Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called “natural human rights” tha
Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called “natural human rights” that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
The world Heinlein depicts in Starship Troopers is both selectively cynical and quietly optimistic in a manner it masks as realism — when it comes to the failures of democracy its loquacious, but the efficacy of a stratocracy as depicted here, Heinlein is far less hesitant to grasp for platitudes.
The actual story of a rich kid rebelling against the cushy life his parents have mapped out for him is quickly sidelined by the minutiae of basic training and the petty politics therein. The meat of the story is actually a series of political and philosophical polemics/lectures by Heinlein, through various characters but primarily Mr Dubois, a teacher of Rico’s.
I imagine the effectiveness of this overly-didactic storytelling depends considerably on whether you agree with Heinlein’s points.
Often, I didn’t.
The lectures of violence and duty, on the necessity of state violence and a citizens duty to implement it, I can only say the analysis here is fairly shallow. An uncritical approach to state violence isn’t all that thought-provoking to me. Neither is mocking the idea that “violence never settles anything” as Dubois takes this almost too literally to believe, and invokes Bonaparte and Hitler — two figures whose use of state violence ended all matters related to the use of them in the first place, according to Dubois.
Yes, it was definitely the violence and absolutely nothing else. The continued colonial troubles France would incur in the century after Napoleon’s ignominious exile in 1814 would suggest it hadn’t quite settled anything. The Hitler example speaks for itself.
Essentially, you don’t “settle” an issue by killing your opponent — you just postpone it.
That isn’t to say state violence doesn’t have value; it’s just that that value is in continual negotiation with other means of reconciliation.
There are other discussions related to the efficacy of corporal punishment I find fall into that quiet optimism masking itself as realism.
There’s also a incident when one of the MI’s goes AWOL and kills a child, only for that man to be turned over to his unit and dealt with. Military law taking precedence over civil law is just insane, especially for the grieving parents.
Outside of that, the power armor is cool. Rico is a good protagonist but he’s never given any decent characters to play off of unless he’s being lectured in some capacity, and that wears thin by the halfway mark.
I struggled to get through Starship Troopers, and the discussion around this book and its intentions are far more interesting than a single page of its actual content. But the main reason there is anything to debate at all related to it is due to how passionately inchoate most of the ideas are expressed here. Almost any reading beyond the staunch militarism is possible in my mind, and it wouldn’t take much imagination. ...more
“You want me to name all the times in history that one person led to the death of millions?” Donald asked. “Something like five or a dozen people
“You want me to name all the times in history that one person led to the death of millions?” Donald asked. “Something like five or a dozen people made this happen. You might be able to trace it back to three. And who knows if one of those men was influencing the other two? Well, if one man can build this, it shouldn’t take more than that to bring it all down. Gravity is a bitch until she’s on your side.”
For all of its strengths — its immersive worldbuilding, compelling premise, and a strong protagonist in Juliette — the Silo trilogy has often struggled with its pacing.
With Wool it was forgivable as Howey had to do a lot of heavy-lifting introducing us to this world. Once we got to Shift, the excuses didn’t come so readily. What we learned about the doomsday scenario that created the world of Wool amounted to, at the most charitable, about a hundred and fifty pages of story in a five-hundred-page book, and the rest of the page-count was spent playing catch-up to a story I’d much prefer to be reading.
Thankfully, Dust is that story.
Set some time after Juliette’s unexpected hero’s welcome back to 18, the good favour she’d earned seems all but squandered. Since recovering from her extensive burns, she’s neglected her mayoral duties and spent her time back overseeing the drilling of a passage to Silo 17. Juliette’s commitment to full disclosure at the end of Wool isn’t the potentially profound success it could have been due to her absenteeism.
Revealing world-shattering information and disappearing to drill disruptively in the bowels of the Silo was bound to sow a little discontent.
That’s not to say Juliette could have stemmed most of the backlash with a reassuring hand. The truth of a wider conspiracy, one that includes multiple Silos, was going to be met with disbelief. Her presence might have tempered it from becoming outright hostility as quickly as it did.
The front half of the book covers the drilling to 17 a little too long. Howey juggles named characters around without much time to flesh any of them out. I genuinely can’t say I care about any characters in 18 or 17 other than Solo and Juliette. Even Lukas, but his role this time around is tragically minimal with how his arc ends.
One surprise was how much I enjoyed the chapters covering Donald and Charlotte in Silo 1. They’re essentially stowaways as they try to continue their communication with Juliette (and Lukas). Donald’s brief stint outside in Shift didn’t leave him unscathed either; he’s dying, in fact.
For the bookend of a hefty trilogy, Howey lands about as many punches as he pulls. The destruction of 18 is a decisive turn the story needed, even if it doesn’t have the emotional impact it could have had. Without better defined characters, the unfolding tragedy feels mostly materialistic in its loss — a loss of resources and comfort. The loss of the known for the unknown eventually takes over to better effect.
A couple subplots just didn’t work for me personally. Lukas and Juliette’s relationship was given no time, and the religious subplot was given far too much. Once the page-count is dwindling between sixty pages, I don’t want to read about book burnings or attempts at making a young girl a child bride.
The conclusion is awfully abrupt for my taste. A bombastic climax is teased by Juliette only for her "last stand" to become a trek with a couple of other suited-up people from Silo 18. Personally, I'd have preferred Juliette blasting into 1 and giving them a taste of their own medicine to her stumbling onto a safe haven with faith as her guide.
I didn’t expect the series to end with all questions answered — that’s the purview of author Q&A’s, not satisfying storytelling, after all — but so much is disappointingly left up in the air that its hard to appreciate the ending for what it is. It’s bizarre to think that a series spanning 1500 pages can spend cumulatively more page time on the marital woes of Donald and Helen (that only mostly don’t matter) than it can on the status of the remaining Silos by the end....more
I came away from reading Shift admiring the book conceptually more than actually enjoying my reading experience. A prequel covering the events leadingI came away from reading Shift admiring the book conceptually more than actually enjoying my reading experience. A prequel covering the events leading up to the apocalypse and the deterioration of the silos before we meet Jules in Wool has great potential. I just don’t think that potential was realised anywhere in Shift’s nearly six hundred pages.
The circumstances of the world-ending catastrophe are far more sci-fi inspired in origins than I’d have expected. Our doomsday scenario is predicated on America’s fear of the use of nanobots in warfare. According to the book, nanotechnology has evolved to the point that it can attack entire populations through their DNA. What exactly that means isn’t adequately explained, but it would result in a controlled pandemic geared at only intended victims through their genetics.
How it differentiates between, say, an American, and another nationality, I don’t know.
We also learn the nuclear devastation was devised by those who built the 50 silos in the first place: a secret subsection of the US government. Choosing to destroy themselves in order to control the fallout — rather than choosing to do literally anything else — is the kind of monomaniacal logic I expect from people so far removed from everyday life, so I have no issues believing that.
Story-wise, this reveal comes early in the book and everything after that suffers as Howey fills in the gaps without much enthusiasm.
There’s no where to go but around in circles as it slowly catches up to the events of Wool. And hundreds of pages of this had me begging the book to move on from Donald, Mission, or anything pre-Jules. Our two main viewpoints are Donald, an architect of the silos that’s unwittingly wrapped up in the governments machinations, and Mission, another freethinking revolutionary from Silo 18. They’re stories run parallel, but with little significance.
The exploration of Silo 1 starts promising. Howey introduces cryogenic stasis to bring Donald into the present timeline, but the reasoning for the stasis (at least given to Donald) is bizarre. Freezing people to do intervals of six month shifts doesn’t sound effective, especially if you’re going to also wipe their memories too. How the Silo with the continuously thawed-out people with memory problems are supposed to effectively commandeer the other 49 silos is anyone’s guess.
Howey does a decent job of incorporating these new elements into the world of Wool, but lacks an exciting vehicle in the story to showcase them. After reading, I’m not sure what would be lost if I’d found out this information from Jules or Lukas in Wool, and that’s the core problem I have with Shift: how inessential it feels.
Had Shift began around the 360ish-mark once the events of Wool began to intertwine with Donald’s story, I’d probably be more favourable towards it. That said, I found the entirety of the sections dedicated to Silo 17 superfluous.
There’s an excellent book trapped between the pages of Shift, but the book we have is often a slog to get through....more
On the whole, he was beginning to weary of the infusion of music into his life. Invasion might be a better word. It seemed to be everywhere these d
On the whole, he was beginning to weary of the infusion of music into his life. Invasion might be a better word. It seemed to be everywhere these days: birdsong, Covey song, bird-and-Covey song.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes gives you a sense of its pretensions before the very first line, right in the epigraph. Ideally, the quote in the epigraph should act as an appetizer. Collins can't even confine herself to one, as she quotes Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Wordsworth and Mary Shelley, mapping out her inspirations and her intentions before we've read a word from her.
Instead of a sampling, we’re given a predigested meal.
As a prequel to the original trilogy, the story is set around eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow as he’s tasked to mentor a tribute in the tenth annual Hunger Games. The Games are a far cry from the preposterous spectacle of Katniss’s time, and the comparison does this story no favours. For all the issues I have with this book, I find it easy to believe no one would tune in to these Games. Not even the morbidly curious.
For nine years the Games have been staged in the same disused stadium. Children are “reaped” and forced to kill each other. Outside of a presumably niche sadist community, it lacks mass appeal, and its poor viewership reflects that. In an attempt to soft reboot the Games, the tenth year adds some notables from the trilogy: a host, mentors, sponsors, interviews and commentary.
Its here Collins commits her time to incorporating the idle details from her trilogy. For the most part, these glorified addendum's don't add anything — a few times they induced eye-rolling. For instance, the reaping happens on the 4th of July.
Some time is dedicated to debating the function of the Hunger Games, and all that seems to produce is some platitudes about the horrors of human nature. It's an argument Suzanne herself summed up much better in Mockingjay through Plutarch.
But that’s the main issue with this book. Without that distinctive flair of pageantry and spectacle, the Hunger Games doesn't work. Not as commentary, and definitely not as entertainment. They come across rote and just another box Collins has to tick in her Hunger Games universe.
Not unlike this prequel as a whole.
The Games last over just a hundred pages and are grueling to get through. We’re stuck in Snow’s perspective and his static shot of the arena, while most of the tributes have squirreled away in tunnels the Capitol doesn’t even try to flush them out of until we’ve sunk into outright tedium.
Without the Games, all that’s left is Snow’s arc. He goes from a proud, resentful young man to one with a body count. Essentially, Snow is not an interesting character, and the perfunctory insights into his psychology don’t merit their own book.
“You’ve no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom. Those are things everyone is born with, and they’re not yours for the taking.”
While Snow might be boring, Sejanus is genuinely awful. His contribution for five hundred pages is to self-righteously state the obvious — just in case the trilogy didn’t accomplish that — again, and again, and again.
The first part of this books title — songbirds — is represented by Lucy Gray, the District 12 tribute Snow has to mentor. Lucy is a singer, and she sings a lot in this book. At the definite risk of stating the obvious, music doesn’t translate fantastically in the medium of books. So much of what makes a song, the key and the melody, must be left to the readers imagination. It’s just awkward poem recitals.
By the time the Games have ended, there’s still two hundred pages, and the sheer overindulgence on display has to be marveled at. We get several renditions of The Hanging Tree song, as well as the incident that inspired it, because of course we do. The folklore-ish element of the songs origins in Mockingjay gone.
Snow and Lucy’s last interaction is a comedy of presumptions on Snow’s part. It’s hilarious to read over three paragraphs his mounting paranoia and conclusions. I can personally say I have next to no idea what Lucy’s intention was. Maybe that says more about my disinterest in the “love” story between the two, because Collins wasn’t hiding her intentions. At every turn, Snow referred to Lucy as a possession. At the same time, Lucy’s sincerity is also up for questioning, but I just don’t care.
The fact that the idea for The Hunger Games came from a drunk teenager riffing about an assignment with his friend one night actually makes a lot of sense, though. I’d have preferred fifteen pages about that night than the five hundred of what we got about this.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a redundant prequel with boorish pretensions it had no hope of meeting....more
I must now become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution. […] I won’t have to do it alone. They have a whole team
I must now become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution. […] I won’t have to do it alone. They have a whole team of people to make me over, dress me, write my speeches, orchestrate my appearances — as if that doesn’t sound horribly familiar — and all I have to do is play my part.
There’s a pervasive bleakness to Mockingjay that definitely won't be as welcoming as the toughened grit of the last two books. Without the titular Games, without stakes Katniss genuinely cares about and is willing to fight for, the storytelling takes a nosedive.
The exploration of Katniss’s mental state in the aftermath of Catching Fire and Districts 13’s use of her in propaganda could reasonably take up twenty to thirty pages without cratering the pace. Instead, its over a hundred and fifty.
What compounds this is Collins need to handhold the reader. I accepted the CliffNotes breakdown of The Hanging Tree song as a necessary evil, but when everyone is in lockdown during a raid in District 13 and Katniss is playing with Buttercup, this line felt more like an annotation than a part of the prose:
It’s on the third night, during our game, that I answer the question eating away at me. Crazy Cat becomes a metaphor for my situation.
I swear, teenagers aren’t as stupid as you think they are, and even if they do miss this intricate metaphor, it’s much better rediscovering it in a reread some time later than having it broke down like they’re being lectured by a teacher.
The same goes for the near-constant references to the Games in the latter half of the novel. What’s bizarre about it is how Collins seems to get confused in her own metaphor here. The pods, the televised count of notable deaths — all the elements that comprise the Games don’t work outside of that construct.
I know its The Hunger Games trilogy, but the Games and Total War aren’t remotely comparable and its genuinely disheartening watching Collins try to fit a square peg in a round hole.
It’s impossible to be the Mockingjay. Impossible to complete even this sentence. Because now I know that everything I say will be directly taken out on Peeta.
There’s a line about how Plutarch “sees the forest for the trees”, how he’s focused on the bigger picture as everyone else frets in the weeds, and its actually this perspective that the book is sorely lacking.
Regardless of what Finnick and Katniss think, this isn’t the 76th Hunger Games. It’s a brutal, catastrophic war between the districts and the Capitol, with casualties far exceeding 23. Unless the wounded are bleeding out right in front of her, the stakes remain what will or won’t happen to Peeta, and its maddening. The revolution is in full swing and contrary to the way the trilogy frames it, resistance doesn’t live or die on every breath of a figurehead.
Which brings me to the actual main players: Coin and Snow. I really hate how Collins has them be the sole representative of each side. A rebellion and the Capitol need legions of willing participants and a complex political apparatus to function, but the way Collins depicts it, its just the two of them behind their own console fighting each other. This poor worldbuilding burdens Snow and Coin with every atrocity committed on each side with the simplest of strokes, and I just really hate it.
What makes this more frustrating is how Collins has the perfect opportunity to shed some light onto Snow when Finnick reveals he was sex trafficked by him. He traded his body for secrets and reveals salacious details about powerful people in the Capitol and Snow’s own rise to power — and its here of all places she decides to just surmise what he says in a few back-breaking paragraphs. Its a telling moment where Collins is hopping over the gaps in her shoddy worldbuilding.
Shockingly, I actually enjoyed Gale this time. He’s been a fringe character throughout the trilogy, but his turn to merciless radical is probably the most interesting arc for me, personally. He embodies and emboldens fiercely sympathetic sentiments that inspire (but don’t justify, of course) the brutalities of the resistance, and yet, like Coin, the moral equivalence Collins tries to make between Coin’s actions and Snow’s are grossly misjudged. The oppressor and the oppressed cannot be judged under the same standards. One is actively suppressing a people, while the other is attempting to resist that suppression.
Which is ultimately why this book falls apart for me. Coin suggesting they stage one final “symbolic” Games for the children of the Capitol. Coin can be a manipulative and bloodthirsty leader and still not be Snow, but Collins didn’t actually want to spend time disecting Coin’s philosophy and leadership style. She just had Coin suggest another Games so the reader knows for certain that she’s just as bad — or even worse — than Snow.
If it seems I haven’t addressed Katniss much, its because she doesn’t do much of consequence. Her main contribution here is fabricating a secret mission to kill Snow that gets about seven people killed (none of whom are Snow). It’s a mortifying waste of lives and Katniss is one hundred percent to blame for it. The pep talk she receives after is the kind of stretch that would tear ligaments.
And then, after exactly two conversations, she assassinates Coin in public. What legitimate grievances Katniss has with Coin can be tackled through the, hopefully, burgeoning political process that’s been promised. Because remember, Katniss’s case against Coin is largely hearsay. And not just hearsay from just anyone, but from Snow, a dying old man not above child murder, and whose been actively trying to kill her.
It makes perfect sense to me why Snow is laughing in the end. He pulled the perfect coup, during his own execution no less. He manipulated Katniss into killing the one person he could be sure would lead to her own execution.
What is or isn’t true isn’t the point. Besides, the fog of war is still thick. Katniss deciding Coins fate with a handful of conversations and no proof, condemning Coin for what she could potentially do rather than what she knows she’s done, is just not something I can respect....more
Life in District 12 isn’t really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever want
Life in District 12 isn’t really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead.
My frustrations with this trilogy often outweigh its merits, but Catching Fire has a greater deftness at distracting me from them. I ended up enjoying it a lot more than The Hunger Games.
Even so, the core elements of this series are still hollow. The worldbuilding is more concerned with presenting the aesthetics of dystopia than authenticity. What results is an impractical assemblage of details that never coalesce into a working structure: in this context the titular games themselves seem mindlessly cruel rather than calculatingly so.
That isn't to say I was expecting a dissertation of Panem's institutions and style of governance, just a better understanding of what led Panem down this specific dystopic path.
The notion that Katniss incited a rebellion through any of her actions in the Games strains belief. Three-quarters of a century running the Games and Katniss is somehow dumbfounding them at every turn with such little effort and intention its embarrassing. Their media is entirely state-run, and somehow, a teenager is easily leading the narrative.
Which brings us to Catching Fire.
Everyone I love is doomed. […] Unless I turn things around on this tour. Quiet the discontent and put the president’s mind at rest. And how? By proving to the country beyond a shadow of a doubt that I love Peeta Mellark.
The book starts off on the right track by giving us a browbeaten Katniss still learning to navigate her new normal as a victor. We get a good sense of her inner turmoil in these opening chapters, and just when you think the story might continue at this contemplative pace (which I wouldn’t have minded), Katniss comes home to President Snow waiting for her.
After agreeing not to lie to each other, Snow spells out the metaphor of the books title before a single reader could have had enough time to consider it themselves. That’s a little irritating.
What graduates that irritation to outright exasperation is how the conversation goes from there. President Snow’s dissatisfaction with Katniss is more or less predicated on her needing to convince him of her love for Peeta. Through this, according to Snow, her rebellious act with the poisonous berries can be downgraded to two teens acting rashly out of love, and that — again, according to Snow — will in turn convince any pesky rabblerousers to stop revolting.
Just imagining those starving, aggrieved districts forgoing a revolution because their ship of two teens is sailing is too preposterous to take seriously.
Whether its a ploy or not by Snow, the fact he has to stoop to it is unbelievable. He could have snatched her right after she won the Games and moulded her into the perfect puppet through threats to her family. Just on the top of my head, I can think of a disgusting amount of ways Snow could have used her to the Capitols advantage — but no, he just wants her to kiss Peeta and appear to really-super mean it.
Sadly, that isn’t even the worst place the romance is awkwardly inserted into the story. That goes to Katniss’s philosophical shift from pragmatic survivalist to rebel.
My favourite interaction between Peeta and Katniss from the last book is the night before the Games. Peeta shares these high-minded ideals around the Games that Katniss has never had the luxury to even contemplate. Katniss’s resistance to the role of rebel incorporates so much of that discussion, and to have that “resolved” by her witnessing Gale being whipped — by her taking the framework of the love triangle of all things and associating Peeta with compliance and Gale with resistance; by crumbling into this Florence Nightingale persona where her personal philosophy is decided by which of them needs her more — is tragic.
Katniss deserved better.
Collins adds the concept of The Quarter Quell to engineer Katniss and Peeta back into the arena. Apparently, these quarter-century celebrations are supposed to “make fresh the memory of those killed by the districts’ rebellion”, but is that not the function of the regular Games? It's times like these that I really wish this series was a duology.
That said, as contrivances go, reaping from the existing pool of victors offers Collins a chance to revisit the Games and improve upon them, and for what its worth, she does. But the most meaningful additions, the exploration of previous Games and the victors, could have been accomplished with Peeta and Katniss as mentors, too.
The victors themselves give no insight into the Capitol. And that's not even addressing how unlikely every district would have a living male and female victor to facilitate this event. The Careers win most years, after all.
“You could live a hundred life times and not deserve [Peeta], you know?”
I like Peeta. He’s a decent person, but the way this book practically sanctifies him is ridiculous. He's a charming guy, but somehow he's discombobulated the entire cast with his supposed superiority.
Like, seriously, what has he done that’s so amazing? His main motivation throughout has been his unrequited infatuation with a girl he’d never spoken to. His willingness to throw his life away for her is a condemnation of his pitiable circumstances, and not the testament to his selfless devotion to Katniss as everyone seems to believe.
He killed at least one tribute in the 74th Games and stood idly by as the Careers he’d teamed up with butchered others. He had no practical offensive skills to fall back on, so he was never capable of making much of a impression in the Games, regardless of his scruples. The point isn’t that he’s somehow “bad”; he’s just not the precious little sunflower everyone paints him out to be.
Even Finnick of all people gets in on the Peeta love-fest when he says no one here became a victor by chance, except perhaps Peeta. And Katniss just thinks, yeah, Peeta is better than all of us. Come the fuck on.
The Peeta parade comes to an abrupt halt when bread boy hits a forcefield around the arena and his heart stops. His heart stops. It fully stops and yet Finnick is somehow able to CPR him into consciousness, and Peeta is up and running within minutes. Come the fuck on.
All my gripes considered, I really enjoyed the Games this time. It was a lot more exciting than the dense woodland of the 74th. The alliances create some fun dynamics between the tributes. I do wish Katniss could have connected more with Johanna, rather than Finnick, as it plays into that guy's girl stereotype that is so common with Katniss's archetype.
The last twenty pages were miles ahead of anything in the first book, and the twist tied the story’s themes together in an interesting way. I’m excited to see how its explored in the last instalment.
It’s an awful lot to take in, this elaborate plan in which I was a piece, just as I was meant to be a piece in the Hunger Games. Used without consent, without knowledge. At least in the Hunger Games, I knew I was being played with.
Alas! why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. If our impulses were
Alas! why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.
For the time of its publication in 1817, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a unique blend of gothic horror and speculative fiction.
The story of a monomaniacal man's perversion of the natural order and letting the consequences ravage those around him as he descends into a self-absorbed madness is ... a curious choice for Shelley, who concocted the story while in the company of luminaries like Lord Byron, and her own husband, Percy Shelley.
For me, the books gothic horror functions best when interpreting the creator, Victor Frankenstein, as a theological analogue. Here, he operates as all theoretical gods: he creates life and maintains a strict isolationist policy from his creation. The horror lies in presupposing it isn't some unknowable design that keeps our creator from interacting with us — some test of faith, etc. — but a visceral disgust.
Here, our creator isn't an omnipotent guardian but an arrogant, capricious coward. Frankenstein's Creature's grievance is easily applicable to a believers with their god: to exist in a state of deep dependance and to be abandoned to ones own devises, only to be harshly judged once you've miraculously eked out an existence you never asked for.
Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds, but was unable. Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again.
The Creature's account is the strongest storytelling, even as it requires serious logical leaps to believe his language and comprehension could have developed so rapidly and in line with Victor's own vernacular. A little miscommunication would have gone a long way to making this more believable. On the other hand, the Creature's poor emotional intelligence is appropriately childlike.
Frankenstein's own experimentation at the beginning of the book is a confusing account to follow: he spends most of the time touting the writings of scientific authors he eventually dismisses, then delves into alchemy and discovers the secrets to life — specifically imbuing life into lifeless material, not restoring life.
On the creation of this new life, all of Frankenstein's scientific learning deserts him; he doesn't attempt to study this new life and instead flees his laboratory. For this humiliating and devastating abandonment, his creation seeks revenge, first killing his younger brother before offering Frankenstein an ultimatum: create me a companion or I'll kill everyone else you love.
Initially, Frankenstein agrees before, characteristically, abandoning his creation once he's thoroughly rationalised his cowardice.
The Creature goes on his killing spree and both of them are dead or presumed dead by the end. Not once is a quirky Alf living situation even considered.
Before dying, Victor attempts to impart a lesson about the evils of the pursuance of ambition, when a more appropriate lesson would be about taking accountability for ones actions. Victor Frankenstein is basically a deadbeat dad who got what he deserved....more
She had seen corpses before—that was the reality of war, even if they were just the ones caught in a cosmic crossfire beyond their perception—but nev
She had seen corpses before—that was the reality of war, even if they were just the ones caught in a cosmic crossfire beyond their perception—but never with their viscera hanging out like the wires of an opened console.
The Scourge Between Stars is a confident debut set on a starship as the vestiges of humanity flee their forsaken colony in search of Earth. If that sounds familiar, it should: its the premise to Battlestar Galactica, but fortunately, I love Battlestar Galactica.
But that's just the premise, while the plot of Alien takes centre stage. Personally, Battlestar Galactica and Alien are a fun combination for a book. There's nothing inherently wrong with wearing your influences on your sleeve the way The Scourge Between Stars does: with finesse and some personality.
Jacklyn Albright is the acting captain on the starship Calypso, and the cast surrounding her is sparse and largely undefined. The standouts are Otto, the creepy guy holed up in Data and whiling his time away creating an advanced android that has an auxiliary function of sex doll, lifelike breasts and all, because why not? And the android in question, Watson, who along with Otto serve up a neat resolution at the end of this 160 page novella.
Beyond that, none of the other characters matter.
This was a problem for Systems, but their best and brightest were working themselves to the bone on the bridge; the rest of the department was patching the jagged edges around the gaping wound of Perseus's systems. Maybe she could commandeer a data techie to take a look and offer an opinion, not that she wanted to go anywhere near Otto right now.
The horror is a little lacking, but it makes up for it with gallons of stress as we follow Jack on her daily grind. There are pages and pages of Jack dictating and delegating convincing technobabble in terminology-laden conversations — I became adrift, waiting for the first glimpse of genuine human interaction. They come, but they're scant.
There's a lot of discussions about reserves, repairs and mutinies and the kind of subplots that could fill an hour or two of television (I've seen them) but are left dangling here uselessly, taking up page-time better spent on fleshing out the cast.
By the time Jack's father became relevant again, I'd forgotten he existed. Everything to do with her family was fairly superficial and the ending confrontation with Jack and her dad is a little funny. These violent creatures you've chosen to cull the herd, the ones with blue blood and bulky carapaces and that speak in whale song, you describe them as "perfect"? Fine. Okay. Let's put it down to space dementia and call it a day.
The Scourge Between Stars is a solid if surface-level space romp. Whatever issues I had with the storytelling, the writing itself was strong....more
They scramble for knives like factionless kids over a spare piece of bread, too desperate.
I have no idea in what sequence these snippets were wri
They scramble for knives like factionless kids over a spare piece of bread, too desperate.
I have no idea in what sequence these snippets were written, but I'm going to assume Free Four: Tobias Tells the Divergent Knife-Throwing Scene was written earlier than most of the others, and it shows.
[...] his eyes alive with that Erudite knowledge-craving.
Wow, a sentence and sentiment so bad I needed a minute.
Another rewrite from Four's perspective. There's a lot of repetition here about Four turning down the leadership position, his disappointment with Dauntless initiation, his animosity with Eric, his inappropriate feelings for Tris that include a "not like other girls" aside for maximum disdain.
The crux of these thirteen pages is Four having to deliberately cut Tris with a throwing knife to prove to Eric "she's just another initiate" to him. Then, afterwards, he says Tris should thank him for helping her — of all the possible moments to write about, why this one? I don't get it....more
The Traitor chronologically covers events from Divergent through Four's perspective.
Given my feelings about Divergent, this leaves the story little rThe Traitor chronologically covers events from Divergent through Four's perspective.
Given my feelings about Divergent, this leaves the story little room to excel as it treads its beaten path. What we get reminds me a little of Midnight Sun or The Other Half of the Grave in how it tries to do damage control for its love interest:
"My first instinct is to push you until you break, just to see how hard I have to press," I say, and it's a strange admission, and a dangerous one. I don't mean her any harm, and never have, and I hope she knows that's not what I mean.
He thinks this as if he isn't inches from her and capable of clarifying. It's so silly.
Surprisingly, Al's suicide gets covered, too. It's good to see the repugnant way his suicide was handled in Divergent has informed her rewrite. Here, Four takes responsibility for being an inadequate instructor — he was far more interested in his own personal drama, flirting with one of the initiates, and office politics to notice an at risk sixteen-year-old. It's a healing moment that makes these shorts worth it —
And then it's ruined:
Al would not have died in Abnegation, and he would not have attacked her there, either. They may not be as purely good as I once believed—or wanted to believe—but they certainly aren't evil, either.
Yes, this very Dauntless-specific situation couldn't be repeated in Abnegation. Obviously.
But the feeling of hopelessness and isolation that can lead to suicide? How well would Abnegation, a faction that would call any self-care vanity, deal with mental illness? Or, like Tris, someone withdrawn from the faction for not living up to their ideals? Or, domestic abuse, as Tobias can personally attest? It's a stupid distinction and I'm actually disappointed.
We also get to experience Four's fear landscape for the three billionth time. For the love of good writing, stop it.
After that, Four tries to warn his father about the Erudite's plan to attack Abnegation. Scenes between Four and Marcus have always been the weakest for me, and this interaction feels like it was made up to explain why Four never tried to warn Abnegation in the first place, and it does so poorly.
The Marcus of the trilogy would have asked more questions; he would have attempted to be more manipulative. But since Roth can't outright rewrite the outcome of what happens, it amounts a petty back and forth before Four leaves....more
She thought that in order to be more than any faction, I would have to abandon this place and the people who have embraced me as their own; I would
She thought that in order to be more than any faction, I would have to abandon this place and the people who have embraced me as their own; I would have to forgive her and let myself be swallowed by her belief and her lifestyle. But I don't have to leave, and I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. I can be more than any faction right here in Dauntless; maybe I already am more, and it's time to show it.
The Son is set after Dauntless initiation, which means we actually get a glimpse into Dauntless life outside of tests. Glimpse being the operative word, and on this occasion, its a good thing.
The less about this paper-thin world, the better.
Remarkably, Four's navigation of Dauntless adulthood endears him a lot more than any chapter of the trilogy did. Accepting a leadership role only to have to turn it down when he remembers his father is also a leader; becoming flustered at going on a date he was pressured into; lying about his faction of origin on that date and fumbling it; the continued friendship between him and Shauna — all of it is very good. I really enjoyed it.
Jeanine's inclusion feels tacked-on, but I'll admit most direct connections with the trilogy and its trajectory are especially egregious when I'm enjoying what I'm reading.
A limited number of spots? In a faction? After just two weeks of initiation training?
The story spends a not inconsiderable amount of time redressing the embarrassing travesty that was Dauntless initiation in Divergent. Two weeks of being brutalised, tallied, and then choosing from a list of jobs is ridiculous.
Reading that above quote, knowing it was inspired by hundreds of comments, reviews and discussion about the series online makes it even funnier....more
The Initiate starts strong, tackling Four's trauma and his obsessive need to prove himself:
But that voice, the one that says "should," now sounds to
The Initiate starts strong, tackling Four's trauma and his obsessive need to prove himself:
But that voice, the one that says "should," now sounds to me like my father's voice, requiring me to behave, to isolate myself. And I came here because I was ready to stop listening to that voice.
Unfortunately, this story can't exist in a vacuum, however much I wish it did.
Divergent creeps in between the cracks just as I'm enjoying myself. Here, Amar doesn't just bring up elderly Dauntless killing themselves, he describes a common method as "taking a flying leap into the unknown of the chasm." The problem?
That's what Al did in Divergent and this relevant detail isn't brought up then, not once, not even as Eric himself eulogized him. This gives the act a greater significance for the faction and there was nothing. Why?
Because Roth hadn't thought about elderly Dauntless death rituals when she was writing Divergent, and the retconning — despite being better — rankles, especially as its about a particularly awful couple of chapters from that book.
Four's experience of Dauntless initiation shouldn't retread Divergent as much as it does. The entire suicide and mourning is repetitive in the worst way. Also, in Allegiant, the relationship between Four and Amar was implied to more personal and impactful than anything we got here.
I'm actually shocked at how lacklustre it was.
Overall, this is the superior rewrite. The pacing is better. Roth was a little more creative with dealing with the simulations. And even with a fraction of the time, Four and Shauna's interactions are a thousand times better than any of the relationships in the series....more
But now I'm wondering if I need it anymore, if we ever really need these words, "Dauntless," "Erudite," "Divergent," "Allegiant," or if we can just
But now I'm wondering if I need it anymore, if we ever really need these words, "Dauntless," "Erudite," "Divergent," "Allegiant," or if we can just be friends or lovers or siblings, defined instead by the choices we make and the love and loyalty that binds us.
Divergent introduced us to a world of people with exactly one personality trait sorting themselves into one of five factions — the titular divergence is the capacity for more than one and that therefore, somehow, makes you a threat to the system at large.
The subversive possibilities of a banjo-strumming Candor or a Dauntless with a love for literature in their spare time isn't readily understood. Not even after finishing the trilogy.
Plot-wise, Erudite stages a violent coup and wrests control from Abnegation.
Insurgent follows Tris abandoning Dauntless and traipsing about the city, learning about the factionless, and acting as an insurgent to Erudite authority. Some background characters die, and its revealed that the faction system exists to detect divergence. Given divergence isn't common knowledge (it teeters around urban legend status) and testing is done with strict secrecy (you're not supposed to tell anyone your results), its not an ideal way to achieve those results.
Hence, the epidemic of divergent murder, inter-faction warfare, and Erudite being toppled by the factionless.
That brings us to Allegiant: the mother lode of retcons.
David and the Bureau of Genetic Welfare are an exhaustive exercise in futility. Over a thousand pages in to a 1500 page series is a risky time to issue some rewrites. And that's what they are.
We're introduced to memory-wipe serum to awkwardly fill in the cracks of David's explanation of the faction system. In short: humanity collectively fell down the eugenic pipeline; something, something "murder gene." In their haste to correct the wrongs of human nature, no one considered the genetic catastrophe of emphasising specific characteristics on a cellular level rather than a cultural one. All that genetic tinkering created "genetic damage" in the population.
While, in the real world, that would mean conditions like Sickle Cell Disease, Cancer, Heart Disease, etc., here, it works under comic book logic: for a heightened trait, you lose another. Intelligence at the price of vanity; bravery at the price of cruelty; honesty at the price of consideration.
Two-thirds of the way through and the last thing Roth should do is try to make sense of the nonsensical system she's created. I was hoping that when Tris left the city, she'd only find vestiges of the Chicago experiment. Maybe enough to piece some of it together, maybe not, but a Tris resigned to reconstituting herself into a broken society has a resonance that can enrich what came before rather than reducing it like David and the introduction of eugenics does.
So much of this book tries to explain and rewrite elements of the last two books, when Allegiant would have had better luck delving into its characters.
Because the characters in this series are seriously lacking. Tori and Uriah die, but their role in the story is no more impactful than Fernando and Lynn's, who died last book. Although the fact that Lynn dies before she comes out is a creative way to avoid the Bury Your Gays trope.
Allegiant takes time to correct the record on some things. It acknowledges Erudite isn't all terrible, and, most shockingly, that even Abnegation is not without sin. It retcons Abnegation having the most divergent's. The faction system is criticised, too.
I assume Roth just compiled a lot of common criticisms of the series and addressed them in between breaths in the story. I can't fault her for it.
This time we get Tobias's perspective too. He sounds exactly like Tris and if you have the misfortune to stop reading mid-chapter, you won't be certain whose perspective you're reading.
When its revealed that actually divergence means you're "genetically pure" and non-divergent's are "genetically damaged," Tobias becomes our point of view character for the latter. It's unfortunate that our "genetically pure" protagonist, Tris, is described as blond-haired and blue-eyed like every Nazi poster about the Aryan race — but those things happen when a series is written on the fly and eugenics is added in as an afterthought.
The "genetically damaged" are a discriminated underclass, like the factionless, and talk of revolution abounds. Similar to how the factionless were handled, the GD's grievances are largely generalised rather than personalised. Nuance is vaguely gestured at before the conflict is translated into terms the Divergent world can work with: serums, shootings and simulations.
Divergent has never had strong villains, and David is no exception. Sadly, his story is reduced to being in love with Tris's mother at one point, which is as pointless of an addition as it sounds.
Tris sacrifices herself once again, but this time its meaningful because she didn't want to die. Personally, I don't think that's true. Not for Tris, and not in these circumstances. Tris's trauma in Insurgent didn't get the care it needed. Her epiphany needed more time, and the muddled plot got in the way more than once.
Her sacrifice here feels like an extension of that death-seeking drive. Even as she declares she's doing it for love, it sounds like the kind of rationalisation she made about doing reckless things for the sake of her dead parents at the start of Insurgent.
Serums continue to be confusing. Why is there a death serum? Serums for truth-telling make sense; serums for manifesting fears, too, as there is no surefire way to do that already.
But Amity's "peace serum" could just be a benzo, and the "death serum" could just be a bullet to the brain and needn't be this bizarre gas that eats through protective gear. The fact that Tris can resist all of these, including the death one ... adds another layer of confusion to divergence just meaning normal now.
Regardless, Tris survives the death serum, indiscriminately memory-wipes a bunch of people so they don't memory-wipe people she actually cares about, and gets shot twice by David. She "sees" her mother, who addresses Tris with, "my child," like an old-fashioned priest rather than a parent, and they have an awkwardly-worded conversation before Tris dies and goes to heaven, I assume.
The rest of the book is Tobias and its fine. I liked the confrontation between him and Evelyn. Tobias learning to accept his mother as a person first, rather than a mother, and her choosing him over the city felt like the closest thing to a victory lap in this story. I wish there had been more of it.
Allegiant isn't good. It's overburdened by the faults of its predecessors and spends the majority of its page-count trying to justify its own ridiculousness. Once the Bureau of Genetic Welfare are introduced, the trilogy loses what little chance it had of ending on a high note....more
"The battle we are fighting is not against a particular group. It is against human nature itself — or at least what it has become."
The time betwe
"The battle we are fighting is not against a particular group. It is against human nature itself — or at least what it has become."
The time between Divergent and Insurgent is literally a nap. Tris naps and we're treated to the immediate aftermath of the first book, including their conditional admittance into Amity — personally, the events of those first forty pages would've been better served in a paragraph of exposition than recounted beat for beat.
Insurgent spends more than enough time with Tris wandering from one clunky plot point to the next.
Speaking of new plot points: Tris overhears Marcus tell Johanna that Erudite didn't attack Abnegation to wrest control of the government — Jeanine is actually looking for something Abnegation have. This retcon is passable — with a few tweaks to Divergent, it wouldn't be so obviously something devised for the sequel — but worrisome for what this forbodes for the direction of this story if we're already rewriting key details like the motivations of our antagonists.
Coupled with the hard drive from the last book being abruptly destroyed and you get the sense Roth is rewriting wholesale to wrangle a trilogy out of this story.
The relationship drama of Tris and Tobias is overblown to absurdity. They've been dating a week when they start snarling at each other. Not about Tobias's creepy behaviour from the last book, but about them not telling each other everything. Likes, dislikes, deep personal histories is going to take longer than a weekend. And they haven't really dated. They've just kissed a couple times.
A coup, dead parents, becoming killers and fleeing factions have all happened since; they've had no time to actually know if they even like each other. They've known each other a month, and spent most of that month in the capacity of instructor and initiate. You can't break something that's hasn't been built in the first place. Their relationship is a joke.
Hilariously, at the end, Tris betrays Tobias by conspiring with his abusive father on hearsay. He's rightfully angry at her and she manages to turn it around, somehow. He's the true liar. Why? Because he didn't dive head-first into a conspiracy with his abusive father, predicated on hearsay — because he should trust her perceptiveness. So, actually, its his fault she had to lie at all.
An absolute joke.
The bulk of the novel is Tris wandering around the claustrophobic confines of this world: Amity, the factionless, Candor, Dauntless, Abnegation and Erudite. Desperately searching for a point of entry into a plot to thwart Erudite.
Tris's trauma is explored but ends disappointingly. Her suicidal ideation is solved when she's confronted with death by Jeanine, but the emotional journey to make that work just isn't there. A lot of that has to do with the priorities of the book: Tobias was shoehorned in at all times.
It takes way too long, but the plot eventually moves with Jeanine leveraging an ultimatum: turn yourself in or I'll mind control people into killing themselves. Sacrificial Tris takes the bait and surrenders herself. And here is when the book gets stupid.
Jeanine and her flock of Erudite's begin to spout Wikipeadia entries about the brain to stupefying effect. Somewhere in her Googling, Roth missed how incredibly complex and interconnected the brain is. Any stroke survivor can attest to that — what's lost and what can be salvaged is often a matter of chance in combination with time, age and other health factors.
So watching the super-smart Erudite (1) treat regions of the brain like they hold a singular function and (2) the strength of a region is based on its size is astounding. Anti-intellectualism is making the book dumber than it needs to be.
With these brain scans, Jeanine makes sweeping generalisations about Tris. At no point does actually talking to Tris sound like a logical thing to do, if only to give context to the scans. One example: According to Jeanine, the "reward center" of Tris's brain is small, therefore Tris engages in little reward-seeking behaviour.
Even if we forget the interconnectedness of the regions (and there's no good reason to), a small sized region could indicate efficiency, not a deficiency. It's all just very stupid and absolutely the worst writing in the book.
Lastly, the revelation at the end is shocking for all the wrong reasons. The goal of this world is to foster divergents and instead inter-faction strife is largely characterised by an attempted genocide of divergents, or as the book refers to it, people with more flexible minds.
Putting a considerable population of people with inflexible minds into its own fenced-in society doesn't sound all that helpful. Or smart. Or logical. Or anything except a recipe for more strife.
Which is the biggest issue plaguing this series: its premise is ridiculous and peeling back layers, trying to make sense of them, is an exercise in futility....more
The world of Divergent is grievously shallow: dive in at your own peril!
Its dystopian society is held up with the literary equivalent of reused tape aThe world of Divergent is grievously shallow: dive in at your own peril!
Its dystopian society is held up with the literary equivalent of reused tape and slabs of sodden cardboard. A great war ravaged the world as we know it and, according to this book, the natural consequence of that was to regiment society into five factions: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless and Erudite.
Ostensibly, each faction values and prioritises their namesake: selflessness, kindness, honesty, bravery and intelligence. But no, they don't simply strive towards a particular virtue — they fundamentally are that virtue. The titular divergence comes from attaining the capacity for more than one.
To muddy these already murky waters further, there's an aptitude test that claims to quantify which virtue you embody. How? Pop on a few electrodes with a tester and go through a series of scenarios: Without context, you see cheese and a knife on a table. Pick the cheese, you're obviously peaceful (or hungry) and belong in Amity. . .
Choose, like Tris, neither, and you hijack this intricate system. Before the results were "explained," I'd assumed divergence would be spearing the cheese with the knife, luring the dog with the cheese and then stabbing the dog through the throat. Something psychopathic and antithetical to a functioning society, but they actually have a faction for that, too: Dauntless.
Subjectivity isn't accounted for to any reasonable degree. Running away from a vicious dog is an action that can be characterised as intelligent (I don't want to get hurt), honest (I'm not capable of overcoming a dog without injury), brave etc. Lying to an aggressive stranger on a bus interrogating you is equally subject to interpretation.
With context, a brave act can be an honest one, an intelligent act can be a conciliatory one, a selfless act can be daring etc. Its in that subjectivity that the books premise implodes in on itself.
Reading Roth grapple with the ridiculousness of her own creation can be entertaining. In one scene she'll describe the Dauntless playing cards (risk?), the Candor debating (truth), the Erudite talking about books and newspapers (knowledge); Amity acting like toddlers and Abnegation creating a self-satisfied vacuum of superiority. Then, as if she realises what she's written, she writes,
Faction customs dictate even idle behaviour and supersede individual preference. I doubt all the Erudite want to study all the time, or that every Candor enjoys a lively debate, but they can't defy the norms of their factions any more than I can.
Is Tris not describing divergence? Does it even matter? No, it doesn't.
This is where the factionless live. Because they failed to complete initiation into whatever faction they chose, they live in poverty, doing the work no one else wants to do. They are janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they make fabric and operate trains and drive buses.
I was a little surprised at how capital "C" Conservative this book is.
While nothing in the world feels thought out, the values come from a genuine place. Of all the factions and how they shape society, two are indicative of this: Abnegation are poised as the political leaders because of their performative godliness and self-righteous rhetoric. Erudite, the faction filled with intellectuals, are the dangerous ones.
And then, horror of horrors, the Factionless — the dregs of society — are the working class. At one point, its made clear Tris would rather die than hold a working class job.
Holy fucking shit.
The bulk of the novel covers Dauntless initiation. Day One: Give sixteen-year-olds guns and have them shoot at a target. Accomplish giving the initiates tinnitus, if not deafness. Also, no gun safety. Day Two: Mime kicks and punches and grapples. Day Three To Six: Break them into pairs and have them beat each other into unconsciousness with those mimed moves. Accomplish maiming the initiates, if not outright killing a few. If they concede, offer elaborate punishments that might lead to death. With an hour of shooting under their belt, partial deafness and some physical injuries, have them play capture the flag with paintball guns. Why not use real guns now? Who knows. Day Seven: Knife throwing.
After a week of activity, Tris develops enough muscle definition to need new pants. In that timeframe, such physical change wouldn't have been possible even if she'd been pumping iron and injecting steroids ... but okay. What are in those Dauntless hamburgers?
The next week is spent in simulations that prey on your fears.
This is where I was most interested: yes, the worldbuilding is awful, but the character-work might compensate. The fear landscape is sadly under-utilised. It's very similar to how dreams are handled in Inception, almost identical in fact.
Just as the story has license to veer into phantasmagorical territory, it remains shockingly concrete. In both, imagining a gun is seen as thinking outside the box. The fears on display are visceral: swarms of violent crows, drowning, burning etc.
Like the series take on various traits, the notion of fear here is reductive. Usually, when speaking of fear we focus on irrational fears — because rational fears are a dime a dozen. Fear is healthy; it's a tool. The book does a poor job of appreciating that; it makes no distinction between the rational and irrational.
Claiming Four has only four fears isn't a lack of fear — it's a lack of imagination, and common sense.
According to Tris all of her fears are about her true fear of weakness and losing control. Metaphor spelled out like it is here isn't my favourite way of understanding a character. It's too unearned to feel like a revelation, and the fears themselves — drowning, crows, burning — are way too straightforward to warrant this kind of breakdown.
I don't like Tobias. He's an asshole. Right before their first kiss he says his first instinct is to push her until she breaks, and makes up with her another time by admitting he forgets she's "capable of being hurt". When she shows any insecurity about sex, he calls her an idiot and his version of a compliment is to say he knew she wasn't one of those girls.
The plot is packed into the last fifty pages. Erudite infiltrate the dumb-dumb Dauntless, mind-control them with transmitters and sic them on goody-good Abnegation. Tris's parents are killed with little fanfare (they were barely characters to begin with), she headshots a mind-controlled friend, and escapes with Tobias on the unstoppable train.
They'll get those diabolical nerds next time.
The story concerns itself with a very facile understanding of identity—a performative game of labels that is interesting when taking an online quiz or reading your horoscope for five minutes but not to carry a nearly five-hundred page novel....more
"The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Conside
"The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual—and, after all, what is an individual?' With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. 'We can make a new one with the greatest ease—as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself. Yes, at Society itself,' he repeated.
What interests me the most about Brave New World is how it teeters the line between utopia and dystopia—depending entirely on one's point of view. It was evidently a struggle Huxley wrestled with too, as he initially espoused some of the core idea's present in the book's World State: rigid hierarchy and social conditioning from conception. He was a vocal proponent of eugenics and was optimistically in favour of Stalin's Five Year Plan.
For of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently—though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers, but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
That said, the World State also broadly reflects his conservativism: promiscuity and casual drug-use are shallow depths for depravity, but that's a natural consequence of reading it in 2022, rather than 1932. Sexuality and gender are divorced from their traditional social roles, but aren't explored much outside of the roles of mother and father. There's also the racial component. While the cast is predominantly white, the nonwhite characters that do exist are scattered in servant roles, invariably at the bottom of the hierarchy, or "savages" outside of the World State's control. Also they're addressed in the prose by one particular slur I had to look up to fully appreciate, and a movie Lenina brings John the Savage to sounds like if Birth of a Nation got a porn parody.
Long after publication, Nazism and the horrible truth of Stalin's Five Year Plan complicated Huxley's feelings on his idea of social engineering. While writing the book he straddled somewhere between the philosophies of Mustapha and John the Savage, detailed in their first and last conversation at the end of the book, and many years later he seems to have resolved these issues in his own way, but the specifics of that aren't relevant to Brave New World. Just the conflict itself. How, at turns, the World State can be a sincere outline for societal progress and, simultaneously, a deconstruction of it. A satire of the modern American lifestyle he found grotesque at the time, and a profound quest for societal stability. It's this complex prism of potential readings that gives the novel is lasting legacy, even if I didn't find it quite so compelling as I did when I was fifteen....more
I drove my feet through a desert Whose mirage fluttered like a host. Voracious for glory, greedy for danger, I roamed the horizons of al-Kulab, Wat
I drove my feet through a desert Whose mirage fluttered like a host. Voracious for glory, greedy for danger, I roamed the horizons of al-Kulab, Watching time level mountains In its search and its hunger for me.
Dune has an impressive ability to encompass its universe's feudal interstellar society within one planet, crafting the perfect epicentre of interplanetary conflict in Arrakis, an inhospitable desert planet rich in a lucrative native resource: spice. A clear analogue to our world's oil-reserves in the middle east, Dune tells the story of house Atreides taking on the stewardship of Arrakis. Despite Duke Leto suspecting the appointment of being a trap, he does as the Emperor commands, bringing his son, Paul, and Lady Jessica—nominally his concubine for political expedience—on what would be a doomed enterprise.
"Arrakis is a one-crop planet," his father said. "One crop. It supports a ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semi-slaves exists on the leavings. It's the masses and the leavings that occupy our attention. These are far more valuable than has ever been suspected."
The storytelling is laden with worldbuilding I adore and some that remain teasingly remote. The way water scarcity informs the culture of Arrakis is fascinating, characterised as precious and practical in different contexts. The harshness and physicality of the world is deeply felt through added elements like stillsuits—claustrophobic and uncomfortable outerwear that works to preserve what little moisture is in the body. And if that wasn't enough, deadly giant sandworms menace the titular dunes.
Where the story struggles for me is the characters and its more mystical elements. Largely because Paul Atreides is our window into the world. Not only as the Duke's son and presumptive heir, but due to his latent special ability that is a matter of fact in this universe if not of particular advantage to its storytelling. Delving into his visions, even shallowly as it is here, sacrifices better characterisation. By design, Paul is rather disconnected from what's going on around him as he grapples with these visions. Even as his father is assassinated and he and his pregnant mother must brave the treacherous dunes in a desperate bid for survival, Paul spends no time grieving with his mother or absorbing the calamity that's befallen them. Instead, he's mentally shifting through unformed but continuously unfolding timelines, trying to piece the future with the present.
While it makes sense that someone mentally trapped in the pathways of potential outcomes would lack an emotional immediacy in general, that doesn't make it great reading. For example, in a blink of an eye, a time-skip gives Paul an infant son and almost immediately has him killed off-page. It adds nothing to the larger conflict, nothing an attack on the Fremen people wouldn't have accomplished.
Luckily, there's Jessica, Paul's mother. She's a fairly effective antidote to Paul's void of personality. As a quasi-deuteragonist of sorts, her emotional journey is charted throughout with much more success. Her arc from Duke's consort to pregnant widow to Reverend Mother with the Fremen nicely offsets Paul's groping metamorphosis into Maud'Dib. Also, Alia, her daughter and Paul's sister, is criminally underused....more
The Host was sold as "sci-fi for people who don't like sci-fi", which is a roundabout way of saying its actually a paranormal romance with sci-fi trapThe Host was sold as "sci-fi for people who don't like sci-fi", which is a roundabout way of saying its actually a paranormal romance with sci-fi trappings. In this case, its a fairly standard invasion-of-the-body-snatchers plot. Stephenie switches it up a bit by having her protagonist be the paranormal one, but Wanda doesn't really come across as a stranger in a strange land—and her vast planetary experience and presumably her age never really comes across on the page either. Its one thing to say Wanda has done this and that, it's another thing to make the reader believe it.
The concept of parasitic aliens taking over human lives because they abhor violence, or, at least, the messy kind, is interesting. They'll violently take over people's bodies and outright kill them in the name of anti-violence, which is an irony the text doesn't seem interested in. Wanda's argument is more like, "Hey, actually, they're not all that bad," rather than, "How is what we do any better?" It's an odd blindspot. And the fact that its advertised as her first "adult" novel is mind-boggling. I have no idea what about The Host is any more or less "adult" then Twilight. Genuinely. The only reasoning I can imagine is that it was for marketing purposes.
A sequel seems unlikely at this point. In the last 14 years, Meyer's output has been slow and most of them have been inessential additions to The Twilight Saga: a novella about an extra from Eclipse, an entirely unwelcome "reimagining" (read: gender-swapped) of the original Twilight novel, a brief foray into the thriller genre with The Chemist, and, most recently, Midnight Sun, another retelling of the original Twilight novel. . ....more
Under the Dome starts with the dome falling down around Chester Mills—and seventy pages later the narrative hasn't managed to account for much more thUnder the Dome starts with the dome falling down around Chester Mills—and seventy pages later the narrative hasn't managed to account for much more than the first five to ten minutes after that. What could possibly fill so many pages without furthering along the plot? Well, King decides to recount a litany of dome-related fatalities with character descriptions and whole paragraphs of inconsequential detail, only for these characters to meet the same deathly end as each other.
By the time the bickering married couple crashed into the dome, only for the half-scalped wife to survive and be rescued by two old ladies driving by, who then proceeded to crash into the dome too—I started finding it hard to breathe with laughter. There's also an old man on a tractor who dies while listening to You're Beautiful by James Blunt, and whatever horror could be mined from the situation completely evaporates.
Thankfully, the pacing improves after that, setting up enough dangling story threads (covering murders, criminal conspiracies, politics etc.) to easily confuse between but with enough surprises to keep the momentum. The large cast of characters weaving in and out of the chaos are fairly well-defined as they fit ready-made archetypes for convenience sake if nothing else, usually supplied in shorthand recurring nouns like "Republican" or "Reverend" at every re-introduction. Honestly, its clunky but absolutely necessary.
The existential horror of being held captive in the dome is perfectly depicted—every possible state, from blind panic, resignation, nefarious opportunism and community spirit, plays out in some form or another—and is by far more compelling than the Lovecraftian threat of the dome itself. Watching the town insidiously succumb to their captivity is the best part of this book, even if the timescale is a little too short for my liking: just one week. That said, the explanation for the dome's existence is interesting in concept . . . and a little anticlimactic in execution. But with mysteries like this, that's generally a given. You either give too much information and irritate or too little and underwhelm; this book is somewhere in the middle....more
Loading...
