Book Review: Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

Book #164 of 2020:

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

I have mixed feelings about this story of psychic twins, separated at birth, who nevertheless find each other via telepathy and end up forging an unshakable bond. I like the protagonists themselves, and the plot reads like classic Stephen King as they use their special talents to evade evil and undo a few doomed timelines. I especially appreciate the complicated nuances of Roger and Dodger’s often-codependent relationship, and that author Seanan McGuire resists ever turning these estranged siblings into lovers (as I worried she’d do after a similar development in her Newsflesh trilogy).

On the other hand, the backstory to the experiment that created the rhymed pair is frustratingly vague, as are any other details to the alchemical worldbuilding and the exact goals that anyone is fighting to achieve. I can’t help but feel checked-out as a reader when the primary villain’s motivation seems to be just a generic power grab, which the nominal heroes only oppose because it involves their deaths. We also spend too many scenes — including the entire first hour of the audiobook — from the perspective of this antagonist or his lieutenant that are dramatically inert, telling us nothing more than that they continue to be nebulously diabolical in their schemes. The narrative crackles back to life whenever we rejoin the main characters, but this would be a much stronger novel if it could focus solely on them throughout.

[Content warning for a graphic suicide attempt.]

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★★★☆☆

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Movie Review: Palm Springs (2020)

Movie #11 of 2020:

Palm Springs (2020)

This is a fun spin on the old time-loop story, situating it as a romantic comedy with both leads stuck in the same repeating day (which happens to include a wedding, a classic romcom setting to begin with). It’s as funny as you’d expect from Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, and I particularly love how she gets to play a dynamic character with her own arc of self-empowerment, rather than just being there to service the narrative of her schlubby co-star. There are some of the typical plot beats to this genre, but the script surprises me at several points, and even makes some smart philosophical observations that feel straight out of The Good Place. I’m not saying I would watch the film again and again, but it’s pretty great on this first time through.

[Content warning for torture and suicide.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Altered Carbon, season 2

TV #26 of 2020:

Altered Carbon, season 2

I still have some issues with the logic of this sci-fi series, from the frequent foolishness of its elite super-soldiers to the persistence of sexism centuries after humans have started casually swapping their minds from body to body. (If anything, that decoupling of mental and physical should allow for a nuanced consideration of gender and other identity aspects that the show is just categorically uninterested in pursuing.)

Nevertheless, even more so than the first season, this sophomore outing has made a lot of really smart adaptation choices, keeping the basic premise of the worldbuilding and a few particular plot beats from the books but generally spinning a fresh take on the material that shores up its many weaknesses. Characters and concepts are remixed together in a way that likely disappoints fans of the original Richard K. Morgan trilogy, but as someone who was only ever lukewarm on that version, I greatly prefer what the TV writers have come up with.

Of note this year is the recasting of protagonist Takeshi Kovacs from Joel Kinnaman to Anthony Mackie — a seemingly necessary reconfiguration for the new story that many shows would surely have resisted regardless, plus just a win for diversity — as well as the decision to bring back the endearing hotel A.I. who only appeared in print for the first novel. These are clever production moves that further service the action and the fun exploration of the setting’s mythology that follows.

I’ve been hard on this franchise before, and it definitely offers more here that I could nitpick, but since this is its finest iteration yet, I think it’s earned my first four-star rating.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Book #163 of 2020:

The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade #2)

I love the first volume in this series, a poignant character study of a queer woman sacrificing her morals and steeping herself in the politics of her people’s conquerors in a long game to bring down their bigoted empire from within. And I have a lot of lingering affection for its world and protagonist as a result, but this follow-up is a rather different beast, a sprawling narrative that adds a lot of detail to our understanding of the wider setting without ever finding much for Baru to proactively work towards next.

There are also quite a few surprise coincidences — motivated only by vague references to fate — and the genre turns more overtly towards the fantastical, with immortal enemies who perpetuate their existence via cancerous growths into new hosts, which is a pretty odd divergence from the fairly grounded intrigue of the first book. I’m still invested enough in the heroine’s personal arc and the broader plot to check out any further sequels, but this is not the instant classic that I was hoping author Seth Dickinson would deliver again.

[Content warning for infanticide, eugenics, genital mutilation, brain damage, cannibalism, homophobia, and rape.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Book #162 of 2020:

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

An old favorite. It’s just so delightfully heartfelt and punny, and it definitely helped shape my love of language at an early age. Milo, a bored and boring young child, gets whisked away to a magical land where he must rescue the princesses Rhyme and Reason from the Demons of Ignorance. Along the way he meets many colorful characters, learns some things, and comes to view life as a grand adventure. Juster wields his language beautifully, and there are any number of delightful turns of phrase and inventive re-interpretations of common expressions as actual characters and concepts, from the Whether Man and the Spelling Bee to eating your words and jumping to Conclusions. I identify far too strongly with the Ever-Present Word Snatcher, and I suspect Norton Juster may have as well.

[Review originally posted 2/12/11]

★★★★★

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Book Review: Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang

Book #161 of 2020:

Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang

Originally published as a series of daily blog posts from late January to late March of 2020, this book recounts Chinese author Fang Fang’s experiences in the initial epicenter of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the city went into lockdown in an (unfortunately futile) effort to contain the virus, and Fang, a lifelong Wuhan resident, was there to offer her perspective and attempt to corral all the breaking information and personal stories that came her way. The 65-year-old academic gained a global audience through her writing, as well as some objections over accuracy and critiques that she was either too hard or too soft on the local political response.

It’s interesting to read Fang’s words in translation a few months later on. A lot of what’s novel for her and her neighbors has become our unhappy new normal — shelter-in-place ordinances, face masks, grocery shortages, business closures, etc. — and the unintentional foreshadowing is somewhat uncanny, even though Fang never once predicts that the epidemic will go worldwide. The blogger is also presenting what she learns about the coronavirus as she hears it, so there are a few claims, as she warns in a foreword to the finished text, that we now know are incorrect. And in fact, a growing theme across the diary is her anger at the early experts who told people that the disease was a minor concern that could not spread from human to human.

Removed from the context of a digital ecosystem there are pieces to this work that fall a little flat, especially the writer’s snippy reactions to contemporary critics and aggravation at the government censors who take down her entries without explanation. Yet she has a keen eye for observation and the valuable ability to synthesize a narrative from disparate strands, and she helps provide a sense not just of what life was like in that moment, but also of how the quarantine was almost destined to fail.

We are still far from the end of the crisis, and it’s difficult to predict how future generations will someday look back and study all this. But it would not surprise me if Fang Fang’s on-the-ground reporting becomes key testimony in that regard.

★★★★☆

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Movie Review: Mary Poppins (1964)

Movie #10 of 2020:

Mary Poppins (1964)

I’m sure I must have seen this film when I was younger, but it wasn’t a large part of my childhood, and I have no particular nostalgic attachment to the title. I can easily see why it’s a classic, however, as it sweeps audiences along on a jaunty and imaginative trip back to 1910 England — closer at the initial release than that release is today! — full of catchy tunes and special effects that are no less impressive now. The main character is also much nicer than she is in the original book, although she does still gaslight the children at one point for no apparent reason. Parents may wish to discuss that and a problematic line or two, but overall, it holds up well.

[Content warning for racism, arguably including blackface.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Book #160 of 2020:

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

This 2018 racial injustice memoir is a little bit lacking in a clear throughline, and I personally haven’t gotten much out of the later sections that are specifically about problems internal to the Evangelical church community. And that’s not solely because I’m an outsider to that space, as I think author Austin Channing Brown could have provided helpful further context for readers like me. But as written, I feel like I’m walking in midway through a conversation that I can tell is important but do not have enough information to follow in all its nuances.

Stronger is the beginning of the work, especially for Brown’s descriptions of what it’s like to grow up black in a majority-white environment and her observation that people in marginalized racial groups know far more about white folks than we do about them. From popular TV shows and other subculture touchstones to basic knowledge of haircare to the fraught nature of police interactions, it’s too easy for white Americans to go through life in total ignorance of the black experience, but almost impossible for the reverse. As with most narratives emerging from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, it’s an eye-opening piece.

This is a pretty short book, which is good for it being a quick and easy-to-recommend read, but frustrating for those areas that could have benefited from being explored at greater length. I’d still suggest it for Christians seeking to better understand and combat racism in their midst, however.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Book #158 of 2020:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

An eerie suspense novel that more than lives up to its title, Mexican Gothic follows a 1950s socialite as she is summoned from Mexico City to the countryside home of a cousin beset by disturbing visions amid her new husband’s uncaring family. The protagonist finds her white in-laws to be uncomfortably interested in eugenics and bloodlines, and as she cares for her ailing relative in that gloomy house, she soon starts sleepwalking and hallucinating herself.

I was expecting a tale of an outsider uncovering the dark history of the manor, a la Rebecca or The Turn of the Screw, where the supernatural is perhaps hinted at but ultimately left ambiguous. Instead, the horror here steadily increases until we’ve slipped into full-on Lovecraftian weird fiction almost without even noticing. That transition is as slow and atmospheric as the rest of the story, less a genre bait-and-switch than a gradual reveal of what’s been rotten all along.

Throughout, author Silvia Moreno-Garcia offers striking meditations on cycles of personal and societal abuse, and how hard it can be to escape them. Setting the narrative in an old British mining town compels readers to confront the colonialist mindset embodied by her villains, whose sinister entitlement is squeezing uncanny longevity from the land. Noemí is a capable heroine to set against such forces, but the feeling of hopeless decay lingers far past the book’s conclusion.

[Content warning for incest, cannibalism, racism, sexual assault, gaslighting, and body horror / gore.]

★★★★★

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