Lately Read

[lunabee34]

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I had forgotten how gloriously sad this last book is. And how much of the mystery is actually laid bare. Vandermeer doesn't leave nearly as much as ambiguous as I thought; that may also be because my first read was so awestruck and frantic that I missed details.

Acceptance consists of interwoven narratives: Ghost Bird and Control, Grace, the director/psychologist, Saul the lighthouse keeper, the ur!biologist.

We finally learn that time moves differently inside Area X; the reason tech doesn't work and that everything corrodes so quickly is that time is moving many magnitudes of order more quickly inside Area X than in the real world. We also learn that Area X is probably not even on Earth anymore but instead an alien world who knows how far away.

We learn that the director grew up on the coastline of Area X, that she was close friends (or as close as a child and a grown man can be) with the lighthouse keeper. She went to stay with her dad the day before the event that caused Area X and that way just barely escaped being trapped inside the border; her mother was trapped and died there although the director is never able to discover what happened to her. She and Whitby made an unauthorized trip into Area X right before the 12th expedition that goes a long way toward explaining why Whitby has some several problems. LOL

We learn that whatever made Area X is some sort of alien tech that somehow got trapped in the glass the lighthouse beacon was made of; the S&SB release it and begin everything with Saul being pricked by the plant it creates. The S&SB was actually an arm of Central; Control's mother was part of making Area X happen. The Southern Reach is Central's answer to a problem it created.

Everything about Saul breaks my heart. He is a good man, and his last act is to drive as far away from everything as he can so that when he becomes what will be the Crawler, he doesn't hurt anyone. That's why the tunnel is so far from the lighthouse. I like the implication that nothing about the lighthouse is really important and that the reason everyone becomes so violent there is some sort of psychic imprint of Henry attacking Saul, that the expedition members just get caught up in reenacting that violence or are infected by it somehow.

I like that we don't know what happens to Control. He jumps into the white light and maybe he dies, maybe he doesn't. At least in that moment he truly does have control.

The ur!biologist turned into something monstrous, or at least monstrous to everyone except Ghost Bird, is really well done. She lives in Area X for 30 years, hurting herself constantly to stave off transformation and then finally giving in. Grace has been living in Area X for three years alone and has clearly also been hurting herself to remain herself; the implication is that the wound on her toe is self-inflicted.

I am haunted by the suggestion of other people managing to live in Area X for a long time, maybe the director's mom, maybe other people Saul interacts with at the bar. I wonder if Charlie made it out okay or if he got caught by the border; I imagine they didn't realize the sea border for far longer than the land border.

The final image of the novel, Grace and Ghost Bird walking past the Southern Reach, throwing rocks so that they can find where the new "border" might now lie--that will stay with me for a long time. Hell of a way to end a book.



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A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is fantastic. I am so excited to read the next three books in the series.

I love the world building here; the main protagonist starts out training to be a poet, someone who can work a kind of magic that harnesses and controls what you might call an elemental force. In this world, the sons of the highest kings must kill each other or be killed in battles for succession of the throne. One of the races of people has a kinesthetic overlay to their communication--gestures and poses and body stances that add extra layers of communication.

Every character in this book discovers that the world is not exactly as he or she believed; they have the foundations of the lives they've built for themselves shaken and they have to figure out not just how to live in the world now that they truly understand it but also how to live lives that are ethical and true to what they believe is right.

This book is tinged with melancholy. The language is beautiful and elegant. The plot is deeply interesting. One of my favorite characters is an elderly woman who is powerful and clever and takes shit from no one.

SPOILERS: part of the plot deals with terminating a pregnancy through magic without the mother's consent; y'all know how much child harm really disturbs me, and I think this book is well worth reading despite that plot point



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A Betrayal in Winter by Daniel Abraham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved this book just as much as the first.

A Betrayal in Winter follows Otah's family as the battle for succession begins now that his father's health is failing. I don't want to give away any of the plot as realizing who is plotting against Otah's brothers is one of the pleasures of reading the novel.

Court politics and intrigue, gender roles, the logistics of a city that must survive winters brutal and deadly, the reunion of Otah and Maati--every single bit of plot and character work and world building and setting makes me happy.

I think the themes of this novel are very similar to the first--people's understanding of the world around them changing and how they do or do not adapt to that change, the struggle to do what is right and moral, the power of love, second chances. At the end of the book, Otah's life circumstances are again drastically changed. I am really looking forward to seeing how he handles that change in the third novel.



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An Autumn War by Daniel Abraham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a heartbreaking book, I think as much for the way everyone in the book is trying to do the right thing and working so hard to get along with and help people they should naturally be at odds with (like Kiyan and Liat) as the loss the book contains. I am struck as I read by how much Kiyan and Liat like each other and admire each other despite everything or how much Sinja admires Balasar and would have liked to truly be his soldier in another life.

Galt wages war against the Khaiem after destroying all the existing andat. Otah becomes the reluctant emperor and manages to defeat the army before it can obliterate Machi, but the price is high, very high.

Otah never even wanted to be Khai, much less emperor. Cehmai loses Stone-Made-Soft. Maati and Liat and Otah lose their son. Maati loses something else precious, his sense of himself as a poet and a good man; at the end of the book, he and Cehmai are in exile, fleeing.

The very last andat that will be probably be made sterilizes all the Khaiem women and the Galt men, meaning that either the human race dies out or the two peoples learn to bury their enmity. I'm extremely curious to see how that plays out in the final book of the series.

This book is so sad but also so full of joy and friendship and love and characters respecting each other. I just can't recommend it highly enough.



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The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I almost gave this four stars because what happens to Maati makes me so sad, and then I decided that wasn't fair and changed it to five.

What a fabulous conclusion to an awesome series. This book takes us 15 years forward from the third. Kiyan has died in an unspecified way four years ago, and Otah writes letters to her and thinks through problems as if she's there to give him feedback. It is a genuinely moving and beautiful depiction of grief and life long love. I'm actually tearing up a little just now, typing this up.

Otah is brokering a treaty with Galt to have their daughters marry Khaiem sons which is logically the only way that either society can survive. He meets a great deal of resistance from both sides and in particular from his daughter Eiah who argues that this reduces all the women who are like her to just their wombs and means they are only considered useful for their utility as breeders. I think the narrative ultimately comes down on Otah's side; if they don't do this, all will die, but it also acknowledges that Eiah has a point that many of the women who have been sterilized have been robbed of something vital and precious (Idaan points out that some women, including herself, were ultimately glad not to be able to have children).

Meanwhile, Maati has become so angry and defeated; he's responsible for sterilizing the two nations (not solely, but largely), and rather than seeing Otah exiling him as a recognition that they're all to blame, he sees it as condemnation. And he's so mad at Otah and jealous; he imagines that Otah is all high and mighty and living it large and none of that is true. This part makes me so sad--not that Maati is reckless and desperate to right what he wronged, but that his feelings for Otah change and that he becomes so cynical and jaded.

The book spends a lot of time describing what a world with no children is like, how quiet, how teenagers have never even seen babies, how a lot of necessary labor goes undone and how people will have no one to care for them or help run farms or businesses as they age. It's a bleak prospect for the society.

Maati has gathered a group of women to study to be poets, Eiah among them. All of his students who try to bind an andat have died until one, Vanjit, is successful. Without going into detail, she uses her andat for revenge, blinding people who anger her and then all the people of Galt. Eiah manages to make a binding for an andat, fix what Vanjit broke, and then fix a little bit more of what's broken in the world before setting the andat free. Maati is astonished that she would just let it free (in the magic logic of this world, setting it free means it will be highly unlikely that it can be bound again), and that broke my heart again. There are signs all along, but this just confirms that what Maati has wanted all along is the power and the prestige and the position of poet (in contrast to Otah who never wants anything more in his life than to die with Kiyan in her inn and genuinely only takes up the mantle of power to prevent harm).

There's also some really cool stuff about how sexual mores change a bit when women know they can't get pregnant. Very strong female characters of variable types. Cool world building. A very satisfying end to Otah's story.



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Comments

[tamoline]

It's been interesting reading your thoughts on the Southern Reach trilogy, especially because I utterly suck at analysis.

If you're interested in reading another 'scientists investigate a weird place that doesn't conform to usual physical laws' I recently came across The Sick Land.

[lunabee34]

I'm glad you're enjoying my reviews. :)

Oooh, *goes to check out rec*. Thank you!