Witch King, by Martha Wells

Cover of Witch King

Like many, my first Martha Wells book was All Systems Red. It was after reading the first four Murderbot Diaries novellas (2017-2018; the rest hadn't been published yet) that I sought out Wells' earlier novels, starting with her second novel of the Ile-Rien Series, Death of the Necromancer (1998, a steam/magic-punkish riff on Sherlock Holmes from the point of view of Moriarty and his gang, who are the heroes, though the Holmes/Watson team is by no means the enemy, just worthy obstacles), and then its predecessor, The Element of Fire (1993, wheel-lock/faery-punk). I still need to read her Fall of Ile-Rein Trilogy (2003-2005) and the Books of the Raksura (2011-2017), as well as several more stories and books. 

But before reading more of them, I first was eager to check out her first fantasy novel since she started the Murderbot Diaries, Witch King (2023). And I was very glad I did. As a novel, and as (so far) a standalone, and with a character who is much more interested in the world, there is considerably more detail of the worldbuilding than in Murderbot Diaries. (The lack of such detail in MBD is something which some readers have complained of, but to me that worldbuilding is there, just largely out of sight for now. I have hopes that the streaming show will take a path most will not expect: instead of centering it on Murderbot as the short stories/novellas/novels do, make it a companion-piece and have it outside of Murderbot's rather narrow viewpoint. That will also avoid the problem of how so much of the story is MB's internal monolog, which is just about impossible to portray on screen.) Like her earlier fantasies I've read, it takes a "drop readers in the deep end" approach, explaining very little and counting on the readers to figure things out as the story proceeds.

In this world, there has been a terrible war--so terrible that the population is significantly reduced--conducted by invading, imperialistic sorcerers with far more powerful magic than the locals, but who are eventually defeated by asymmetrical warfare, coalition building, and intrigue. The main character is a demon who, summoned from the underworld, had become part of a nomadic family in the willingly given body of a daughter who had recently died, but in the process of the war and its aftermath has had to change bodies twice. This demon, Kai, has some characteristics similar to Murderbot: very powerful and deadly in combat, an inhuman viewpoint, mental-health issues, and a member of a somewhat dysfunctional but beloved found family. 

The story is told in two chronology streams, with chapter titles that indicate which stream. It starts with the Present, and Kai imprisoned with no memory of how that happened. Alternating chapters reveal the Past, when Kai was part of a family, just before the Hierachs' invasion rolls over his people.

As with Murderbot, gender and culture play an important role of cognitive estrangement. The book is just as queer as MBD, with same-sex romances, nonbinary characters, and characters like Kai who are one gender (male) in spirit but sometimes in a female body. As with the real world, the cultures have different gender expressions: the largest culture has men wearing skirts and women wearing pants, a strong enough expression that when Kai (in male body) takes off the skirt for freedom of movement, some of his companions are very distressed that they can see his legs through the feminine pants. And the Immortal Blessed (also powerful magic wielders, most of whom are allied with the Hierarchs) require men to wear their hair long, and women to cut it very short. These are of course part of the worldbuilding, but they also call into question the readers' beliefs of what is "proper," shaking the reader free of conventions.

I very much enjoyed this novel. It's quite different from MBD, but it also incorporates some of the elements that have made MBD work so well for me. It's not exactly set up to be the beginning of a series, but it's not closed off to that, either, and I wonder if we'll see more of Kai and his family.

Things I still need to blog: Rivers of London, Master and Commander, and Post Captain, the first few stories of The Unreal and the Real, the first stories of The Complete Stories of HP Lovecraft (all audio). Currently reading: The Unreal and the Real, Stone Blind, and Rusty Puppy. Oh, and the first 2 Rivers of London comics.)

The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie

Cover art for The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie, 2019

I've had The Raven Tower on my TBR shelf for a long time, putting it off for ages due to work and other things that needed to be read. Since I also have Ann Leckie's 4th and 5th novels set in the Imperial Radch universe to read, I turned to this, her first fantasy novel, before those. (I read this in print.)

This is one of those fantasy novels that feels like a science-fiction novel--that is, the magic is as quantifiable as science, in many ways, as if the fantasy universe is just a normal, material universe with slightly different rules. In this world (which could be Earth), there are gods, which seem to come to being in various ways as part of the natural order. Some are much older than humans; some apparently even come from outer space. Humans have learned how to make contact with gods, how to teach them to communicate, and how to get them to help.

There are two point-of-view characters: The Strength and Patience of the Hill--a god older than life on land--and Eolo, a transgender man who is retainer to Mawat, a man of heroic stature and temperament, who is the son and heir of the leader of a nation, the Lease of the Raven--the Raven being another god. Mawat, a character much like Hamlet, returns home to find his father missing and the throne usurped by his uncle. Indeed, there are many Hamlet elements in the story, including an Ophelia parallel and a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern parallel. Also, the transgender nature of Eolo harks back to the male-only rules of the acting profession in Shakespeare's time, so that all female roles were played by men or (more often) boys.

Eolo's story is the investigation of what is going on, to set things right. Strength's story, on the other hand, covers vast stretches of deep time, much like some of Lovecraft's works, and yet it leads inexorably toward a collision with Eolo. Strength is a god who cares little for individual humans--until other gods treat them callously. Its story is one of learning to care for those humans who count on it, and then--returning to Hamlet--revenge.

A beautifully written book, unlikely to become a series, but I can imagine further stories set in the same world. Indeed, this would make a very interesting TTRPG campaign setting, in the vein of Runequest.

As with her Imperial Radch novels, this book examines how other forms of life might think, and also addresses other possible human cultures, and the effects of those human and nonhuman cultures encountering each other. Gender, too, is a theme--gender and the effects of culture on it.

I had the pleasure of meeting the author when she won the 2016 Seiun Award for Best Translated Novel (given for speculative fiction works translated into Japanese, presented every year at WorldCon by literature and culture scholar Dr. Tatsumi Takayuki).

Things I still need to blog: Witch King (in print); Rivers of London Master and Commander and Post Captain, the first few stories of The Unreal and the Real, the first stories of The Complete Stories of HP Lovecraft (all audio)

Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

Traditional Chinese translation with great cover featuring the author as Hari Seldon--appropriate, since Seldon, like all the smart characters in the book, is basically Asimov.

I first read Foundation 40 years ago. Like everything I've read by Isaac Asimov (and I've read a ton of Asimov), I found it rather dry and dull back then, and my tastes were much less discerning--back then I loved pretty much anything with a spaceship in it. This fix-up novel is basically a bunch of conversations where the smart character is the author's mouthpiece and the other characters exist just so the smart character can look smart.

Also, the very existence of women is not alluded to until 81% of the way into the book.* This being a society tens of thousands of years into the future, a reader could be forgiven for starting to seriously think that women have gone extinct (or abandoned the men like Entwives) in the book's setting, and that the interchangeable men--who all smoke and talk like 1950s American businessmen, and only two of whose names I can remember less than 12 hours after finishing the book--reproduce via cloning or something. Near the end of the book, a young woman appears and says nothing, but just looks mesmerized in the mirror as a piece of high-tech jewelry (made by men, I assume) makes her look pretty. A couple of pages later, the comedy-shrew-wife of a petty despot appears, and actually has a few lines just to make her be the awful harpy, and is immediately shut up by being given the same piece of jewelry. It doesn't keep her silent for long: she acts the shrew again for a page or two a couple of chapters later. And that's it for women in this book! I can't remember a single mention of children, either.

This is the problem with most classic SF: it may be interesting in a sort of anthropological tracing of influences and of bygone attitudes, but as literature, well, you can see why science fiction is still fighting to shed the prejudice that it's shallow, juvenile, and poorly written. Thanks a lot, John W Campbell.

Wow, women! Women who actually do things!

And how about the Apple+ adaptation? Well, it's MASSIVELY better--for one thing, women not only exist but play major roles in the show and in the narrative setting, and for another, there's a racially diverse cast of really talented actors who fill out the two-dimensional characters of the novel--but at the same time...saying it's massively better is not saying much. To be honest, I find the TV/streaming show ponderous, self-important, cold. It's beautiful. The cast are great. There's a great deal of imagination invested in it. But...it's still pretty dull. That's down to the writing and directing. The acting, the casting, the cinematography are superb, and just barely enough to keep me watching.

*I'm willing to admit there may have been some mention of them before that, or even a very vague allusion toward their existence, but if so, I missed it. And after noticing the total lack of female characters in the first few chapters, I was looking for them...and then looking for any mention at all, even indirect, that women existed.

The Future of Another Timeline, by Annalee Newitz

Spanish-language cover of the first issue of the "Death of Speedy" arc in one of the best comics of all time, Locas, by Jaime Hernandez (part of the Love and Rockets magazine by the Brothers Hernandez). Included here because Newitz's novel kept bringing Maggie and Hopey to mind, and I kept imagining the characters in The Future of Another Timeline as if drawn by Jaime Hernandez.

I've read plenty of nonfiction by Annalee Newitz, lots of stuff that they've edited, and some short fiction, and I've listened to their podcast with Charlie Jane Anders. But I hadn't read any of their novels! Well, I got to listen to and ask questions of Newitz at the 2023 VICFA online conference, and that reminded me how remiss I've been, so while they were talking, I surreptitiously got on Amazon Japan and bought the ebook of The Future of Another Timeline. I finished it a few days ago, and though I still haven't blogged some other books I finished before that (note to self: need to write about Rivers of London audiobook, The Raven Tower in print, the first few stories of The Unreal and the Real Vol 1, and starting my 8th circumnavigation of the Aubrey/Maturin series with Master and Commander in audio), I wanted to get this one down before it loses its freshness.

Time-travel stories are hard. Even harder, because there have been so many, is getting anything fresh into a time-travel story. That certainly one of the reasons Future of Another Timeline has shot up to be in my top-five time-travel stories. (Note: I do not actually make top-five lists. I have a really hard time putting things in order like that. My students often ask me "What's your favorite ___?" and I panic and go "Too much pressure!" and reply "Well, I don't know about my favorite, but right now I really like ___." If somebody on social media tags me with "name your top ten thingamajigs," I just ignore it or I'll end up with a migraine. So when I say "my top-five" I really just mean "I love this!") Fresh things in this story: For one, there are vastly ancient time machines, created when life was just starting on Earth, that humans have figured out how to work by tapping them in certain sequences, and thus for centuries there has been time travel, though an academically inclined society keeps a monopoly on it to prevent things from going totally crazy. The fact that a time traveller can go back to the late-19th century and people go "Oh, so you're a time traveller! So what's that like then?" is a charming change from all the "must keep time travel secret" of 99% of such stories. Also, I love the pre-human machines--were they built by aliens? By humans who somehow travelled back before the machines were built? Are they some result of a bizarre natural process? Nobody knows yet.

Another thing I love about this book is that it is unapologetically feminist, and portrays a time war going on between two factions: the Daughters of Harriet (who claim Harriet Tubman as their patron saint), and the Comstockers (basically Incels, who are trying to get the movement led by 19th-century anti-vice/anti-abortion misogynist activist Anthony Comstock to produce a timeline where women have no rights at all). As is revealed in hints through the early parts of the novel, Comstock's laws have already succeeded in a history where abortion is 100% illegal throughout the USA, and the Daughters of Harriet are trying to edit the timeline to get more freedom and equality for women (including trans and nonbinary people), when they come across the Comstockers' plan to edit the timeline to erase women's rights entirely and turn them into "queens" (breeders) and "drones" (workers).

I like how the language and ideas are very reminiscent of how Wikipedia works, particularly with "edit wars," something Newitz has much experience with and has written about. It really brings to mind how much we know of history, what is brought to our attention, and so on. How much do we know of the two most influential historical figures in this novel, Harriet Tubman and Anthony Comstock. I knew a fair bit about the former before I read, but hardly more than the name of the latter, but they're quite important to the history of the USA. Yet it's so easy for them to be "written out," and right now, erasing uncomfortable history is an obsession of the Far Right--the same people who complain endlessly about "cancel culture," something they have mostly made up from their own imaginations. Control of history is a powerful thing, and time travel serves as a powerful metaphor for that.

If I had read this book before Gamergate and the rise of the Far Right (which would have required a time machine as the book is from 2019), I'd probably have thought it a bit on the nose, and a bit hard to believe that incels could ever become that big of a problem. But today, anybody who finds it hard to believe in the existence of a feminist-vs-incel war needs to open their eyes. We are, to put it simply, already there, in an ideological struggle for equal rights, democracy, and liberty on one side and a gleeful romp toward a fascist dark age on the other. (That the second choice will also lead to an environmental collapse is just icing on the cake.) As a middle-aged white American man, I'm expected to be on the side of the majority of my fellow middle-aged white American men, but I am very much with my queer, intersectional-feminist environmentalist antifascist comrades on this issue. Some people reading this book might feel preached at, but at this point that makes as much sense as reading a book set in WW2 that says "Nazis are bad" and being mad that the author doesn't make it fair and balanced.

Still, those things alone do not a wonderful book make. Well, there's also excellent plotting and structure, but the best thing is the depictions of the main and supporting characters. I felt tears welling up twice at the traumas and the victories of the main characters. I always love a book where I fall in love with some of the characters, and I know that Tess and Beth and even Soph and Hamid will live in my imagination for years and years. And that is yet another success in this novel: That it can be both a big, overarching story of the war for human rights across history, and at the same time a focused, very personal story of a few characters, often teenagers oppressed by their society, who escape through backyard punk-rock parties and smoking...and, tragically, violence.

CWs: This novel has some very graphic violence, and abuse of women, trans people, and minors, including sexual abuse. None of it is there to titillate like some cheap action movie--it's all pertinent to the narrative and the characters. But some may want to avoid it for that.

Anyway, highly recommended. I have two more of Newitz's novels ready to read.