Archive for the Novel Category


Perhaps the Stars, by Ada Palmer

February 6th, 2022

“…no one should be made to choose between advancing the future we love and doing so kindly.”

 

Today I am wrapping up a review that took 4 years from beginning to end. It began in 2018, when Peter K suggested I read Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer. I did and I was blown away by it. You can read my review here on Okazu, where I gave it a 9/10. This was a book for people who loved to read. It stretched my ability to follow a complex story, with roots in history, anime, 18th century literature, science fiction, political science, and /flailing hands/ everything.

Over the next few years I read the next books in the series, Seven Surrenders and The Will to Battle. I did not review them here, but they were as outstanding. The world Ada Palmer built was fully fleshed out. While we saw epic events from individual perspectives (and not all of those reliable), it was gripping drama.

And then, at last I read the series finale. Perhaps the Stars may well be one of the very best books I have ever read – in part because it scratches all of my literary itches. ^_^ As I read, I kept jotting down quotes, so I hope you don’t mind if share them as I write here.

 

“Then I wrote an essay, ‘On Fanatacism’ (based on Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique portatif) in which I argued that war’s atrocities hatch, not from any inhuman machine of war, but from human hearts when we let conviction turn into fanatacism. We are all in danger of dying in this war, but we are all also in danger of becoming the authors of atrocities. The first danger we cannot avoid, but the second is entirely in our power, since each, of us alone can choose whether we let fanatacism fester in us, or keep our hearts havens of Reason, Reasonableness and Humanity.”

 

There is a constant dialogue between Past and Present in Terra Ignota, and, in Perhaps the Stars, it turns out that Future has been there are along, waiting to be noticed. References to both classical literature and pop culture stop being references, and shove their way through to the surface, where they stand gleaming in the light as the homages they are. I cannot stress how fantastic these scenes are. One of my long-lasting sells on literature is any mythology creeping in…but this is not a creep. In Terra Ignota, Homeric mythology is front of stage along with Gundam and Rose of Versailles and Utena. And little green army men. And Voltaire. It’s all real and all there.

Where previous volumes dealt with the remaking of the world after it had failed, Perhaps the Stars deals deeply with the unmaking of that brave new world; how simply refusing to acknowledge gender and sexuality, nationalism or the raw desire for power can never be a truly healthy society.  (Queership has a terrific article abut Gender in Terra Ignota, which I recommend.) And how the world we leave for our children is a brand new set of diseases that need to be cured.

 

“…you who had power and used it to burn the world. You burned it a lot. You didn’t just burn trees and cities and each other. You burned our admiration for the governments we grew up respecting. You burned our sense of safety in our care. You burned our patience, our ability to believe in the great things in this world you promised to protect will still be there for us and future generations. You burned our trust as you misused the data and surveillance we let you collect…for the war, its propaganda and lies. You burned our self-trust, too since we know we are infused with your values, values we thought made both you and us people who would never do such what you just did. We have to be afraid of ourselves, vigilant against what you’ve taught us to be, since now we know that we are something to be afraid of and ashamed of. And even if you didn’t personally kill in the war, if you carried arms, if you participated, you helped burn what nothing can bring back. No sentence can repair any of that. So, we want you to repair what you can.”

 

Above all, Perhaps the Stars is paean to everything I hope for the world. That communities of intent and desire, are as powerful as the arbitrary allegiances we have because of geography.  In fact, that was what spurred me to Interview Ada Palmer for Yuri Studio.I wanted her thoughts on what we do, here, every day. And boy did I get some great commentary! If you haven’t listened to Ada talking about the power of historical LARPing, Revolutionary Girl Utena and how fandom can save the world, you definitely should. This book and the conversation with Ada, convinced me even more that those of us in this Yuri community, are best served when we stand with each other and with other marginalized communities.

“Friends help friends ignore the voices that tell us we are not human, outside voices and in.”

 

At the end of everything, Perhaps the Stars is deeply aspirational. Ada spoke of Hopepunk, which is now my new favorite genre of everything in the world. I believe that one of science fiction’s jobs is to provide aspiration so the next generation does better, whether it be in connecting with other races, or with our own. We need to find the cures for the diseases we create and homes for our hearts.  There’s a good reason why healing anime is super popular right now. Communities of intent become “ibasho, that special community that lets one be one’s self, the human half of home.”

Perhaps the Stars and the whole Terra Ignota series is a magnificent love letter to literature, philosophy, history and humanity.

I sincerely hope you’ll all read it. It’s worth every second. Now I think I’m going to get it all as voice recording and start all over again. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 10





Three Books For Fans of Revolutionary Girl Utena

December 15th, 2021

Today’s review is a video!

Revolutionary Girl Utena was a major gateway anime for a generation of Yuri fans. 20 years later, it is inspiring literature. Check out these three titles for their Utena references and roots!

 

Books mentioned:

Silk & Steel: A Queer Speculative Adventure Anthology on Kindle
Featuring stories by:
Ellen Kushner * Aliette de Bodard * Yoon Ha Lee * Neon Yang * Jennifer Mace * Django Wexler * Freya Marske * Claire Bartlett * K.A. Doore * Alison Tam * Ann LeBlanc * Cara Patterson * Chris Wolfgang * Elaine McIonyn * Elizabeth Davis * S.K. Terentiev * Kaitlyn Zivanovich

A/CINet Case Files: An Inside Job by Erica Friedman on Kindle

The Terra Ignota Series, by Ada Palmer

Too Like the Lightning
Seven Surrender
The Will to Battle
Perhaps the Stars

(links to Amazon, but these are available at any bookstore or site)

Today’s t-shirt: Hana & Hina Afterschool, by Milk Morinaga, from the 2018 Yuriten event:

Hana & Hina Afterschool is available in English form Seven Seas.





Speaking of Fanfic…I’ve Published a Kindle Novel

August 17th, 2021

This weekend I wrapped reading Silk & Steel: A Queer Speculative Adventure Anthology. It was a really fun read and I highly recommend it. One of the stories is, to readers of Okazu, instantly recognizable as a fanfic on a series we have been enjoying for a good 20 years.  It was so obviously a fanfic, that it put me in mind of a fanfic I had started some 20 years ago as well, that grew into an original novella and I had never done a damn thing with. It took me 14 years to write the story. I started it in the late 1990s and kept putting it aside. It came with me to 4 jobs that I can think of, where I occasionally pulled it out and wrote another paragraph or two. I had thought it would work for a particular publication, but by the time I finished it, that publication had moved on and wanted something different than what I wanted for the story.

A few years ago, on a lark, I created a cover for it – a cover, it turned out, that had a typo. D’oh ^_^

This week I dragged it out, gave it a dust off and found I didn’t hate it. So while I was thinking about fanfic, I put it up on Kindle. It’s not a magnum opus, it’s a fanfic that outgrew it’s skin. (This is a pun and about as funny as puns usually are.) Here’s the synopsis:

Claudia Moreno was a good soldier, but the military saw her as a problem to be disappeared. Now she has a second chance as an Investigator for A/CINet and she’s determined to make her life work.

On her first solo case, she finds herself caught up in security for the most powerful corporation in the worlds; and its beautiful, charismatic leader, Lyrin Hayasu. Who is infiltrating this mysterious Artificial/Created Intelligence’s network…? Can Claudia save Lyrin from the intruder? And, can she save herself from Lyrin?

It’s a hardboiled-ish, science fictiony, cyberpunkesque, lesbian story. A/CINet Case File: An Inside Job is available for $2.99 on Kindle.I hope you’ll read it and, if you find some interesting bits in it, drop a review.

 





Silk & Steel: A Queer Speculative Adventure Anthology

August 15th, 2021

Some days, the weather is just perfect and all you need is something plain fun to read. Silk & Steel: A Queer Speculative Adventure Anthology is very fun to read. There are no bad stories and, depending on what you like, there are a lot of good stories and a few that just gut punch you in the right buttons and are otherwise great.

The anthology starts off strong, with a wonderfully whimsical story by Alison Tam, “Margo Lai’s Guide to Dueling Unprepared,” and continues on with a wide array of fantasy and science fiction (which, at this point, are largely identical, only, one involves spaceships, generally speaking,) and queer characters of all kinds.

For me the gut punch of greatdom came in the form of Freya Marske’s “Elinor Jones vs the Ruritanian Multiverse,” for entirely mushy story of little Erica and her little wife reasons. Back in middle school we had a tricky tray auction and I had excitedly gotten a tray of three books, one of which was The Prisoner of Zenda. The punchline was that the person who had created the tray was my now wife. “Awwww.” (The other two were A Swiftly Titling Planet, still my favorite of the trilogy, and one of the Elric books, which have now been thoroughly, permanently and hilariously ruined for me by Bimbos of the Death Sun.)

The world borrowing and building in so many of these stories are a real testament to the skills here of the authors. Cara Patterson’s “Little Birds,” and Yoon Ha Lee’s “The City Unbreachable” feel like stories we have already been told so many times and know so well. Aliette de Bodard’s “The Scholar of the Bamboo Flute” borrows a world we’re all so, so familiar with here on Okazu, and still breathes a whole new life into it.

For my money, the two best stories are “Positively Medieval” by Kaitlyn Zivanovich, which seamlessly melds fantasy and cyberpunk in a wholly unique and disarmingly adorable way and “The Parnassian Courante” by Claire Bartlett which was…perfect. Paros no Ken, step aside, this is the correct ending to that scenario.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

With a diverse cast of characters and writers, Silk & Steel was fantastic read.





Watashi ha Ongaku de Naguritai: Band Yuri Novel (わたしは音楽で殴りたい: バンド百合小説)

May 30th, 2021

Watashi ha Ongaku de Naguritai: Band Yuri Novel (わたしは音楽で殴りたい: バンド百合小説) by Yuruico Vraisravana is the very last item I picked up in February 2019 when I was in Japan for Comitia that was left unread. And now, more than 2 years later – it has been read!

Novels are slow going for me, simply as a matter of circumstance. I do my reading at night before bed and my eyes are already tired from the day. A few pages at a time is about all I can manage. And this novel is nearly 400 pages long. At least it wasn’t in a teeny-tiny font. ^_^

The story follows Nagi, a young woman who is at loose ends. She’s graduated high school and is in university, but is sort of floating aimlessly with no particular desire. Her lover is a teacher with whom she has had a relationship since middle school and if that wasn’t enough to make you hate Sensei, they are also a complete jerk to Nagi as a matter of course.

One day, Nagi meets Mare, an old schoolmate. Mare is on the way to a live show and invites Nagi along…and Nagi’s life is completely changed. Although she doesn’t “understand” rock and roll, she’s rendered helpless as Chimera sings from the stage about how life has no meaning. At the end of the show, Mare finds Nagi on the floor, her eyes filled with tears. Mare takes Nagi to a karaoke room and there, discovers Nagi has a great voice. Once again Mare invites Nagi out – this time to audition with her band, Asiatic Hybrid (which, by the way, is the name of a lily.)

The bulk of the story involves Nagi and the band adjusting to one another. Nagi is sleeping with Yomi, the drummer and band leader, but she’s running after the girl with black hair, Chimera. The band struggles to find their sound. Toa, on bass, seems detached a lot of the time, Mare is starting to sound jealous of Nagi’s increasing influence and Yomi and Nagi are maybe more serious than they are admitting. When Nagi asks to write the lyrics to their next song, things come to a head with Mare. Mare and Nagi spend an all-nighter confiding secrets and working on their song – together.

Nagi tries to find her sound and to understand rock and roll. As the big contest is upon them Chimera dissolves her band. When Nagi tracks them down and demands to know why, they say that it’s just time. She’ll have one chance and one chance only to beat Chimera. Chi, the girl with black hair, signals her support and Nagi and the band go out and kill it.

The book wraps up with Nagi and Yomi rededicating themselves to studies, the band continuing to play and Yomi and Nagi admitting that they love one another.

When I got the book, I also had received a mini disk with the band’s song. I had very clear idea of what I thought the band members looked like as I read this book, and when I finally watched the music video for their single…this was not it. ^_^ But it was fun to see this and now you too can see Asiatic Hybrid and listen to their single, Recollection:

 

I was surprised that Nagi was a soprano. I don’t know why, really. There’s also a lovely little voiced promo which nails what I imagined as Yomi’s voice.

 

 

Ratings:

Art – Not in the book, but the videos, and while nice, not the image I had at all.
Story – Not bad.
Characters – Totally worked, no one that felt out of place
Service – Gonna call Sensei on this. Yuck
Yuri – Yomi and Nagi were a boot I was waiting to see drop. It never did, for which I was glad

Overall – Solid 7

Honestly, it wasn’t a bad novel at all, just needed a bit of editing in places. As a purchase at Comitia, two thumbs up from me and I’ll borrow a thumb for giving out the companion CD as well. Yuri girls band story with a happy ending, plus media mix for the win. This novel is available on JP Kindle, or from Melonbooks, and you can download the song, Recollection for free from Booth.pm. Melonbooks also has a some of Yuruico’s other publications, or you can check them out on Pixiv.

This is kind of a long review for a doujinshi novel…but it took me 2 years to read it, I’m gonna talk about it a bit.