It is now almost the end of July, and I’ve only managed to check off two from that list.

But in my defense, the Harry Potter series is really freaking long…

This time, I stayed on this side of Diagon Alley and went in an entirely different direction—namely, beyond the atmosphere.

Here’s the Amazon blurb for the volume of collected novels of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read)
Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
The moment before annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.

Life, the Universe and Everything
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky– so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription thrusts him back to reality. So to speak.

Mostly Harmless
Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?

General Thoughts

Overall rating: Four-and-a-half stars. In my head, this series was five stars all the way through, but on this reading, I struggled a bit with book two, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It just felt more disjointed than the other three, though that’s saying a lot given that the plots of all four books are sort of loosely constructed and entirely dependent on coincidences.

I will note that I have not read Mostly Harmless. I’m not sure why—it came out in 1992, when I was still reading fairly voraciously, but somehow I just never got around to it. Maybe I was trying to slog through The Wheel of Time.

In any event, I only have the first four books of the series, and I don’t remember ever reading Mostly Harmless in the first place. But given the generally farcical nature of this series and the fact that it morphed from a trilogy into a pentalogy, I’m just going to offer something of a review anyway and pretend that in this timeline, the series ended with So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

These books are very easy to read—about 200 pages each with short chapters and engaging writing. Philosopher, Substacker, and YouTube personality Jared Henderson recently recommended The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as a good book to help start or restart a reading habit. I totally agree—these books are entertaining without being empty, and there are enduring jokes under all the silliness that bite at problems we humans always have.

The hardest part of these books is figuring out some of the crazy alien names, but that’s part of the fun, too. Douglas Adams was an absolute master of the English language, and the way he plays with words and phrases is delightful.

My general feelings toward this series remain warm, and I did find myself laughing out loud in many places along the way. I think So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish is the funniest of the four; I actually forced my poor husband to listen to me try to read aloud a few sections of that one, just because I needed to not be the only person in the house laughing aloud at the existential morosity of the 1980s Englishman.

However…

I found myself asking why I felt this books were so lifechanging when I read them all those years ago.

What, exactly, was I looking for when I read these books?

And what did they add to my life?

Representative Quotes

“This must be Thursday,” said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. “I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” — The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. — The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“It’s a strange thing,” said Arthur quietly, “that the farther and faster one travels across the Universe, the more one’s position in it seems to be largely immaterial, and one is filled with a profound, or rather emptied of a…” — Life, the Universe and Everything

“It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.” — So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Observations

On Language

It is impossible to discuss this series without talking about the way Adams wove words. I know I offered some quotes above, but those are representative of deeper themes. The really fun parts of the book are the places where Adams turned language on its head or wove sentences and paragraphs that went in directions one would never expect, yet made perfect sense and offered vivid setting, character, or narration.

Just consider:

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”

“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.

“For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question, ‘How can we eat?’, the second by the question, ‘Why do we eat?’ and the third by the question, ‘Where shall we have lunch?’”

“It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.”

“If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn’t exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar.

“He was tall and he gangled.”

These aren’t even the very best parts of the book. So many of the best quotes and one liners are actually part of longer sections that you have to read to get the joke.

But when the joke lands, it lands so perfectly and with such great timing that it’s almost impossible not to laugh.

Adams, as an Englishman, also captured that dry, self-effacing, morose and slightly embarrassed British wit. The part I read to The Man captures the morosity of sitting in a train station pub eating bland, greasy, stale food as a way to pay for the sins of the British people in such a way that one almost wishes to be British, just to lay claim to the experience.

I don’t think of myself as a funny writer at all. I think I occasionally stumble onto a witty phrase or a bit of dialogue that might make someone snort or chuckle, but those are rare and usually accidental. Adams’s writing comes across as intentionally funny, and it’s obvious that he actually worked at making them witty.

Which is probably why these books have become a bit of a cultural touchstone…

YouTube Mixologists and Supreme Court Justices

If there’s one thing that the Internet has done for us that I am entirely onboard with, it’s giving geeks permission to come out of their hidey holes and proclaim their fandoms.

The Douglas Adams/Arthur Dent/Ford Prefect fandom is quite large, as it turns out.

Consider:

• A whole lot of people share “Don’t Panic!” memes on May 25, Towel Day, in honor of Mr. Adams’s birthday. If you’re really in the know, you might even mention that real hoopy froods know where their towels are at all times.

• The number 42 has taken on almost mythic status. People are so familiar with 42 being “the answer to life, the universe and everything” that it’s even shown up in Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

• More than one YouTube mixologist has attempted to recreate the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the famous drink from the series. I have not tried any of the versions I linked, but if you do, let me know how they taste. You know, if you survive.

I’m sure there are a lot more examples that escape me at the moment, but you get the picture—these books are well-known and beloved across the galaxy (or at least across this tiny corner of it).

Which makes what I’m about to write kind of bittersweet…

The Dark Side

Here’s the biggest revelation I had on my re-read:

These books have quite a dark undertone.

It’s as if the depressed robot Marvin is the real voice of the story. Marvin is, by his own estimation, the smartest character in the books, but he’s also sort of doomed to an existence in which he can never be intellectually satisfied.

I think that maybe the first time I read these books, I felt a little bit like I fell into a world that, oddly, made more sense than the one I knew up to that point.

After slogging through boring high school and community college classes, the idea of being tortured with bad poetry sounded like something that could really happen.

With limited experience in the working world, I was still something of an outside observer, and I could see bureaucratic absurdities like those Adams painted so vividly.

And like Arthur Dent, I was always trying to make sense of a world that most decidedly did not make sense.

So maybe reading these books the first time wasn’t so much “life changing” as it was “life explaining.” There was something that felt so relatable about them all.

Now, 30-some years after that first reading, I’ve lost a lot of my idealism and figured out how to navigate this generally absurd world (mostly). I think maybe now, having actually experienced and observed so many scenarios that would completely fit into the Douglas Adams universe, the life-explaining angle is just…

Well, depressing.

But also?

Still relatable.

Because here’s the thing about Arthur: even after all he went through, he still managed to get back to Earth, meet a girl, travel again to space (this time by choice), and have something of a happy ending. His English “stiff upper lip” sort of nudged him into just getting on with it, like the entire country after the Blitz.

There is a sense of trudging through it all, but still thinking that, you know, it’s basically okay.

And this is another reason I’m choosing to end with So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish: after all is said and done, it basically ends on a satisfying note. Douglas Adams said he felt like Mostly Harmless “was a rather bleak book,” and honestly, I don’t need any extra “bleakness” in my life.

Would I Recommend?

Absolutely. These books worth reading for the language, wit, and biting social commentary. Just maybe don’t take the dark undertone too seriously… Or maybe just consider it gallows humor, which is a good and healthy thing.

Will I Read More of This Author?

I don’t know. I have read the two Dirk Gently books (they’re around here somewhere, probably in that missing box of books). I don’t know if I’ll look for his short stories, but if I stumble onto them, I might pick them up. And as I said above, I don’t feel compelled to read Mostly Harmless.

What’s Next on My List?

I’m not sure. We are going to be traveling for a bit, and I decided to just take my Kindle instead of hauling books around, so I may try to plow through some of my Ray Bradbury short stories that are on there. Or I may download something new. I haven’t decided.

But when I figure it out, y’all will be the first to know.

In the meantime, check where your towel is, and most of all, don’t panic.

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And what might you lose in the process?

Those, in a nutshell, are the big questions at the foundation of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V. E. Schwab. It’s interesting to me that this book is sort of the opposite of the subject of my previous review. Where Water Moon looks at choices and regrets, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue looks at life through a different lens—a lens that examines identity and purpose and what it means to leave a mark on the world.

Here’s the Amazon blurb:

A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

General Thoughts

Overall rating: Four stars. It dragged in places for me, but Schwab is a very good writer, and the themes and images have hung with me, which says a lot about the overall story.

The story does jump around in time quite a bit, but it’s easy to follow. Schwab starts every chapter with the date and place, which definitely helps ground the reader and is helpful when we skip back into the past. Spanning 300 years, multiple cities, and a few continents isn’t easy, but Schwab manages the various settings quite well. It’s as easy to picture rural 18th Century France as it is to picture modern-day New York City with its smartphones and ubiquitous coffee shops.

There are also two point-of-view characters, but it’s not hard to keep track of who’s talking. And this book employs an omniscient narrator with a close POV, which both helps manage the perspectives and gives a sense that maybe the “old gods” are participating in telling the story.

More on that in a minute.

Schwab is very good at drawing well-rounded characters. Even many of the minor characters jump off the page in vivid color. And as I noted in my review of Fourth Wing, the various identities of the characters don’t feel pasted on; they feel like a natural outgrowth of both the characters themselves and Schwab’s authentic worldview. Where it feels like Rebecca Yarros is checking boxes, one gets the sense that Schwab is writing authentically from the world as she sees it. You can’t fake authenticity.

Representative Quotes

“And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” — Estele Margritte, wise old lady in the village of Addie’s birth

“What she needs are stories. Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.” — Addie’s thoughts about what she can live with and without

“I remember you.” — Henry’s dedication in the book he writes about Addie

Observations

The Old Gods and Faustian Bargains

Anyone who’s read my stories has probably figured out long ago that I am quite fascinated with various kinds of “old magic.” Call it myth, legend, paganism, whatever you want—I think the old beliefs and systems we human beings embraced explain a lot about human nature and how we process the world around us.

In The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Addie starts out as a young girl in rural 18th Century France. She’s an only child; her father is an artist and craftsman, and her mother is a very traditional wife who seems very frustrated with Addie’s refusal to follow in her footsteps. On the eve of her wedding to a widower who already has children, Addie runs into the forest in desperation, begging any “god” that will listen to please save her from this unwanted future.

There she encounters an “old god” who is willing to bargain with her. After some back and forth, she finally offers him what he wants: her life, her soul, when she is done with them. “You can have my soul when I don’t want it anymore,” she says.

And this devil, old god, forest spirit—eventually we come to know him as Luc (hm, Lucifer?)—agrees.

Addie is only a teenager when she makes this bargain, and I think all of us can understand this teenage way of thinking. She wants to get out of her little village and see Paris. She wants to live life on her own terms, defined by herself, unconstrained by obligation to others. She can’t wrap her head around a limited life—limited by place, family, years, or anything else. All she can see is that possibility will be taken from her by a marriage she doesn’t want.

But what Luc gives her is immortality with a twist: she can have all the freedom she wants for as long as she wants it, but no one will remember her.

Of course, Addie doesn’t know the full price at first, and the immediate aftermath of this bargain feels very much like the George Bailey experience of a world that never knew his name. We feel as desperate, lonely, and panic-stricken as Addie does as she tries to grasp the full weight of her bargain.

This is a Faustian deal at it’s best and worst, I think. We often don’t think much about our souls; we think only about what we want in the moment, as Addie did. But Luc wanted her soul badly enough that he designed a bargain that he hoped would drive her to declare herself finished so that he could collect what he wanted.

The problem for Luc was that he didn’t count on the resolve and determination of a teenage girl.

Identity and Purpose

I think one problem with identity as we understand it in 2025 is that it’s too small—that is, we’ve reduced identity to a collection of things about us. We can see this in the language we use when we meet people (“What do you do?”) or the way we talk about ourselves (“I’m a mom, a writer, a Christian, a woman”).

Even when we get into things like identifiers about race, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, and the like, those are descriptive and only partially prescriptive. Yes, the fact that I am an adult human female certainly has a huge impact on how I think, feel, and function in the world, but it isn’t the only important thing about me.

In other words, the fullness of my identity is more than just a collection of random identifiers.

This is where purpose enters the picture, I think. As Simon Sinek suggests, we all need a “Why.” Some or all of our identifiers might come together to produce that “why,” but I think purpose is more than the sum of its parts. It’s something bigger and more important than just any single identifier.

Addie LaRue has to find a purpose without the benefit of most identifiers. Aside from a unique pattern of freckles and a generally pleasing physical appearance of an ageless young woman, every identifying feature was taken from her in her bargain. Any literal mark she makes on the world disappears or melts away. People who meet her forget about her the moment they break eye contact. She can’t even say her own name, so she’s forced to make up names.

But Addie is unwilling to simply relinquish her soul. There’s too much of the world to discover. She reads voraciously and learns multiple languages. She travels across countries and continents just for the experiences. She even acts as part of the French Resistance in World War II.

Of course, none of those activities can leave a mark on the world, and Addie wants to leave a mark.

So Addie becomes a Muse.

Over the course of centuries, Addie “discovers” dozens of artists and helps birth their best works into existence. She sits for portraits that her face will never appear in. She is the subject of songs that composers don’t remember meeting. She inspires political writings that fuel revolutionary thinking.

None of these creators remember her specifically, but Addie remembers them. And she learns to be content with breathing life into works of art.

Until she meets Henry.

When the Bargain Goes the Other Way…

Henry, a bookstore employee in modern New York City, has always longed for significance. Overshadowed by his siblings, dumped by his fiancé, and uninspired to finish his education, he makes a bargain that promises significance in exchange for his soul. Everywhere he goes, people notice him. They talk to him about everything. Both men and women throw themselves at him in sometimes disconcerting ways.

Of course, Henry and Addie meet, and as it turns out, Henry can say Addie’s name. He can remember her. And Addie sees Henry for what he really is—a kind, gentle, artistic soul.

It takes a while for Addie to figure out why Henry can remember her and what the price of his bargain is, but when she does, she realizes her biggest purpose is to save Henry from the consequences of his deal. To do that means giving up her own soul—but not quite the way Luc may have intended originally.

Henry and Addie’s love affair is intense and poignant. We read it knowing that it can’t last—that Luc is hovering, ready to interfere.

But we also know that Addie has hope for the first time in 300 years, and we know that Henry finally feels like his life is important.

And in that way, it’s fair to ask—does Luc know what he’s doing after all?

I think this book ultimately asks the question “what do you have if you don’t have a purpose?” Addie’s path to a purpose took 300 years. Henry’s takes a year. Both of them needed to know their souls were at risk.

And in a sense, all of our souls are “at risk” without purpose.

Would I Recommend?

Yes, with a few content warnings. This book does contain a wide variety of sexual identities and scenes, some drug use with overtones of self-harm, and some fairly dark scenes around Henry’s depression. There are also times where Addie engages in prostitution at questionable levels of consent.

Will I Read More of This Author?

Maybe. If I see anything from Schwab at a used bookstore or in the library, I’ll definitely consider them.

What’s Next on My List?

I am now on Life, the Universe and Everything, book three of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, so I’m on track to hand y’all a summary of that re-read in two weeks.

I know you’re all just waiting with bated breath.

I will give you this teaser: sometimes a re-read makes you question why you thought what you thought the first time around.

Until next time…

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That’s the intriguing question posed in Water Moon, by Samantha Sotto Yambao. The story chronicles the quest of young Hana Ishikawa, the inheritor of a mysterious pawnshop where customers trade the choices that led to regrets for boxes of special tea.

Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn’t it?

But what do you give up when you leave your choices behind?

This book is a fascinating exploration of fate, choice, memory, and regret through the setting of an alternate world where everything is symbolic. I found it very tough to put down; it balanced beautiful writing, philosophical musing, and plain old fantasy adventure in a way that kept me turning pages.

Here’s the Amazon blurb:

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.

General Thoughts

Overall rating: Five stars. This book doesn’t exactly grab you so much as lure you in with its language, imagery, and questions. It’s like falling into a poem.

Yambao’s writing is approachably lyric. Each sentence, paragraph, page, chapter feels carefully constructed for maximum cadence and impact. It feels like she painted the words onto the page.

Anyone who has followed me very long knows that I absolutely adore Kazuo Ishiguro. I’ve also read a little bit of Japanese literature besides Ishiguro. Samantha Sotto Yambao’s website says she is “based in the Philippines,” so I don’t know if you could consider her work as belonging to any particular nationality, but it did remind me a lot of Ishiguro’s work, especially An Artist of the Floating World and The Buried Giant.

The plot is interesting and unique and unfolds a little bit at a time over the course of the book. It’s a bit episodic in that much of Hana’s adventure with her new friend, Keishin (Kei for short), jumps around from setting to setting. However, I didn’t find that troublesome—it just contributed to the sensation of being in an anime dreamworld.

A note on the anime aspect: I have no real experience with anime, but this book is exactly what I imagine anime is like. In fact, the book mentions My Friend Totoro a few times, and reviews and blurbs mention Studio Ghibli. I think fans of anime would very much enjoy this book.

Representative Quotes

“Broken things have a unique kind of beauty, don’t you think?” — Hana’s father Toshio to a client of the pawnshop

“Because if we don’t hit walls, we can’t break through them.” — Keishin to Hana when she says they’ve reached a dead end

“There is something about autumn that makes things more beautiful. Out of all the seasons, it is the most honest about time. Summer and spring blind you to its passing with their colorful displays. Winter paints over everything in white. But autumn is not shy about things coming to an end. It welcomes it, waving leafy flags of red, yellow, and gold. It celebrates its sadness.” — Hana to Keishin

Observations

Parallel Universes

I’ve always been captivated by stories that take place in a world just beyond our own. I think it’s partly that my worldview demands a willingness to accept that there are forces and powers beyond the material that influence what happens in this world.

But I think there are people who believe what I believe and aren’t drawn into those stories like I am. I love the idea that there are doors, veils, passageways, and other entrances to something just beyond—worlds that operate by their own rules and in their own times and may or may not cross into or influence ours.

Water Moon is one of those stories. Toshio and Hana’s pawnshop is a gateway into a dreamworld where human-ish beings deal with choice, regret, and all the things surrounding those. Everything Hana leads Kei through has a poetic explanation or explains something about the “real” world—a pearl that contains a memory, a bridge of dreams that crosses to morning.

Or a pawn broker who can take your regrets and allow you to walk away lighter.

Memory and Regret

The premise of this book is both thought-provoking and chilling. Toshio trades his special blend of tea for items that are symbolic of choices his clients made that led to deep regret. For Izumi, the first client in the book and the last client Toshio serves before he disappears, the choice is represented by the bus fare it would have taken her to get from her childhood home to the ramen restaurant she intended to visit.

The idea that by trading our choices we can relieve ourselves of regret is a tempting one. How many of us wouldn’t love to go back in time and make different decisions to avoid the regrets we live with today? How many of us can identify forks in the road where simply taking the other path would have, we believe, led us to a better outcome?

But this kind of thinking traps us in the past—keeps us inside our brokenness and prevents us from integrating our mistakes into who we are in the present.

The idea of beauty in brokenness is spelled out in Toshio and Izumi’s conversation in the very beginning of the book:

Izumi traced the bowl’s delicate gold joinery with the tip of a perfectly manicured finger. “Some things wear their damage better than others,” she said softly, so softly it was as if she were worried that her voice might shatter the bowl.

“I have found beauty in all manner of broken things. Chairs. Buildings. People.”

Izumi looked up from her tea. “People?”

“Especially people. They shatter in the most fascinating ways. Every dent, scratch, and crack tells a story. Invisible scars hide the deepest wounds and are the most interesting.”

Toshio promises that those who take his bargain can walk away lighter—unburdened by the regrets from past choices. He says that no one has ever returned to the shop to give back his tea and reclaim a choice.

This leads one to consider—what are you without that choice?

A Quest… With a Twist…

In many ways, this book follows a fairly standard quest motif with shades of the Hero’s Journey. Hana discovers that her father is missing, and as she starts her search, a stranger shows up to accompany her. She’s reluctant, but Keishin is insistent, so she lets him join her. Together, they leapfrog through a wide array of settings, seeking clues and information that will help Hana find her father.

The twist?

The entire quest is basically psychological.

Every setting has something of a psychic parallel. In traveling through this parallel world with Hana and Kei, we are traveling through our own psyches, facing our own choices and regrets and attempting to reconcile who we are now with who we wanted to be or wished we could be.

A while back, I wrote about art, craft, and work, and I suggested that we all, ultimately, are trying to put the world back together through our various endeavors. We all seem to understand that the world is broken, and I think when most of us look at ourselves honestly, we see that we are part of that brokenness. We look at our past choices and think “if only” and assume that choosing differently would result in a different outcome.

What we don’t like to acknowledge is that the different outcome might have been just as bad or worse, or that the choices we did make ultimately led to something good, or even that a lot of choices were pretty good, but still didn’t turn out exactly the way we dreamed at the time.

Annie Duke calls this “resulting”—that is, we judge a decision based on its outcomes. The outcome of a decision doesn’t indicate the quality of the decision or the thought process that went into it; it’s a retroactive application based on how we judge the choice from where we stand now.

Or, in other words, the predicate for regret.

The truth is that we can only choose based on the information we have at any given moment. We can improve our decision-making capabilities. We can put careful thought into choices. We can ask others for advice and guidance. We can pray or seek divine wisdom. But ultimately, as temporal creatures, we only have what we have.

That’s what Hana discovers during her quest. She makes decisions and choices based on the information she has, the clues she uncovers, and the help and guidance that Keishin provides.

And while the end of her story isn’t exactly what I expected, I think, ultimately, she is able to move on without regret—and without giving up any of the choices she makes along the way.

Would I Recommend?

Yes, especially to fans of anime or Japanese literature.

Will I Read More of This Author?

I might. I’m intrigued by A Dream of Trees.

What’s Next on My List?

I am currently re-reading the first four books of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, but it’s taking me a while because I reserved about seven or eight non-fiction e-books at the library, and they keep coming available… I’ve already postponed delivery of a couple, but there were also a couple that I was really, really anxious to read, so… yeah, I’m jumping around a lot.

As to why I’m only reading the first four books of Douglas Adams’s series?

They’re the only ones I own.

I don’t remember reading the fifth one, Mostly Harmless, and I know I didn’t read the posthumously published And Another Thing, which was actually written by Eoin Colfer. I doubt I’ll pick those up, because honestly, I sort of liked where So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish ended. Given the overall farcical nature of that entire series, I feel like Adams might approve of my decision.

I’ll be back to review those books again when I’ve finished my re-read, but before that, I think I’ll review The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V. E. Schwab. I read it a few months ago and decided not to review it, but some of the ideas have just kind of lingered. I think a book that hangs on like that deserves a review.

So expect that review in two weeks, and then I’ll revisit the whole farce that involves Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and the number 42.

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I did not intend to leave such a huge gap between my last book review and this one. Even though I hoped to do a thorough edit of Soultainted in May, I still had every intention of posting a review on this book and maybe even one or two more over the last several weeks.

Alas, life.

But here it is June, and I’m picking myself up and dusting myself off and charging back into the fray.

Or at least the Internet.

Anyway… onward.

A few months ago, I was buying used books in Coeur d’Alene, and the delightful owner of Bookishly Happy recommended The Will of the Many.1 I had mentioned to her my general “meh-ness” toward young adult books and a lot of modern fantasy, and she said this book was an exception.

I am so glad I listened to her.

Here’s the Amazon blurb for The Will of the Many:

At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic - the Hierarchy - may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus - what they call Will - to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy's ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.

General Thoughts

Overall rating: Five stars, hands down. There were days when I could hardly put this book down. It hooked me from the first chapter. This is the kind of book that would have had me running into poles when I was younger.

It has great character development, excellent setting, and a tight plot with tons of twists, turns, and surprises. Even the first-person narrative didn’t bother me—it’s that good.

This book is long—very long. My hardcover version is 690 pages, and the Internet informs me that the story is about 242,000 words. For comparison, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is about 257,000 words.

But here’s the thing—this book does not drag. I never found myself wondering if Islington would just get to the point already. Even during stretches where not much happens, the writing itself is taut and interesting, full of details that round out the world rather than drag it down or bore the reader.

I think it’s also worth pointing out that this book is an excellent example of an adult book that doesn’t include a ton of stuff parents wouldn’t want their teenagers to read. I suppose one could call it young adult—certainly the first person narrative, the setting, the fact that the main character is an older teen put it in that category—but it also didn’t feel young adult to me.

Let’s get to the good stuff.

Representative Quotes

“You fight the tyranny of the many, or you are one of them…. Silence is a statement, Diago. Inaction picks a side. And when those lead to personal benefit, they are complicity.” — Melior, a rebel terrorist, in the midst of mass murder, right before he kills himself

“‘That’s the problem with people, though, isn’t it? They always think that other people are the problem.’ Quiet. Angry. ‘You want to remove the Princeps? The senators? You’ll just become them, sooner or later. If all you’re trying to do is change who’s in control, then you don’t really want to change anything.’” — Vis to one of the rebel leaders

“They ask something small of you. A thing you would prefer not to do, but is not so terrible. You think you are working your way up, but in fact they are changing you. Moulding you into what they think you should be, one compromise at a time…. In this place… each man has to find his line. Has to find it ahead of time, and be resolved never to cross it.” — Eidhin, one of the other students at the Catenan Academy and a child of a one of the conquered peoples

Observations

How Often Do You Think About the Roman Empire?

Remember a while back how the Internet claimed that men think about the Roman Empire several times per day? It turns out that most men don’t think about the Roman Empire that much, but they do think about it—and about general historical topics—more than women.2

I’m pretty sure James Islington is one of those guys upping the averages.

This book does not even attempt to disguise the fact that it’s a new take on the Roman Empire. Let’s just say that if you ever learned a bit of Latin or at least have familiarity with one of the Romance languages, you’ll be able to very quickly pick up the pronunciation of names and places in the book. The social structure is very familiar, as is the general attitude among the elite toward conquering people and territory.

And then… Islington added magic.

Or maybe technology.

It’s hard to say. The ceding of one’s Will seems more like magic, but there is some kind of ancient technology at the root of it all. The people travel by carriage, but also by large transports that sound like airplanes or even space shuttles.

This unique blend of fantasy and in-world science fiction gives the book a fresh feel. The “swords, togas, and sandals” feel of the book grounds us in the familiar, which allows us to investigate the mysteries presented by the technology.

A brief word for how this compares to Red Rising, another clear interpretation of the Roman Empire: The Will of the Many is much better. The writing is better, the book is not as dark, and the POV and tense won’t make people with my peculiar first-person-present-tense aversion start twitching.

Old Trope, Fresh Take

As I mentioned in my review of Fourth Wing, I don’t mind when people offer a fresh take on an old trope as long as it’s well-executed. The Will of the Many is an excellent example of this principle.

When the used bookstore owner mentioned to me that this book is set in a school, I’m sure I must have rolled my eyes. I can hear all of you thinking, “another one?”

But the Catenan Academy brings a fresh take to this familiar trope. For one thing, students in this academy have to advance up progressively smaller levels. The number of students at each level reflects a pyramid, similar to the entire social structure; most students are in Class Seven, then 48 in Class Six, and then the numbers halve up to Class Three. The six students in Class Three compete at the end of each year for final rankings.

There is a sort of “Survivor” aspect to the school in that moving up a level requires someone either being eliminated or moving down, but it’s not reliant on the death of a student. There are times when students trade places based on competition or poor performance (and sometimes for other reasons), but there’s no requirement that someone die. These are the children of the elite, after all. The idea is to put them into positions of power once they graduate.

That’s not to say there is no death in this book—there is, in fact, a lot of death—but it’s not gratuitous in the fashion it was in Fourth Wing. The deaths in this book make sense.

Asking Hard Questions…

Another thing I really like about this book—it’s tough to pin down Islington’s political and social leanings.

The characters in this book represent recognizable people groups of the ancient world. Vis’s real name is Diago, and his original country seems a lot like Spain. Eidhin is very clearly from a Germanic or Celtic people group. And of course, the elite main characters and students are all very Roman.

It would be easy to turn this book into a polemic against imperialism. Islington could have turned it into a book preaching against the lingering evils of various powerful or imperial states. There is certainly a very strong theme of throwing of the shackles of an oppressive state.

But the thing is… You could overlay the Hierarchy in this book with any state you think is oppressive.

And through that lens, the book asks some serious—and sometimes unanswerable—questions.

When is terrorism justified?

What are you justified in doing when you have no legal recourse?

Is genuine meritocracy possible?

Islington doesn’t preach in one direction or another. He simply presents the world as it is with all of the moral, ethical, and political dilemmas each person has to face. Characters debate how best to achieve their own ends without the heavy hand of the author pounding anyone into a particular direction.

This book is an excellent example of how to present complex, real-world challenges in a way that doesn’t shy away from the advantages and disadvantages of various solutions. Islington just writes the story; he lets the reader decide the answers to those big questions.

Writers, you don’t have to preach your own points of view in a heavy-handed way. Just write the story and trust your readers to come to their own conclusions.

Would I Recommend?

Yes! I already have, several times.

Will I Read More of This Author?

Absolutely. I’ll be reading the sequel to this one as soon as it’s out, and I plan to pick up his other trilogy soon, too.

What’s Next on My List?

I am hoping to start doing a book review every two weeks on this tab, and my next one will be a belated review of Water Moon, by Samantha Sotto Yambao. I have a fair amount of fantasy and science fiction reads sitting around here, some old and some new, and I’ll be sharing those as I work through them.

As for another read-along? Well, I’m still thinking that through. There’s a lot going on through the summer and fall, so maybe that will be a late fall/winter kind of thing. Stay tuned.

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I read Fourth Wing.

And it did nothing for me.

(But I kind of liked the dragons.)

And if you only read that far, you know enough.

If you’re curious about all the rest of my feelings? Keep reading.

When I said I was going to write more book reviews, I also said I didn’t want to be a jerk. I still don’t want to be a jerk. I debated whether to even post my real thoughts about Fourth Wing. I did give it three stars (because dragons), but it’s really only a two-star book for me. I could have let sleeping dogs lie, but the thing is, fantasy is my genre. It’s a genre I care about deeply, and I’m super disappointed in the direction it’s going. So at the risk of sounding like a jerk, I’m sharing my whole opinion.

I doubt Rebecca Yarros’s royalties will suffer because of my review.

Here’s the Amazon blurb for Fourth Wing:

Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from #1 New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Yarros

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general―also known as her tough-as-talons mother―has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter―like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda―because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.

General Thoughts

Overall rating: Three stars, but only because of the dragons. If they hadn’t incinerated half the characters in this book, I would have given the book two stars. The dragons performed a public service.

In case you could not tell, I did not like this book.

The writing itself is turgid and overdone. There are way too many words for the story it’s trying to tell. Ironically, it’s not overwritten in a flowery or pretentious sense, really—it’s just A WHOLE LOT OF WORDS that don’t do their job.

It set my teeth on edge in the very beginning by offering first person present tense, which, as I may have mentioned, is my absolute least favorite form of POV. I instinctively don’t trust first-person narration, which probably says more about me than about the narrative form. As for present tense, I just don’t like it. I don’t like feeling like I have to watch everything that happens.

That said, I have read books written in first person present that were compelling, delightful reads, which proves my objection can be overcome.

Fourth Wing was unsuccessful in that endeavor.

If the first-person-present weren’t enough to turn me off to this book, the characters were flat, one-dimensional, and uncompelling. Violet Sorrengail is tiny and fragile, but also super bookish and smart, but also she can take down a badass burly-man and poison her enemies, but also she cares deeply about everyone and everyone loves her, except her mortal enemies and her mom…

There was a lot of telling rather than developing. We get told about Violet a lot—from Violet herself, of course—but there’s very little actual character development. And if there’s no character development for the main character, there’s none for anyone else.

But the dragons were cool, so there was that.

Representative Quotes

“And to think, I’d almost forgotten just how loquacious humans are.” — Tairn the dragon, probably responding to how many words it took Yarros to get to this point in the book.

“Please, do tell me more about what I should value.” — Tairn again, speaking for me as I read all the performative stuff in this book.

“Dragons pay no heed to your puny gods.” — once again, Tairn, just because his tone is the best one in the book.

Observations

Like, OMG, Right?

This book was written by a woman who wanted to prove she was cool and had shaken off the shackles of a traditional upbringing.

At least, this is my assumption based on all the Millennial slang and performative swearing.

Look, as a woman with a traditional upbringing who often finds herself with heterodox opinions and would occasionally like to be seen as at least mildly cool, I get it. The siren song of proving your bona fides by throwing in modern linguistic indulgences is a tempting one indeed.

And if Yarros had not absolutely saturated the entire freaking book with such indulgences, I would not say anything at all.

Modern language in fantasy is fine, and I don’t care about a few well-placed F-bombs. My word, I’ve dropped a few into my own work.

But holy hand grenades, y’all.

These are some of the phrases used entirely unironically in the book:

• … for the win.

• I know, right?

• Awesome.

• Excuse me?

It was the “I know, right?” that pushed me right over the edge on the slang. I’m GenX, and never once has a single one of my modern-speaking characters said “gag me with a spoon” or “as if.”

As for the swearing, it’s just entirely over the top. Violet Sorrengail is supposed to be 20, but she talks like an angry 13-year-old who just discovered that her mom wouldn’t find out she was swearing at the lunchroom table.

Is There a Quota For This Stuff?

And then there’s the other performative stuff.

I mentioned the lack of clarity in a previous post. Yarros creates this interaction between Violet and another character who is apparently deaf, but she never bothers to actually let the reader know that the character is deaf. We have to figure it out from the context of the two women signing to each other.

There are also the various identities slapped onto characters. These felt very much like an afterthought, as if Yarros decided she should include “one of each” from the spectrum of identities available to her.

Finally, Violet has some kind of unnamed disability. All we’re told is that her mother had a fever when she was pregnant with Violet, and as a result, Violet has a weirdly brittle physique and hair that turns silver at the end, no matter how long it is.

She’s small and fragile with weird hair.

Someone call Dr. House.

It’s a lot to cram into one book. And while I am trying to be charitable about different worldviews and beliefs and all that, everything in this book comes off as performative. Again, it’s as if Yarros thought she needed to fit a certain amount of cultural sops into her book to ensure… what? Acceptance in her social circles? Publication? Sales?

Here’s a counter example. I also recently read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V. E. Schwab. That book has a similar cultural tilt as Fourth Wing. HOWEVER—I was never confused about who was talking or how many people were in the scene, and it never felt like the character identities were slapped on them to meet a quota. It felt authentic—like Schwab wrote characters rather than checking boxes.

Is That Even Possible?

It takes for-freaking-ever for Violet and Xaden (yes, that’s his name) to get together, so the first half of the book is a lot of frenemy behavior, yearning, and longing looks at each others’ bottom lip.

I wish I were kidding.

When we finally get to the sex, it is interminable. It’s over the top in a way that’s just mostly exhausting to read. I ended up skimming most of it, because I really didn’t even care about these people. There wasn’t any important information in it. It was sex for sex’s sake.

I’m not a prude—I’ve read George R. R. Martin, for goodness sake. But I just kept thinking that if this were written for men, we’d decry it as pornography.

And here’s one more thing: we’re told constantly in this book about how fragile and tiny Violet is, and then Yarros sets her up with burly-man Xaden who is apparently ginormous and super cut. Their sex gets… well, a little rough. And Violet is never injured?

But I guess maybe it’s fine, because she can totally kick ass on the sparring mat.

Sure.

This is No Way to Run an Army

Finally, there’s the fact that this book takes place—yet again—in a school with a Hunger Games doctrine.

I don’t know what happened to us between Hogwarts and Fourth Wing, but somewhere, we got our boarding schools confused with our reality TV shows, and everyone decided it was fine to literally snuff people out instead of just voting them off the island.

How in the heck does a country build an army this way?

This whole book is written with the premise that these dragon riders are essential to the war effort, and yet people are constantly dying.

Granted, the war college also has scribe, infantry, and healer schools. Presumably people don’t die as often in those ones.

But in this dragon rider quadrant, there are deaths in every chapter.

And they’re stupid deaths, too. Did they really have to make the initiates walk across a Parapet—essentially a tightrope—to get into the school? Dozens of people died before classes even started.

The very first day, a cadet kills another one by snapping his neck during a skills assessment. Why is that cadet not expelled or—you know—arrested?

Maybe because the professors are just as bad? One professor kills a cadet who manifests the wrong power, but it was apparently a mercy killing?

We’re told that there aren’t enough dragons to bond with the riders. Okay, fine, but just from a resource standpoint, it seems to me that you’d want to preserve these educated, physically capable cadets to do other things, maybe?

I mean, maybe it’s okay if the scary enemy overruns your country if this is the way you recruit your elite fighters.

A Word About Originality

I’ve read reviews of this book that criticize the lack of originality. It’s another book set in a magic school with a kill-or-be-killed ethos. It has elements of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. There is no shortage of similar stories in recent years, and every one that comes out gets the same criticism.

Here’s the thing. A whole lot of fantasy and science fiction is built on tropes that have worked in the past. Harry Potter worked. The Hunger Games worked. I do not begrudge authors for adapting proven formulas—most of modern literature is adapted from something that worked somewhere.

It doesn’t bother me when writers rehash an old trope. I’m always up for a new spin on something familiar. Again, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue had a new and interesting take on what happens when one makes a deal with the Devil. Sometimes the familiarity fades into the background in a way that allows me to just enjoy the character development and the story.

The problem with Fourth Wing isn’t that it lacks originality.

The problem is that it’s a poorly executed romance novel plunked clumsily into a fantasy world.

Because the execution is poor, all we can see is the lack of originality. If Yarros had written compelling characters in a more compelling way, the familiar tropes wouldn’t matter.

Would I Recommend?

No.

Unless you think you’d enjoy the times when the dragons incinerated people.

Will I Read More of This Author?

No.

What’s Next on My List?

I am currently reading The Will of the Many, by James Islington, and so far—to my great surprise—I’m enjoying it. When I saw that it was first-person-present and set in a school, I had my doubts, but… Well, maybe this book will restore a little of my faith in fantasy.

Review coming when I’m finished with it.

And I doubt that it will be as scathing as this one.

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That’s the ultimate question in Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author. In that sense, this book follows a long and proud tradition in speculative fiction—one that asks us to think about the role of technology in our lives, how it should “enhance” our earthly experience, and whether it can eventually replace us.

This book belongs in the pantheon that contains classics like Frankenstein, mass market favorites like Jurassic Park, and more obscure titles, like Nancy Kress’s Beggars Trilogy (which I highly recommend). I think this is what speculative fiction does best—it asks us to think about what is “optional” in our humanity and our stewardship of our world and then whether we should tinker with those optional bits.

And when we do tinker with the optional bits, can we live (literally and figuratively) with the results?

Here’s a portion of the Amazon blurb for Death of the Author:

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.

When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.

A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it.

General Thoughts

Overall rating: Four stars.

I enjoyed this one, even though I felt like the last third or so dragged a bit. Maybe it was just too long. I also struggled with maintaining sympathy for Zelu, the main character, toward the end. I thought some of her choices were rather selfish. She changed a lot and matured over the course of the book, and then I felt like some of it was taken back at the end. But the interesting thing is that the choices made sense within the context of Zelu’s character and the book; she just took different forks along her life path than I probably would have taken.

I did really relate to Zelu as a writer. We are obviously very, very different people with different backgrounds and challenges, but the writer brain? That part is pretty relatable across the board, I think.

Okorafor is a very good writer, and most of the book moves along with a pretty good pace. I actually enjoyed the intermittent “Interview” chapters the most, I think. In these chapters, Okorafor moved away from the main character’s story and inserted “interviews” with the significant people in her life, giving them a chance to talk about her. Made me wonder what people in my life would say about me!

Representative Quotes

“Humanity didn’t think in binary, though. Emotion rules them, and it existed in everything they left behind—their structures, their tools, even us. Emotion formed their language, and therefore it formed our codes.” — Ankara, the robot featured in Rusted Robots

“The biggest hurdle was the most obvious one: Submitting to the technology. Trusting it.” — Zelu’s thought process as she considered getting into a fully autonomous vehicle for the first time

“I can’t be normal, so I’ll be something else.” — Zelu’s journal the night before she gets her exoskeleton legs

Observations

The Robots are Coming

I can’t decide if this story is supposed to set our minds at ease about how humans and artificial intelligence can work together or if it’s another cautionary tale.

Or both.

I think this is what makes it the very best kind of science fiction.

This book questions what it means to be human—what humanity really looks like, where the lines are between human and machine, what it might mean for machines to have self-awareness and sentience.

There’s a quote from the robot Ankara toward the beginning that I think sums up a lot of this struggle: “We cannot escape our creators. I keep saying this. You can’t erase that which made you.”

Whether you believe in God or you just acknowledge that you came from two other human beings in the past or both, you were still created, and the source of your life has an impact on who and what you are now. I think this book asks how we acknowledge what made us while also becoming better, and then adds a technological element.

And Speaking of Creators…

In Zelu’s story Rusted Robots, the different robot factions essentially fall into tribal warfare. The disembodied AI creatures—”Ghosts”—are the main antagonists against the essentially humanoid robots—”Humes.” In the story, the Hume Ankara and the Ghost Ijele end up fused and have to figure out how to co-exist—and then how to convince their own tribes to co-exist and work together against a larger threat.

There’s a lot in this. I think it’s easy for us to see the allegorical nature of this story—the different tribes polarized against one another, the struggle to work “across the aisle” (metaphorically speaking) with people who have an entirely different worldview, etc.

But Ankara seems to understand that everything she is comes from her human creators and from the last human on earth, Ngozi, who repaired her after a Ghost attack.

Ankara seems to maintain the knowledge that she cannot separate herself from her creators—that everything she is and all of her potential is bound up in the emotion, qualities, intelligence given her by the humans who made her. In Rusted Robots, she writes:

We took emotion from humanity and enjoyed it. Fury. Enchantment. Inspiration. Envy. Joy. Sorrow. Curiosity. Whimsy. Fear. Excitement. Boredom. Hopelessness. And, of course, love. Having, feeling, experiencing emotion allowed us to form communities, to share with one another. And so we continued to replicate, splice, and download, until eventually we didn’t even have to program it anymore. After a few generations, it became our digital DNA.

I love this. Ankara is created in the image of her creators. But what’s really fascinating is that the robots chose to replicate the human experience.

Think about that. Given the option to delete icky things—boredom, sorrow, hopelessness—the robots refused. They accepted those parts of humanity and integrated them into their digital DNA.

This is a fascinating take on artificial intelligence. In much of science fiction, the robots are so coldly rational that they can’t be reasoned or negotiated with. But these robots—this future intelligence—chose to keep all of the emotion.

Publishing Doesn’t Work Like That

Honestly, the biggest place I had to suspend my disbelief was in the premise that Zelu would write such a phenomenal science fiction novel on her first go-around that within a year, she’d be a world-famous multi-millionaire.

Since when has anything in traditional publishing ever worked that way??

This book is a sort of near-future world, where autonomous taxis and exoskeletons for humans exist, so maybe in the near future, traditional publishing will have a complete renaissance and become even more of a juggernaut than it was in its heyday.

Color me skeptical.

Would I Recommend?

Yes, especially if you’re a writer. There are a lot of spots in this book where I found myself nodding along in understanding. Zelu struggles with pretty severe writer’s block, for one thing, which is very relatable.

Will I Read More of This Author?

I might. I’m not sure she shoots straight to the top of my favorite author list, but I’ll look at her other stuff.

What’s Next on My List?

It’s been a couple of weeks since I finished this book, and since I finished it, I read Fourth Wing. Boy do I have thoughts about that one… I’ll post those soon.

I’m currently reading West with Giraffes (which is absolutely wonderful), and I may need to read a non-fiction book before I get back to any of these fantasy/science fiction reads. Sometimes when I’ve read too much fiction, I start to feel like I’ve been eating nothing but jelly beans for days.

All this to say… Not sure what my next speculative fiction read/review will be (after Fourth Wing), but y’all will be the first to know!

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I’ll get into my thoughts in a minute, but first, your thoughts about chapters 15 - 20…

What You Said

My friend Mary and I exchanged a few e-mails about this section and discussed Circe’s character growth from a young girl who was largely ignored and abused to a woman with a spine who could demand to be treated with dignity and respect. Mary called Circe “the ultimate momma bear,” which I can’t really argue with. I mean, there were certainly times when my kids were small that I would have gladly cast a spell over my house to make it appear uninviting. I mean, there’s only so much that drawn curtains and a neglected front yard can do to keep people out.

Mary and I also talked about how Circe’s relationships with men kind of reveal her growth. I see Glaucos as that first teenage crush, Daedalus as that first real romance, and Odysseus as something closer to a relationship of equals where both participants hold fairly equal power. Mary had to remind me that Hermes was in there, too, and I honestly had forgotten about him! Maybe that’s indicative of his position as an on-again, off-again fling of convenience.

On to the final section…

Some Lines I Liked

“Two children he had had, and he had not seen either clearly. But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults” (p. 311). *gulp* This one definitely hit home. When I look at my kids, I feel like everything good in them is a result of their own efforts, and all of their faults are a result of my mistakes or my traits that somehow made it into their make-up.

I may be overstating things a bit…

“And do you know what I told myself? That he only needed time. That any moment he would remember the pleasures of modest home and hearth” (p. 327). This whole section with Penelope recounting what happened when Odysseus returned home was really brilliant for a couple of reasons. First, it was a really gentle and insightful passage about the struggles a man of war faces when he tries to reintegrate in society. Such men can’t be expected to just become docile and quiet, just because a war ended. They are still warriors, and when that energy isn’t properly directed, it goes awry—as it did in Miller’s telling of Odysseus’s later years.

Second, I think this section revealed the real problem Penelope and Circe had: Athena. Athena was the real “first love” of Odysseus’s life—the real “other woman” they both had to compete with. How could any mortal woman or minor goddess compete with Athena?

“All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal’s voice, let me have the rest” (p. 385). I use this quote to summarize the entire fourth section of the book. I think these final chapters are really the resolution of Circe’s redemption arc. It’s in this section that she finally lets her son go, finds a mature and enduring love, makes peace with her rival Penelope, breaks ties with her father, and repairs the damage she inflicted on the world by destroying Scylla. Though she has no real mortal blood, in many ways, Circe’s entire existence has been about her quest to touch mortality. It’s interesting—so often in speculative fiction, it’s humans who want to achieve godhood, and here we have the opposite.

Maybe it’s a matter of wanting what we don’t have?

Questions to Ponder

1. The original story of Odysseus ends with his triumphant return to Ithaca and the deaths of Penelope’s suitors, whereas Miller’s version posits what might have happened to Odysseus after 20 years away. Do you think Miller’s version of Odysseus is a fair one? Why or why not?

2. What do you think Circe sees in mortals? Why does she identify with them more than with the gods?

3. Would you choose the same end as Circe? Would you choose mortality over godhood?

Overall, I have to say that I really enjoyed this read immensely. It was not a book I would normally choose, but it was a lot more nuanced and deeper than I expected, and I am glad I read it. Five stars; would definitely recommend.

What’s Next

I mentioned in my regular post on Tuesday that I’m going to start trying to write more book reviews. I currently have a stack of five books of varying types of speculative fiction sitting on my desk, and I’m going to read and review some of those while I figure out what’s next as far as future read-alongs. I’m currently reading Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor, and so far, I’m really enjoying it. All I will say right now is that this is exactly what speculative fiction should be.

And as for future read-alongs… I’m currently mulling that over. I was considering maybe choosing a classic work of speculative fiction—something like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Fahrenheit 451. But I haven’t settled on anything like that yet. All I can say for the moment is “watch this space.”

For those of you who joined me on this read-along, thank you for all your comments, e-mails, and views! I enjoyed our interactions and look forward to the next one!

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More than halfway there, and honestly, it was hard for me to stop at Chapter 21 this time. I didn’t want to read ahead for fear of accidentally spoiling anything, but I was really getting into this book!

Before I share my thoughts on this section, a few notes about the previous one…

What You Said

My friend Mary offered some helpful links to get some perspective on the geography of Circe’s world. I confess—I didn’t really think much about the specifics, instead relying on my rudimentary knowledge of the Mediterranean and the one all-to-brief vacation I had in that part of the world many years ago.

For those of you who might want some insight into the travel of these characters, here are some links Mary sent me, along with her notes about the routes people would have sailed:

• Circe's island Aeaea is close to Rome.

• The Strait of Scylla is thought to be the Strait of Messina between the island of Sicily and Calabria, Italy.

• When Aeetes followed Medea and Jason, he would have left from Colchis, which is modern day Georgia.

• He could travel west through the Black Sea and south through the Aegean Sea to Crete.

I am grateful to Mary for sharing these, because it didn’t even occur to me to look them up!

My friend Jane commented, “I love the way she can feel the plant’s purpose, and her willingness to make endless mistakes in the effort to hone her craft. I think both are traits I need to work on, listening to my intuition and releasing the fear of failure.” I love this. We have to be willing to make endless mistakes in the pursuit of excellence, and our fear of failure can hamper those efforts.

Easier said than done, right?

I enjoyed interacting with Richard Parry (Roll for Narrative) on my note about this section. Even though he’s not reading the book with us, his insights about art vs. craft were really helpful to me in shaping this week’s regular post. In particular, I liked his point about time: “This question may come more from having the time to be an artist and a craftsperson; I think we’d all love to put curlicues on our letters if only we weren’t being waterboarded to release things sooner, faster, and immediately.” There is something really intriguing in that thought. Very few of us have the luxury of devoting our entire lives to putting metaphorical curlicues on our letters.

My General Notes

I’m not gonna lie—this section really hit me right in the feels.

It wasn’t Circe’s relationship with Odysseus, though I enjoyed reading that. Odysseus gave Circe back to herself, or maybe she found herself again through him—I’m not sure. I just felt like she healed from the many centuries of abuse she’d suffered while he was with her, though I can never entirely forgive adultery, even from a fictional character.

The part that really hit me hard was Circe as mother to Telegonus. It hit all of my mothering insecurities, inadequacies, mistakes, pains, and didn’t really let go of them. I confess that I got a little verklempt more than once. “I know what I was in those days: unsteady, inconstant, a badly made bow. Every fault in me his raising laid bare. Every selfishness, every weakness,” Circe says.

Damn, Madeline Miller. Just reach right into my soul and touch the third rails I usually keep hidden behind yellow caution lines.

And then when Circe finally lets Telegonus go in his little boat? I think my heart sailed away with him.

The journey from girl to woman to wife is one thing. There are innumerable events that leave marks on us—little scars and large ones, things that make us into someone another person can (mostly) live with.

But the journey of motherhood is something completely different. It’s a process of unmaking us, first, of teaching us that no matter how prepared we think we are, there are things we don’t know, and even when we think we have it figured out, another baby comes along who needs different things. And in an attempt to manage all those unique needs, you spend a lot of time doing damage control and responding on the fly, and most of the time you make mistakes you don’t even know about until an angry teen throws them in your face. And then outside forces act to disrupt even the unsteady and tentative truce you’ve made with the little barbarians, and you try to shield them, because they carry your entire spirit around in their frail little bodies, even though they think they’re invincible. So you hang on and nudge, hang on and nudge, until one day, they sail away and start something new and potentially dangerous, but you know you can’t keep them with you, because they’re supposed to go out into the world…

Being a mother is having your heart repeatedly broken and spilled out and then remade, healed, and filled so it can all be done again.

*deep breath*

I think it’s safe to say this section resonated. (And the fact that Telegonus sailed away while my own oldest child is currently deployed on an aircraft carrier in a dangerous part of the world was not lost on me.)

Some Lines I Liked

“They have wrinkles, but no wisdom. I took them to war before they could do any of those things that steady a man…. I fear I have robbed them not only of their youth but their age as well” (p. 219). Oh, how I love this insight from Odysseus! Young men so desperately need certain things in their lives to steady them. We see again and again that men—especially young men—who have no purpose will often fail to reach their full potential as productive members of society. But I also appreciate the other side of this observation—that these men who’ve been on this journey with him won’t really have the sunset years they should have, even if they survive the trip, because they didn’t get to be shaped by the experiences they should have had.

“Her only love was reason. And that has never been the same as wisdom” (p. 251). Oh, that’s a sharp insight. Reason is valuable and important, but for it to be truly useful, it has to be tempered by other things—experience, emotion, observation, insight, self-awareness, reflection... Reason is strong, but brittle. Wisdom is a flexible alloy that constantly takes in the new and lets the dross fall away.

“He gave it to me, for a price” (p. 283). I use this quote as a summary of Circe’s journey to get the tail of Trygon for Telegonus to use on his journey. I really loved what Miller did with this section. Circe expected to pay a price of pain for that tail, but in reality, the pain came when she had to damage this beautiful creature. She thought the pain would be the sting of venom, but instead, it was doing something against her own nature—that is, damaging an innocent creature for her own gain. She would have to live with that. Was it worth the price?

Questions to Ponder

1. How are Odysseus and Daedalus different? How are they similar? What do their different relationships with Circe reveal about her growth?

2. What is the significance of Circe’s encounter with the Trygon? Why do you think she was so willing to accept the physical pain she anticipated, but so reluctant to take on emotional or mental pain?

3. What did Circe’s encounter with Athena reveal about her growth as a character?

One final note: My calendar is rapidly filling up for April, and I’m not sure I’ll have the time to schedule a live event for us to discuss the book. I definitely wouldn’t be able to do it until at least mid-April, anyway, because my daughter-in-law asked me to stay with my grandsons for a week, and how could I say no??

(Also, their other grandma is pretty cool, too. Those two boys are pretty lucky, cuz we set a high bar for grandmas. Just sayin’.)

Anyway, as of right now, I’m not going to set up a live discussion, but I am open to changing my mind if y’all really want one. Let me know in the comments or shoot me an e-mail, and if there’s a real interest, I’ll figure out a day and time that work!

In the meantime, I’ll post my final thoughts about the book on April 3. See you then!

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Welcome to the second of four posts on our read-along, Circe, by Madeline Miller. Let’s dive right in…

What You Said

A couple of friends shared some thoughts about the first section with me, and I appreciated some good insights.

First, one friend pointed out that Circe stops caring about her appearance once she arrives on her island, and I confess—I did not even notice. My friend pointed out that Circe lets her fingernails go black from all her foraging and gardening. Circe becomes less nymph/goddess and more human, but because of her power, she’ll never be truly human. This sort of keeps her in a state of perpetual limbo between the two worlds.

My friend also pointed out that the fact that she has a self-regenerating house means she can spend all her time on her craft. This is an interesting point. As much as I have resented the interference of worldly obligations on my own writing, those things do kind of keep you grounded. It’s interesting to think about such a carefree life that you only ever need to pursue your own interests—do any of us really want that? Would it even be good for us?

Another friend said she “loves a good witchy woman,” and all I can say to that is “same.” I think there is something about a woman who can take care of herself through her herbs and spells that resonates with women.

My General Notes

I started to get a lot more invested in the book in this section. I especially appreciated Circe’s relationship with Daedalus, in part because her observations of him trigger her internal ideas surrounding the similarities between her craft and his inventions. I have long thought about the distinction between art and craft, and it’s hard to know where to draw that line.

Circe also started to get a lot more jaded about her family in this section—and really, the world in general. Her interactions with Pasiphae and Medea sort of reinforced her belief that women (or at least goddesses/demigoddesses) can be villains, but the women themselves make a pretty strong case for how they acted out of necessity or self-interest.

It is here I will confess to you that I had no idea Circe would be violated in Chapter 14. I honestly did not see that coming, and I don’t remember it from any previous reading about Circe. It’s kind of silly that I didn’t see it coming—I mean, she’s a woman living alone on an island (or basically alone, aside from occasional nymphs and various wild animals) where men come and go. It was sort of bound to happen.

Now that it did, however, I have some ideas about how this event will contribute to Circe’s character growth and her interactions with Odysseus… We’ll see how right I am…

Some Lines I Liked

“It made me dizzy to realize that this was but a fraction of a fraction of all the men the world had bred. How could such variation endure, such endless iteration of minds and faces? Did the earth not go mad?” (p. 106) I absolutely love this observation about the uniqueness of the men on Daedalus’s ship, especially given how much sameness Circe imbues to the nymphs and goddesses she has known. People are so endlessly unique. There are currently 8 billion people living on earth right now, and every one is different. The combinations of human attributes are genuinely bottomless, and that’s a thing that engenders genuine awe in me.

“Let me tell you a truth about Helios and all the rest. They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power” (p. 146) This quote is from Pasiphae, and I think it’s quite revealing—not just of her character, who sees power as the only means to achieve her ends, but also of the ancient world. Most of human history has revolved around power and might. The concept of certain universal rights—especially those backed up by law—is a fairly recent invention. There’s a cautionary note here for all of us—if you’re following a strongman, you’d better pray nobody stronger comes along.

“Witch Circe skilled at spinning spells and threads alike, at weaving cloths and charms” (p. 151) I use this quote as a summary for the ideas of craft and art in this section of the book. Circe becomes not only a powerful witch, but a skilled dyer and weaver. She weaves on a loom of highest quality created by a master craftsman—a loom that even when it isn’t in use is still a beautiful object. Where is the line between craft and art?

Questions to Ponder

1. Where do you think the line is between art and craft or art and invention? What makes something a work of art vs. a work of craftsmanship?

2. Circe is surrounded by nymphs and animals, yet she’s desperately lonely. However, she wasn’t lonely when she was mostly by herself with occasional visits from Hermes. What do you think that says about our modern world and the rise of loneliness?

3. What purpose do you think our everyday chores and obligations serve in developing our character? How does/would their absence change us?

We’re halfway through, y’all! Drop your observations or comments here, or shoot me an e-mail to let me know what you think!

And in the meantime, watch for a post or two about some of these deeper ideas, because I’m cooking up something in my own mental cauldron right now…

See you on March 20!

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Welcome to the first of four posts about Circe, by Madeline Miller.

I’m still not entirely sure what form my read-along notes will take, but I’m going to start by just trying to group my thoughts into highlights and then ask a few questions of all of you to get your thoughts and ideas.

General Notes

I thought the book started a little slow for my tastes. I prefer something that dives right in—especially if it starts in media res—rather than a whole bunch of backstory. This one starts with how Circe’s parents met and started their family and then proceeds to cover how much everyone teased and tormented Circe. I confess to being a little bored during this part.

However… I am also willing to hang with a story that starts slow if the writing is good, which this is. And I could see even in the midst of backstory that Miller was weaving in hints and notes about where the story would go.

I think the story really starts to move when Circe goes into exile, and even Circe acknowledges this when she says “I stepped into those woods and my life began” (p. 81). It seems like everything up to that point was basically setting the stage and crafting Circe’s character.

I will also note that I generally don’t like first-person narration, but this is entirely a personal preference and one I will put aside for a novel that offers a good story. My objection to first-person narration is just that I don’t trust the narrator; people lie about themselves, whether intentionally or not, and I find it tough to figure out what’s true when I’m inside a first-person narrative.

Some Lines I Liked

“It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two” (p. 16). Oooh, what’s going to tear the world up? I like the little drop of mystery and truth here. Circe is acknowledging that we all hide things.

“When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world” (p. 43). Preach, girl. I wish I could make every 16-year-old recognize that every feeling that seems to be unique and new is actually common and old. Also, you kids get off my lawn.

“In the old days I would have rushed forth with a brimming cup of answers, to give him all he wanted. But I was not the same as I had been. I owed him nothing. He would have of me only what I wanted to give” (p. 94). You’re learning, honey. Guard your secrets and you’re heart. Make him earn it.

Questions to Ponder

1. Circe is very much an outsider. She doesn’t seem to belong to the world of the gods or the world of mortals. How do you think that shapes her character?

2. Why do you think it takes Circe so long to recognize and use her power?

3. What kind of cautionary messages did you see in the evolution of Glaucos’s character from starving mortal to buffoonish god?

4. Did any of you read the other material about Circe? How did it inform your view of the novel?

That should get us started on this first section! I’ll post this over in the chat as well. Drop your comments, questions, insights here or in the chat. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

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As we get ready to read the book and start posting our thoughts, I wanted to share a few links that might be helpful background reading:

• A free version of The Odyssey in Google Books; Circe’s story is in Books X and XII.

• The short story “Circe,” by Eudora Welty (this is a PDF version, so it might be tough to read on a phone).

• A great blog post summarizing different depictions of Circe throughout the ages.

• The artwork depicting Circe as collected by the book’s author, Madeline Miller. Which painting is your favorite? I think mine is Circe with a staff.

I don’t know if I’ll do this for every book we read together, but I thought it was relevant for this one. Circe has been around for a long, long time, and having an idea of how she was originally written could help put the book into a larger context.

I’ll be back with some thoughts on the first section of the book on February 20. In the meantime, if you have comments, questions, or thoughts about the book, feel free to post them in the Substack chat or drop them in the comments on this post.

Happy reading!

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You will note that today is not, in fact, a Tuesday.

You will also note that the title of this newsletter is not Swords & Sarcasm.

I have been threatening for some time to start an online book club of sorts where we will read speculative fiction together, and I’m finally ready to kick it off with our first read-along.

After mulling over a few choices and getting some input from my threes of fans, I’ve chosen Circe, by Madeline Miller, as our first read-along book.

Here’s the Goodread’s page, and here’s the blurb:

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child--neither powerful like her father nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power: the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.

To give y’all some time to acquire the book and read the first section of it, I want to schedule our first discussion for February 20. I will post a note here on Just Speculating about my impressions of the section, and we can use the chat to go back and forth. At the end of the book, I’ll set up something interactive for us to chat in real time—a livestream here or maybe a Zoom-type call. I’ll figure that out.

To get us started, here’s my proposed schedule:

• February 20: Discussion of Chapters 1 through 8

• March 6: Discussion of Chapters 9 through 14

• March 20: Discussion of Chapters 15 through 20

• April 3: Discussion of Chapters 21 through 27

• April 10: Live wrap-up!

If you get the copy I got, you should have a reading club guide in the back of the book. I’ll use some of those questions as a jumping off point for my own questions, but I’ll also try to prompt our discussion with my own observations. I’m also hoping to add some supplemental material to the read-along, such as source material or other reviews or whatever seems relevant.

As for what else I intend for this Substack section—I’m going to use it to dive more deeply into my thoughts, ruminations, and opinions on whatever speculative fiction I’m reading. I don’t intend to publish something long every week, like I do on the main Swords & Sarcasm section, but I do intend to keep this section focused on fantasy, science fiction, and related sub-genres.

So if you’re into conversations about dragons, interplanetary travel, magical jewelry, and maybe an occasional diversion toward cyberpunk or a dystopian future where all the chickens are dead, but we all drive cars with a Mr. Fusion adapter, hop in.

And hey, if you’re not so into those things, feel free to unsubscribe. No judgment here.

I’ll be back next week with a few thoughts to prep us for the first section of Circe. In the meantime, feel free to share this post with others who might be interested in joining us!

Oh, and drop a comment below to let me know you’ll be reading along!

See you soon!

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