Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

by Rebecca

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
by Robin Wall Kimmerer
2013
read by Robin Wall Kimmerer
2016

This is a gorgeous and fascinating book, and I’m glad that I was able to listen to a version read by the author. The book is a wide ranging series of stories and musings about her life, family history, biology, ecology, and reclaiming that which is too nearly lost. It starts with a very personal focus, about her life and self-reflection and moves onto some really fascinating discussions of plants and of Native American culture and history, and then continues onto a discussion of both the dangers of ecological destruction and the importance of not giving up on repairing such casualties.

Kimmerer was raised with a Native American’s perspective on nature which gave her a love of plants and a desire to study them, and then went on to get a PhD and then a professorship in biology with a very scientific perspective on nature. It was later that she realized how important it was to combine the two approaches to nature rather than to give up one for the other. The scientific perspective is one of studying plants as objects, with scientists as unbiased outsiders, while the Native American perspective is one of being part of the nature with humanity as the younger sibling needing to learn from the plants and animals who came before them.

One of the themes that really got to me was her description of how nature is a gift economy: plants give fruits and berries to the birds, and birds give transportation of seeds to the plants. And also how humans are part of this gift economy, not separate from it. Our role in nature is supposed to be taking what is given with gratitude and giving back with reciprocity. The dangers comes with refusing what is given, taking what is not given, not having gratitude, and not giving back.

Another metaphor that she used to great effect was delving into the story of the windigo — a Native American monster that is constantly hungry and can never be satiated — and how capitalist society is trying to turn everyone into this very monster: hungry for more and never satisfied.

The audiobook is approximately 17 hours long, so I’ve been listening to this on my work commute for more than a month, and Anna has been inundated with “In Braiding Sweetgrass…” statements, because every day there is some new and fascinating story or perspective. I’ve also had to deal with becoming a bit teary-eyed while driving a few times.

This is truly an amazing book, and I highly recommend it to basically anyone and everyone.

Little Mushroom by Shisi

by Rebecca

Little Mushroom
by Shisi
translated by Xiao
2022

This is adorable and hilarious and horrifying. This is set in a post-apocalyptic world (with all the scientific explanation of Star Trek, ie, absolutely ludicrous but boy does the author and a series of scientist characters try) where the final bastions of humanity are in a handful of highly guarded cities under military rule, while plants and animals outside are all aggressively mutating and mutagenic. Get stung by an insect and within a couple of hours you’ll become a giant insect monster going on a killing rampage. The nature aspect reminds me of Scavengers Reign, and the writing is clearly intended to evoke specific visual images that sometimes comes across oddly in a written medium, but this would make a stunning animation.

The society is an extreme form of fascism that’s written as a necessary evil with the protestors dying horrible deaths for not understanding the necessity of the military department with little to no oversight that executes anyone suspected of being tainted with a mutation. The slogan of “Humankind’s interests take precedence over all else” very much includes the rights of any individual. There’s the military, the scientists, the breeding program, and everyone else. It’s a grim society, on the cusp of destruction: an extreme dystopia.

However, the book’s perspective is not from the point of view of a human. While humans are struggling for survival in an increasingly hostile world due to the mutating animals and plants, one such mutation is a mushroom who has gained sentience, mobility, and the ability to shape change into the form of a human. That mushroom, named An Zhe, ventures forth into the human city to reacquire part of itself that had been collected by a human research team. Human massacres just aren’t as traumatic to a mushroom as they are to a human and An Zhe’s calm curiosity permeates the book. What does he know about humans and morals and society? He’s just a little mushroom! Adorable!

Lu Feng, the human in charge of executing any human mutations, takes one look at An Zhe and essentially goes: huh. An Zhe is definitely odd but not in the way of a mutated human. Deeply suspicious, but to all appearances just an oddly sweet and naive human.

And thus the plot develops: the human race losing the century-long war against the increasing number of devastating disasters while desperately trying to figure out what’s causing the mutations, An Zhe trying to figure out how to fit into human society while searching for his lost “spore”, and Lu Feng developing unwanted feelings for the one person who isn’t scared of him.

It is utterly ridiculous and adorable — despite the gore, body horror, and overarching destruction — and somehow ends happily.

While this is printed in two volumes, it was originally written as a webnovel with three books and then a series of epilogues and side stories. I’d originally just bought the first volume which is books one and two (despite the cover which says “book one” on it). It does come to a good conclusion and is a natural break in the story… except that there are some really distracting loose ends (a mannequin that’s a perfect replica of Lu Feng was created, confiscated, and then never shows up again? I think not!) so I immediately ordered the second volume and then had to wait a week for it to show up.

There’s definitely some cultural commentary and common Chinese tropes that I don’t have the context for, but I still really enjoyed these books. I can’t give a blanket recommendation since the society is seriously grim dark with the aforementioned body horror and gory deaths, so readers will need to judge their own preferences, but it really is amazing how chill and even hilarious the narration can be regarding the horrors when the POV character is a self-aware mushroom.

Web comics

by Rebecca

I have been bingeing so many web comics! There are so many, and cover such a range! And I know I’ve read web comics before and even recommended some of them on this blog, but previously I was discovering them on their individual websites and now I have discovered that there are phone apps that give you access to some untold numbers of web comics all through a single searchable interface.

Admittedly, the vast majority are pretty darn schlocky, and my first impression was that they were like harlequin romances for fantasy fans. (“His Majesty’s Proposal”, “The Remarried Empress”, and “Justice for the Villainess” are all real titles of webcomics I’ve tried.) But on the one hand, I do enjoy some schlocky fantasy romances, and on the other hand, there are other genres represented, and some really good stories, as long as you’re willing to go searching.

Many of the stories are on-going with weekly updates which remind me of why I stopped following comics in individual issues and waited for trade paperbacks instead. I find the individual updates frustratingly short. But having just discovered these collections, there are a lot of issues to catch up on before I’m current, and there are some great stories that have been completed.

Manta is one of the apps I downloaded on my phone, although it’s also available as a website. I now have a monthly subscription that gives me full access to any story in their collection. Some of the completed stories that I recommend are:

  • Shall We Pole Dance? is a 12-issue nonfiction story about a woman’s experience improving physically and mentally through joining a pole dancing class, that’s just sweet and delightful.
  • The Night Market is a 12-issue fantasy story about a magical market that is an intersection of worlds, where you can buy anything at all, but once you enter, you must buy something, and everything has a cost.
  • Unbreakable Master is a 141-issue fantasy gay romance about a guy who breaks everything he touches discovering that there is a hidden world of magical beings fighting a war for control of the world, and what role his powers might have in this struggle.
  • Traces of the Sun is a 96-issue fantasy gay romance about a guy who has the magical power to fix things, a job fixing destroyed buildings, and a secret: that when his childhood friends were killed in an attack, he tried to fix them, but only raised them as zombies that he can neither bring fully to life nor settle into peace. (This is based on a book and I want to read the book so bad, but it’s in Korean and there’s no translation available.)

Webtoons is the other app I now have installed on my phone, which charges a certain number of “coins” per recent issue, with coins being sold for real money, however, as long as you’re willing to wait a few weeks, the backlog of older issues are free. None of the stories I’ve read on this app have been completed, but there are several that I’ve enjoyed the backlog and updates for:

  • Eleceed is currently at 262 free issues of a fantasy adventure story about a kid who has a superpower discovering that there’s a whole society of “awakened ones” with superpowers and working up the ranks of power via an endless series of dramatic duels, which is a tedious premise, but the growing cast of characters are so darn delightful! The sweet kid, Jiwoo Seo, discovers an injured cat, who is actually a person, Kayden, who had semi-accidentally transformed himself into a cat, but proceeds to mentor the kid. This story made me realize that for a society that’s essentially lawful evil, the chaotic neutral of Kayden is a net benefit.
  • Cleric of Decay is currently at 30 free issues of a fantasy adventure story where our protagonist has been sucked into a video game he was playing, but only after he’d both selected a particularly difficult/weak character class AND installed cheat codes to make it viable. So now he’s wandering around as the last living cleric of an evil goddess who was killed and dismembered years ago trying to collect objects of power at the demand of a mummified hand of a goddess while staying unnoticed by the various paladins and clerics of more accepted deities.
  • Paranoid Mage is currently at 11 free issues of a fantasy adventure story about a young man who discovers he has magic powers shortly before being discovered by a secret society of magic users who are strictly hierarchical and do not think he is allowed to opt out of joining their society on a low rung. He escapes, and is now on the run/in hiding, while trying to learn to use his powers, and also stumbling across parts of magical society.

These stories are a delight and an addiction.

Comics written by women

by Anna

I ran across a thread on Twitter listing out comics and manga by women, and there were a number I hadn’t heard of, so I promptly went on a hold spree on my library’s website.

The Good

Sleepless by Sarah Vaughn and Leila del Duca

Ooh, this was a delight! The beautiful illustrations and realistic dialogue work together to draw the reader into this diverse Renaissance-type world of heraldry, politics, and magic. Lady Pyppenia or “Poppy” is the beloved though illegitimate daughter of the late king, trying to find her place in the court once her uncle takes the thrown. Her sworn knight, Cyrenic, is one of the ‘sleepless,’ guards who have magically sacrificed their need for sleep in order to offer around-the-clock protection, and the only one she can trust when assassins come for her.

The world building is expansive enough that it reminds me a bit of Game of Thrones, though much more family friendly, of course. The variety of fantasy cultures borrow elements from Europe through the Mediterranean and down into North Africa, represented with different fashions, manners, and magic, and all trying to navigate the various political alliances. At the same time, it is an intimate look at the relationship between a young woman in a precarious position of power and the man that serves her. The first volume ends on a cliffhanger, and the second picks up immediately, so get them together if you can.

Black Cloak by Kelly Thompson and Meredith McClaren

Another phenomenal story! I knew it was likely to be a good one for me from the various raves describing it as fantasy shot through with noir mystery/police procedural. There’s not much better way to my heart, and it is excellently done.

Set in a futuristic fantasy world, where elves, dragons, and humans all jostle for political power in the last standing city, Black Cloak balances the writing and illustrations beautifully in its “show, don’t tell” approach. When two bodies wash ashore from the mermaid lagoon, our protagonist, a ‘black cloak’ cop, must investigate. The world-building unfolds with the mystery as the bodies lead to secrets through all levels of the society.

Continue reading →

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels

by Anna

By Janice Hallett

I raved about Hallett’s The Appeal earlier this year, but I’m savoring this one even more! The Alperton Angels uses the same epistolary style of collected emails, texts, and memos, but whereas The Appeal was more cozy mystery, this is religious suspense thriller, which is absolutely my bag. The same style that worked so well to bring out the humor in small community theater works equally well at building brewing creeping dread.

The first page sets the premise: you have access to the following collection of documents, do you take them to the police or hide them away forever? And when I first started, I wondered, what on earth would lead me to cover up a brutal murder?! Well, the presence of the antichrist might… (that’s a teaser, not a spoiler). The documents are the collected emails, texts, and transcribed interviews of a true crime author researching her latest project: years ago two teenagers rescued a baby from a doomsday cult that claimed it was the antichrist and planned to kill it to save the world. The cult itself was then found dead by ritual suicide by the cops that responded to the teen’s emergency call. After the first rush of news stories, with some suspicious discrepancies, the story went quiet and the teens and baby seem to have disappeared.

Our central author is approached by her publisher to revisit the story, and to pique the public’s interest, find the baby, who would be turning 18 this year. As she follows the various leads, more and more isn’t adding up, and then a competing author joins the search as well. That’s about as much as I want to say; since the mystery goes in so many different directions, anything else could be mild spoilers. There were so many twists and turns at the end, it was getting a little ridiculous, but I loved every one of them!

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

by Rebecca

The Wild Robot
2016
by Peter Brown

This was clearly written for young readers with simple language, chapters that are only a page or two long, and fun illustrations on most pages. It’s also 300 pages long, covers a lot of ground in those many short chapters, and is lovely to read as an adult, with a heart-felt plot arch. The titular wild robot, Roz, is a general assistant robot made for by and for humans with a learning AI component, who is lost in a shipwreck and wakes up for the first time on an island full of wild animals, and no humans at all. So Roz must learn directly from nature and the wild animals, which whom she learns to speak and live and become wild.

It’s light and fun with the animals all talking in their animal language and having an hour of truce every day between predator and prey to gather and discuss the island news, but it does acknowledge (albeit lightly) that sometimes the predators do kill and eat the prey animals, because that’s the nature of nature. But it’s a lovely feel-good story, with adventures, found family and beautiful wilderness.

The Wild Robot Escapes
2018
by Peter Brown

Although they were published two years apart, the sequel feels like the second half of a duology. This is another 300-pages of many short chapters riddled with illustrations and a simple plot arch that’s also emotionally deep and resonant. It continues directly from the end of the first book, and creates some lovely parallels.

There is a third book, The Wild Robot Protects, that I’ll probably read eventually as well, but I’m guessing it’s more a stand alone story, while these two are definitely paired.

I highly recommend these for any kid who’s just getting into longer full-text books, or for any ESL readers who want something that’s interesting with plot and characters while still needing simply language, or anyone like me who just wants a somewhat relaxing read about sweet characters figuring out how to succeed.

Also, as a little extra, DreamWorks is making this into an animated movie. The trailer looks adorable, and I’m deeply curious as to what they do with the plot arc.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

by Anna

By Shehan Karunatilaka

Work is sending me to Sri Lanka tomorrow, so I scrambled to check out several travel guides from the library. They weren’t really holding my attention, though, so I had the thought to track down a fictional novel by a Sri Lankan author and set there. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority focus on the long and brutal civil war, and that wasn’t what I was looking for in this particular moment.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida has a fascinating premise, and was described as “bawdy, wisecracking” and “comic, macabre, angry and thumpingly alive,” which seemed more like it. However, it was very much also about the civil war, which upon consideration makes a lot of sense: the 26-year war only ended in 2009, recent enough that it would probably be absurd for any novel to not feature it someway or another. (I also think it worked: I have a much better general sense of the recent history and culture, though I had to frequently remind myself that I was reading a critique of the most negative side.)

The novel opens with Maali Almeida, a photojournalist, arriving in the afterlife, which spotty memories of his life and none of his death. The very bureaucratic helper explains to him that he has seven moons before his chance to move to the next stage, whatever that will be, closes. As he travels around Colombo, revisiting old homes, family, and friends, dodging various other ghosts and demons, pieces of his life come back to him, and he scrambles to make meaning of it before he must go on.

Maali not a very likeable man, though neither is anyone else, and the situation in Sri Lanka is impossible. The tone of the book in general reminded me of Catch-22, in that it was actually quite funny when showing truly horrifying circumstances. Upon reading the first chapter, Rebecca said it reminded her a bit of Slumdog Millionaire, and perhaps there is genre of books that reveal the worst of humanity through the darkest of humor. For all that, though, it ended in a surprisingly optimistic view of humanity and life in general, which caught me off guard but that I really appreciated. (As an aside, the beginning of the book caught me off guard with its second-person present tense, which is an usual style that can be difficult to get into, but I adjusted more quickly than I expected and came to really appreciate it.)

The Mysteries

by Anna

By Bill Watterson and John Kascht

I first heard about Bill Watterson’s latest publication from Midnight Pals’ twitter thread, which is funny, a little mean, and pretty accurate. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the extremely slim volume with one sentence and one picture per page still took me by surprise. It’s described as a “fable for grown-ups” and it is a very quick read — my whole family read it in an afternoon.

It is very much a departure from his Calvin & Hobbes work, though some family thought they could recognize trace similarities in the illustrations. I wasn’t previously familiar with John Kascht, apparently a renowned caricaturist, but per the afterward, both art and writing were a collaborative effort. Whatever each of their roles were, it is clear that they are both fairly fed up with the cultural discourse over the last few decades and perhaps humanity itself. Though it is overall a hopeful message, it reminded a number of us of this comic.

It’s a lovely little book that would probably make a nice gift for a fan or completionist; everyone else should also check it out, but perhaps from the library.

Unexpected Night

by Anna

By Elizabeth Daly

This book is a trip — not exactly good by today’s standards, but very entertaining! First published in 1940, Daly is a contemporary of Agatha Christie, though not nearly as prolific or renowned. I was going to give Daly some extra credit for avoiding the n-word where Christy would absolutely have used it, but she follows up later with some blackface and different (less charged?) slurs, so I guess there’s that.*

The narrative structure and characters are certainly dated, but that was part of the charm for me. I was often kept guessing at the twists in plot, more because I don’t understand many of the lifestyles and character tropes of the time (why is everyone going out golfing the day after a suspicious death?!) than any planned surprise reveals, and occasionally I couldn’t understand what the characters were on about, with their contemporary slang. It adds a certain spice to the reading experience!

Unexpected Night introduces Daly’s primary detective, Henry Gamadge, an antique book verifier, who gets dragged into mysteries under the flimsiest of excuses. In this case, he is vacationing at a resort in Maine, coincidentally along with a casual friend of his, who’s family then becomes embroiled in the suspicious death. Like I said, Gamadge doesn’t have much of a connection, and I very much appreciated the variety of characters that were also puzzled at his involvement, including the long suffering sheriff.

Since this is her first published book and the first in the Henry Gamadge series, I’m guessing that some of the rougher narrative and character parts will get smoothed out, and I look forward to continuing the series.

*Well, I started the second novel in the series, Deadly Nightshade, and unfortunately it features depictions of “gypsies” so offensive I had to quit, so I guess that’s that.

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang

by Rebecca

The Poppy War
by R. F. Kuang
2018

Some years back, I first heard of this book in a recommendation list that had tagged it as grimdark. That’s not a subgenre I appreciate at all, and so I didn’t read it then. More recently, I ran across a recommendation somewhere else, and it looked interesting so I gave it a shot, and for the most part it slots pretty neatly into a lot of fantasy and YA war books that deal with horrible situations. However, out of 530 pages, there are about 30 at the 400 page mark that are absolutely horrifying and I wish I hadn’t read.

While the book is set in a fantasy world, it’s clearly inspired by China and Japan and the Japanese invasions of China. And those 30 pages are inspired by the Rape of Nanking, aka the Nanking massacre of 1937-1938. If you ever want nightmares, look up that bit of history. As a piece of fiction, it comes across as a series of gratuitously detailed descriptions of physical and sexual abuse on a massive scale; as a reminder of the depths of horror that humans perpetuate upon each other, it made me wonder why I was reading fiction and not somehow doing something to stop any of the current genocides taking place, and how horrible is it that none of them are as horrifying as Nanking was.

But, you know, other than that, the book felt like a combination of The Magicians (which I didn’t care for) and Iron Widow (which I did). The plot focuses on Rin, a young orphan girl being fostered by drug runners who’s determined to get out of an arranged marriage by passing the entrance exam for the premier military academy (which come with an automatic full scholarship) and going on to do great things.

The book is organized into three parts, the first part of which is basically an extremely long training montage. I do love a good training montage, so this isn’t a bad thing from my perspective, although some of it broke my suspension of disbelief. (Forcing yourself to stay awake for days on end to rote memorize texts you don’t understand is unlikely to actually lead to a good test grade.)

The next two parts are the war. And also where the characters get increasingly full of themselves even as they make increasingly questionable decisions. The training montage section dealt with a lot of cool world building and magic theory, but not much about military structure, strategy, tactics, or logistics, all of which they could have been helpful later on.

There is an extremely dramatic conclusion with Rin coming into her power and rather conclusively ending the war, while also setting up for an even more dramatic sequel. However, it also falls a bit flat as it tries rather quickly to address the philosophical question of whether or not atrocities in response to atrocities are ever acceptable.

So over all, this was well written, but I didn’t actually like it, and while I’m curious to know what happens in the next book, I don’t think I’m going to read it.