Archive for the Novel Category


Network Effect by Martha Wells

May 17th, 2020

Imagine, for a moment, a story in which an non-gendered lead character’s gender was never an issue, in which pansexuality and polyromantic relationships existed and none of that made any difference and had nothing to do whatsoever with the story. Imagine, instead, that the story was about a self-aware rogue bodyguard cyborg who was a raging pop culture geek and had severe social awkwardness in a variety of dangerous and complicated situations that involved alien contamination, space colonization and computer hacking. Just imagine that.

Well, you don’t have to, because Martha Wells has imagined it for you in the Murderbot series. I mentioned All Systems Red back in an overview of Queer Friendly Science Fiction I’d been reading in 2018, but have never reviewed one this series, specifically. There are a lot of reasons why I have not done more than mention it, but today I want to entice you all to read the series if you have not yet done so.

In All Systems Red, we meet an organic-tech construct, a contract bodyguard that calls itself Murderbot. Murderbot prefers watching media to being with its human clients, who treat it like a robot or its corporate owners who treat it like equipment.  I will spoil nothing, but Murderbot’s story continues in Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy at the end of which Murderbot’s circumstances are vastly different than they were in the first novel.

Which brings me to Network Effect, the newest entry. In Network Effect, Murderbot is kidnapped and asked to do the right, most dangerous thing, for the right reasons by an entity Murderbot has a complicated relationship with. It is a rollicking action tale and would be worth reading on its own, but as part of this specific continuum is breathtaking. What makes Network Effect worthy of an Okazu review are key characters around Murderbot. Dr. Mensah, a main player in earlier novels is in a polyromantic familial relationship. That’s it. That relationship exists. People in it show affection and caring to one another. Two of our main female supports are in a partnership. None of this has anything to do with the plot per se, although the relationships are relevant to what happens and why. Like any relationship might be. Murderbot is uninterested in being gendered and ultimately finds “it” more comfortable, presumably to keep a hold onto it’s not-humanity, in which it finds comfort.

If you had asked me, I would have assumed the series would end at the finale of the 4th book, but Wells has skillfully set up a scenario in which she can continue to plausibly write Murderbot for as long as she desires, and has provided room for spin-offs and sequels that would be wholly organic. Pun intended.

Since the first four books are novellas, they make quick reading and although this book is a full-length novel, I had to keep my reading paced or I would have blown through it quickly. More than ever, the action was very visually evocative. In places I felt that this book was being written for the movie it will hopefully one day become. (With flashbacks to fill in the earlier books). For once, that really worked.

This book is not “lesbians in space,” its “well, yes there are lesbians in space, but there’s an actual story that involve them and not just some YA coming out schtick in space or vague mentions of lesbian-ish relationships.”*

Ratings:

Overall – 9

For action filled action, a non-gendered dorktastic protagonist, and alien worlds with queers in space, Martha Wells’ Murderbot is among the best, along with Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series and Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series. We are in a renaissance of queer sci-fi and I, for one, am loving it.

*I’m still looking at you Melissa Scott.





Novel: JK Haru is a Sex Worker in Another World

November 24th, 2019

Last night I had to call 911 because a man was beating a woman outside my house. It was not a good evening to finish JK Haru. But I did finish it. I have many thoughts about this book, some good, some bad. There will be sleep lost for a few days while I deal with it. Much like Psycho-Pass, my brain has to work through the trauma of experiencing someone else’s trauma third-hand. So let me provide some context for my perspective.

In the 1980s, there was an anthology series called Sword and Sorceress. It began in 1984 and ran for 30 volumes through 2015. The first volume began with an introduction, The Heroic Image of Women: Woman as Wizard and Warrior by editor Marion Zimmer Bradley.* She was and remains a big name in 1980s fantasy literature. I was never a fan of her work at the time, although I ended up reading a great deal of it. I felt her work as a editor was vastly superior to her writing. It was her introduction to a later volume that changed my life. She talked about how the first volume contained stories about women proving themselves in sexist fantasy worlds, of women earning the right to be a warrior or wizard. In her introduction, Bradley paraphrased an earlier science fiction editor who spoke to prospective writers. Those writers were often at great pains to spend their time with the technical details of their technologies, at the expense of the story. Bradley noted that the early volumes had been at pains to establish women’s right to be a warrior or wizard and that future volumes would run stories that assumed that right. No more “why can’t women do x?” stories. Women can, women do, and then, you can just tell the story.**

That was in the late 1980s, more than 30 years ago. And yet, here we are still reminding everyone that women can and women already do everything they do. Over and over.

JK Haru is a Sex Worker in Another World by Ko Hiratori was a very rough read for me. Highschooler Koyama Haru is killed by a truck, along with her classmate, Chiba and they awaken in another world. This other world is structured like a RPG game and characters are given abilities at random. Only men get to be adventurers or soldiers and the world is overtly misogynist. Haru becomes a prostitute.

The bulk of the book is scenes of sex work, some consensual, some rape. You know I do not shy from violence, as long as it is between equals. This is not that. The book’s climax is a worse-for-being-entirely-predictable gang rape of Haru and another prostitute and the other’s death. At which point, Haru decides she’s had enough. The book had made a point, but failed to develop the point it had made. Instead, it retreated into a fantasy revenge narrative, dropping the one potentially excellent plot point into a literal single line of conclusion. “It was raining.”

Yes, Haru does create change by the end of the book. That was a positive note. We are left at the end of the book with the belief that things can change for the better.

But I’m still left having read page upon page of sexual and psychological violence against women.  I’m pissed that once again, the humiliation of women is a plot point. It confused me that the author*** said this book is “for women.” What are women supposed to gain from it? “Life is unfair, but the most exceptional of you can take revenge for those who can’t,” isn’t really a lesson we had to be told, surely. Sex workers are always at high risk of violence. (From:17 Facts About Sexual Violence and Sex Work.) Sex work is work. Sex workers deserve to live without stigma. Sexual harassment is disease. Sexual assault is a plague.


In the end, the most crushing thing about the entire story is that not one man in the entire story had learned anything at all. ****
 

Ratings:

I am unable to rate this.  It wasn’t written poorly, but it wasn’t something I’d recommend for entertainment. Perhaps as a reading for a class on social justice. The ending is all right, but I really did not enjoy the ride.*****

 

Kudos to translator Emily Balistrieri and editor Aimee Zink for not just making this book make sense but for giving characters unique “voice.” That takes a lot of skill.

 

*Yes, I am aware that she is a child abuser. If you thought it might be some incredibly relevant point to make, please rest assured, it isn’t.

**I adopted this policy for the Yuri Monogatari project. Stories about coming out were done in V1 and from there contributors were expect to move forward and tell a story.

*** I do not know, nor do I care, if the author is male or female. It’s not really relevant to my reaction to the interview. The interviewer really needed to ask a follow up, like, “In what way is this ‘for women?’ Can you explain what you mean by that?” If I were asked for to suggest a book that outlined “female power fantasy” I would not recommend this book. Not only was more space in Sexiled taken up by women working together, it had a much less violent outcome.

**** Arguably Sumo is the exception. He was never a threat and in the end became an ally. Whether that would be enough, we’ll never know, but we do know the sweet kids Haru played Kickin’-the-Can with did not grow up to be allies, which I would have hoped.

*****Yes, there will be a sequel. I am reviewing this book and how well this book handles its own material in this review.

If you are about to comment with *any* version, of “well….” or “but…” or “actually…” stop. It won’t be approved. In fact, I am going to be very strict about comments on this post.





Yuri Novel: Otherside Picnic, Volume 1 (English)

November 8th, 2019

Just about the time J-Novel Club announced their license of Otherside Picnic, I picked up the first volume of the manga to get a look at the story. Now that I have read the novel, by Iori Miyazawa, I find that I much prefer the novel to the manga.

Otherside Picnic, Volume 1, follows a woman who researches Internet myths and urban legends, Sorawo. The novel begins as she is drowning and is saved by a beautiful woman named Toriko. They are both on the “Otherside,” a place that is definitely not the normal world, but is accessible from it. They are there for their own reasons; Sorawo is drawn to the Otherside the same way she is drawn to ruins and abandoned places, Toriko is looking for her friend, Satsuki, who disappeared.

As Sorawo and Toriko travel together, encountering the flora, fauna and phenomena of the Otherside – and other humans,  who are there for their own reasons – they find themselves changed, both physically and mentally. And, although they can see that there are changes in their bodies, they aren’t necessarily sure exactly what the changes in their minds mean. As they discuss at one point, are the being of the Otheriside using human fear against them, or is their way of communicating or trying to engage with people? They don’t know and neither do we by the end of this volume.

As with Miyazawa’s other translated novel, Side-by-Side Dreamers, the author works hard to meld understandable, researched phenomena with wholly unique concepts, in a way that makes for an interesting read about experiences we have never considered before. This alone makes this book worth reading. Above and beyond this, the writing uses the cultural vertigo of a world whose rules are wholly alien and unknown to create a unique set of plot twists. By the end of Volume 1, we know enough to not always believe what we see or hear, because Sorawo cannot do so, but we are also reliant upon her for narration, which puts us wholly in her unreliable hands. This makes the reader feel as ungrounded as the protagonists, which is a genuinely terrific trick.

There is Yuri, although I’m finding it hard to describe. Sorawo always notes Toriko’s physical beauty right from the beginning, but early on she begins to feel an attachment that kind of jumps past “friend” to something else. She hardly knows Toriko, but wants to be with her. In her incoherent, misanthropic (and slightly jealous) way, Sorawo almost immediately bonds with Toriko and by the end of the book, it seems perfectly natural that her feelings will at some point be recognized as attraction. Additionally, we also learn that Toriko’s relationship with her “friend” was more intimate, which shifts something in Sorawo.

None of the characters are really likable, but neither are they unlikable. As with the Otheriside, we don’t really understand their rules…possibly because they don’t understand themselves.

Translator Sean McCann did a fine job with the vast vocabulary of Japanese Internet urban legends and the alien Otherside and the inside of a not-particularly-social person’s thoughts. Kudos to him and editor Krys Loh.

All in all, this is a slightly creepy, action-filled, semi-mythic story full of many ups and downs, until we don’t know where the ground is. All we can do it hang on and wait for the ride to be over. I liked it a lot.

Ratings:

Story – 9
Character – 8
Service – 2
Yuri – 5

Overall – 9

Otherside Picnic, Volume 1 is available on Amazon or on the J-Novel Club site in several formats. A sample section of the book is also available to read on their site.  Volume 2 will be available on Kindle  or on J-Novel Club in January 2020.

Many thanks to J-Novel Club for the review copy! This the fifth of their initial Yuri line and of these first 5 only one has not been something that I’d read a second time and consider two of them to be brilliant. That’s a hell of a record to start with. I am just so impressed with these choices, I’m really looking forward to more from J-Novel Club. They’ve made a convert of me. ^_^





Yuri Novel: Side-by-Side-Dreamers (English)

October 11th, 2019

As part of the the Yuri issue of SF Magazine last winter, I read a short Yuri story by author Miyazawa Iori.  It was very good. So, when a novel by Miyazawa was included in the initial rollout of J-Novel Club Yuri titles , I was super excited. It’s thrilling to me to read science fiction that is unique and thoughtful. That it has a frisson of Yuri is a nice to have…what I really want it to be a good story.

Side by Side Dreamers is a very good story.

It also was a case of atrocious timing. ^_^;

I’m a very bad sleeper myself and have been since I was young. I picked this book up as my normal insomnia was exacerbated by jet lag. So the opening in which we meet Saya, a young woman who has not slept in a very long time, and whose ability to function normally has been all but destroyed, I questioned whether this was the book I really needed in my life right that moment. ^_^;

Saya is trying once again to get some sleep when a schoolmate climbs into the bed she’s in…and instantly she falls asleep. Saya finds herself battling a creature in her dream with the other girl, who she immediately understands is her lover. Upon waking Saya is refreshed, but confused. As she encounters other dream warriors, Saya discovers a whole ecology of sleep monsters, the Suiju and the Sleepwalkers who combat them. Unfortunately for Saya, Hitsuji, her dream lover, and the other girls, the monsters are getting smarter…and are starting to enter the waking world! 

With an original, if poorly-timed-for-me premise, I was hooked pretty quickly into the story. The relationship between Hitsuji and Saya took second place to the main plot, which twisted in the most interesting ways. Their relationship was also pleasantly service-free. Even with girls sleeping as the plot driver, the lack of lingering creepy gaze was a relief.

The eventual climax was nothing I could have predicted, a quality I particularly like in my science fiction. It was a very good read.

Ratings:

Story – 8
Character – 8
Service – 2
Yuri – 4

Overall – 8

My expectations for the J-Novel Club Yuri line was not high – like most people who have read a lot of light novels, I tend to assume they are mostly franchise/genre extenders written for an audience with an 8th grade comprehension level. The current crop of “reincarnated as a log in a feudal monarchy” trend has not changed my opinion much.

I can say with all honestly, that after reading 4 out of 5 of the initial Yuri offerings from J-Novel Club, I am damn impressed. 3 out of 4 get top marks from me for good writing (and the one I didn’t love was blatantly not for me,) and 4 out of 4 for excellent translation.  And we’re not done yet, because we’ve go two more to go and at least one of them is superlative!  ^_^ Check back for a gushing review next week!

Thank so much to J-Novel Club for the review copy!





Yuri Novel: Last and First Idol (English)

September 30th, 2019

Last and First Idol, by Gengen Kusano, is the first of the J-Novel Club Yuri novels that I have read. Having read it, I feel that I stand in the presence of genius, very uncomfortably so. ^_^

This collection of three stories, “Last and First Idol,” “Evo Girls” and “Dark Seiyuu” are reminiscent of Murakami’s “Superflat” movement; combining pop culture and the shallowness of consumer culture with an eye to creating something new and extraordinary. In Murakami’s work, he’s using pop culture art as the base for his epic art. Kusano is using pop culture in the form of idols, seiyuu and mobile games as a base for hard science fiction, sprinkled liberally – and holistically – with philosophical discussions of consciousness, soul, time and life, with extremely detailed forays into science, with a strong emphasis on evolution.

The post-script essay by Satoshi Maejima gives us a few clues to the nature of this particular flattened construction; noting that the titular story began life as a Love Live! fanfic. Kusano himself likens his description of his opening story as a “widescreen yuri baroque proletariat hard sci-fi idol story,” as being suggestive of the kind of trope inversions we saw in Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

For myself it reminded me heavily of Piers Anthony’s early pre-Xanth science fiction Herald the Healer series and his early fantasy Tarot series, which, while both were obsessed with sex, dealt rather prominently with communication and evolution and society as well. (Disclaimer: The Tarot series is one of my foundational series and a great number of things remind me of it.)

“But in a deterministic universe only the present exists. There is no past or future. Determinism only allows for a time-like progression based on the laws of causality. All that existed is a privileged point in time we call the present. These points in time are related to each other, in that one occurs before or after another, but that’s all. In a universe where free will had shattered determinism the real present exists. The point at which free will activates is the present. By activating free will, we can create a future that had not yet existed. As opposed to the deterministic universe, in which all points in time exist simultaneously.”

Yuri Novel or philosophic rant by an unhinged pop culture addict? Or thought-provoking science fiction? Choose all that apply.

There’s no question that this book is bonkers, but bonkers in a brilliant and brilliantly disturbing way that nonetheless did not leave me feeling traumatized. This despite a great deal of violence, guts, cannibalism, and three completely different end-of-the-world scenarios, all uniquely horrific.

If you are still reading at this point, not put off by anything I have said, you are now ready to read story descriptions.^_^

“Last and First Idol,”explores the nature of pop idols in extremis, in which one young woman’s desire to be an idol, and another young woman’s desire to see her achieve that, drives her them reshape reality to achieve their ends. The end of the world and the destruction of humanity is nothing more than another idol activity.

“Evo Girls,” explores the exact opposite, using the media of mobile games, which have the ability to strip all life from the planet and how one addict puts is all back together, from scratch. You may have read other “reincarnated as an amoeba” stories, but you have never read one like this. Objectively, this one has the happiest Yuri ending.

In “Dark Seiyuu,” the universe turns out to be fundamentally not at all what physicists tell us it is. Genetically engineered seiyuu who fuel interplanetary travel, have the capacity to destroy or preserve life. Murderous Akane, driven mad by her dreams of becoming the greatest seiyuu, is the only one capable of saving herself and her kouhai, Sachi.

I have never before been so relieved that a book did not have illustrations.

The book is described as being “Yuri” and is being sold as being “Yuri” so, it behooves us to ask “Is it Yuri?”

Yes. Every story includes an intense emotional/romantic connection between two characters who identify as female. This last distinction will become clearer as you read the stories. I will not spoil, but I caution you to make no assumptions about my phraseology. It is neither gender nor sexuality, but humanity, about which I am prevaricating.

In more than one of the stories, “love” or “like” is probably not the right terminology, either. Obsession, mutual need, symbiosis, all come a little closer. I’ll tell you this, though – none of the stories have a particularly bad end. The beginnings and middles, though…you’re on your own. ^_^

 

Ratings:

Overall – 9

Genuinely brilliant, thoughtful and uncomfortable-making in a dozen ways, Last and First Idol is an excellent book, but not a light read. Thanks very much to J-Novel Club for the review copy!

Tomorrow, we’ll be talking to Sam Pinansky of J-Novel Club about this new line of Yuri science fiction novels and see what else in store for us!