Category: Science Fiction

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With Ursula K. Le Guin’s passing this year, I knew it was time for me to read one of her works. She is science fiction royalty, and her Hugo and Nebula-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness is considered a masterpiece of classic sci-fi. It is everything 1970’s era science fiction usually is, with its politically intricate societies and chapter segments that present written “artifacts” from alien history. However, this book is so much more–it feels almost as groundbreaking today as it must have been when it was published in 1969. Le Guin approaches the idea of a genderless/gender-shifting society with a graceful hand. Particularly in the third act, her human protagonist Genly Ai needs to re-structure his concept of the gendered body, the gendered mind, sexuality, worth, and honor in order to survive on an alien world. While the first two acts are intellectually interesting and occasionally mired in world-building details, it’s the final third of the book where the heart of the novel truly beats, inviting us to personally encounter these ideas. I found it unforgettable.

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Kenobi by John Jackson Miller
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kenobi is the first Star Wars installment that I’ve read since the transition to the rebooted Legends canon, and it was a natural choice because (in my opinion), Obi-Wan’s character is the single shining gem to emerge from Episodes I-III. This adventure picks up right at the end of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and presents Ben Kenobi’s transition to Tatooine life in the form of a space western. It’s an engaging adventure story that is absorbing and fun, but ultimately forgettable. I wish there would have been more scenes actually involving Ben, since he’s left as an enigma on the side of what is really a settler’s story. Miller doesn’t let us get close, and I think that’s on purpose. While I understand the move to keep the mystery surrounding his character sacred, I’ll simply counter with this: the book is called Kenobi. I was hoping the novel would take his point of view as its guiding force, but I guess I’ll just have to keep daydreaming about Obi-Wan’s forgotten years in my free time. That being said, enjoyable romp of a book.

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Artemis by Andy Weir
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Andy Weir’s sophomore literary appearance brings in many stylistic elements that fans will recall from The Martian: a first-person narrator with snark to spare, high stakes space peril, and lots of meticulously researched, accurate science. However, the punchy heart that made The Martian soar is just not present here. Artemis is a fun-enough adventure tale that doesn’t bring quite enough believability to its characters to be truly great. The narrator and her entourage of various frenemies drop witty lines at every turn, like they’re waiting for a laugh track. The constant witty back-and-forth, pervasive even in moments where more gravity (pun intended) really is required, makes me feel like these characters are simply a cast full of little fictional Andy Weirs. Especially in the middle of the novel where Weir is busy connecting all his plot elements, we really lose all sense of soul in exchange for the big “can you believe that?!” conundrum that pushes the ending along. The ending, by the way, is redeeming in many ways. All in all, if you want to have fun thinking about perennially sassy smugglers doing improbably complicated science heroics in a moon city, you will enjoy this. If you’re looking for Weir’s best, go re-read The Martian. There really is no comparison.

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An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King explores a timely, absorbing speculative premise: if the continued effects of China’s One Child Policy and preference for male children continues along its current path, what cultural reactions will occur because of the millions of “excess” unmarriageable male citizens? The writing itself is a little unwieldy and uneven. Shen simultaneously develops the rise of a governmental conspiracy on a large level alongside the more intimate drama of a family trying to make their lives work within an oppressive polygamous social structure. Ultimately, neither one reaches a fully realized state… overly easy tie-ups are definitely at play in the plot. The ideas within the novel, though, were forceful enough to give me pause, wondering how closely King’s vision will match up with the future.

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The Circle by Dave Eggers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Circle is an uncanny parable for our times, and it leaves a disturbing metallic taste as well as a sense of bewildered confusion. Eggers’ compulsively readable novel provides much food for thought, even while skimping on character substance. The main character, Mae, is endlessly naive and effortlessly manipulated, not to mention fairly soulless. Most of the characters are similarly empty, or act in erratic, senseless ways. I wonder if Eggers intended them to be so vacuous… maybe it’s a commentary on the type of people created by a society that is obsessively driven by views, likes, and comments. I’m glad I read this novel–despite its flaws in craft, it offers a dystopian vision that deserves consideration. What happens when we no longer put a value on our personal privacy, on our freedom from being plugged into faux-social participation at all hours, on our division between our personal and work lives? What happens when you distill human beings into just so much information that can be bought, sold, and harnessed? If you want to see these scary, scary things… read The Circle. But you can take comfort in the fact that real people with free will would never behave like the majority of these characters do. At least, I have to hope so.

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The Ship by Antonia Honeywell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I absolutely inhaled Antonia Honeywell’s The Ship, reading it in just two days. All its strength comes from its disturbing premise, which did fascinate and disturb me. The enclosed society of this ark-like ship has promises that are unnervingly simple and sweet–the reader tears along with the main character through the first half, working furiously to uncover the secrets of the cult. Ultimately though, once the mysteries are solved, there’s not a ton of substance to give the book any lasting power beyond the turning of the final page. It’s less of a story, and more of a ride. A cool ride! But a temporary thrill. The characters, especially our heroine, are simple at best and off-putting at worst. I wish Lalla would have been pushed way further in her capacity to understand, manipulate, and resist her surroundings–she was so inert as to be frustrating. However, the ending was right, and that counts for something.

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Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jeff Vandermeer’s Borne astounds. It’s bizarre, unsettling, gentle, insane, violent, and intimate all at once. The best survival stories help us question which shreds of humanity are the most vital to hold on to, and remind us of how staggeringly important the simplest things can be, especially when they fall out of reach. Borne does all this and more, wheeling us through Vandermeer’s lushly painted, poisoned dystopian landscape, introducing us eye to eye to a newly-sentient organism learning to understand itself, the war-torn scavenger who becomes his mother, and the harrowed, hollow dealer/lover/mad scientist who fortifies their home. Did I mention that the city is ruled over by a merciless, genetically engineered, three-stories-tall grizzly bear deity that can fly? It sounds absolutely mental, doesn’t it? I’m here to assure you that it is, in the very best of ways. If you’re willing to give it a go, Borne will hold your heart just on the edge of breaking, page by page, until its fantastic final note.

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