Alexia Tarabotti doesn't care what you think. A review of "Soulless"

Soulless by Gail Carriger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am totally over vampire stories and werewolf stories--but the premise of this book intrigued me, so I got it. I'm glad I took a look, because it's a fresh approach to the genre (even bearing in mind that I'm reading it 9 years after its first publication). It took me halfway through to get a fix on the author's tone, but once I did I enjoyed it very much.

Speaking of tone, here's my take on that: this is a (mostly) light-hearted, witty book, almost as much a romance as it is an action novel, and it is as charming and as comedic as it can be with genuine bloody monsters about. And dirigibles.

Alexia is a fun heroine, a rule-breaker with a great deal of confidence and unrelenting stubbornness, which is what is needed for a female MC in an alternate-Victorian setting. I like that this is an action story, and she is not simply watching the action (as is found in some novels of this type). She is engaged, and her action is integral to the plot. She has a mystery to solve that she investigates on her own rather than waiting for others to act, and she makes progress using her intelligence and nerve. She prefers comfort and propriety, to a degree, but doesn't back down when things become uncomfortable or unpleasant. Even when the action becomes more than a lady of the period can deal with--even a plucky woman with a strong will--and other characters come to the fore, she still engages and makes a significant contribution. She's not window-dressing; she's driving the action.

Plus, it's a witty book. I seldom laugh out loud when I read, but I actually did several times. Like at this point:

"Mrs. Loontwill fainted.

"Alexia thought it the best, most sensible thing her mama had done in a very long while."

The naughty bits were also written with a good amount of humor. I thought it a good balance for the romance.

Partway through, before I had gotten properly dialed in, I had thought I would finish the book but not get the sequels. I've changed my mind, obviously--now I'm eager to find the rest. It looks like Alexia has a lot of interesting, exciting stories to live, and I'm looking forward to reading them.

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I'd kinda rather lie and say I loved it

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm not trying to be difficult. Or contrary. I just didn't really like this book. I almost gave it 4 stars, because assigning 3 stars to a Hugo Award winner looks like you want a fight. I don't.

To be clear, right up front, this is a well written book, and I like the author. I'd like to meet her, and shake her hand, and ask for her to sign a copy of something. That would be an honor. But I didn't enjoy reading this particular book. The novel might be up your alley. If so, it may well be a 5-star favorite of yours. I hope it is. In fact, I hope other people like it much more than I did.

For me, this was just a downer, and I usually don't finish books that I feel that way about. Being entertained and feeling a bit of joy are, for me, more motivating purposes for reading than FOMO or "seeing what happens" or being surprised or any other more esoteric purposes others have. The novel is more dystopian than I thought it would be, and the tone is unrelentingly grim, pessimistic, misanthropic, and disheartening. So, not too fun, at least not for me. Nothing good happens anywhere in this land of despots. [Spoiler, sort of. Maybe skip a line or two.] Well, there is a moment of freedom and domestic bliss, but the foreshadowing doesn't let you enjoy it. You know, by then, what will happen/has happened. Almost everyone in the story is untrustworthy, unkind, and unhappy, taught from infancy to be practical to the point of ruthlessness. There are no heroes to root for; even the main character is only occasionally sympathetic. I cared what happened to her, enough to keep on, but I didn't ever want to meet her. I didn't like her, even though I wanted to.

A dark tone is, for me, more tolerable in those books where the main characters are fighting to change what's wrong in their world, or when I have the feeling, as the reader, that something can improve. There is perhaps a hint of that, at best, but that's not really what the story is about. The characters, instead, are moving about, or being carried about, or being pushed about, doing whatever is in front of them to do without much choice or self-direction. [Spoiler! Stop!] Until maybe the last page, there's no drive for anyone to create a better life, or solve a problem, or intentionally attack a main conflict, and all that does is point to book 2. [Still spoilering] The nearest to a recognizable goal is Essun chasing after her daughter, but that feels like a waste of emotional energy when you get to the end of the novel without any sign of the girl. Really, the book has a lot of movement, but without goals proper to the characters we're following. It is action without clear purpose. (In that way, this novel is more like literary fiction, where the plot is more about the sum total of the characters' life situation than linear action toward a goal.) That kind of vagueness about the plot or main conflict can work, of course, but it's just not for me. The why? in my head never quite gets answered, and I want it to be.

The literary consensus is that this is an awesome book. Smart people who like novels really liked this one. I'm not in the mainstream here. Make of that what you will.

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A fresh look at history

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very useful history, looking at world events through a lens I had never considered: Central Asia's wealth and the West's efforts to possess it. The author traces the development of trade, empire, war, and colonization in the region that stretches from the Mediterranean to Western China, which was, of course, the location of the original "Silk Road." I found it very eye-opening, and most of it entertaining. (Where I wasn't entertained, I was still informed, which is a different reward.) :)

I especially enjoyed the ancient history part, which is why I started the book, but the modern history was equally informative. It showed how many forces have remained constant for millennia. The main idea is that Central Asia has been a source of great wealth throughout history, and the efforts to obtain that wealth (and guarantee its flow) has been a preoccupation of Western powers for thousands of years. Whether it's silk, silver, horses, spices, opium, rare earths, or petroleum that is capturing the attention of traders and speculators and governments, the effect has been to cause competition and war to obtain it.

One of the ways information is framed in this book is to show how much history is driven by trade and profit. Everything is about the money first, and the politics follow. That seems obvious, and has been pointed out endlessly everywhere, but it really informs every moment of history as it is described in this book, and explains better than anything I've read before the movements of people and growth of cities and spread of ideas, including religions. What struck me was the constant revelation of the great wealth of this city or that one, of this empire or that one, in places that are mostly blank in my understanding or only roughly penciled in. In regions that seem, in my mind, to be a deserted wasteland (metaphorically, since I know so little about them), huge numbers of people have lived and civilizations have thrived, with wealthy populations and advanced societies that included many educated, cosmopolitan people enjoying high levels of sophistication. Think Merv, and Balkh, and Samarkand, and Mosul, and Edessa, and dozens more that may seem familiar or may not.

The middlemen all along the route took their cut, and that explains the dramatic push of poor Westerners to find a way around them. The desire for Central Asia's wealth explains the Age of Exploration. It explains the "Great Game" in Afghanistan and India, and it explains British Petroleum, and the toppling of governments. It explains (sort of) how the United States could first arm Saddam and then attack him, or revile Iran and then arm them. Specific examples of European and American colonization or exploitation explain anti-Western sentiment there far better than explanations I've heard since the 80s or 90s in media or elsewhere.

What the author does so well in this book is put this region of the world in the very center of history. Right or wrong, it changes how you look at events, and how you see life on the periphery. It's a "walk a mile in his shoes" exercise that has given me a great deal of insight into how people in the Middle East might see their history, their place in the world, and the relative trustworthiness of our government and institutions, or our corporations. When Westerners--British East India Company, or Exxon, or Soviet Russia, or Hitler's Germany--want to extract a nation's wealth, and then use that wealth to oppress the people in their own land, and treat those people and their needs as less significant, calling them "backward," or "tribal," and brutally suppress their very natural objection to that treatment... well, it's easy to see why they would consider that unjust. You can see why they would expel the colonizers. Why they would nationalize oilfields and railroads. Why they might still be angry.

There are other ways to look at all of these events, of course, but I found this perspective very useful. While it was sometimes uncomfortable, it was enlightening, and well worth spending the time investigating. In addition, the scholarship was excellent (beyond my ability to judge, that is) and painstaking, with extensive notes for the skeptical. So both for its excellent information and its unique perspective, I must highly recommend the book.

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