DreamHaven

I’ve been meaning to read Fonda Lee for some time, since I keep hearing good things about her epic fantasy trilogy, The Green Bone Saga, that begins with Jade City. Lee has won a World Fantasy Award and Locus Award, and has been nominated for a Hugo and Nebula. The Last Contract of Isako easily meets these high standards.

Isthmus Isako is a highly trained atier contractor—a combination advisor, personal bodyguard, spy, and assassin—who has been working for the director of Astrocom for years. She is considered one of the best tracs in the business, and the best longknifeswoman on the planet Aquilo. She is also over fifty, and has devoted everything to her job. But Astrocom is being dissolved after losing a policy war.

One of Isako’s final jobs is to terminate redundant employees. Aquilo is an extremely hostile planet, colonized and then abandoned by Earth. It is only five hundred years into a terraforming process expected to take many more centuries. Everyone knows that there is nothing extra to support unemployed people. Those who do not voluntarily resign—and take a final walk unprotected out of the domes onto the planet’s lethal surface—have to be literally terminated. And since Isako’s contract will end with Astrocom and its director, she expects to follow those employees into death.

But even on a harsh planet, there are unfathomably rich directors who do not have to make the same sacrifices as ordinary people. The moral Code that Isako lives by demands that atiers carry out the orders given by their directors regardless of the cost to themselves. Isako owes her contracted director her life and loyalty and obedience. She is about to have to seriously question the moral underpinnings on which she judges honor and the value of her life.

The Last Contract of Isako is a gripping science fiction adventure on an alien, complex world. Isako is not only a rare believable female action hero, but a rare well-written aging character. There is action and betrayal and heart. But the unexpected treat is watching Isako wrestle with questions of duty and responsibility, and whether it is possible to find honor in working honorably within a corrupt system.

Claire North has been publishing genre fiction since 2002, beginning as Catherine Webb and then Kate Griffin. I have enjoyed books under all of those names, and had no idea they were the same person. Claire North’s novel, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August won a John W Campbell Award in 2014, and The Sudden Appearance of Hope won a World Fantasy Award in 2017. These most recent novels don’t entirely fit into the SF/F genre, but they are beautifully written and feature intensely personal characterization.

Slow Gods is mostly science fiction, since there are spaceships and intergalactic civilizations and one supernova. But all of those things are secondary to the life of Mawukana na-Vidnaze, who dies in the first chapter thus becoming more or less immortal. Mawukana becomes a witness to the final centuries of the human civilizations on the planets Adjumar and Cha-mdo after a nearby binary star system Lhonoja, also called the Lovers, goes nova.

Mawukana insists that its preferred pronoun is ‘it,’ because the (many) pronouns commonly used by humans and AIs no longer really apply. Since the story is narrated in first person, this is mentioned only once, and Mawukana’s biological gender never becomes important. Nor does that of most of the other characters.

Mawukana is a starship pilot, able to cross the galaxy through “arcspace” without going mad from the Dark. Most pilots lose their sanity after just a few jumps, but Mawukana is not effected. This may or may not be the reason for its continued existence. The expanding wave of heat and radiation created by the Supernova Lhonoja takes centuries to arrive. Immortal Mawukana does not set out to be any sort of participant, but seems not unwilling to be a witness to the destruction.

But this is not the story of an intrepid scientist or hero fighting to prevent the end of their world. It is not really even a story of the collapse of two civilizations. It is the story of the people Mawukana meets, whose lives are altered by overwhelming destruction. It is the story of a person who dies and then lives and loves and learns while watching humanity from a distance of not-quite-human anymore.

God is not love, or at least not in the way we usually speak of love. God is curiousity. And Mawukana na-Vidnaze is curious.

Almost thirty years ago, Cameron Reed published her first novel, The Fortunate Fall, to much acclaim. In 1996, she won an Otherwise Award for a short story. Both author and award went by a different name then. Now Cameron Reed lives not too far from DreamHaven Books, with her found family, all of whom I’ve known for the thirty years she’s been working on this book.

What We Are Seeking is a book about transitions. It begins with an elegantly described transition on a starship, from zero gravity “summer” to low gravity “winter”, in order to decelerate to respond to a distress call. The human colonies on the planet Scythia have been nearly destroyed by its existing species, and have recently realized that one of them may be intelligent.

Passenger John Maraintha is forced to disembark with translator Sudharma Jain to aid the planet’s human colony with their first contact with an intelligent alien species. Both men know they will likely never be able to return to their home worlds. For Sudharma, this change is the fulfillment of a dream; he will need to become part-alien in order to properly communicate with the native Scythians. But John had planned to someday return to his home planet.

John is from a world where marriage is considered an illegal form of slavery, and so is resistant to the idea of permanent relationships. Though he easily switches from one lover to another, and has no problem with gender transitions, he is less comfortable with other life changes. In order to find a place on Scythian society, he must learn to accept that others are not only willing to make major transitions, but that some actually live for them. He must accept who others are and who they wish to become.

What We Are Seeking is a complex web of changing relationships, offering insight into current feminism and gender politics. But it can also be enjoyed as science fiction adventure. There’s galactic exploration, the future of the human race, survival in a hostile extra-terrestrial environment, and first contact with some really weird aliens. If you find yourself reconsidering your views on alien species, marriage or gender, that’s just a bonus.

The cover of this book features a bright pink, one-eyed, tentacled monster and claims that it is a “Sapphic Moby Dick in Space!” I pretty much fell in love with it in the first sentence, which is, “Call me . . . call me whatever the fuck you want.” The person who is not Ishmael is female, raunchy, and a very good writer. She has no problem poking fun at Moby Dick while remaining true to its nihilistic heart.

Not-Ishmael’s story might be similar to Melville’s but her words, attitude, and philosophy are entirely her own. For one thing, everything happens in the far future after humans have colonized the solar system. For another, there is a lot more sex. Yet, the story is a progressive descent into Hells inherent both in an uncaring universe and in the unreliable human heart. It is also, frequently, laugh-out-loud funny.

In a moment of despair brought on by a combination of restlessness, self-deprecation, and poverty, the unnamed narrator signs on aboard the hunter-ship, Pequod. She signs on with her sometime lover, called only “Q”, a mysterious Terran woman who is a harpooner and speaks mostly in incomprehensible Latin phrases. They are hunting Leviathans deep in the uncharted skies of Jupiter. The cerebrospinal fluid of those Leviathans (called spermaceti, which the narrator thinks is hilarious) provides the power to keep alive the failing colonies of exiles from a ruined Earth.

It is dangerous and foolhardy mission, made even more dangerous and foolhardy by the captain’s obsession with tracking down the Möbius Beast, the legendary white Leviathan that she claims is responsible for the loss of her leg. Of course, Not-Ishmael is helplessly, and somewhat pathologically, sexually attracted to “Captain A.” This does not stop her from observing and sometimes sleeping with the rest of the crew, as their voyage leads them deeper into the skies of Jupiter. They all go somewhat mad long before they stab at the unconquering Leviathan from hell’s heart.

Yes, you have heard this story before. But not like this. Hell’s Heart is not fanfiction that adds lesbians and makes everything funny. This is a reverent (and irreverent) retelling that uses science fiction to add modern ideas to an old story. Nor does it fix all the mistakes. The conclusion is right there in the cover copy, “Spoiler: We lost.” And yet it is still glorious. The best science fiction deals, directly or indirectly, with what it means to be human. Perhaps we are the most human when obsessed with vengeance and grappling half-mad with the incomprehensible maw of death.

“Here is Hell’s Heart. Here is the face of every god and none.”

This is a first novel by Kalie Reid, who is a Portland, Oregon native who now lives in Northern Ireland. To no one’s surprise, she lives with a cat. I was drawn to The Sacred Space Between by the title, and kept reading because of its intricate, mysterious magical system and the gorgeous prose.

The book feels like a nineteenth century Gothic romance, possibly because there is a lonely house surrounded by bleak, windswept moors. The moors are dangerous and unwelcoming, but their isolation also seems to provide a refuge, though no one seems at first to know why they might need one.

Maeve is an iconographer at the Abby, a religious institution which has turned the world’s magic into a well-controlled form of faith. The actual magic is done by Saints, through prayers to their painted icons. Maeve is very good at painting icons, but after unusual things happen during the sitting for a new icon, she is sent away to paint an icon of an exiled Saint named Jude. Maeve does not know whether this is punishment or praise. No one, including Jude, knows what terrible things he did to result in exile.

In Jude’s house on the moors, they learn that neither of them fully understands how the magic really works. Jude is convinced that understanding the magic and exposing the Abbey is critical, but Maeve wants to hold on to her faith. They must learn to trust each other. And, of course, they find themselves falling in love. They will need every bit of that trust and love to survive the betrayal the Abbey has in store for them.

For those who like romance, this is a moody slow-burn with plenty of pining and the promise of intimacy at the end. (It is not, however, cosy. The Abbey is physically and mentally abusive, and serious violence is eventually necessary.) For readers of fantasy, The Sacred Space Between provides a solid, unique magical world along with some interesting musings on the nature of memory and faith.

I’d never heard of this book, or its author. So I was quite surprised when we got almost fifty orders for it February. Turns out that Jessie Sylva is a “recovering lawyer” who just started writing. She lives in Canada with her wife and two cats. How To Lose A Goblin in Ten Days is her first novel. She calls it a “cozy fantasy [with an] emphasis on queer joy.”

The book is a very cozy romance. Pansy is a halfling girl who is a terrible farmer, but a very good cook. Her taste in furnishing runs to squeaky clean and excessively frilly. Ren is a non-binary goblin who loves good cooking. They can grow food anywhere, including in the dirt they bring inside the previously-abandoned cottage they’re forced to share with Pansy. Of course, halflings and goblins are natural enemies so clearly, one of them must move out within ten days. They argue. They try to trick each other. They eat delicious food together. They get a cat. There is only one bed.

The world of Pansy and Ren is inhabited by fantasy races drawn from Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons tropes. There is some magic, in the form of an ongoing vague war between wizards and demon lords, in which halflings and goblins are recruited (read: used) by opposing sides. But, unless you count being able to overcome decades of prejudice with a few well-chosen words—and possibly the alluring shape of someone’s ears—there isn’t much fantasy.

But the enemies-to-lovers romance is sweet and satisfying. The evil wizard who shows up eventually is hardly more evil than the busybody neighbor lady who hates goblins, though he is more prone to bloodshed. The disapproving townspeople are easily convinced along the path to acceptance, eventually. Pansy and Ren themselves are barely able to fight with each other. So, despite many obstacles, it is always comfortably clear that love will win in the end.

On May 4, 1970, a troop of National Guardsmen shot fifty-six M1-armor-piercing bullets directly into a crowd of student protesters, killing four of them and severely wounding nine others. The Guard had been sent to quell student demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, but the presence of armed men served only to increase the students’ anger. I was fourteen years old, and saw the resulting outrage and eruption of student protests that followed. I believed it was a turning point against the war in Vietnam. In fact, the war did not end until I was a sophomore in college, five years later.

Derf Backderf was ten years old at the time, and living in the next town over. He saw the truckloads of Guardsmen patrolling his own town. He became an award-winning journalist who produces, essentially, documentaries in graphic novel form. His graphic novel detailing the five days leading up to the Kent State incident is a “dramatic recreation” based on “eyewitness accounts, detailed research, and investigation.”

Kent State follows the mundane lives of several students, including the actions and opinions of the four students who were killed—or at least what could be pieced together later from interviews with their friends and family. It follows the testimony of a student who claimed at the time to be an FBI campus informant, but may not have been. It also documents the incident through the eyes of the only National Guardsman ever willing to speak about the tragedy.

Kent State assembles a picture of fearful confusion, hatred born of possibly-deliberate misinformation, and an absolute refusal of anyone in power to take responsibility or even give a clear command. The book is a stunning and wrenching account of the evolution and eventual cost of mutual paranoia and misunderstanding.

Disclaimer: I read Kent State and wrote this review in the days following the ICE murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

These days, we have a different set of lies, misdirections, and paranoid notions. The government has decided that protestors are terrorists rather than communists. We have scared, inappropriately-trained boys under the command of bitter, hardened men, but now they are signing up as ICE agents instead of escaping the draft by enlisting in the National Guard. Some of us dare to call the deaths “murders” instead of “killings,” though heavily-armed men still claim to be in fear for their lives at the hands of peaceful but angry protesters.

The murders at Kent State were never punished. There were a series of cover-ups—false claims of hordes of students charging the Guardsmen; mixed up or hidden ballistic evidence; judges acquitting Guardsmen for no reason; politicians telling outright lies. No Guardsmen ever admitted to any wrongdoing, though several student protesters were jailed. The general public blamed the students.

The book is essential reading for those who wish to continue an ongoing fight for justice. We now have video cameras on every phone instead of eyewitness reports, so perhaps we will be more successful. But it has never been without cost. Richard Nixon was later taped saying, “You know what stops them? Kill a few. Remember Kent State?” He was speaking about the civil rights protests in 1971. Nixon resigned, but not until 1974. His legacy of distrust and hatred obviously still lives on. It has been and still will be a long road.