Review: "Uprooted" by Naomi Novik

Cover Summary:

“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.

On the Goodreads page for this novel, I saw someone shouting in all caps about the implausibility of this story. The reviewer appeared to think that, as long as the wizard calling himself “the Dragon” doesn’t actually eat, rape, or torture the girls he takes, that makes everything all right and Agniezhka, his newest servant, should have nothing to worry about.

But I disagree. Being taken away from your home for ten years, forbidden all contact with your loved ones, living alone with a powerful, incomprehensible (and frankly quite rude) immortal, and gradually losing your identity so that you cannot connect with your family anymore when you do see them – that’s enough to frighten anyone. And it’s far from being the worst thing that happens to Agniezhka.

Still, the Dragon is not a villain. It’s more complicated than that. He is someone who’s been alone for so long, concentrating on nothing but his magic, that he’s almost forgotten how to deal with ordinary people. Especially an impulsive, messy young woman with power of her own, whom he’s duty-bound to train whether he wants to or not.

Also, Agniezhka is no traditional fairytale heroine. She may have the power to save the world, but she still can’t cook without getting dirty, and she drives the Dragon crazy with her slapdash approach to magic. (Think My Fair Lady meets The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.) Her peasant girl narration is pitch-perfect; by describing impossible things like magic in terms she can understand, she makes them almost real enough to believe in. For example, her only talent growing up was gathering useful things in the forest, so that’s the analogy she uses for learning a new spell – unlike the Dragon who, she says, always insists on using the road.

The arguments they have about each other’s working methods are some of my favorite scenes in the book. Their partnership challenges them both, intellectually as well as emotionally.

Another relationship I loved was Agniezhka’s with Kasia, the classic heroine everyone thought would be chosen instead. They should (and do) envy each other’s very different fates, but not for a moment do they let it ruin their friendship. Kasia, too, breaks free of the villagers’ (and the reader’s) expectations, becoming just as strong in her own way as Agniezhka in another.

Considering the title, it’s fitting that roots are so important to this story. Agniezhka’s strength comes from her heritage: her family, her best friend, and the land she lives on. The Dragon, a solitary man, has no roots. He spends his life holding back the forest because he is afraid it will overrun the world. He has a point – this is not a Disney forest – but the best way to handle these monsters is with compassion and an open mind.

By the way, this is one of only a few stories I’ve seen where reading aloud saves the world. I’m surprised there aren’t more.

Surely we bookworms must have known this all along. ;)

Review: Tin Star & Stone In The Sky

Cover Summary:

On their way to start a new life, Tula and her family travel on the Prairie Rose, a colony ship headed to a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station. 

When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind.

Warning: spoilers.

If you’re wondering what Firefly would be like with aliens, or Rogue One with a somewhat lower death toll, this duology is for you.

It subverts several important tropes that science fiction writers have come to rely on. Firstly, there is an interplanetary government, but humans are not the glue holding it together. They’re one unimportant species among many. The language spoken between different species, Universal Galactic, is clearly not English and Tula Bane has real trouble understanding it until someone equips her with translation technology.

Since humanity isn’t the standard, this leads to some wonderful world building on the author’s part, sometimes by what she doesn’t write, as much as what she does write. Casually referring to a character as a “biped” implies volumes about the different kinds of alien bodies on that space station (Stone, p. 29). When one of them stabs Tula with the sting in his tongue, she assumes it’s poison, but it turns out to be something quite different (Star, p. 33).

Secondly, the aliens are not stereotyped. Each species has its own distinct culture and biology, but the characters are still individuals: for example, the Hort are cunning, ruthless, and offended by the sound of human voices, but one of them becomes Tula’s mentor. The Loor are formal and hierarchical, but one of them bends the rules to help Tula while another of them is corrupted by power. Humans themselves are stereotyped by the other species as primitive nomads, but all Tula wants is a home of her own.

Speaking of stereotypes, I was a little disappointed that in Tin Star, the only female character besides Tula was a caricature straight out of the movie Mean Girls. Why do we still assume that women who wear lots of makeup and tight clothes are always selfish, promiscuous or both? However, the author fixed that issue quite thoroughly in Stone in the Sky. Hendala, Ednette, Elizabeth and Myfanwy are all strong, complex female characters, and even mean girl Els is shown in a different light.

Thirdly, Tula herself is not the average heroine. She’s strong and vulnerable in interesting ways. On the one hand, she’s a consummate survivor: beaten and left for dead, the only one of her species, with no money, no possessions, and a shaky grasp on the language, she still talks herself out of trouble. She has excellent social and business skills: she can mimic alien body language, keep track of a complicated network of trades, bend the truth, and even kiss someone she dislikes if it gives her an advantage.

But while she’s an expert at connecting to people on a surface level, deeper connections are a problem for her. When it comes to romance and friendship, she’s as confused as any other teenage girl; arguably more so, since she has no human mentor to ask for advice. Her strongest relationship is with her enemy, Brother Blue, and that trips her up as well; it takes her a long time to learn that hate should not be the reason you get up in the morning. These flaws make her more relatable, as well as driving the plot forward; most of her actions are fueled either by revenge or loneliness.

The only weak point in the series for me was Tula’s relationship with Tournour. All the hard work seems to be on his side: he saves her life many times, walks a delicate tightrope between loyalty to her and his duty as Chief Constable, watches her fall in love with another man, helps them be together, and makes considerable efforts to understand how her alien mind works. What does she do for him in return except cause trouble? That being said, I liked the subtle ways he finds to show her he’s on her side, even when he’s locking her in the brig or frisking her for weapons.

The two of them remind me of Constable Odo and Major Kira from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Although it’s the Andorians who have antennae …

Okay, someone stop me, before I start making Trek references all through the night.

Needless to say, Tin Star and Stone in the Sky are highly recommended for all science fiction fans.

Review: The Look of Love

Cover Summary:

Born during a Christmas blizzard, Jane Williams receives a rare gift: the ability to see true love. Jane has emerged from an ailing childhood a lonely, hopeless romantic when, on her twenty-ninth birthday, a mysterious greeting card arrives, specifying that Jane must identify the six types of love before the full moon following her thirtieth birthday, or face grave consequences. When Jane falls for a science writer who doesn’t believe in love, she fears that her fate is sealed. Inspired by the classic song, The Look of Love is utterly enchanting.

The explanation for Jane’s ability to see love, and the challenge she receives, may seem a bit arbitrary - why six types of love, and why the punishment if she fails? But it is this very rigid structure that allows the author to explore love in all its diverse and unpredictable beauty.

Jane finds six couples in her circle of friends, charting the course of their love stories in third person narration as well as her own in first person. Some of them surprised me with their endings, but yes, some of them are cliché. Not all of the couples are neatly paired off, either, at the end. I’ll let you guess which ones:

• ·      Flynn, Jane’s brother, is fascinated by a beautiful artist he never speaks to, and only sees through glass.
• ·      Lo, Jane’s co-worker, is an expert at casual dating. But when the best match she’s ever had turns out to be married, all her expertise may not keep her from getting hurt.
• ·      Elaine, married with children, is torn between her kind but predictable husband and the impulsive neighbour who wants to fly with her in a hot air balloon.
• ·      Mary, pregnant and divorced, is falling for the Italian contractor she hired to remodel her kitchen. But is it fair to ask him to take her on, with all the responsibilities involved?
• ·      Mel, a 73-year-old newsstand owner, was heartbroken for years when his wife died. Now he’s finally interested in someone new – an English aristocrat who wouldn’t look at him twice.
• ·      Josh and Katie are engaged and couldn’t be happier – until one of them disappears.

The story shines most during those scenes where Jane is going about her daily life, and her gift surprises her. For example, she looks at a handsome young man offering a diamond ring to his girlfriend, and the telltale haze in her vision isn’t there. She looks at a middle-aged woman nagging her husband not to eat cheese when he’s lactose intolerant, and their aura almost blinds her.

Jane’s own love story, unfortunately, is a weak point in the book. Cameron Collins, her love interest, is too arrogant for such a gentle, lonely woman. The first time they meet, being drunk at a New Year’s Eve party and upset by his cynicism, she tells him about her gift and how it proves the existence of love. He mocks her for it, then several days later, practically orders her to have dinner with him. Why she accepts is a mystery, unless it’s because he looks good in tweed.

He does turn out to have some human vulnerability later on, but she doesn’t know that in the beginning. As for the classic “third act misunderstanding” that almost drives them apart, I saw that coming a mile away.

Still, the two of them share some interesting, Star Trek-style debates about logic versus emotion.

“The brain isn’t made to sustain that feeling of intoxication,” he tells her (p. 77). “Even the greatest love stories turn to pots and pans.”

“But (…) there is still love in the pots and pans. Deep love,” she retorts several weeks later (p. 177).

Or, in the words of my mother, who has been happily married to my father for 27 years: “Love is what you get to keep when the romance is over.”

A rare sentiment, but true, and it sums up this book better than anything else I could write.

Review: A Desperate Fortune

Cover Summary:

For nearly 300 years, the mysterious journal of Jacobite exile Mary Dundas has lain unread — its secrets safe from prying eyes. Now, amateur codebreaker Sara Thomas has been hired by a once-famous historian to crack the journal's cipher. But when she arrives in Paris, Sara finds herself besieged by complications from all sides: the journal's reclusive owner, her charming Parisian neighbor, and Mary, whose journal doesn't hold the secrets Sara expects. 

It turns out that Mary Dundas wasn’t keeping a record of everyday life, but a first-hand account of her part in a dangerous intrigue. In the first wintry months of 1732, with a scandal gaining steam in London, driving many into bankruptcy and ruin, the man accused of being at its center is concealed among the Jacobites in Paris, with Mary posing as his sister to aid his disguise. 

When their location is betrayed, they’re forced to put a desperate plan in action, heading south along the road to Rome, protected by the enigmatic Highlander Hugh MacPherson.
As Mary's tale grows more and more dire, Sara, too, must carefully choose which turning to take... to find the road that will lead her safely home.

A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley satisfies in three genres at once.

As a historical novel, it is meticulously detailed without losing any of its suspense. Take this description of a rifle: “These do place a whirling action upon the bullet so it spins upon its axis in its flight … I have heard tell of these, but never seen one” (ch. 23, p. 45). If Samuel Pepys was ever involved in a political intrigue, isn’t this exactly what he’d sound like?

As a romance, the story might surprise readers who are not too familiar with the genre, and maybe even some who are. Sara Thomas’ romance in the modern sections is easy to predict (although no less charming), but the identity of Mary’s love interest is up in the air at least until halfway through the book. For a story about code breaking, it’s only fitting that the characters learn to look beneath each other’s surface for qualities that inspire love.

Finally, this is a story about autism. Sara, the code breaker who deciphers Mary’s diary, has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. 

Although there are a few heavy-handed moments – “I’d always been puzzled by books about people with Asperger’s that claimed we didn’t have empathy (…) My problem wasn’t that I didn’t understand their feelings, but that I didn’t have a clue of how to respond to them” (ch. 18, p. 12) – mostly, Sara’s condition is portrayed with both accuracy and compassion. 

She has her limits (crowds, strangers, jazz music, and even one minute’s lateness make her panic) but also her strengths (cracking her employer’s test cipher in 17 minutes; asking the blunt and necessary questions no one else dares to ask). 

She believes that she is “not capable” of a long-term relationship, but her love interest talks her out of that quite logically:

“I can’t change.”

“You don’t have to. Simple maths. You only have to change the value of one variable to affect the outcome of the whole equation.

“Are you saying you’re that one variable?”

“Well, of all the men who left you, were any of them me? (…) You never need to change.” (ch. 28 p. 32-33)

Not only autistic people need to hear that.

In short, for anyone who is looking for three great books to read, A Desperate Fortune is highly recommended.