Spring Break Reading #4

1. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
2. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
4. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
5. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Well, Spring Break is over starting tomorrow, a truth that makes me rather sad.  Especially since I might not be able to get to Red Mars this month, since I must return to reading for school.  On the other hand, I did read three and a half books in eight days, so that’s a break well spent.

Who Fears Death is the meaning of the name of the main character, Onyesonwu.  She is a powerful sorcerer who is also an Ewu, a child of rape.  The story of her upbringing and her emergence into her own powers is a gripping tale of magic and emotion, as she grows up, makes friends, falls in love, and journeys across the desert to take revenge on her evil father.  Touching on politically and socially important themes such as female circumcision and genocide, this novel’s base in the atmosphere and mythology of Africa makes it some of the most original science fiction (or, fantasy?) I’ve ever read.

While the character of Onyesonwu has plenty of pathos, I did find the narrative a bit meandering.  The specific roles of the wide cast of minor characters was sometimes confusing, and I was impatient to get through the first half of the book, during which Onyesonwu grows from a child to age twenty, to the second, where she finally begins her epic journey of discovery and vengeance.  I was so invested in her struggles and battles with her father that I wanted the final confrontation to be much longer–the parts of the book I happened to be most interested in did not seem to get as much emphasis.

Another criticism I have is understanding the exact limits of sorcery: while Onyesonwu’s teacher warns her to embrace contradictions, I wished for a little more specificity in exactly what sorcery is, who could have it, and why Onyesonwu was able to keep discovering new powers even up until the very end of the book.  I have several other specific objections, but they all relate to said ending, and since I do recommend reading this novel, I’ll not spoil the experience with any of my confusion or skepticism.

If I were to compare this novel to Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Spring Break Read #2), I would say that Who Fears Death is a more difficult read, including many scenes of anger and violence, but treats more Important themes, such as sexuality or racial identity.  Although I liked Boneshaker better (because who doesn’t enjoy a good quest through historical zombie-infested Seattle?), Who Fears Death is a book I would be more likely to read again.

Spring Break Reading #3

1. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
2. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
4. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
5. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Book Thief was loaned to me with two pieces of information: it’s about a foster girl who adjusts to her new family in WWII Germany, and it’s narrated by death.

Unfortunately, death as the narrator of Liesel’s story didn’t work for me.  Not only is it difficult to understand why death should care so much about Liesel’s story and the books that she’s stolen (sometimes from Nazi book-burning parties), but the scenes are also interrupted by these odd headline-style sentences.

***AN EXAMPLE***
This is exactly what the headlines look like.
Except with slightly relevant information
about the story.
Sometimes.

They appear on nearly every page.  The fragmentation of the narrative to tell me things that I could have just as easily inferred from the story kept pulling me out of what was happening, however interesting.

My frustration with this is the main reason that I stopped reading it.  I just wasn’t persuaded why death would tell this particular story in this particularly odd manner.  I cared about the person hiding in Liesel’s basement, but the narration style was too disruptive for me to want to finish out the next three hundred pages.

Spring Break Reading #2

Here’s the lineup–

1. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
2. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
3. *NEW* The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
4. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
5. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Boneshaker is quintessential steampunk.  Sixteen years ago, in mid-nineteenth century Seattle, Leviticus Blue tested his amazing Boneshaker machine, a subterranean drill created to penetrate Klondike ice in search for gold.  But things went horribly awry, and Blue’s Boneshaker pierced a gas vent that leaked volcanic-poisonous Blight  into the air.  In order to contain the Blight, and the living dead who were infected, downtown Seattle was surrounded by a 200-foot wall.

Today, fifteen-year-old Ezekiel scales the wall to find out the truth about his father, and our heroine, Briar Wilkes (Blue), must venture in after him.  With her gun and her gas mask, Briar is prepared to face hordes of rotting corpses, political intrigue within the walls, and a mysterious inventor who might be her husband, all to find her son again and tell him the truth, once and for all.  There are cutting-edge chase scenes through destroyed streets, plenty of tunnelling underneath the city, a first-rate cast of supporting characters, and a spectacular airship collision.  What’s not to love?

The Seattle setting works splendidly here, although the first sixty or so pages were spent in laborious backstory.  But once Ezekiel and Briar were both over the wall, the action was nonstop.  While the beginning was a bit slow, the ending was a bit abrupt, yet I prefer a quick, clean break instead of an overly explained one.  Plus, Briar’s reveal in the last chapter about What Really Happened was quite satisfyingly in-character.

All-in-all, there is good reason that this book made a little sensation a couple of years ago.  It certainly merits being called the author’s breakout novel, and now she will be on my radar for future reading.

Spring Break Reading #1

Spring Break Reading, as selected and arranged by Sherri:

1. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
2. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
3. Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
4. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

We is a classic dystopian novel, written by the Russian Yevgeny Zamyatin but published first in English in 1924.  It tells the story of the 26th-century engineer D-503, a Number who has designed the INTEGRAL, the Earth’s first spaceship whose mission is to bring a message to all life in the galaxy.

If they [that is, those “in the primitive state known as freedom”] will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically infallible happiness, we shall be obliged to force them to be happy.

The people of D-503’s society, OneState, venerate mathematics and the purity of numbers, logic, and reason.  Ever since humanity began to live behind the Green Wall, safely separated from the chaos of nature, life has been organized and blissfully nonfree.  However, when D-503 meets the woman I-330 by chance, he begins to fall in love and, even worse, develop a soul.

Torn between following the dictates of his society and his new feelings, D-503 writes in his journal about first his confusion and conflict, and later about the conspiracy designed to destroy the OneState itself, a conspiracy that has his INTEGRAL ship at its heart.  This book challenges D-503 to think of himself as an individual rather than one part of a regulated whole, and it also reveals to him the mystery of beautiful disorder.  Ultimately, human imagination itself is threatened by the OneState.  This isn’t a dystopia for nothing.