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Book Review: The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He

Cover art for The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He

 

The Ones We’re Meant to Find  by Joan He

Roaring Book Press, 2021

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250258564

Available: Hardcover, audiobook, Kindle edition Bookshop.orgAmazon.com )

 

 

 

Every time I thought I had this book figured out, it took me in an unexpected direction.

 

There are two alternating plotlines. First, we are introduced to Cee. Cee is trapped on a deserted island, with few memories but with an urgent feeling that she must get off the island and find her sister Kay..

 

Then we meet Kasey, living in a climate-ravaged world. At sixteen, Kasey is a scientific genius who works for the government office responsible for finding solutions for human survival. The living situation is desperate. The most privileged individuals live in eco cities in the air, where they are required to spend much of their time in stasis, participating in life virtually, as a cleaner option than that available to those with pollution karma. Even this is becoming unsustainable, and Kasey is part of the bureaucracy trying to find a solution quickly, as weather and radiation worsen dramatically, killing millions. Yet even in this desperate state there is debate over whether it’s worth it to survive without freedom and self-determination, or in some cases, at all. As this situation continues, Kasey is also searching for her sister, Celia, a free spirit, who disappeared at sea and is believed dead.

 

There is a really slow start and neither Cee or Kasey start out as deeply emotional, but the puzzle is intriguing and He does a great job bringing both worlds to life. This book is really going to disturb some people but there are some interesting ethical and scientific debates being explored and the choices the primary characters make are often unexpected. It’s not what one expects from typical horror, but it isn’t a title that readers will forget soon.

 

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Book Review: Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

Alfred A. Knopf, 2019

ISBN 978-1-101-94788-3

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

The answers to some of the most intriguing questions about human thought and behavior are so complex that they have remained central to storytelling for hundreds of years. Ted Chiang’s Exhalation is a fascinating collection of science fiction short stories that raises many ideas related to these questions through thought-plots, reporter-narrators, and both ancient and modern elements of storytelling.

 

Chiang’s ability to spark the imagination and engage the reader in deep thought leads to entertainment of the highest order. The opening story, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” is reminiscent of the Arabian Nights and tells overlapping tales of time travel that show the interconnectedness of people’s stories with a surprising twist on the definition of alchemy. The title story “Exhalation” and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny” focus on the human elements of robots and machines and what they share with their human creators. Readers are introduced to a robot society about to be extinguished as the narrator ponders the end of time and to the creator of a mechanical nanny who hopes to raise rational children by eliminating the emotional aspects of child rearing. “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” the longest story, engages the reader in the lives of digital entities and their owners, including discussions about setting emotional boundaries for these “digients,” parental strategies for the owners, and determining digients’ maturity and readiness for certain experiences.

 

Two other stories show characters reflecting on the serious developments in life that have come about through technological innovation. “The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling” considers the negative effects of assistive technology on people who have access to videos of their entire life. In a parallel plot line in the same story, a character from Tivland is being taught to write for the first time and struggles with the contrast between the culture’s prized oral tradition and their doubts about the quality and truth of written stories. “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” takes a look at paraselves who can be contacted for a limited time through prisms and suggests the fallout that might occur if we see our lives lived out in other versions that might not conform to our picture of ourselves. The examination of truth in storytelling continues in “Omphalos” in which an archaeologist who examines the first creations of God, trees without rings and mummies without bellybuttons, defines science as a search for truth and purpose but develops doubts that lead to a crisis of faith. Finally, in “The Great Silence,” the narrator reflects on the divine as it manifests in sound or the loss of sound that is the extinction of a species. Interestingly, it is a parrot that points out the human process leading to greatness as a creative force originating in myths, imagination, and aspirations.

 

This collection of stories is so effective because it taps into what is familiar and applies it to what is unfamiliar, thus revealing the layers of thought which are at work in any human endeavor but particularly in those involving science and what Chiang calls the “technology of writing.” The stories are a goldmine of allusions to scientific, literary, and religious thought such that the more a reader can bring to them, the richer the experience of reading. By bringing the craftsmanship and truth that he writes about to his own storytelling, Ted Chiang creates a collection that deserves to be read more than once. Highly recommended

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Editor’s note:  Exhalation: Stories was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection.

Book Review: The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring

The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring

Imprint, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1250304506

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

Teenage Mavi, living in Argentina under the military dictatiorship of Jorge Videla in 1978, is barely scraping by in the streets of Buenos Aires after her parents have “disappeared”.  Desperate to evade the police herself, Mavi uses forged credentials to get a job as an English teacher at the Vaccaro School, an exclusive boarding school in a huge Gothic mansion located in isolated Patagonia. Angel is a disembodied visitant from 2020 to Mavi’s time and place.

The Vaccaro School was built by the wealthy De Vaccaro family in the nineteenth century on land seized by the fictional indigenous Zapuche tribe. Mavi’s uncle explains that the Zapuche enacted bloody rituals when their land was seized. Sixty years ago, a mysterious illness reputed to have sprung from a Zapuche curse killed nearly all the residents of the Vaccaro School, and a girl had to be sacrificed to stop it. It is just now reopening. I think the author was trying to make a commentary on the damage colonialism has done to Argentina and its indigenous people, but the “Indian curse” and “savage bloody sacrifice” tropes really need to be set aside. The Zapuche being a fictional tribe means that the author lost an opportunity to bring attention to the existing problems of Argentina’s indigenous peoples.

The Tenth Girl was promoted as a Gothic psychological thriller with a twist, and for about 350 pages it hits pretty much every trope in the toolbox for a Gothic thriller, without actually having a story that goes much of anywhere. One thing that I did find interesting was the way the house seemed impossibly larger and space more disorganized on the inside than on the outside,  reminding me of the Winchester Mansion or Hill House. Sara Faring is an Argentine-American, so maybe that’s why she set the book in a remote part of Argentina, but the majority of this could have taken place in any isolated location. Faring’s descriptions of Patagonia are lovingly written, but there are too few of them, as for the majority of the book, the school’s inhabitants are trapped inside by the terrible weather. The sudden twist turned the events and characters in a completely different direction, leading to the raising of some interesting philosophical questions. However, I also felt that it cheapened the historical events chronicled in the book. I felt that the twist ending undercut the harsh realities of  Argentina’s “desaparecidos”. The twist also explained in part why the depiction of indigenous people is so problematic, but I think it was just unneccessary in the first place.  I’d love to say more about why, but that would spoil the book for potential readers.

I picked this up because it made the preliminary ballot for the 2020 Stokers in the YA category. It was a real struggle for me to stick with the book for the first 350 pages, but I’m glad I persisted. Faring’s twist ending really changed my perspective on the events and characters. I have trouble imagining many teens picking up this doorstopper and working their way through the whole thing, though.

Contains: pedophilia, self-harm, mentions of suicide, violence, gore.