimes blunt, and each always has a distinct voice. Even in text exchanges their voices shine through; Lily's penchant for using expressive emotes ( \(-.-)/ ; (~‾▿‾)~; etc.) is a fantastic use of the medium-with-medium and modern text vernacular that I haven't really seen much of (though I also haven't been reading many modern novels lately). It conveys emotion efficiently and authentically, and builds upon her characterization.

The tone of the novel is fairly light, and it has a great sense of pacing for comedic beats. It also keeps a good pace in its plot reveals and story beats; there is not much complexity in this mystery, and the book feels no need to drag out its revelations after they become obvious. This keeps the story engaging along with the characters.

However, outside of the dynamic between Carol and Lily (which is most of the book), few other characters have substantial personality or purpose in the book. Carol's father and a second friend named Charles are the 'secondary' characters, but are several under-developed compared to the two stars. Charles is a frat bro used for a few comedic cameos, and Carol's father simply doesn't seem as developed as he should be for the dramatic moments he gets with Carol. This is partially due to some clunky exposition at the start of the book, and what I would call 'basic' book-ending at the end. It reads more like checking a box or as prompts to get to later chapters, and less like the genuine results of characters interacting in that situation. It's just not as strong as the Carol/Lily dynamic. 

There are a few technical oddities as well; for example there are some unusual perspective shifts away from Carol then back despite the narration ostensibly always being from her perspective; a few sentences of clunky exposition, as I mentioned, and what appears to be a missed edit on page 142. The narration reads as if Carol and Lily get on a motorcycle and head to Carol's house twice in a row, both before and after the page-break. But these are the minutia of writing.

Overall, I loved this book and these two dumb lesbians. I was smiling throughout my reading, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants some thing short and sweet. A wonderful debut; definitely worth your time.

 Argent is available through Amazon

Book Review: Dracula, by Bram Stoker

Today we have a classic: Dracula, by Bram Stoker, and I'm please to say it still holds up!

We are all, I'm sure, at least passingly familiar with the concept of vampires, as well as Dracula himself. The monsters have existed across cultures long before Dracula was penned, but it is this book's incarnation that lead to our modern conception of them as sophisticated, elite, and sexy.

The story is told through 'found' sources; that is journal entries and newspaper excerpts that have been transcribed, in-universe, by characters within the story. Not only does this allow for easy switching between multiple perspectives, but it gives an air of 'authenticity' to the fiction, much ;ike the aesthetic of 'found footage' films. Both use their framing devices to ask the audience to play along; to pretend, for a moment, that they have stumbled upon this story in reality. Of course, a willing suspension of disbelief is easier when the story itself is compelling, and Dracula is excellent at building tension and characters.

The story itself is divided into three arcs. We start first with the journal of Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor traveling to Transylvania to aid one Count Dracula in purchasing property in England. He stays with the Count and realizes, slowly, that he is trapped with a monster. After growing increasingly desperate and fearing for his life, he tries to escape by scaling down the castle walls to the chamber where Dracula sleeps, and we leave him shortly thereafter, his fate unclear. We then cut to England, and learn about Jonathan's wife-to-be Mina, and her close friend Lucy. This second arc follows Lucy as she deals with personal drama involving a trio of suitors, and then her death at the hands of Count Dracula, who arrives shortly after the perspective shift. It is during the Count's slow predation of Lucy that one doctor Van Helsing arrives, and though he fails to save Lucy, he realizes what is occurring and begins to make a plan to track down and destroy the Count. The third arc centers around the group of Mina Harker, her now husband Jonathan, Van Helsing, and Lucy's former suitors all racing against the clock to hunt down Dracula and destroy him before he can retreat to the safety of Transylvania.

Jonathan Harker, though he doesn't do all that much after returning to England, does an effective job of setting the tone for the rest of the book. We barely see the Count after he reaches England, but through Jonathan's experience we see enough to understand how much of a threat he poses to Lucy and the others back in England. I would say this early portion is the only part of the book that is solidly 'horror' in tone. Jonathan is one man being held hostage by an increasingly inhuman host, and it ends with him going mad from fear.

The tension from Lucy's part of the story derives more from the human drama of her situation, rather than the immediate mortal peril. As Lucy has her blood drained and is turned into a vampire over the course of weeks, we see how it affects both her and those she loves. She has three suitors, and though she chooses only one man to be her husband the story does not use this as a set up for petty revenge of jealously. Instead the three men unite, and repeatedly work together with Van Helsing to try and save her. There is almost a sort of polyamory on display; each man, in turn, gives their blood to Lucy in a transfusion to keep her alive, and each expresses that they are willing to give their life for her, if they could. The novel even points this out when Lucy's would-be husband, Arthur, links the giving of his blood to being "his wife in the sight of God," and the Van Helsing informs him that they have all given blood. The dynamic is refreshing; it would have been all too easy to have the three suitors becomes jealous or work against each other, but instead they each recognize Lucy's desires, accept her decision, and are able to stay friends with her and each other.

In this second portion Dracula is portrayed as a force of nature: he arrives in an unnatural fog, appears only in the forms of a bat and a dog, and then plagues Lucy like an unseen disease until her strength finally fails. This analogy makes Lucy's portrayal much more... interesting, I guess is a good word, because she as a character has very little agency and does little beyond exist to be Dracula's victim. Van Helsing is the only one with a clue as to why she is wasting away, but he repeatedly decides not to share the information with anyone. He insists the women (such as Mina, Lucy's mother, and the maids in their house) not be told about what he is doing or why (such as lining Lucy's room with garlic); and each time he does so someone inadvertently removes or undoes the protections he has put in place. It is frankly comical the extant to which the men's obsession with chivalry kneecaps their efforts to protect their woman, and I believe that irony is intentional, given how Mina is portrayed.

By the time Lucy dies, Jonathan Harker has returned to England and married Mina. He is in denial about his experiences, but after Mina reviews his journal she realizes that they are linked to what happened to Lucy. She expresses this to Van Helsing, and he realizes it is beneficial to let Mina into his confidences; indeed that he must share all he knows with everyone involved. Although Mina is the next to fall victim to Dracula she does not sit idly by and waste away as Lucy did. Each time the men are at an impasse, or Dracula seems to have given them the slip, she is the one to deduce where he must be or to come up with some idea that lets them continue on.

When the men find Dracula attacking her, the scene reads as them walking in on an assault. Though she does declare herself "Unclean!" there is no other language or sentiment of victim blaming; if we read it as an assault allegory, it is relatively empowering, as it does not relegate Mina to being only a victim. After Mina recovers from the shock she is able to use her link to Dracula to help track him down and, as I said, makes critical deductions that allow their group to track him down. As the men rush across Europe to reach Transylvania before the Count, Mina is with them, and even ventures with Van Helsing toward the Count's castle. Although she does not strike the killing blow, Mina is an agent in her own salvation. I would hardly call it 'progressive,' but it is without a doubt a refreshing portrayal of a female character that actively tries to empower her even as she is subsumed by a culture that wants to leave her behind and let the men handle things.

The book is far from perfect, of course. Many things have aged poorly, such as how it portrays anyone of 'lower' class with accents that imply they are illiterate or incapable of speaking 'proper' English (interestingly, Mina points out how their pursuit of the Count is only possible because of their status: "It made me think of the wonderful power of money!"); there are many stereotypes portrayed whenever we are in non-English lands; and although Mina specifically is well-written, the lack of agency given to most of the other woman who appear is grating, even though the novel seems to be somewhat aware that Helsing's chivalrous misogyny helped Lucy die in the first place. However, this may be a case where it is hard to tell irony from a genuine depiction of regressive ideas.

As far as classic go, Dracula has so far stood the test of time and is interesting in its own right; definitely worth a read. It is also worth mentioning that much of the mythological details from Dracula have not, in fact, been adopted by popular culture. So even if you are familiar with modern depictions, I am sure the book will read as its own interesting take on the mythos.

Dracual can be found wherever books are sold.

"Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot?"  -Van Helsing

Commentary: The Last of Us Part II

Although I haven't played the game (I watched someone's livestream), I wanted to share my thoughts on the story in The Last of Us Part II, as I loved the first game and I think the second has a lot going on worthy of analysis.

I think TLoU2 is a good game, but has many flaws and deeply unfitting ending. In fact, I think the ending is so bad it makes the entire game worse as a result, and I want to talk about why. These first few paragraphs will be mostly summary of both TLoU and TLoU2, so if you're familiar with both, you can skim a bit if you wish.


For those who don't know, The Last of Us is a video game, released in 2013, set in a post-apocalyptic world where a fungal infection has turned most of the population into mindless zombies (or 'infected' as the game calls them). As with all good zombie fiction, the story is not about the zombies, but how people react to them and each other. The player follows the journey of Joel Miller, a man who lost his teenage daughter on the even of the outbreak--not to infection, but to the bullets of a desperate and paranoid military. The first game picks up twenty years later, when Joel has become a brutal man and is a gang enforcer/muscle-for-hire type. It is then that he meets Ellie, a teenage girl who is revealed to be immune to the infection. Joel wants nothing to do with her at first, but after his partner dies in an effort to help Ellie he is convinced to look after her and escort her across the country to the Fireflies--a group who claims they will be able to use Ellie to generate a vaccine for the infection.

Review Roundup (I'm back!)

Hello! It's been a while since I've posted, and there's been a lot of reasons. Mostly I fell out of the habit of writing up the books I've read because I got busy in my work and personal life, and since then it's been hard to get back into it. But recently, with the pandemic and all, I have more free time and also am in a good state of mind for once in a very long time. So I'm going to try to post more regularly here, and potentially expand what I write out.

So! To start things off: some short reviews of a selection of some of the books I've read over the past few months.

 To be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers


We'll start with the best of the batch. To be Taught if Fortunate is a sci-fi novella about four astronauts scouting four alien worlds for potential habitability. Each planet has a distinct environment, one nightmarish, one idyllic, and, the last, barren but hopeful. I loved this book. It's very character-focused, and the trials (or lack there of) they find on each planet gives us new insight into their relationships and how they function as a crew.

A lot of sci-fi tends to focus more on the technological requirements of space travel, but To be Taught if Able uses its premise to examine the social requirements, among other things. Our characters do not turn on each other, nor does their mission does not go astray because of human error. It is, ultimately, a very hopeful book, and one that focuses on the potential of human empathy. It is definitely worth a read.