Author Archives: Rebecca

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.

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 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.

Ruined by Vaughn, Searle, and Smith

by Rebecca

Ruined
written by Sarah Vaughn
pencils and colors by Sarah Winifred Searle
inks by Niki Smith
2023

This is a regency romance graphic novel and it’s delightful and well-done and extremely fictionalized. It’s not so much set in the British regency era as it is in the universe of the Bridgerton TV show, not explicitly but pretty obviously, as it mostly maintains the fashions of the historical era while ignoring the social and political issues.

In this universe there is no racism or homophobia. Sexism is alive and well in the systemic way that drives so many romance novel plots, especially arranged marriage ones such as this one, but not in the individual way. Systemic classism is also highly present but largely ignored. If this book had been trying to be historical fiction, it would be a failure, but as a romance with aesthetic, it’s a delight.

Our heroine has been compromised! She must marry immediately in order to avoid a terrible scandal! Our hero has inherited an estate that’s in terrible repair and near bankruptcy! He must marry for money! They must give up all hope of a love match and have an arranged marriage!

The story opens at their wedding, and then they proceed to get to know each other and fall in love. There’s also a number of secondary characters with at least two other couples who get together with their own intersecting shenanigans. The book is very cute, beautifully illustrated and everyone makes ridiculous decisions regarding their love lives. It’s also got a couple of explicit sex scenes, which are very much part of the story and character arcs, but were surprising to me since otherwise the story telling feels very general audience and open to all ages.

Demon Daughter by Bujold

by Rebecca

Demon Daughter, a Penric & Desdemona Novella
by Lois McMaster Bujold
2024

Yay! A new Penric & Desdemona story! And I’ve been distracted enough that I had to discover it from an Amazon notice since I follow Bujold. (And it says something that it took three weeks for them to notify me.)

This is a novella that has a plot around a kid lost at sea, but contains some even more interesting explorations about what demons are and what they can do, as well as showing how Penric, Desdemona, and Nikys are evolving their family. It introduced enough interesting lore that it also makes me wonder if there’s a larger work in progress to take advantage of the implications. I live in hope! But if not, this still is a wonderful addition to the series.

Also, a mini-spoiler: I always love it when a saint of the Bastard is a character because they are all hilarious and awesome!

Apocalyptic Travel graphic novels

by Rebecca

Touring After the Apocalypse, Volumes 1 – 3
by Sakae Saito
translated by Amanda Haley
2022-2023

I randomly checked these manga out from the new release section of my local library and they’re adorable. Youko and Airi are (or at least appear to be) two teenage girls who are traveling via motorsbike around Japan, seeing the sights, following Youko’s older sister’s previous touring schedule, but while the pictures and social media posts that the sister posted look (more or less) like regular posts we might see today, Youko and Airi are seeing the sights after they’re long abandoned and worn down and completely absent any other people. But they’re so excited to see everything!

In each volume, there’s some discovery that to me-the-reader acknowledges the whole tragedy of the empty and crumbling infrastructure of society and what it means that there are so many people not there. To the two girls, it’s fun and interesting and then they move on to the next thing. It keeps the whole mood light-hearted, while also highlighting how much society changes in a single generation as kids who didn’t live the history are accustomed to their lives as being the norm.

There’s a slowly building reveal that something else is going on with these two, but while there are various hints and teases so far, I haven’t figured it out yet.

I’m also really impressed with the translation job since there’s a lot of pop culture references and word games that flow perfectly naturally while I’m reading the English and I can only imagine were incredibly difficult to transpose from the original Japanese.

The Electric State
by Simon Stålenhag
2017

Oof, this is beautiful and moody and horrifying and dark, and it ends in such a way that there’s just enough hope for the future that I think “maybe…”, even though it’s very clear that there’s no real hope. But, just, maybe…?

My first thought when looking at this book was that it was an art book, full of beautiful full page and two-page spreads of various post-apocalyptic scenes. And it is! But it’s also a novella with a story, written in text and full paragraphs and absolutely no text boxes or the like, so it’s more of a picture book than a graphic novel in the way the text and the images interact.

The story is about the narrator Michelle and her companion Skip making a cross country trip in a thoroughly failed cyberpunk society. The setting is intra-apocalyptic rather than post, and oof, does it dip into all sorts of horror, with the implication that at least three types of apocalyptic disasters were all happening at once: war, environmental, and technological. It was reassuring that the events were set in the 1990s with a different history prior to that because this book would have been even more horrifying if it was set in the 2040s. There are a series of flashbacks that reveal the narrator’s backstory, but it’s only in the final third of the book that the reason for trip and Skip’s story are finally revealed, and it’s such a magnificent twist that just twists my heart and stomach.

The differences between these two titles is kind of amazing, just in tone and visualization, especially given how similar the premise and frameworks are. It very much highlights how two people can tell the same story in such different ways that they become two different stories. Reading these two so soon one after another reminds me very much of the Holy Shit! Two Cakes! meme.

graphic novels

by Rebecca

It’s Okay That It’s Not Okay
by Christina Tran
2022

I got this book from the Small Press Expo and it’s really good and also really emotional, about the process of dealing with grief after too long trying to push past it. Trans’ mother died in 2003, but the story is set in 2011, as she deals with the results of never fully allowing herself to grieve before, and not feeling able to grieve anymore. It’s really beautiful and well done, using the graphics to show both how busy she kept herself for years and also how hard the depression hit when she was no longer able to push the emotions away. There were definitely parts I recognized in myself and others. I highly recommend it.

Cat Burglar Black
by Richard Sala
2009

This is an adorable classic gothic mystery with gangs of orphaned street thieves, mysterious secret organizations, orphans, previously unknown aunts, mysterious illnesses that require full face bandages, hidden treasures, and a lot of just-off-screen gruesome deaths. There was also a lot of info dumping about the various backstories, but the action was really well done. The deaths had a certain Edward Gorey quality to them. I expect kids and teens would love this, but I might be too old to properly appreciate the many macabre deaths.

Thistil Mistil Kistil
by Sarah Schanze
2015

This is gorgeous. It’s another Small Press Expo acquisition that I bought entirely for the illustrations which are amazing, and only then did I pay attention to the story which is also really good. The plot is about a viking kid who has died honorably in battle, but due to circumstances has been blocked from Valhalla and given the mission to find three pieces of famous weapons that Loki has stolen and return them to Odin before he will be allowed to enter. So he goes to Loki to try to figure out what he did with them. Loki is more or less curious about how is all going to play out and probably has motives of his own to go along with this quest to find whatever happened to those pieces. Stuff happens. After reading this, I discovered that it is only the first five chapters, and while the story is not yet completed, the first twenty-two chapters are available online: https://www.tmkcomic.com/archive/ Yay! So I am now all caught up and wow, did things get complicated and I really hope the rest comes soon! But also, just wow, the illustrations are so beautiful and so significant to the story telling.

The Mystery of the Fool & the Vanisher
by David and Ruth Ellwand
2008

This book is less of a graphic novel and more an extensively illustrated short story. (“Picture book for adults” was how I first phrased this but then thought that sounded pornographic, which this is decidedly not.) The plot is a Victorian gothic mystery about a photographer, an archaeologist, and the pixies who do not appreciate archaeological digs in their territory. The illustrations are all photographs, including photographs of photographs, as the framing story is about a photographer who finds an abandoned locked trunk that contains documentation of a much earlier photographer who tried the prove the existence of the fae folk. (I was much reminded of Arthur Conan Doyle’s attempts to prove such.) It is extremely atmospheric.

The Body Factory by Héloïse Chochois

by Rebecca

The Body Factory: from the first prosthetics to the augmented human
by Héloïse Chochois
translated by Kendra Boileau
2021

This is another book I bought from Graphic Mundi at the Small Press Expo and it feels a bit like a Mary Roach book, in that it looks at the history and development of a fascinating but somewhat disturbing topic, in this case amputation and prosthetics. This being a graphic novel* came with some pros and cons in that the illustrations were extremely helpful in following the topic, but also kind of disturbing as the topic started with dismemberment. But it covers a lot of ground very quickly, using a framing story of a young man who loses his arm in a motorcycle accident and is getting through the recovery process.

The book is divided into four main chapters:

  1. Amputation
  2. Phantom Limb
  3. Prostheses
  4. Transhumanism

This book is very much a basic introduction to the topic and concepts that can give you a foundation from which to look into more details, and I found this fascinating and sufficient for the first three chapters discussing history and anatomy but less so for the final chapter which seems a more niche philosophical perspective than a mainstream overview. The mention of how “Eugenics is a matter of great debate among transhumanists who recognize that there are negatives but also positive aspects to eugenics” was a major red flag for me.

So this book is fiction (framing story), nonfiction (first three chapters), and philosophy (fourth chapter.) In some ways this reminds me of Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder (a book I only read once, decades ago, so take with a grain of salt) in the way it’s framed, but I didn’t care for that book and I did enjoy this one. Although upon reflection, Sophie’s World was all about philosophy and the one section I didn’t care for in this book was the philosophy chapter.

I did enjoy this book, and I do recommend it, but with some caveats: be prepared for some casual medical gore and expect the fourth chapter to be the author’s take on philosophy rather than the nonfiction of the previous chapters.

* I’ll reiterate a pet peeve of mine that this type of book gets called either a “graphic novel” or a “comic book” and both of those are misleading terms when it comes to books like this one. But I don’t have a better term for it. Sigh.